A gangly twenty-something with a straggly soul patch, a case of post-adolescent acne and bony wrists stared impassively at her as she walked up to the checkout counter. “Are you ready or would you like to take another lap around the store?” he asked.
She flushed and fought the impulse to blurt out her troubles.
“I’m ready,” she said, although she’d never felt less ready in her life to face what was waiting for her.
He rang her up without saying another word. At the door, she turned to say goodbye to him, but he’d started dusting a rack of condoms and ignored her.
She couldn’t dawdle long. Her neighborhood was on the edge of gentrification, but it still wasn’t safe at night. Prostitutes stood on street corners and groups of young men and women sometimes roamed aimlessly down the ill-lighted streets, making a lot of noise, reconfirming Bertie’s opinion that a person’s IQ shrunk as their noise level grew.
But there was hope. Several gay couples were renovating homes in the area and when gay people moved in, property values usually went up. Bertie thought it was a lovely idea, as long her rent didn’t go up, too.
Bertie parked her car and stood in front of her door, delaying the inevitable just a few seconds more. She took a deep breath, stuck the key in the door, and entered, opening her mouth to say “Hello,” before swallowing the word at the sight of her guest sound asleep on the couch, his 6’2’’ frame hanging over the edges in odd and unwieldy ways – his legs over the arm and his feet almost touching the floor, one arm over his head and the other trailing alongside the sofa, his head crooked at almost a forty-five degree angle.
Bertie stood and stared down at the sleeping William Patrick Cully. Her ex-husband. He had dark circles under his eyes, and his shirt collar was fraying. Gray was mixed in with the blonde stubble on his cheeks and chin. He’d obviously been living rough for awhile.
“What am I supposed to do with you, Cully?” she asked herself. She knew what she should do: Wake him up, make small talk and send him on his way.
But a tsunami of memories flooded her brain: Their wedding day, with both of them so nervous they could barely squeak out the requisite “I do’s”; waking up in the morning next to him, warm and cuddly; his fascination with monkeys …
He looked so tired, so worn out.
She was torn between letting him sleep and getting rid of him. She tiptoed to the fridge and put the milk and eggs away, careful not to bump anything that might clang. She grabbed a box of Wheat Thins from the cupboard, and retreated quietly to her bedroom and closed the door. Crackers would do for dinner; she wanted to postpone talking to Cully for as long as possible.
She changed into her pajamas, ate crackers in bed and read until she felt sleep sneaking up on her. Before she slept, though, she crept out to the living room and covered Cully with a blanket. Tomorrow would be soon enough to sort out what was going on and why he’d come back into her life after six years of divorced bliss.
***
Bertie woke slowly next morning and lay awhile in her bed, struggling for complete consciousness. The apartment was quiet. Maybe Cully had just needed a place to crash for the night and left, returning to whatever life he’d created for himself after they’d divorced.
The last she’d heard of him, he’d been working as a photographer for the L.A. Times. She wasn’t surprised, he was a really good photographer, it’s what he’d wanted to do his whole life and he’d put all of his passion into learning and practicing it.
Bertie finally got up, put on her ratty old pink chenille robe and opened the bedroom door. Cully was sitting on the couch, his feet in their shabby sneakers together on the floor, his hands in his lap, as if afraid to move and offend her by his presence. His sun-streaked blonde hair looked as if he’d finger-combed it into a semblance of order and the blanket was folded neatly beside him. He smiled at her as she entered.
“Hello, Bertie, I’m sorry I fell asleep last night on your couch. I was tired.”
“It’s OK, Cully, you looked pretty whipped. Would you like some coffee?”
“Yes, please. Thank you.”
This very formal and polite exchange was breaking Bertie’s heart. He seemed afraid of her – no, not of her, but of her rejection. They’d had a good marriage in many ways and they’d parted as, if not friends, then not enemies, which was something a lot of couples couldn’t say. That he might be afraid of her hurt her in a way she couldn’t comprehend after so many years apart.
