The Dictionary of Failed Relationships

by Meredith Broussard

  “Well, I don’t want none of that weird Greek health shit you’re always trying to give me.” I pinched him on the side.

  “Ow! Bitch.” He laughed. “OK, how ’bout I take you out, spend a couple of bucks on you. Someplace nice.”

  “And I can eat any kind of fattening thing I want without hearing it from you.”

  “Fine,” Bobby said. “I’ll hook you up nice, baby.”

  “Better hook me up nice.”

  He squeezed me hard, tighter and tighter until I screamed at him, laughing. “Stop, Bobby! Stop! I mean it!”

  We went to a place kind of far from where we lived. It was Sandy’s in the Marina. I ordered fried chicken, collard greens, macaroni and cheese, and corn bread. Bobby tried to come between me and my macaroni and cheese, but I wouldn’t let him. I was feeling good, had a buzz on from the wine we were drinking. All the planets were lined up right, even though Professor Salazar said talk like that was astrology. A world of difference from what he was trying to teach us.

  “Happy anniversary, baby,” I said. I fed him a bite.

  “Hmm, this is good,” he said. “How come you never make this for me?”

  “What? And hear fat this and fat that? Gimme a break.”

  “Well, you’re right about that. You like my choice, though? A couple of people at the gym said this would be a good place.”

  I nodded and smiled at him bright. “It’s good, Bobby.” Really, it was just OK. “You know Hattie’s in Leimert Park? That would have been good, too.” It would have been a lot better. It was in a black neighborhood where they didn’t have no marinas.

  “Never heard of it.” Bobby shook his leg under the table. He was being jittery and distracted all during dinner. Biting his nails, jiggling his leg, and playing with his hair.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I worked on my peach cobbler.

  “Nothing,” Bobby said. He lifted our wine bottle off the table to show the waiter we needed another bottle of wine. He smiled and winked at me.

  “ ’Member the time,” I took a drink from my glass, “that time I threw up in your bathroom?”

  “Christ, La Donna, you gotta bring that up now?” He nodded at my wineglass. “Better slow down with that.”

  “That was funny, though, Bobby. Almost a year ago. Can you believe it?”

  “Yeah, funny to you.”

  I put my fork down and pushed my plate away some. Bobby took my fork and finished off my pie. “That was sweet, though, Bobby. How you cleaned me up, cleaned up everything.” I leaned into the table, trying to get as close to him as I could. I thought I was the luckiest woman sitting with the finest man in the whole place. I felt so close to Bobby, so happy, I was thinking he must have been feeling it, way across the table, me shining everything on Bobby.

  “What,” he said. “Like I had a choice.”

  I was smiling at Bobby before, but I stopped. “What do you mean? Course you had a choice.”

  “If you think I was gonna let my bathroom stay vomity, you’re crazy, and if you think I’m gonna let a vomity woman sleep passed out next to me, you’re even more crazy.”

  I hadn’t ever thought of it like that. A cloud passed over my face.

  Bobby looked at me. “Don’t start.”

  I looked around the restaurant and sank down in my chair.

  “Come on. Don’t get mad. Come here.”

  I sat still.

  “Come here,” Bobby said. When I ignored him, he said, “All right. I thought it was kind of cute, you puking all over my goddamn bathroom. The cutest, sexiest shit I ever saw.”

  I tried not to smile at that, but Bobby could be funny sometimes. He saw me trying not to smile.

  “Lemme kiss you, then I’ll tell you your surprise.”

  I sat up straight. Hard to do after my fourth glass of wine. “What surprise?”

  “I ain’t gonna tell you till you kiss me.”

  I did. “Well?”

  “OK,” Bobby cracked his knuckles and then took both my hands. “I got something waiting for you back home.”

  “What? What Bobby? What is it?” I got happy, got rid of that cloud real fast. I knew it was that telescope I’d pointed out to Bobby one day when we were shopping. It cost a fortune—a fortune to me and Bobby, but if he’d been thinking about me at all this year, even a little bit, he would have been saving up for it. I’d dragged him into the shop and pointed it out to him, plain and obvious. He said I must have wanted to blow my teacher; that was the only reason I’d be so into the “most boring shit on the planet. The fuckin’ stripping astrologist. That’s funny,” Bobby had said.

