The Dictionary of Failed Relationships

by Meredith Broussard

  In the years since his departure, my father has always had a girlfriend. He’s run through Vic (for Victoria) and Jack (for Jacqueline), and some woman whose name I can’t recall but who kept her Brazilian parrot, Rio, at his apartment. “Rio, Rio,” my father crooned at the brilliantly colored, green and gold bird. Sometimes Rio would say hello, and I’d amuse myself by making up internal monologues for the parrot, most of them consisting of lines like, “I left the jungle for this?!?”

  But at the time of his phone call, I’m living in Philadelphia, I haven’t seen him in years, and I have no idea who he’s seeing. My first sight of his intended will be on their wedding day.

  My father’s second wedding takes place by a lake in Connecticut on a sunny summer day. My brothers and I huddle by a picnic table, carefully examining every female who walks by. Is that her? (No, it’s the photographer.) Is that her? (No, just the justice of the peace.) Our father emerges, natty in a dark suit, his hair and beard carefully clipped. His bride—or, as my brothers and I quickly start calling her, the Second Future Ex–Mrs. Dr. Weiner—is tall, short haired, and round faced, like our mom, only twenty years younger. She’s in her thirties, closer to my age than my father’s. Also, she’s wearing a loose-fitting pink dress with an Empire waist. I look at this and wonder.

  The lunch after the wedding—her parents, her sister, her sister’s husband, their little kids, and the three of us, in an upstairs room at the lakeside lodge—is exquisitely awkward. There’s lots of silence, lots of strained small talk, and, in my youngest brother’s case, lots of drinks from the open bar. From the conversation— the things that are said, the things that aren’t—it’s clear that this wedding was hastily planned and something of a surprise to the bride’s family. It’s her second wedding, which is maybe why she’s happy with such a tiny handful of guests, such a sad excuse of a celebration. Nobody says anything about what may or may not be under the loose-fitting midriff of her wedding gown, or about the fact that the bride is twenty years younger than the groom.

  The bride passes pictures of a tropical vacation she and my father have been on—here they are swimming, and here, on the beach. There’s palm trees, white sand, turquoise sea, schools of brilliantly colored tropical fish. I think how my mother’s told me that my father hasn’t paid the child support that he owes her in months because, he said, he’s out of work, and even though I’m trying to be a detached observer, a fly on the wall, even though I am, by this time, a professional reporter, even though observation is my job, I feel sad. I’m sad that my father’s life has become this bad collection of clichés, this pastiche of the predictable: the younger woman, the fights about the checks, the shotgun wedding, the second family sure to follow, the family where he would get it right. Because whatever else I’d thought of my father, I’d always believed that he was special, that he was different (and, as a result, of course, that I was also special and different). And here he was, just like Mindy’s father and Pam’s father and Elaine’s father: younger woman, late checks, a second family in a doubtlessly futile attempt to wipe the slate clean and start over. How disappointing.

  I see my father and his second wife for the second and last time three months later. My siblings and I are invited over to their brand-new house for Christmas dinner. My father is Jewish. The Second Future Ex–Mrs. Dr. Weiner, evidently, is not. I travel through the cold with my brother Joe, my then boyfriend, X, and my little dog. My father’s new wife opens the wreath-bedecked door, her belly bulging beneath a fluffy, red and green sweater, and I want to scream because it’s so fucking predictable. My father takes Joe and me on a tour. X is left in the kitchen, eating nachos and trying to make conversation with his girlfriend’s father’s new wife.

  “Beautiful house,” he says politely.

  “Well,” she replies, “I won’t be living here much longer. Larry’s leaving me, and the baby’s coming in the spring!” (“The only thing I could think of saying was, ‘Could I have some more salsa?’ ” X tells me later.)

