The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done

by Sandra Newman

  Finally I open my eyes to the pretty ceiling, sighing because it’s me. I sigh again, grateful that I’m clean and indoors. I sigh a third time, grateful that I’m not underneath the bed, and Ralph is the sick one, not me now, and I’m going to have breakfast.

  I’m hungry for the first time in three days. Excited, I sit up buoyantly and leap out, I throw clothes on. Rattling down the stairs, I prepare myself not to look at Ralph and go out the door with paranoid haste.

  He’s sitting there. His hair has dried in strange tufts. He’s sitting there.

  My appetite gone, I change my mind and walk stiff-legged to Eddie’s door. Still seeing Ralph’s figure, which has lodged in my mind as a half-man blot, which becomes more unfinished even in those few steps, until its defects suggest a decomposing zombie, and oppress me –

  I don’t realize Eddie’s door is open

  until I’m standing in the open door.

  The room is bare. I stagger in, drawn by the vacuum of it, the stillness. All his junk is gone. The bed is stripped to the stained mattress. The floor is cleared but hasn’t been vacuumed; shreds of lint, foil, paper lie exposed.

  When I open a drawer, it’s cavernously empty, nothing nothing but the wood bottom. I open more drawers, I begin to sweat.

  There are no clothes and his briefcase isn’t there. His diary isn’t there. His ashtray.

  I call, foolishly: “Eddie? Eddie?”

  Then I spot the snail, on the floor beside a lone tack. It’s an ordinary garden snail with a brown shell. As I stoop, it flares its neck like a brontosaurus. Like a circus brontosaurus, about to curvet, and its phlegm-like stalks gesture.

  Plucking it loose blindly, I head out to the flowerbeds (again not looking at Ralph, dammit, not now) and drop the snail under a shrub.

  Then I hear the voices. They’re coming from the kitchen’s screen window, just above my bent head. Guests, assembling, as they have every right to, in my kitchen.

  Now I can’t use my kitchen. Instantly I realize I’m desperately thirsty, and I freeze, anguished by this new-minted dilemma. I watch the snail struggle to right itself, its shell heaving with the effort, and I hear:

  “It was cruel, you just tried and tried, and it was, you were never good enough.”

  “I never wanted to say, but I actually went back to therapy as a direct result of Ralph.”

  “But there was no room with him, for our needs. It had to be all one way.”

  “It’s cause, I don’t think he realized our value. Cause I gotta believe, I know you have value, so maybe I do too?”

  “He was just like my father.”

  They all laugh then, and I’m released, I go, tonguing my dry sticky mouth, toward the dining room, with a hysterical certainty that Eddie will be there (but also knowing there’s a mini-fridge, with cold sodas)

  (Ralph passing in my peripheral vision)

  (I open the front door just enough to slip through sideways, as if that’s safer)

  (the living room with its long curve of marble stairs where Eddie once successfully completed the self-imposed task of pissing on every single stair in one mad run, God don’t let him be gone)

  (the dining room is lit)

  There are people there. I halt in the doorway, and Kate Higgins waves.

  It’s her and Anna Rossi and Jo Minty. Assembling as they have every right.

  Anna’s doing Ralph.

  “Stay in your center. You aren’t in your center.” She strides, haughty and ponderous, along the dining room table, pausing to frown at a shoved-out chair. “Come back to your center. Fool.” She shoves the chair in.

  Kate and Jo are in stitches. They turn away from me, but I see Kate peeking, her eyes meet mine with sensuous hate.

  Jo says to everyone but me, “You guys know what? I got a stash of beer under my bed. Only it’s not cold.”

  “Oh, I usually don’t,” Kate simpers, “but today.”

  Anna puts a hand on her hip, and says, “Since we don’t have dope to smoke.”

  “Oh, let’s just call the cops on him, that would settle this.” Jo dusts her hands together, settling it.

  “No, I still couldn’t do that to him,” Kate sighs. “He was my teacher, I could never raise my hand to harm him.”

