Fresh Complaint

by Jeffrey Eugenides

  At the car, wouldn’t you know it, my key fob chose right then not to work. I kept pressing and pressing. Johanna stood on the gravel, looking small, for her, and crying, “I hate you! I hate you!” I watched my wife crying from what felt like a long way off. This was the same woman who, when we were trying to have Lucas, called me on the phone and said, like Tom Cruise in Top Gun, “I feel the need for seed!” I’d rush home from work, stripping off my vest and string tie as I hurried into the bedroom, sometimes leaving my cowboy boots on (though that didn’t feel right, and I tried not to), and there would be Johanna, lying on her back with her legs and arms spread out in welcome, her cheeks fiery red, and I leapt and fell, and kept falling, it felt like, forever, down into her, both of us lost in the sweet, solemn business of making a baby.

  * * *

  So that’s why I’m out here in the bushes. Johanna kicked me out. I’m living downtown now, near the theater district, renting a two-bedroom in the overpriced condos they built before the crash and now can’t fill.

  I’d wager I’m about sixty feet away from the house now. Maybe fifty-nine. Think I’ll get closer.

  Fifty-eight.

  Fifty-seven.

  How do you like that, Lawman?

  I’m standing next to one of the floodlights when I remember that restraining orders aren’t calculated in feet. They’re in yards. I’m supposed to be staying fifty yards away!

  Tarnation.

  But I don’t move. Here’s why. If I’m supposed to be fifty yards away, that means I’ve been violating the restraining order for weeks.

  I’m guilty already.

  So, might as well get a little closer.

  Up onto the front porch, for instance.

  Just like I thought: front door’s open. God damn it, Johanna! I think. Just leave the house wide open for any home invader to waltz right in, why don’t you?

  For a minute, it feels like old times. I’m angrier than a hornet, and I’m standing in my own house. A sweet urge of self-justification fills me. I know who the bad guy is here. It’s Johanna. I’m just itching to go and find her and shout, “You left the front door open! Again.” But I can’t right now, because, technically, I’m breaking and entering.

  Then the smell hits me. It’s not the De Rougemonts. It’s partly dinner—lamb chops, plus cooking wine. Nice. Partly, too, a shampoo smell from Meg’s having just showered upstairs. Moist, warm, perfumey air is filtering down the staircase. I can feel it on my cheeks. I can also smell Forelock, who’s too old to even come and greet his master, which under the circumstances is OK by me. It’s all these smells at once, which means that it’s our smell. The D.s! We’ve finally lived here long enough to displace the old-person smell of the De Rougemonts. I just didn’t realize it before. I had to get kicked out of my own house to be able to come and smell this smell, which I don’t think, even if I were a little kid with super-smelling abilities, would be anything other than pleasant.

  Upstairs Meg runs out of her bedroom. “Lucas!” she shouts. “What did you do with my charger!”

  “I didn’t do anything,” he says back. (He’s up in his bedroom.)

  “You took it!”

  “I did not!”

  “Yes, you did!”

  “Mom!” Meg yells, and comes to the top of the stairs, where she sees me. Or maybe doesn’t. She needs to wear her glasses. She stares down to where I’m standing in the shadows and she shouts, “Mom! Tell Lucas to give me back my charger!”

  I hear something, and turn. And there’s Johanna. When she sees me, she does a funny thing. She jumps back. Her face goes white and she says, “Guys! Stay upstairs!”

  Hey, come on, I’m thinking. It’s just me.

  Johanna presses the speed dial on her phone, still backing away.

  “You don’t have to do that,” I say. “Come on now, Jo-Jo.”

  She gets on with 911. I take a step toward her with my hand out. I’m not going to grab the phone. I just want her to hang up and I’ll leave. But suddenly I’m holding the phone, Johanna’s screaming, and, out of nowhere, something jumps me from behind, tackling me to the ground.

  It’s Bryce. My son.