  Somewhere between the basement steps and the start of dinner, X whispers to me what’s happened. Dinner is bizarre. I know that she’s pregnant and that my father’s leaving. He doesn’t know that I know he’s leaving. Poor Joe doesn’t know any of it. My dog, Wendell, refusing to be intimidated by my dad’s new wife’s much-larger dog, Harley, helps himself to various fluffy toys that squeak when he bites them. After dinner, the Second Future Ex–Mrs. Dr. Weiner drags me downstairs to pour out her tale of woe. “He’s mean,” she whispers, and I nod, having experienced his meanness firsthand. The specifics don’t matter, but she’s happy to share them. He’s yelled at her, belittled her, called her a lesbian, locked her out of the house. I nod and make appropriate noises, but meanwhile, I’m thinking, Well, lady, what did you expect? You married a man with four grown-up children whom he doesn’t really speak to, doesn’t care for, doesn’t know, and you thought you were going to be different? What did you think was going to happen? What did you expect?

  Outside, the air’s so cold it hurts to breathe, and our boots crunch through the ice-crusted snow. My father and the Second Future Ex–Mrs. Dr. Weiner stand side by side in the doorway, waving, silhouetted in the doorway with the Christmas tree twinkling in the background. From a distance, they could be a greeting card, or a commercial for this season’s piece of jewelry or hot holiday toy. From a distance, you can’t tell that he’s twenty years older, that the marriage is falling apart, that two weeks earlier she had to call the fire department to let her into the garage. “Weird,” says X. Joe says nothing. Wendell hops into the backseat with one of Harley’s choicest fluffy toys clenched between his jaws. It’s as if he knows we’re never going to see her again. It’s as if he knows we’re never coming back.

  You don’t get fairy-tale endings outside of fairy tales. You can get happy endings, but not perfect ones. And there is, sadly, a part of me that will always crave perfection, search for it, mourn its absence.

  If I were writing the story of my life instead of living it, the phone would ring. My father would be on the line. He’d thought about things, he would say. He’d seen what he had done to me, to the four of us, and he was sorry. Was it too late? he’d ask soberly. Was there still a chance to fix things? I’d say that I wasn’t sure, and he’d sigh (a sane sigh, a nonmelodramatic sigh, uninflected with tears or curse words) and say that he understood, and that he would always regret not appreciating me and loving me while he had the chance. Can we try? he’d ask, and the urgency in his voice would let me know that trying was the most important thing in the world. “I’m sorry,” he’d tell me. “I wish you happiness,” he’d say.

  I know this won’t ever happen. I regret that most of all.

  SAVAGE

  By Maggie Estep

  sav·age ’sa-vij transitive verb [Middle English sauvage, from Middle French, from Medieval Latin salvaticus, alteration of Latin silvaticus of the woods, wild, from silva wood, forest] (1880) 1: to attack or treat brutally. 2: to rip out the heart of another, jump up and down on top of it, whir it around in a Cuisinart for a while, then restore it to its rightful owner (with a pinch of salt sprinkled into the open wound). Sometimes accompanied by bad behavior such as infidelity with the heart-owner’s close friends or relative. . See also: LOVES LOST.

  She walked into my shop one day in early spring. I was hunched over my worktable, carefully shaving the hammers of a tinny sounding Kawai baby grand. The radio was on, blaring the salsa station at an invigorating volume. My shop is wedged between a bodega and a bicycle repair shop in a predominantly Spanish part of Brooklyn. Full-volume Bach doesn’t go over well with the kids from the bike shop. Arturo, the youngest of them, likes to come over and yell things (“That shit sounds like math, man”). So I mostly play salsa when I’ve got the shop windows open.

  That day, I had the door open, too. It was beautiful out. The sky was a violent blue, exploding with life. I had my back to the door, and she must have
walked in and watched me work for a spell. Eventually, she spoke.

  “Hello?”

  I turned around and looked up, startled.

  “Oh, hello,” I said, setting down the razor blade I’d been using on the hammers. “Can I help you?”

  “I need a piano,” she declared, jutting her chin out.

  She was verging on tall and on the odd side of beautiful. There wasn’t much meat on her, but that was fine. I’d just been dumped by a voluptuous Cuban prodigy. I’d had enough curves to last a lifetime. Not, mind you, that this girl was indicating she wanted me to contemplate her lack of curves. Her eyes were hungry, but they were focused on a Steinway with troubled dampers. Not on me.