  I say something, some moan of farewell, and stagger back, cursing the impossibility of getting a drink in this place, heading to the john where there are faucets after all, but there the GUESTS are, in the hallway, in my path.

  It’s Arthur Clough and Mat who commutes from Sacramento. They straighten up, but studiously pretend they haven’t seen me.

  Sacramento Mat is saying, “No, I get he wants us to go, but I don’t get why.”

  Arthur Clough holds up his hand. He says confidentially, “What I’m saying, I had an idea he’s trying to weed us out? You know, the ones who stay are real seekers, and then the . . . secret teaching could start.”

  “Wow. Right. So, this is a test.”

  “That’s what I think. I’m just telling you this cause you’ve become a good friend.”

  They pause, just managing not to turn to me hopefully.

  Mat says, trying to laugh, “But it could be not –”

  “Yeah, that’s it. That’s why you’ve got to use your own perceptions.”

  I walk towards them mechanically, say,

  “It’s not a test,”

  and walk away mechanically. My eyes water a little but when I wipe them, I don’t cry after all. I go outside.

  Of course, my saying it’s not a test could be another test. If Ralph and I publicly fucked at poolside, that would make a splendid test. We could hold guns on them and scream “Fuck off, you revolting ass-lickers!” That would be an advanced test.

  We are forced to shoot them. They become instantly enlightened, having passed all the tests, and their souls fly away to nirvana, cleansed. We bury the corpses underneath the tower.

  I head toward Ralph. He has turned bright red already in the sun. I call gaily, stronger than him, in my desperation: “I’m just going to get you some sun block, okay? Back in a second!”

  To my pained empathy, he flinches. Oh, God! He’s real! I think, running for the sun block. I slip on the stairs and crawl the last several steps. Then I make myself get up on my hind legs again, walking sensibly to the bathroom. I drink from the faucet, the water splashes down my chin. Then I grab the sun block, spilling everything else out of the cabinet, and laugh and almost pause to trample the skin products underfoot. But no: Ralph is waiting. I run laughingly out, and wave the fat tube over my head as he doesn’t look.

  “Okay, hold still.” I squat down beside him, and squeeze cream onto my palm. It’s old and a crumb of congealed goo comes first. I wipe it off on my jeans, not wanting to squish it on Ralph, who’s clearly feeling sensitive.

  I get a fresh globule and reach to his shoulder.

  “Get the fuck off me,” barks Ralph.

  My mind instantly flies back to the night he punched Eddie. It’s that voice. I say, loving him, “You can die of sunburn. Ralph?”

  He doesn’t move. I love him. I pity how he’s made dirty fingermarks on his cheek. He doesn’t move.

  “At least you’re talking,” I comment. He turns his head away. Frustrated in my friendly intent, I squeeze fat rings of sun block on my hand, puckishly meaning to absolutely smother him, and reach for his forehead.

  He swats my hand away hard. It stings and a glob of cream flies in the water. Ralph’s muttering:

  “Rip your fucking head off, you shove your hands in my face.”

  I squeal, “I’ll just keep trying, though! I’ll sit here with the sun block all day, we’ll both be burnt!”

  He says nothing, vehemently. I falter away and we sit, mutually staring into the fouled water. The sun block drifts into crumbs, not dissolving. I rub my sticky hand on the concrete.

  With time to kill, I ponder dismally the possible derivation of the zombie myth from people like my boyfriend. I picture Ralph blackened, semi-
fingered, with bright bone peeking through his flesh. The odd small worm clings, festively wiggling. In my image, Ralph’s really upset about decaying, and I feel for him sorrowfully. I want to tell him I would still love him, if he were decomposed. Of course in practice there is no predicting what I’d feel, and besides which, it’s a wild associative leap.

  I ponder dismally how I’ve alienated people, all my life, with my bizarre associative leaps.

  I look at him then for real.

  He’s a middle-aged man with dirty skin, slumped in a “penniless” attitude. In this sedentary year, his body has lost tone, and the trunks’ elastic cinches up a fold of sweaty flab. His face is set in a sullen resentment. He could have known better than to trust anyone. He could have known better than to think he was any good. People just fuck you over.