Bertie made coffee, and she and Cully settled on the couch again. There was a hesitant kind of silence while they drank. Before it became uncomfortable, Bertie said, “So, what brings you to …” just as Cully said, “You look great, Bertie.”
It was so corny, so ‘50s movies “coincidence” that they both laughed.
“It’s nice to see you, Cully, but why are you here? Are you still at the Times?”
Cully looked away. “Ummm, no. I, uh … lost my job.”
“Laid off?” Bertie’s sympathy softened her voice.
“Ummm, no. I was fired.”
“Fired? What happened?”
“Well, I was sent out to cover last year’s wildfires, toward the end, when it was mostly over and, you know how hot it was, and it was even hotter there, of course, where the fires were still going a little and … um, I did something they didn’t like and I was fired.” The last part came out in a rush as he flushed red in embarrassment.
“Uh oh. What did you do, Cully?”
“Hey, I had no idea they’d get so upset. It was hot, there were tables of food set up for the fire fighters and media and …”
“And?”
“Well, there was this watermelon, just cut in half, and I was so friggin’ hot that I scooped out the inside and put it on my head. I didn’t have a hat and I thought I might have heat stroke and …”
“You put a watermelon on your head? While you were taking pictures?”
“Yeah. And someone saw me and reported it back to the office. And they fired me.”
“A watermelon?”
“Just half a watermelon, not a whole one,” he said, as if that made a difference.
Bertie snickered, and then covered her mouth to keep in a laugh. Then she burst into laughter at the mental picture of her tall, good-looking ex-husband in a watermelon “hat.”
Cully flushed again, then joined in, tentatively at first, then stronger, finally combining his raucous laughter with hers.
“Captain Melon Head,” Bertie spluttered, setting them off again. They struggled to control themselves, but just a glance would set them both off, hooting and laughing till they both wound down. Bertie hiccupped and wiped tears from her eyes.
“So what did they nail you for?”
“Unprofessional conduct. They were looking for excuses; they were laying people off already and by firing me, they didn’t have to pay me unemployment.”
Bertie could feel anger welling up inside of her at the avarice of the owners of “big business,” which is what newspapers had become. She swallowed hard and it was enough to keep the anger in check.
“What have you been doing since then? The wildfires were almost a year ago.”
“I was free-lancing, doing some celebrity shoots at red carpet events. Did you ever hear of the American pickers?”
The American pickers were a series of photos of celebrities picking their noses that had gone viral. There was something about a huge star, male or female, with a finger stuck up their nose that appealed to the worst in “ordinary” people. Bertie remembered some talk about the photos being made into a book..
“That was you? I never heard who actually took the shots.”
“That was me.” The pride of profession was evident in Cully’s voice.
“Oh my God, Cully, that was big … HUGE. Good job.”
“Yeah, until they…the celebs, figured out it was me. I was blackballed as a freelancer. I couldn’t get any more bookings.”
“Oh, come on, those sleazy tab
loid TV shows, TMZ, and the other ones? They’d eat nose pickers up. Ewwwww, you know what I mean.”
“I guess the blackball and the watermelon were enough to scare them off, ’cause I couldn’t get any more work. And there’s a lot of competition out there, Bert. There are Pulitzer Prize winners standing on street corners waiting for Lady Gaga, for God’s sake. It’s been hard lately. Really hard. I’ve been living … well, I’ve been living …”
“Yeah? Living …?”
“I was living in someone’s house.”
“So what? I’m living in someone’s house, too.”
“You don’t understand. It was sort of illegal. I found a way into one of those big houses in the Hills and I’ve been living in the basement. The owners were on vacation in Italy, or somewhere, I don’t know.”
“You were a squatter?”
“Hey, I did odd jobs around the place to pay for my keep. Even if they didn’t know about it, I was OK with paying my way.”
“Why did you leave if you were so OK with it?”
“They came back.”