  “I’m Lucinda,” she said, extending a surprisingly weathered, small hand.

  I told her my name was Albert. She smiled, as if this pleased her.

  “That’s a handsome Model B,” she said, indicating Steinway #238659, the 1926 Hamburg B with damper problems.

  “Play,” I said. I stood up and pulled a bench from the chaos near my worktable. The shop was particularly crammed that week. I’d just bought two broken-down Yamaha uprights off a music school that was going out of business, and I now had fourteen pianos stuffed into my small, low-ceiling storefront.

  I dusted off the cracked leather bench and put it before the Model B.

  I had a sense that Lucinda could play. In spite of those strangely damaged little hands.

  She hesitated. Looked from me to the bench to the big black piano.

  She could have been anywhere from fifteen to forty, but I figured probably in the middle there. Her eyes seemed to be gray.

  “Go ahead,” I said, waving her toward the instrument.

  She frowned, turning her forehead into an appealing little accordion of flesh.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked softly.

  “I can’t afford it.”

  “Oh, don’t be sorry about that. No one can. No one ever buys my pianos. Even the cheap ones. Just play.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  She sat down. She removed her watch and a silver charm bracelet. She kicked off her dirty brown shoes, then lightly rested her hands over the keys.

  She started playing, very softly. Schumann’s Romance in F-sharp major. I’d never heard it quite like that. She seemed to be doing the same things any other pianist would do, but there was something that made it odd. Good odd. Before I could pinpoint the source of the oddness, though, she abruptly shifted to a strident Prokofiev piece. Whipped through it. Violently.

  When she finished, she looked up at me from between the two wings of her hair.

  I’d never liked Prokofiev’s piano sonatas, but right now they were working for me just fine. In fact, she could have played a putrid rendition of the Moonlight Sonata, and it wouldn’t have mattered. I was sold on her.

  Before I had time to compliment her playing, she stood up and started inspecting the walls. I had all sorts of things affixed to the blistered green paint. Photographs of musicians and pianos and a cat calendar that the Cuban prodigy had given me. Off to one side was John Black’s holy card, which I’d gotten at his memorial service at St Patrick’s. This was the thing Lucinda focused on, staring intently at the laminated photo of Captain John Black. It was a nice picture. He was wearing his FDNY uniform. He was grinning, and his close-set blue eyes seemed to be laughing.

  “How do you know him?” Lucinda asked, still staring at the card.

  “Bought a piano off me,” I said. “Turned forty, decided it was time to take up piano.”

  “And he’s dead,” she said.

  “World Trade Center,” I said.

  “Oh.”

  “That’s his piano,” I said, indicating a humble mahogany Model M. “His family gave it back to me to sell. I’ll give the proceeds to Ladder 3 in Manhattan.”

  “Oh?” she said.

  “He was captain there.”

  She went back to staring at the picture.

  Amazing that, even from the grave, John Black still had a way with women. She would have been his type, I guessed. He’d gravitated to pretty, smart, half-crazy girls. Not that I’d been his best friend. He bought a piano from me, I helped him to find a teacher, and we’d stayed in touch. We had dinner now and then. Sometimes I’d stop by Ladder 3 to say hello.

  The morning it happened, I’d been on my way to Manhattan to, ironically, tune a piano in the World Trade Center Marriott. I was on my bike, approaching the Brooklyn Bridge bike path, when all hell broke loose. Crashes, smoke, and chaos. Thousands of people started pouring across the bridge, fleeing lower Manhattan. For a while, I kept going, toward it, walking my bike. About halfway across the bridge, I stopped. Stood off to one side, holding my bike against my body as thousands of strangely quiet pedestrians hurried across the bridge. There were women in bare feet, carrying their office pumps, evidently having evacuated without retrieving their walking shoes. There was a group of large black women, praying aloud. Dozens of pale men with cell phones glued to their ears. And just ahead, the towers burned. A few seconds before the first tower fell, I realized I was watching thousands of people die. I had a sick feeling at the time that John was one of them.

  Lucinda stared at John’s holy card for a very long time. I didn’t understand quite what was going on, but I left her to it.

