The Dictionary of Failed Relationships

by Meredith Broussard

  “Oh, so you’re going to call me a racialist now? Jim?”

  “Joey.”

  “Is that some kind of fag name?”

  “No,” I said. Maybe it is; I don’t know. Looking back, I wonder if maybe saying no makes me a homophobe. Maybe I should have taken a stand. These things get so confusing sometimes. I wanted to tell him that I was quitting, but then I thought of the flyers, the picture of me grinning maniacally in front of horizontally striped wallpaper that made it look like I was in a lineup.

  “Are you some kind of mental patient? Why would a healthy, young man like you need a job like this?”

  “Carpal tunnel syndrome,” I said. “Bad back. Lots of chemical allergies. A.D.D.”

  “You have a kind of nutty look. I’ll keep my eye on you.”

  I spent a few hours a day with him. I wondered if he had Tourette’s. It was the most hazardous job I’ve ever had. He had a loud, stentorian, professorial voice and would comment on every person he saw on the street. He used ugly words, he used words I had to look up later. He used words like coolie and coon. He called a pretty teenage girl a sodomite, and then he told her friend she looked like a woman of ill repute. I had to be constantly explaining, making excuses, blocking blows. The sharp corner of one woman’s purse left a triangular dent in my forehead for weeks. I dredged up words like Alzheimer’s, senility, Parkinson’s, dementia—anything that sounded vaguely medical and mitigating.

  On the weekends, I went around tearing down the flyers. They were everywhere; they seemed to be multiplying. That woman really had it in for me. I couldn’t get away from them. Strangers on the street would look twice at me; a few times people would say, “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?” I couldn’t escape the thing. I hadn’t done anything wrong. Or maybe I’d done one little thing wrong. But I wasn’t a bad person. I was a good person— I was. Wasn’t I a better person than someone like Mr. Murray, who’d spent his entire lifetime calling people niggers and fags? I knew better than that.

  There were fresh flyers on the lampposts every weekend. A bike messenger ran over my foot. A toddler shot a bird at me as his mother wheeled him past in a stroller. When I shot one back, his mother stopped and lectured me for half an hour. That night, I got thrown out of a bar for barging into the women’s bathroom. I’d only been trying to get to the flyers in there, but no one gave me a chance to explain.

  I overslept the next day, missed my usual appointment with Mr. Murray. Later, I got a call and learned that he’d gone out without me, had an accident, and was now in the hospital. He’d been hit by a car, the nurse said. “Just tapped, probably,” she said, “but he’s very delicate.” I suspected he’d probably been pushed out in the street by someone he’d said something unpleasant to. Someone Asian or bald or fat or Irish or wearing the wrong pants—the possibilities were numerous.

  I went to see him in the hospital. His face was a mess of purples and greens, it looked all crumpled and caved in, like a wet paper bag; his arms and legs looked frail and spindly. There was still dried blood in his white hair. I felt terrible. “You’re the worst walker I’ve ever had, bar none,” he said. “You’re a pathetic human being.” He picked up his cane from the bedside and heaved it at me like a javelin. It hit me smack in the nose.

  It didn’t hurt all that much—the cane had a rubber tip for traction—but it must have hit at a lucky angle, or something, because I felt a pop deep inside my head, then blood started gushing out of my nose and wouldn’t stop. It was warm and wet, on my face and neck and all over my shirt; it felt like tears. Not that I cry much. I tried to be quiet and just watch the television, but after a while, Mr. Murray told me to leave because I was making him nauseous. “Give me back my cane before you go. Where’s the clicker?”

  I walked out of the hospital and around the parking lot to a different entrance, the one with ambulances, and I waited a long time in the emergency room. The blood pulsed out steadily. Big drops kept splatting on the floor. I’d been fired from my walker job. I was lower than low. I was bleeding out through my nose, and I imagined my heart all parched and dried out, wringing out the last few drops. “Clear!” the doctors would say, the way they do on medical TV shows, as they pressed electrical paddles to my nose, which was now an enormous throbbing thing barely attached to my face.