“You could’ve been thrown in jail.”
“I know, I know, but Bertie I’ve been taking pictures and they’re good, they’re really good … black and whites, not color. I set up a darkroom in the basement and I was developing them the old way, with chemicals and paper and … I think I can get them published. If I can just find a place to stay until I finish the work, I think I the pictures would hit the big time, the way that Dorothea Lange photos did during the Dust Bowl.”
“Pictures of what?”
“Mostly homeless people, but other things, too. I think we’re in a new Depression; someone needs to record what’s happening out there on the streets. For God’s sake, I’m almost out on the street myself.” He stood up and started pacing the room as his passion for his subject grew, his long stride eating up the small area. “And, for all the hype about green-this and green-that, there are some serious problems with the ecology movement. I was thinking of calling the book “Life in LaLa Land: Not All It’s Cracked Up to Be.”
Bertie was impressed. She’d been first attracted to Cully in college because of his serious approach to his craft and then his whimsical side had sucked her in the rest of the way. That was the side that would wear a watermelon – OK, half a watermelon – to keep cool.
But she still wasn’t ready to commit to letting him stay with her. That would be like taking on a small child who wasn’t yours and over whom you had no control.
“I’m impressed, Cully, I really am, but don’t you think you’d be better off in one of those long-stay discount motels? They’ll even leave a light on for you.”
“Bertie … please?” He didn’t look at her. He looked at the floor. A long silence grew, then doubled and grew again.
“OK, but there are some rules. You have to bring in some money. I can’t afford to keep you. I’ll see if they’ll take you on as a freelancer at the Beacon-Banner. I don’t have any influence there, but having a former Times photographer should be a big deal. I’m writing greeting card verses on the side for extra money. You can try that, too.
“And, I have a life, I have friends,” she said, thinking of Madison. “You get out of the way if I have someone in. Got it? And you help out around here. You go to the store, you cook, you clean.”
“I can do all of that, Bertie. Thanks. Thanks so much. You won’t be sorry, I promise. I’ll dedicate the book to you.”
“If it gets published.”
“This one will. I know it.”
“And, Cully, the most important thing: You sleep here on the couch. It pulls out into a bed. We do NOT sleep together. Got it?”
“Sure, Bertie, of course. I never thought that …”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m sure.
He gave her a big hug and took off to get his things from the bus station locker where he’d left them.
Bertie sat on her sofa and contemplated her radically changed life.
She sighed. “Captain Melon Head goes to seed,” she thought.
CHAPTER SIX
Bertie helped Cully settle in. She made up the sofa bed while he stashed his gear in the small storage area she’d been allotted in the garage. It was an uneasy alliance. Bertie had been attracted to Cully because of his wild whimsy, his unpredictable sense of humor, his spontaneity, all wonderful, exciting qualities when they were dating, but that later contributed to the demise of their marriage.
She put up with a lot – oh, who was she kidding? – she’d participated in a lot of the craziness, too. They’d met in college. Bertie had been doing a story about a new regent and instead of the usual nicety-nice-nice story, she wanted to get an inside look at what made the man tick. She’d long had a theory that what a person carried around in the back seat of their car told a lot about them so she’d “liberated” a ladder from the maintenance room, climbed a wall into the administration parking garage and was trying to see in Regent Nippert’s car when Cully had surprised her from behind.
“Are you climbing the ladder to success or do you just have a car fetish?” he’d asked, leaning against a cement column. Bertie drew in her breath sharply. What was this blonde, blue-eyed, tanned surfer prototype doing in a Pittsburgh parking garage?
“Unless you’re the Dean of the Fucking Parking Garage, buzz off,” she’d said.
“Whoa, that’s a lot of hostility for someone who had to climb a ladder to get in a garage. Spill, lady, what’s up? I didn’t’ follow you up that ladder for nothing.”