  “Astronomy,” I had said.

  He turned down the corners of his mouth and shrugged. “Whatever.”

  But maybe he was just trying to throw me off the trail. “You got me that telescope, didn’t you?” I said it like I was accusing him of something and happy to bust him.

  Bobby stopped grinning. “Wha? Nah. I didn’t get you any fuckin’ telescope. This is better. Way better.”

  My heart started beating real fast and my hands started shaking. Bobby had gotten me a ring. “It’s a ring!” I screamed. Some folks in the restaurant turned to look at us.

  “What? A ring,” Bobby said, blowing out of his nose. “That’s funny. Wow,” he said, shaking his head.

  I blinked and frowned at him. I was confused. “Then what? What’d you get me?”

  Bobby looked into my eyes. Serious. He glanced over his shoulder before he leaned into me as close as he could. He smiled. “OK, don’t freak out.”

  “Yeah?” I smiled back at him.

  “At home? Right now? I got Amber waiting for you.”

  “Amber?” I was still confused. “What for?”

  “What for,” Bobby said. “Don’t be cute.”

  My hands were in Bobby’s. I squeezed his hands as hard as I could, letting everything he was telling me find a place to settle in my head. “You’re telling me”—I took a deep breath—“that Amber. Amber from the gym. She’s in our apartment. Waiting for us. For all of us to have sex.”

  “That’s right,” Bobby said, hopeful, kind of holding his breath.

  “That’s your present. To me. My anniversary present.”

  I didn’t know whether to cry or punch Bobby in his perfect actor face. I couldn’t look him in the eye, because I was afraid I’d cry, which would have made me real pissed at myself.

  “It’s part of your present.” He reached into his jacket pocket in the chair next to us.

  Bastard. He was just playing. He handed me a long velvet box. When I snapped it open, there was a shiny gold chain in it, with a little white stone attached to it.

  “You like it? I got you this, too. It’s a moonstone. I told the guy at the place what you liked, and he said this, you’d like.” Bobby looked like he was really wanting me to like his present, but I couldn’t fake it.

  I turned the stone over in my hand. It was beautiful and felt cool in my palm. “Too?” I said finally. “So you’re not kidding about the Amber stuff.”

  “Uh-uh,” Bobby said.

  I held the chain in my hands. Amber was in my apartment. Bobby asked her to be there. Or did she ask?

  “Ah, fuck. I shouldn’t of told you,” Bobby said. “I should of just got you home. See what happened when you got there.”

  “You should have seen.” My voice had no life in it. “You’re really fucking crazy, Bobby. You know that?”

  “What? You said you were down, might try this someday.”

  “I was just playing. I wasn’t for real.”

  “Then why’d you say all that stuff then?”

  “I was just half-kidding!”

  “What half, Donna?” Bobby was yelling. “And we got Amber waiting there and everything. . . . She’s going to feel really shitty about this. I told her it would work out.”

  I poured myself more wine, shook my head slow and careful.

  Bobby threw up his hands. They dropped down loud on his thi
ghs. “She’s supposed to be waiting in the closet. I’m supposed to call, and she’s supposed to get in the closet when we get there, and I’m supposed to put a blindfold on you, get all sexy and loose with you, and then that’s when we were going to surprise you.”

  I put my head in both my hands and coughed out a laugh.

  “Then what am I supposed to tell Amber?”

  “What do I care, Bobby. Tell her whatever you want. You did that already. She can stay in the closet all night.”

  Bobby’s eyes followed people leaving the restaurant. “We gotta tell her something, Donna. It ain’t nice.”

  “It ain’t nice, Donna,” I said in a deep, fake Bobby voice.

  “You’re fuckin’ drunk,” he said. He saw the waiter and then motioned for the check. “And you better not get sick in the car.”