  I can be trusted. I love him right now. I want to touch his shoulder –

  Then I remember, shocked, and say, “Eddie’s gone.”

  I look at Ralph and he doesn’t look at me.

  I say, “I think Eddie’s gone. All his stuff is cleared out. It’s scary.”

  I pause to consider that I can’t be trusted in particular. I have already lost an entire family. Although of course Eddie is probably just in San Francisco, buying coke. Then again, he’s buried all his things (putting two and two together), which sure looks grim.

  And I add, doomily:

  “I found a snail.”

  Then Ralph starts to laugh. It’s such a normal laugh, I laugh too, to encourage him, and then just because I can’t stand it.

  “Oh, God,” I say. “Why are you laughing?”

  He puts his hand over his eyes. Then he isn’t laughing.

  “Ralph?” I say, falsetto with suspense.

  He takes his hand away and looks at the grimy palm.

  He says, “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  “This is a farce.”

  “Yes, yes . . . are you . . . talking, now?”

  He looks around him for the first time in days, grimacing ruefully when he comes to me. He stretches his arms out in front of him. “Let’s see how it goes.”

  I watch him examine his sunburned arms, pick shreds of dope from his waterlogged feet. From time to time he gives me a look: the half-shamed triumph of a child recovering from a tantrum. I stop myself from mentioning how shitty he’s been, although I sneakily promise myself I’ll get to that later. Now I say, nice:

  “Would you like to go inside and have something to eat?”

  He winces, I’ve gone too far. But then he thinks: “We could . . . is there anyone in the kitchen?”

  “There was. I could check, if you want me to.”

  “Yeah. I’m just . . . I was hoping they’d all have left.”

  “Oh, no,” I say, jumping to my feet. “Not they.”

  The last kitchen scene

  I went into the kitchen and they were there. I said, “You’ll have to get out now, I’m afraid, because Ralph wants to use the kitchen and he doesn’t want you here.”

  “Oh!” they said, affronted, and “His Lordship! Excuse us!”

  But the cunts left. (I wasn’t feeling very generous.)

  When they were really gone, I leaned out the door and called to Ralph.

  He came shambling, clumsy. He kept stretching out his legs, mid-walk. In the doorway, he balked, unhappily frowning at the Oscar Person chairs.

  I looked at them too, the horrible shitty awful chairs that hurt you. Ralph was exhausted! I wanted to kill the chairs!

  Yet he just sat down.

  I brooded over him, worried. “Are you okay? I guess you can’t be . . .”

  “No. I need . . .”

  “I’ll get you some juice?”

  “No, I’ll get some in a minute. Thanks.”

  I sat down, useless. Then he reached out and I reached out and we held hands.

  He said, “Really thanks.”

  I said, “Thank God it’s over.”

  Then, just as I looked up and saw the pale blue envelope, gaudy with foreign stamps, addressed in near-invisible pencil, propped between two corn muffins on the microwave:

  my chair began to play “Pop Goes the Weasel.”

  round and round the mulberry bush It had a bleepy timbre: my first thought

  the monkey chased the weasel was that a guest had planted a bomb in

  round and round the mulberry bush the chair, which mocked its victim with this

  the monkey chased the weasel infantile tune before blowing him/her to

  round and round the mulberry bush smithereens. I sprang to my feet, and saw:

  Deep within the punctured seat, an odd plastic gleam showed. I bent and plunged my hand into the chair’s guts, extracting Eddie’s mobile phone. I shook it free of cornflake debris, and waved it at Ralph, squealing:

  “Oh, shit, we’d better really answer it?”

  “You,” he said, alarmed. “I can’t. I –”

  “Oh, shit.”

  I backed away, stalling, and went to peer at the blue envelope. It had no return address, but it was addressed to Jack Moffat, and somehow I knew, and when I finally pressed the right button and held the tiny phone to my comparatively colossal head, still frowning at the awful tune and reluctant to press the thing which made that noise to my ear, and more absorbed by the envelope, which I’d plucked from its nest and was opening with one hand,

  the phone call was from Denise Cadwallader too.