  He isn’t at trumpet lessons. Maybe he quit. I’m always the last to know.

  Bryce has got a rope in his hand, or an extension cord, and he’s strong as a bull. He always did take after Johanna’s side.

  He’s pressing his knee hard into my back, trying to hog-tie me with the extension cord.

  “Got him, Mom!” he shouts.

  I’m trying to talk. But my son has my face smashed down into the rug. “Hey, Bryce, lemme go,” I say. “It’s Pa. It’s Pa down here. Bryce? I’m not kidding now.”

  I try an old Michigan wrestling move, scissor kick. Works like a charm. I flip Bryce off me, onto his back. He tries to scramble away but I’m too fast for him.

  “Hey, now,” I say. “Who’s your daddy now, Bryce? Huh? Who’s your daddy?”

  That’s when I notice Meg, higher on the stairs. She’s been frozen there the whole time. But when I look at her now she hightails it. Scared of me.

  Seeing that takes all the fight out of me. Meg? Sugar pie? Daddy won’t hurt you.

  But she’s gone.

  “OK,” I say. “Ah’mo leave now.”

  I turn and go outside. Look up at the sky. No stars. I put my hands in the air and wait.

  * * *

  After bringing me to headquarters, the officer removed my handcuffs and turned me over to the sheriff, who made me empty my pockets: wallet, cell phone, loose change, 5-Hour Energy bottle, and an Ashley Madison ad torn from some magazine. He had me put all that stuff in a ziplock and sign a form vouching for the contents.

  It was too late to call my lawyer’s office, so I called Peekskill’s cell and left a message on his voice mail. I asked if that counted as a call. It did.

  They took me down the hall to an interrogation room. After about a half hour, a guy I haven’t seen before, detective, comes in and sits down.

  “How much you had tonight?” he asks me.

  “A few.”

  “Bartender at Le Grange said you came in around noon and stayed through happy hour.”

  “Yessir. Not gonna lie to you.”

  The detective pushes himself back in his chair.

  “We get guys like you in here all the time,” he says. “Hey, I know how you feel. I’m divorced, too. Twice. You think I don’t want to stick it to my old lady sometimes? But you know what? She’s the mother of my children. That sound corny to you? Not to me it doesn’t. You have to make sure she’s happy, whether you like it or not. Because your kids are going to be living with her and they’re the ones that’ll pay the price.”

  “They’re my kids, too,” I say. My voice sounds funny.

  “I hear you.”

  With that, he goes out. I look around the room, making sure there isn’t a two-way mirror, like on Law & Order, and when I’m satisfied I just hang my head and cry. When I was a kid, I used to imagine getting arrested and how cool I’d act. They wouldn’t get nothing out of me. A real outlaw. Well, now I am arrested, and all I am is a guy with gray stubble on my cheeks, and my nose still bleeding a little from when Bryce mashed it against the rug.

  There’s a thing they’ve figured out about love. Scientifically. They’ve done studies to find out what keeps couples together. Do you know what it is? It isn’t getting along. Isn’t having money, or children, or a similar outlook on life. It’s just checking in with each other. Doing little kindnesses for each other. At breakfast, you pass the jam. Or, on a trip to New York City, you hold hands for a second in a subway elevator. You ask “How was your day?” and pretend to care. Stuff like that really works.

  Sounds pretty easy, right? Except most people can’t keep it up. In addition to finding the bad guy in every argument, couples do this thing called the Protest Polka. That’s a dance where one partner seeks reassurance about the relationship and approaches the other, but because that person usually does
this by complaining or being angry, the other partner wants to get the hell away, and so retreats. For most people, this complicated maneuver is easier than asking, “How are your sinuses today, dear? Still stuffed? I’m sorry. Let me get you your saline.”

  While I’m thinking all this, the detective comes in again and says, “OK. Vamoose.”