Bertie took a deep breath and spilled. Cully, a senior to her junior, not only didn’t turn her in to Dean of the Fucking Parking Garage, he climbed back down the ladder to his car, retrieved a camera, climbed back up and illuminated the back seat with the flash.
Nippert, whose official CV claimed his family was back in St. Louis, waiting till summer to join him, had a baby seat in his car. It didn’t take much digging to find out he had two families, an official one in St. Louis, and – surprise – another Mrs. Nippert and three little Nipperts in Pittsburgh. He was charged with bigamy and eventually sent to jail, where none of the Mrs. Nipperts or the little Nipperts visited him.
Bertie’s story was illustrated with Cully’s pictures and the two had won several prizes.
They’d married two years later, after Bertie graduated and moved West a year after that. It was such a fun, exciting time. They were starting careers, they were newly married – they felt like the world was theirs.
But then Bertie got serious … and older. She grew up and he didn’t. He was still the same old Cully, crazy and wild, when she’d decided she’d had enough. Actually, it was the monkey that caused the final split. He was never very specific about it, just a few words here and there about how cute they were at first.
“Hey, Bert, let’s go to the zoo and see the monkeys,” he’d said casually one day.
“The monkeys?” She’d been sitting at her computer at her desk in their tiny L.A. apartment, researching dry cleaners in the Washington, D.C., area for a story she was doing on Dick Cheney. “Nah, I don’t think so. Thanks, though.” The question had barely penetrated her concentration, although right before falling asleep that night she’d thought, “Did he say monkeys?”
Then, when she’d almost forgotten about it, he’d brought up how easy they were to take care of. Hardly any trouble at all, really. Put a diaper on one and you wouldn’t know it was there. That progressed to how you could train them. She always yelling at him to help around the house, wouldn’t she like to have a monkey to help with the dusting? No thanks.
Then one of his friends let drop that his former girlfriend’s cousin’s husband had left her and his monkey and now the monkey needed a new home.
Oh lord, just the thought of a diaper-wearing, furniture-dusting monkey was enough to send Bertie run screaming for the nearest divorce lawyer. When she’d asked Cully about plans he had to adopt a monkey, he’d looked studiously at the ceiling and waffled, mostly on the negative
side – “Umm, gee, no Bert. A monkey? Ha, ha ha.”
She knew him well enough to know he was seriously thinking about it, if he hadn’t already agreed to it.
That was the end. He hadn’t wanted the divorce but she had a sneaking suspicious that at that point in time, he might’ve wanted a monkey more than a wife so she didn’t feel too bad about signing the final papers.
She’d lost track of him over the years, but when she put down the pizza and salad she’d made for their lunch on Sunday, they’d fallen into the comfortable relationship that had developed over three years of marriage. They didn’t have to be “on” with each other.
“So what’s new, Bert?” he asked.
“Well, Friday night, I was covering this booorrrriing party at the Claraton when this guy comes out of trees and falls dead, almost on top of me,” she told him.
“What?”
“Yeah, can you believe it? Someone cut his throat.” She filled him on the life and death of Rowley Poke, as far she knew it, and said, “I’m going to try and get a story out of it. I can’t take this job writing about rich people.”
“I got’cha. I worked for awhile as Owen Wilson’s butt double and I couldn’t hack that for very long, either. Maybe I could help? I don’t know what I could do, but it would be partial payback for letting me live here, you know?”
Bertie sat quietly for a minute or two. She’d felt very alone since she lost her job. The life she’d known had exploded when she was laid off, the pieces never to be put back together again. Her friends, her work, her social structure had revolved around work and when that work, that job, was gone, she felt adrift.
She hated corporate America for what it had done to her and to journalism. Outsourcing jobs for cheap labor, getting rid of people with experience and knowledge for kids just out of college who would work cheap … “What’s happening to this country?” she thought.
“OK, Cully,” she finally said, somewhat reluctantly. “While you’re here, you can help.” She smiled. “I’d appreciate it, actually, thanks. But you have to bring in some money, too.”
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