  Finally, a nurse noticed me. She kneeled before me, right in the blood, and looked up into my face. She was a vision of lightness and purity. “How long has it been bleeding?” she asked, looking up my nose. She had large green eyes with skinny eyebrows puckered up in a concerned frown. Her nostrils were tiny and perfect. Her hands were cool and smooth on my face. And then she smiled, and she had, honest to God, the biggest teeth you’ve ever seen. She could gnaw down a forest with those teeth. They were just gorgeous, dazzling. I tried to tell her this but couldn’t with all the blood in my mouth. I tried to tell her again, much later, and somehow didn’t phrase it correctly—I’m no poet—and it made her cry for days. Forever after, she’d smile in a self-conscious closed-lipped way, except when she forgot; and then, the smile would burst out again, and it would be like one of those blinding summer days that burn into your retinas, making you feel like you’d be able to see even with your eyes closed. Magical, like that.

  That was the beginning of it, and I had high hopes about her; but I wasn’t certain until a few weeks later, when she brought me to her sister’s wedding. It was a Jewish wedding, and when the groom stepped on the wineglass at the close of the ceremony, a big shard of glass went right through his shoe and into his heel. My future wife didn’t blink an eye as she whipped out her little medical kit from her jeweled purse and stitched up his foot then and there, to the sounds of the band playing “Hava Nagila.” That just blew me away; that was when I knew she had to be my future wife. She completed me. She was everything I was not—resourceful, responsible, intelligent, capable, compassionate, employed.

  You’d think I’d never have half a chance with a woman like that. But fortunately, she had a weakness for sad and pathetic creatures. The three-legged dogs of the world.

  “Now what are you doing?”

  She’s all set up at the window with her bird-watching book prominently propped up and the binoculars pointing nowhere near any birds. “Watching beautiful Billy next door,” she says.

  I give her two chances, because I’m a nice guy. But when I catch her at it again, all camped out at the window with the birding book not even open—well, that’s the straw that breaks the camel’s hump. Or something.

  I go over there in my steel-toe boots, with my hedge clippers, thinking I’ll crunch the lock off his door if I have to. But I don’t have to, the door’s wide open, so I breeze right in. God, it’s a mess in here. We’re not neighborly, I’ve never met him, I don’t even know how long he’s been here. Many stenches are emanating from many different locales. I walk through, kicking stuff. “Billy? Billy?” Maybe he’s dead. Maybe someone killed him already. Then I won’t have to.

  “Billy?” I hear dripping. I find him in the bathroom. He’s propped up in the tub, one arm trailing on the floor, head tipped back, blissful face. He looks like Marat in his bath in that famous painting that my wife likes. Minus the turban and stab wounds. “Hey,” I say. The eyes open and blink.

  “Might you be Billy?” I say. I’ve got those hedge trimmers, understand.

  “I might,” he says, and stands up. The water streams off him. My God, he is beautiful. He’s svelte and languorous, with long, greasy black curls. He’s dark and high cheekboned in some Mediterranean or Hispanic or Native American way.

  He says, “Who are you?”

  I say, “I’m the jealous husband.” When he doesn’t say anything, I say, “Next door. Binoculars. Get it?”

  “I don’t even know your wife,” he says.

  “When I get through with you, you’re gonna wish you did,” I say.

  “What?” he says. “What’s that supposed to mean?” He leans on my shoulder to climb out of the tub.
I don’t get it. He’s not only unarmed, he’s naked. And little. And yet I’m the one getting pushed around? I’m a big person. I don’t push easy. I’d like to really, really hurt him.

  I get all close to him and all up in his face. He’ll squash like a bug. But I can’t do it. I just can’t. He’s too beautiful. It would be like smashing a Ming vase, or a Grecian urn, or even a really nice pitcher from Crate & Barrel. It would be such a waste.

  He offers me a beer. We go sit in the living room. Or should I say the many-piles-of-crap room. He looks like a guy who smokes a lot of pot. I wonder why he doesn’t offer me any. Do I not look like a fun guy? Am I too old?

  “Man,” he says, “you need to get your priorities straight.”

  “You’re right,” I say. He is.