  He means I’m getting out. No argument from me. I follow him down the hall to the front of headquarters. I expect to see Peekskill, which I do. He’s shooting the breeze with the desk sergeant, using cheerful profanities. No one can say “you motherfucker” with more joie de vivre than Counselor Peekskill. None of this surprises me at all. What surprises me is that standing a few feet behind Peekskill is my wife.

  “Johanna’s declining to press charges,” Peekskill tells me, when he comes over. “Legally, that doesn’t mean shit because the restraining order’s enforced by the state. But the police don’t want to charge you with anything if the wife’s not going to be behind it. I gotta tell you, though, this isn’t going to help you before the judge. We may not be able to get this thing revoked.”

  “Never?” I say. “I’m within fifty yards of her right now.”

  “True, but you’re in a police station.”

  “Can I talk to her?”

  “You want to talk to her? I don’t advise that right now.”

  But I’m already crossing the precinct lobby.

  Johanna is standing by the door, her head down.

  I’m not sure when I’m going to see her again, so I look at her real hard.

  I look at her but feel nothing.

  I can’t even tell if she’s pretty anymore.

  Probably she is. At social functions, other people, men, anyway, are always saying, “You look familiar. You didn’t used to be a Dallas cheerleader, did you?”

  I look. Keep looking. Finally, Johanna meets my eye.

  “I want to be a family again,” I say.

  Her expression is hard to read. But the feeling I get is that Johanna’s young face is lying under her new, older face, and that the older face is like a mask. I want her younger face to come out not only because it was the face I fell in love with but because it was the face that loved me back. I remember how it crinkled up whenever I came into a room.

  No crinkling now. More like a Halloween pumpkin, with the candle gone out.

  And then she tells me what’s what. “I tried for a long time, Charlie. To make you happy. I thought if I made more money it would make you happy. Or if we got a bigger house. Or if I just left you alone so you could drink all the time. But none of these things made you happy, Charlie. And they didn’t make me happy, either. Now that you’ve moved out, I’m sad. I am crying every night. But, as I now know the truth, I can begin to deal with it.”

  “This isn’t the only truth there is,” I say. It sounds more vague than I want it to, so I spread my arms wide—like I’m hugging the whole world—but this only ends up seeming even vaguer.

  I try again. “I don’t want to be the person I’ve been,” I say. “I want to change.” This is meant sincerely. But, like most sincerities, it’s a little threadbare. Also, because I’m out of practice being sincere, I still feel like I’m lying.

  Not very convincing.

  “It’s late,” Johanna says. “I’m tired. I’m going home.”

  “Our home,” I say. But she’s halfway to her car already.

  * * *

  I don’t know where I’m walking. Just wandering. I don’t much want to go back to my apartment.

  After me and Johanna bought our house, we went over to meet the owners, and you know what the old guy did to me? We were walking out to see the mechanical room—he wanted to explain about servicing the boiler—and he was walking real slow. Then right quick he turned around and looked at me with his old bald head, and he said, “Just you wait.”

  His spine was all catty-whompered. He could only shuffle along. So, in order to stave off the embarrassment of being closer to death than me, he hit me with that grim reminder that I’d end up just like him someday, shuffling around this house like an invalid.

  Thinking of Mr. De Rougement, I all of a sudden figure out what my problem is. Why I’ve been acting so crazy.

  It’s death. He’s the bad guy.

  Hey, Johanna. I found him! It’s death.

  I keep on walking, thinking about that. Lose track of time.

  When I finally look up, I’ll be god-darned if I ain’t in front of my house again! On the other side of the street, in legal territory, but still. My feet led me here out of habit, like an old plug horse.

  I take out my phone again. Maybe Meg played a word while I was in jail.

  No such luck.

  When a new word comes on Words with Friends, it’s a beautiful sight to see. The letters appear out of nowhere, like a sprinkle of stardust. I could be anywhere, doing anything, but when Meg’s next word flies through the night to skip and dance across my phone, I’ll know she’s thinking of me, even if she’s trying to beat me.