  I fell asleep on the way home. I was full of wine and food. I felt heavy. I didn’t dream about stuff, nothing at all. I stayed asleep until we got off the freeway. You always do that, stay asleep when you’re riding, until you get off the freeway. Something about going so fast, the sound of the air swooshing by, like floating, being in a trance. But then, when you feel the car slowing down, going down the off ramp, you can feel some kind of change, something about the ride feels different, even if you’re in a deep sleep, dreaming. You wake up.

  We were in the garage of the apartment building. The building was shitty, the stucco all stained and peeling, but all the cars in the garage were nice.

  “Hey,” Bobby said. He touched my face. “You all right? You not sick or nothing? You can get out, right?”

  I nodded. Bobby came around and helped me out. He was trying to be nice.

  “Didn’t you say there was going to be one of those eclipses today?” He put his arms around me and walked to the elevator.

  “It wasn’t that great,” I said. Bobby pushed the UP button, and we got in and went up. Earlier that day, I’d spent a half hour standing outside. I put a hole in a piece of paper, turned my back to the sun, and looked down on the sidewalk while all the cars sped by me on the street. I saw a little bitty old shadowy thing that looked like a moon with a bright light all around the edges. It wasn’t as cool as Professor Salazar said. But he said we had to see it that way, with the filter and everything, or else we’d burn the shit out of our eyes. He didn’t say “shit,” but he said we really, really didn’t want to look straight at the eclipse or else we could really hurt ourselves.

  I wasn’t drunk—as drunk—as I was at the restaurant. I thought of Amber waiting for me in the apartment, and I thought it would be nice to see her.

  The elevator bell rang when we got to our floor. When we got to our apartment, Bobby put his key in the door and looked at me before he turned it.

  “I don’t care,” I said, which was the truth. Being with Amber sounded better than being alone with Bobby just then. She would look at me like she really wanted me, like she knew what I was, and I wanted that.

  Bobby opened the door and I went to the couch. I started taking off all my clothes. Bobby, too. He stood in front of me and put a scarf around my eyes. There was a little slash I could still see through, so I squeezed my eyes shut. I still wasn’t sure how far I was going to go, even if I was already in the middle of it, anyway. I lay down on the carpet. Bobby didn’t want the lights off. He wanted to be able to see everything; but me, I wasn’t supposed to be able to tell when Bobby stopped touching me and when Amber started.

  I knew right away, though. Amber’s hands were light and smooth. They moved all over my hips and breasts, between my legs. Warm, soft hands, gentle hands that felt like liquid. Her hands were so warm I felt tingly, like I was on fire. I still had the blindfold on, but when I looked through the little slash, I saw Amber on her hands and knees between me and Bobby. Amber felt good, but she didn’t come close enough to what I wanted. I wanted how Bobby used to make me feel. I wanted something bigger than me. I could sort of make out Bobby moving slow behind Amber, like a shadow. “You like that, Sunshine? You like that?” he was whispering to me. But I didn’t feel like sunshine, not like I usually did when he called me that. Bobby thought the three of us together in that room was big, a big thing that would take his mind off Louie. But he was still trapped, doing without seeing. And now, there was something, somebody between us. I was in it, seeing it. Me and him and Amber wasn’t half as good as he talked about it being. I was disappointed in everybody and everything. But at least I could finally see clear.

  UNDER DOG

  By Judy Budnitz

  un·der·dog ’n-dr-’dg noun [origin unknown] (1887) 1: a loser or predicted loser in a struggle or contest. 2: a victim of injustice or persecution. 3: a neglected, underappreciated guy. See also: JESUS COMPLEX, TEACHING NEW TRICKS TO OLD DOGS.

  My wife makes a patchwork man and hangs him in the garden.

  “Is that really necessary?” I say.

  “The rabbits,” she says, “have been getting into the tomatoes.” She shows me one with a huge gouge in it. No rabbit could have made that. Unless it was a monster bunny. It looks like the work of a rabid beaver.

  “Rabbits don’t even like tomatoes,” I say.

  “It’s an acquired taste,” she says.

  “They can’t even reach the tomatoes.”

  “They have cute little stepladders,” she says.

  I don’t care if they take all the tomatoes, since I don’t even like them. They’re heirloom tomatoes, which to her means they’re precious and gourmet, and to me means they’re big and mutatious and ugly. And my wife used to love all animals, great and small. Why would she want to scare them away?