  “Hello?” I said, and for the first time heard her cool, self-conscious voice.

  “Hello. May I speak to Chrysalis Moffat, please?”

  “This is . . . Chrysalis.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m afraid I have bad news.”

  MALAYSIA SECTIONS

  Argument

  “You Can’t Go Home Again Until Your Whole Family Is Dead”

  Context

  Having scrawled a suicide note on a paper placemat, over its depiction of “Fruits of Malaysia,”

  and recorded his goodbyes on an audio cassette, Woolworth’s brand with orange stickers, labeled:

  Soul – various,

  my brother Eddie died in the course of a massive epileptic seizure.

  He was on a small island off the coast of Peninsular Malaysia. He was thirty at the time, although he looked much older. No one was with him.

  His body lay on the white sand beach, with the sea approaching and retreating, making a fringe of white bubbles and absorbing it into the dark water again, as if thoughtfully.

  Eddie had made a mark like a snow angel, flailing, before he suffocated. Then a damp stain of urine and dilute feces. Found by an early swimmer, an Australian who reported that the sand was bright yellow like dyed hair at sunrise and my brother was like a few stones in his dark suit and it was, like, a spooky postcard. Closer, you could see the insects, so many they made a heat shimmer. You were aware of your bare feet suddenly and saw what that was and then you stopped as if hurt.

  “And I just thought, you know, shit, that’s a dead guy. You know. That’s a corpse. Cause they were all crawling round in his eyes.”

  There was sand in the briefcase the tape was in. Not much, but I could feel it when I handled things. The placemat smelled of food. At first I thought that meant he was alive although I already knew and I don’t know why really. Then I put the tape on and listened to his voice.

  Dear Jack Moffat,

  In response to your recent letter, after a brief hiatus I am returning to professional gambling, and need a partner urgently. Having recalled your once eagerness to learn, I thought this might be of interest, and so invite you cordially to meet me in my first port of call. I will be in Kuala Lumpur the 8th–14th of this month, and can be contacted via the Awana Hotel, whose card I enclose. Naturally, all travel expenses will be reimbursed.

  Yours sincerely,

  Denise Cadwallader

  1Ralph and I flew

  LA – London

  London – Singapore

  Singapore – Kuala
Lumpur.

  1.1In Singapore, we spent the night in the airport hotel.

  1.2The room was windowless, and smelled of concrete.

  1.3We smoked until our eyes burned. Showering made us feel better.

  1.4I lay on the chilly carpet, and wept. When Ralph stroked my back, I got annoyed.

  2The 30-minute hop to KL, then we caught a bus.

  2.1All day through the jungles and the windy plantations. Children waved, they demonstrated their yo-yos.

  2.2At every stop we bought a liter of water, parking lots smelled of rotting fruit.

  2.3All the Malays smiled. I wanted to shut my eyes.

  3We had lunch in Ipoh: a whole extended Chinese family cooked, stir-frying noodles as they talked.

  3.1Ralph made me eat and I was starving. Those wonderful noodles made me cry again: how happy people must be here.

  3.2And walked down to the pier. I cried mechanically and sweated. The sun made the view hurt. My brother was dead.

  4Just fucking sorrow. The ferry had backless pews. It was cool on the water, the little boat hurdled the waves, making breeze. Sea-birds followed in circles overhead, looking down at us.

  4.1“It’s the Indian Ocean,” said Ralph, and I wondered if he was right.

  4.2Once I had wondered, I felt better. I leaned my chin on the side of the boat.

  4.3“That’s my favorite ocean,” I said, remembering childhood. And added:

  4.4“It was Eddie’s favorite, too,” and we both laughed at the fact that even that made me cry. Ralph pressed my hand, he pressed my head to his chilly, sweat-damp chest.

  5Denise was waiting at the dock.

  5.1Long dark hair, blue dress, as she’d described herself. She looked summery, among the chatting fishermen.