  When Johanna and I first went to bed, I was a little intimidated. I’m not a small man, but on top of Johanna? Sort of a Gulliver’s Travels–type situation. It was like Johanna had fallen asleep and I’d climbed up there to survey the scene. Beautiful view! Rolling hills! Fertile cropland! But there was only one of me, not a whole town of Lilliputians throwing ropes and nailing her down.

  But it was strange. That first night with Johanna, and more and more every night after, it was like she shrank in bed, or I grew, until we were the same size. And little by little that equalizing carried on into the daylight. We still turned heads. But it seemed as though people were just looking at us, a single creature, not two misfits yoked at the waist. Us. Together. Back then, we weren’t fleeing or chasing each other. We were just seeking, and every time one of us went looking, there the other was, waiting to be found.

  We found each other for so long before we lost each other. Here I am! we’d say, in our heart of hearts. Come find me. Easy as putting a blush on a rainbow.

  2013

  THE ORACULAR VULVA

  Skulls make better pillows than you’d think. Dr. Peter Luce (the famous sexologist) rests his cheek on the varnished parietal of a Dawat ancestor, he’s not sure whose. The skull tips back and forth, jawbone to chin, as Luce himself is gently rocked by the boy on the next skull over, rubbing his feet against Luce’s back. The pandanus mat feels scratchy against his bare legs.

  It’s the middle of the night, the time when, for some reason, all the yammering jungle creatures shut up for a minute. Luce’s specialty isn’t zoology. He’s paid scant attention to the local fauna since coming here. He hasn’t told anybody on the team, but he’s phobic about snakes and so hasn’t wandered too far from the village. When the others go off to hunt boar or chop sago, Luce stays in to brood on his situation. (Specifically, his ruined career, but there are other complaints.) Only one brave, drunken night, going to pee, did he venture away from the longhouses to stand in the dense vegetation for roughly thirty-five seconds before getting creeped out and hurrying back. He doesn’t know what goes on in the jungle and he doesn’t care. All he knows is that every night at sundown the monkeys and birds start screaming and then, about 1 p.m. New York time—to which his luminous wristwatch is still faithfully set—they stop. It gets perfectly quiet. So quiet that Luce wakes up. Or sort of wakes up. His eyes are open now, at least he thinks they are. Not that it makes any difference. This is the jungle during the new moon. The darkness is total. Luce holds his hands in front of his face, palm to nose, unable to see it. He shifts his cheek on the skull, causing the boy to stop rubbing momentarily and let out a soft, submissive cry.

  Wetly, like a vapor—he’s definitely awake now—the jungle invades his nostrils. He’s never smelled anything like it before. It’s like mud and feces mixed with armpit and worm, though that doesn’t quite cover it. There’s also the scent of wild pig, the cheesy whiff of six-foot orchids, and the corpse breath of carnivorous f
lytraps. All around the village, from the swampy ground up to the tops of trees, animals are eating each other and digesting with open, burping mouths.

  Evolution has no consistent game plan. While famous for remaining true to certain elegant forms (Dr. Luce likes to point out, for instance, the structural similarity between mussels and the female genitalia), it can also, on a whim, improvise. That’s what evolution is: a scattershot of possibilities, proceeding not by successive improvements but just by changes, some good, some bad, none thought out beforehand. The marketplace—that is, the world—decides. So that here, on the Casuarina Coast, the flowers have evolved traits that Luce, a Connecticut boy, doesn’t associate with flowers, though botany isn’t his specialty either. He thought flowers were supposed to smell nice. To attract bees. Here it’s something different. The few lurid blooms he’s unwisely stuck his snout into have smelled pretty much like death. There’s always a little pool of rainwater inside the cup (actually digestive acid) and a winged beetle being eaten away. Luce’ll snap his head back, holding his nose, and then, in the bushes somewhere, he’ll hear a few Dawat laughing their heads off.