  The patchwork man, out there on his stick, is undeniably waving at us.

  “It’s a windy day,” she says brightly.

  I look at him harder. “Hey, isn’t that my tie?”

  “But you never wear it.”

  “You gave it to me. For my birthday.”

  “Exactly.”

  I go out to the garden to study him closer. He’s smaller than I thought. Pretty flimsy. The wind keeps tugging him around. He seems flexible, fluid in the joints, and moves in sudden, unpredictable spasms. The way he moves reminds me of those horrible mimes. You never know when they’re going to come up to you and do their creepy invisible wall thing. Or even worse, do that mirror thing where they imitate you in front of a big crowd of people.

  The patchwork man is all pieces, like a jigsaw puzzle stitched together. My wife is a decent sewer. Bits of her clothes, and mine, and other stuff all mixed up. The guy’s got a huge stupid smile on his face. I’m not a smiley guy. I’m a nice guy, I’m a good person, I just don’t smile much. He’s got a little curly mustache. I don’t. What’s that supposed to mean?

  He’s thinner than me, I admit it. He doesn’t have a gut like I do. She could have given him a gut, easily, if she’d wanted to, with a little extra stuffing.

  I give him a good punch. He whips around on the stick but doesn’t really go anywhere.

  I can’t stop thinking about The Wizard of Oz, and how Dorothy liked the Scarecrow best. They never really explained why. Just because he met her first? Is it all about longevity? In that case, I should get points. I punch him a few more times. “Ha. Beat you to it, straw man.”

  Where does jealousy come from? I can’t remember when it started, when suddenly it seemed that everything with eyes started ogling my wife. We used to be so happy.

  I punch him until he sags and stuffing is leaking out of his seams. He’s almost falling off his post, his head drooping. There’s something familiar about it, his knees together and turned to one side, head down, arms stretched out. Oh, no. He looks like Jesus. This is not good. Those door-to-door people with their pamphlets will never leave us alone now. I try to fluff him back up, separate his legs. Eventually, he lifts his head and smiles at me.

  I go inside. I hear her rustling around in the bedroom. I go up there and find her naked in bed under the patchwork quilt. We’ve had that quilt for years, b
ut now it makes me feel queasy to see her body covered in patches. I look out the window and, sure enough, there’s the scarecrow looking right in, checking her out and smiling.

  I met my wife at a low point in my life. It was after I wrecked the van, after the grease fire, after the sexual harassment accusations, after the memos placed in everybody’s office mailbox and posted in the bathrooms (both male and female), showing my picture above the words DO NOT DATE THIS MAN. It was the year I became a walker.

  “A walker?” I’d said to the woman at the employment agency. “You mean, like, dogs?”

  “No,” she said. “I mean, like, people.” I did not like her tone; I wanted to tell her that she had no right to judge me. I could see all the places where she’d tried to cover up pimples with pink makeup, I could see the line along her jaw where the foundation ended. She had fat fingers. But she had every right to judge me. That was her job. She’d looked at my credentials and seen I was not really qualified to do much of anything. The one thing I was good at was focus groups, getting paid fifty bucks a day to sit around a table in front of a one-way mirror, talking about potato chips or shampoo.

  I found out that being a walker meant occasionally offering an arm or carrying a bag of groceries but mostly just walking beside a person, an elderly person, just being there. In case something happened. Spontaneously broken hips; rollerbladers knocking them down; tripping over dog leashes; forgetting their keys or where they were going or where they lived; arguments with impatient bank tellers; untied shoelaces (most of them could not bend); sudden bouts of incapacitating sadness that made them freeze, weeping on the sidewalk. This happens more than you might expect. And not just to old people.

  I got a walker job with a Mr. Murray. On the first day, he informed me that I was a temporary replacement; his usual walker was on maternity leave. “She’s had three kids in the time she’s been with me. As soon as this little niglet gets big enough, she’ll be back.”

  I didn’t know what to do. “Um,” I said. “That’s an ugly thing to say. You shouldn’t say things like that.”