  Eventually, she dragged the piano bench away from the imposing Model B and put it in front of John Black’s piano. She sat down and ran her right hand over the instrument’s lid.

  I turned back to the Kawai hammers I’d been working on.

  She played a Bach prelude. A beautiful thing in E-flat major. Simple and heartbreaking. I wanted to say something about it, but felt like this would be invasive.

  When she’d stopped playing, I asked if she was hungry.

  She frowned and seemed to consult herself. Then, “I think so, yes.”

  I took her to the Caribbean place on Myrtle Avenue. JouJou, the big sexy waitress, pulled a long face, seeing me with another woman. Not, mind you, that we were dating or anything close. I’d certainly noticed the way her glorious ass looked under the lively print skirts she favored, but she wasn’t the kind of woman to date a white man, anyway. You knew that just to look at her. Still, she liked to pretend she had dibs on me.

  We ordered and the food came quickly. Steaming piles of collard greens, yams, and cabbage. Lucinda didn’t say much. Was far too busy shoveling food down herself. I’d never seen anyone eat like that. Particularly not someone so thin.

  As if reading my mind, she looked up from her immense plate of food: “I burn it off.”

  “Oh?” I said.

  “Horses,” she said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I ride. At the track.”

  “You’re a jockey?”

  “Exercise rider.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I ride ’em in the morning. The jocks just ride ’em in races. But it’s fools like me that go out on the track every morning at five and work those suckers.”

  “Wow.”

  She shrugged. Then: “How much you want for John Black’s piano?”

  I was taken aback. She’d remembered John’s name.

  “I dunno. About twelve.”

  “Thousand?” Lucinda frowned.

  “That’s cheap for an M. You must know that.”

  “Uh,” she said—then shoved more food down her throat.

  “Do you want to go to the movies tonight?” I ventured.

  “I get up at three A.M,” she said, completely matter-of-fact, not seeming to feel strongly in any direction about my having asked her out. She was just stating the obvious, that a nighttime movie would conflict with her schedule.

  “Oh,” I said.

  “So what do you do?” Lucinda asked then. She had finally put her fork down, and she was now actually looking at me.

  “What do you mean what do I do?”

  “With all those pianos.”

  “I sell ’em.”
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  “You told me earlier you almost never sell them. How do you earn your keep?”

  I started feeling defensive. And, simultaneously, wanting to take her clothes off.

  “I’m a tuner, too. I have a good amount of tuning clients. I get by that way.”

  “Oh. So what’s with all the fucked-up pianos, then?”

  “They’re not all fucked up,” I said, wanting to reach across the table, grab her small pretty face, and kiss her violently.

  “You play?” she asked then.

  “Not really. I was a violinist. But I have a tremor. I had to stop.”

  “A tremor?” She squinted.

  I noticed tiny, pale orange freckles smattered across her nose. Her hair seemed too dark for freckles.

  I held my hand out in front of her. It trembled like it does. Early onset of Parkinson’s. Mild at this point. Just enough to have ruined any violin dreams I’d had.

  “Oh,” she said. Her gray eyes went black with sadness.

  A few minutes later, JouJou brought the bill. I paid. Lucinda thanked me and for the first time really smiled. She had handsome, even teeth.

  As we walked back toward my shop, she looked all around, taking in the bodegas, the manicure shops, and the gas stations. They seemed to please her.

  We reached my block. I unlocked the padlock, pushed the gate up, and ushered her inside, advising her to steer clear of the Chickering’s keyboard that was laid out on a blanket near the door.

  Lucinda took two steps into the shop, then turned around, draped her arms around my neck, and pulled my mouth to hers.

  I’d been thinking about this very thing, but I definitely hadn’t expected her to pounce like this. Though I can’t say I minded.

  Her tongue found its way into my mouth and traced my teeth. I touched her lower back. It was barely wider than the expanse of my hand. I leaned my body into hers. She sank down to her knees. I did the same. I touched her ribs and her jutting hipbones. I cradled her neck. I kissed her ears. She grew more savage, forceful, kissing me violently, grabbing at my lower back, grinding her hips into me.