  We watch public television for a long time. “Man, those antelopes are really something,” he says. “Look at ’em go. Boing, boing, boing.” He makes an antelope of his fingers and hops it around the furniture. His hand lands on my knee for a second, and I wonder if he’s making a pass at me. But he doesn’t seem to notice and keeps bouncing his hand around. If that’s flirting, he’s flirting with his couch a lot more than he’s flirting with me.

  “Those are gazelles, anyway,” I say.

  “But antelopes, man,” he says. “Wow. Crossbreed ’em? Antelopazelles?”

  He must be high. Somehow, he smoked a joint when I wasn’t looking. Or just stuffed a big handful of weed in his mouth. Either that or he’s just really, really stupid.

  “Are you leaving?” he asks.

  “I might be,” I say.

  “Here’s your clippers,” he says. He’s been playing with them.

  “You should maybe put on some clothes,” I say.

  “Come back when you’re in a better mood.”

  I go back across the yard. My wife is waiting for me, tapping her foot. I wonder how long she’s been tapping. It’s probably just for effect, but it would be cool if she’s been doing it for two hours. We could make a video and send it to the Guinness people.

  “What were you doing?” she says.

  “Just straightening things out,” I say. “Beautiful Billy. Ha.”

  “Was that really necessary?”

  “Beautiful my foot.”

  “You’re getting worse and worse. Do I need to take you back to the hospital?”

  “Why? So we can volunteer for experiments again for a lousy thirty bucks? So they can do that thing where they stick me full of needles and darts, and you act like you can feel my pain?”

  “No. So they can do that thing where they stuff you full of pills, and you act like a normal human being.”

  “I don’t like that experiment.”

  “Now what are you doing?”

  She says, “Jesus, Billy, what does it look like I’m doing? I’m feeding the birds.”

  “What did you call me?”

  “What? I said Joey.”

  “You are treading on thin ice, woman.”

  The birds are swarming all around her. You can’t even see the driveway. I don’t know what kind they are, I should grab her bird-watching book. There are big black ones and brown ones and small black ones with yellow beaks and sparkly bits. They’re coming so close to her, not to the point of perching on her shoulders or eating from her hands, not that Disney-ish, but close. They’re huddled all around her, warbling, and cooing. Her face, before I came out, was lost, blissful. You could say they’re just there for the food, but I know the truth. They’re leaving their splotchy white love letters all over the driveway.

  What I don’t like is the way they keep flapping around. Up, down, spiraling around her in a whirlwind. Between her face and mine.

  “You can’t do this.”

  “Why not?”

  “They’re mine.”

  “What?”

  “These are my birds. You can’t feed them. Find your own.”

  She doesn’t even argue, just flounces into the house, kicking birds out of the way.

  I stand looking at my flock for a minute. They’re just dumb, dirty birds.

  I go back inside. She’s waiting, tapping her foot. She’s still wearing her raincoat, it has little, white bird-splatters on it. She doesn’t look at all sexy, but I’m sure there’s some pervert out there somewhere who would find a shit-splattered raincoat with my wife in it a huge turn-on.

  “Just tell me, Joey. What is it? What do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to stop looking at other men. Is that so wrong?”

  She rolls her eyes.

  I spell it out: “Other men. Other males. Males of any species. Mammal, reptile, fish, fowl. Inanimate objects in the shape of a man.”

  “What do you suggest I look at then, Joey? There’s not much left.”

  “Look at the walls. Look at the TV. Look at the sunset. Look at yourself. Look at our kids, for God’s sake.” Our kids! I forgot all about our kids! Where have they been all this time? What if there’s been an accident? Are they okay? I race up the stairs to their room, yank open the door, my heart pounding, expecting to find a couple of curled-up, starved-to-death corpses.

  There’s a mop. The vacuum cleaner. A dusty, old cardboard Rubik’s Cube Halloween costume. “Where the hell are the kids?”

  She’s standing right behind me. “We haven’t had the kids yet, remember?”

  “Of course,” I say. Strange how I forget. When we moved here, we labeled this room the kids’ room. Sometimes, we’d pretend there really were kids in it; I’d go in there and yell at them to clean it up, and then my wife and I would laugh like mad and then make love, the whole time whispering to each other, “Shhhhh, shhhh. The kids might hear.” At some point, I’m not sure when, we stopped playing the game. But I keep on thinking they’re in there, the kids. When my wife’s eyes veer away when I’m talking, when she disappears for hours and comes home smelling of perfume samples, when she pushes my hand away— I think of the kids. I tell myself that she won’t ever leave me, if for nothing else than for the sake of the kids. She cares about family; she wouldn’t want to raise kids in a broken home.

  There’s a disease I read about— histoplasmosis. You can catch it from bird droppings, even bat guano. You breathe in the spores, and then it infects you; it causes a swelling of the membranes around the heart. I’m not making this up. Bob Dylan had it. I think I have it, too. I have an ache here, under the sternum. It gets worse when I look at her. Can you get histoplasmosis from your wife?

  She’s decided that if she’s not allowed to look at anything else, she’ll look at me all day. It’s nice for a while, I like the attention. But after a whole night of feeling her eyes creep over me like beetles, I start to feel like my skin is blistering and peeling away. I wish I had a job; I’d go to it. I’d work overtime. I’d make tons of money, buy her piles of gifts, buy her anything she wants, buy a bottle of champagne for her, buy a huge steak for dinner and come home and tape it over her face to stop her staring at me like that.

  “Stop it!”

  “Stop what?”

  “I can’t stand it anymore! You with your wanton eyes!”

  “I’m just sitting here.”

  “I feel like a piece of meat.”

  “You used to like it.”

  “You’re lascivious and unsubtle. It’s disgusting.”

  “These are my bedroom eyes. My come-hither eyes.”

  “Yeah, come hither and I’ll bite your head off and gnaw on your bones’ eyes.”

  “What are you watching there?”

  “I don’t know! A television program! It’s funny! You’ll love it! Watch it! Please!”

  “I can’t,” she says. “There are men in it.”

  “How much longer are you going to keep this up?”

  “I thought men loved being the focus of attention.”

  She puts on sunglasses, but that’s even worse; I can’t see her eyes, but I can feel them sliding all over me. I go in another room, and her eyes are boring through the wall.
>
  I leave, slamming the door behind me. I move in with beautiful Billy. I don’t really move in, but I hide there quite often. He doesn’t notice for a while. It’s nice to be invisible for a change. Then he notices, but thinks I just happen to be visiting a lot. At night, I sit in his living room and impersonate a pile of random crap, and he doesn’t even see me. Then finally, he really notices and says, “Are you ever going to leave?”

  Not for a while. I feel safe here. I brought my wife’s binoculars so I can keep an eye on her and be sure she’s not spying on us.

  Why does love turn bad? How do these things happen? I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m a good person. I was honest with her. I was never unfaithful or unkempt. Why did she pull away from me?

  I stay at Billy’s until I see her packing up her car. I’m afraid she might pack up the patchwork man to take with her (put him in the front passenger seat—then she could use the car-pool lane) or invite beautiful Billy to come along. But she leaves them both behind. She waves toward Billy’s house as she gets behind the wheel. I see the flash of her splendid teeth. It’s like the flash of a shipwrecked sailor signaling for help with a mirror. She knows I’m in here watching. She can probably see my eyes between the window shade and the sill. I want to run out to her, but I know I have to make her come to me. She knows I’m here. She has to prove herself. So I wait. And wait.

  I stay here until she’s long gone.

  And then I stay a little longer, because the house over there is empty and sad, because our kids’ room is full of cobwebs and will never have kids in it (barring some freak of nature), and because the driveway is full of bird shit. Nothing is waiting for me over there but histoplasmosis and heartache. I stay because Billy really is beautiful to look at, even when he’s picking spilled shreds of marijuana out of his navel. I am far from homosexual, but I can appreciate beauty in art, and in cars, and in living things. I stay until Billy says my child-molester eyes are creeping him out and messing with his high, and he pushes me out the door.

  VITRIOL