Everyone but You

by Sandra Novack

  “I don’t know,” I told her. That was the truth. “You tell me.”

  “I don’t want to be with Lucius,” she said. “I mean, that Lucius. If you don’t know that, then you don’t know me.”

  “No kidding,” I said. “Really.”

  She didn’t speak for an hour. I don’t know what Lola was thinking about. Eventually I got up, went over to the couch, and drifted off to sleep. I dreamed of Lola. In my dreams, I held her close, saying, “Lola, Lola, my firefly.”

  THE NEXT DAY LOLA dressed and left for class. When I came home from work later that night all her drawers were empty, the bathroom was stripped bare, and Lola was gone. That was it. Sometimes even when you sense the end, you expect that it will be drawn out and painful, but the truth is a lot of times people surprise you. They simply leave. There is that sort of ending, too.

  The only thing she left was Boo, who swam mournfully around his fishbowl. I sat on my bed. I thought some troubling things as I sat there, things I’d never thought about before that moment. I thought: Eventually people just quit and leave you, whether you want them to or not. Maybe they don’t even really want to leave—who knows?—but they leave just the same. I wasn’t angry, but a quiet terror filled me.

  I searched for Lola in the weeks afterward. I’d ride my bike to campus and wait while a flood of students poured out of the Arts and Science Building. I started to worry. I texted her at least a hundred times, but she didn’t answer. I thought, Even in this day and age, if people want to disappear, they can. A few weeks later, I finally caught sight of her. She was wearing jeans and a wool coat and high-heeled boots. I called to her, and, when she ignored me, I rode my bike behind her, pleading until she stopped.

  “Lola,” I said. “We’ve got to talk.”

  She repositioned her backpack. “I’m a liar, remember? A user? A bad person?”

  “What did you want me to say?”

  “You meant it,” she said, raising her voice. Some students stopped, some turned around. “And it was a mean thing to say, but that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part is it’s true.”

  “Come on,” I said. “We’ll talk in private.”

  “No,” she said. “That’s it. End of story.”

  WAS MY LIFE so bereft before Lola entered it, before we agreed, for a time, to play along with each other, and pretend? I can hardly remember now, and yet, a year later, I still think about her with a fondness that is unmatched by any other. I’m telling you all this because, see, the thing that happens is you forget over time. I mean you remember this and that happened, you have a vague sense of events, but the feelings become blurred and foggy. I don’t remember the exact moment I needed Lola, and I don’t remember the exact moment of love and how it came to exist as its own force, in its own complicated proportions. But I know that I felt these things; I know Lola and I had potential. I don’t question that love exists, but I do sometimes question the mechanisms of it. Maybe love simply happens when someone steps into your life and opens up your imagination, and you can see yourself in new ways. I think it’s at least a possibility. But what the hell do I know? My name is Harold and I ride a bike to work, and in twenty-six years I really haven’t learned a lot, that’s the goddamn truth.

  Last week was the anniversary of the first blaze, the one set at Floyd’s. The networks covered it on what was an otherwise off night. They recapped the months of havoc, the Lunar Pyro’s path of destruction. Eventually the guy got caught. Turns out he was a disgruntled employee, so Lola was almost right. I wondered what she thought of it all and what she would say.

  She must have been thinking along the same lines of completion because today the post office forwarded a letter—a letter!—to my new address. It was a fat envelope, taped shut, my name clearly printed on the outside with no return address. When I saw the handwriting, my hands shook. Thirty pages—I shit you not—written in the small loopy handwriting that was Lola’s. I will not bore you with all the details, but one part stood out:

  You were right, you know. I touch my skin and know there’s flesh. I look in the mirror and see my face and it is a confirmation of something, I suppose. I exist in this world. I breathe and eat and fuck and learn things and forget and remember. But I almost never feel real. Do you know what I mean? Can you hear me? Because there’s no sense in writing if you don’t.

  I’m sorry I left like I did, Harold. You probably deserved more of an explanation, which is just that I was suddenly very horribly afraid of sharing the bed another night because there was no place to hide anymore. It’s not you. It’s me, really. I end things as easily as I begin them. I’ve been doing that for as long as I can remember. If I were capable of love, I might have loved you. I can say without a doubt that I liked you. I liked you quite a lot, even if your apartment did smell a little funny and your pipes cranked and cranked. You need to believe me, by the time I wanted to stop pretending there were too many lies to undo. It sort of put a kink in things, really, but I guess that’s what lying does.

  In other news, I’ve discovered a true passion and have enrolled in a creative writing class. I am writing about fires and a lonely man who keeps a goldfish. I’ve been having difficulty with the overall flow of events and I am plagued—absolutely plagued, Harold—with questions of point of view. I have tried writing it from the fish’s perspective, but it didn’t work out so well. My instructor has told me that in ten years I might have a story, but certainly not even then if I keep writing about animals. I swear they pay these people to be miserable, but I will persevere.

  So, why am I telling you all this, anyway? Because I hope you will listen, really. Because this all has some pertinence to us, you and me. I know what you are thinking, that you are the lonely man with the fish. And partly that is true. But the strange thing is that when I’m writing, the man is also me. We are one in our aloneness.

  Is that love, Harold? It’s real, I think. I can’t quite touch it, but it’s real just the same. For that, I owe you thanks.

  Please give my best to Boo.

  Sincerely,

  Bertha McKern (your Lola)

  I sat on the bed and read Lola’s letter again. I thought, My darling, skinny Lola had a fat girl’s name. I just couldn’t get over that. I took Lola’s note to the kitchen. I burned the first page of it. The fire consumed it. The paper folded in on itself and smoked and burned before becoming black and breaking into pieces at the bottom of the trash can. I burned another page, then another and another. I burned it all. It was a small gesture on my part, a gift to Lola, one required to complete a story.

  ATTACK OF THE POD PEOPLE

  Beginning at midnight, you watch a twenty-four-hour marathon of macabre movies like The Thing and Die, Monster, Die! Your boyfriend, who loves horror movies, has two days off before his unit ships out to some country that you know we’re fighting. You’ve decided on a sick day tomorrow, which you feel certain you will need and which he justifies by saying that you have too much sick time accrued anyway, so why not stay in bed? Is it your fault you’re resilient, he asks? Smile and say, Yeah, right. Thank him for his support, but tell him he doesn’t have to tell you twice.

  He supplies the popcorn with extra butter. You supply the quilts and comfy pillows, which you will hog during the scary scenes. Share one of your pillows with Chance, your dog, though, because you recognize that, being a pound mutt, Chance has already had a raw deal in life. You try to wean him from his nasty temper with offerings of bad people food like popcorn. He gobbles pieces from your hands, and, if you are not careful, you could lose a few fingers.

  After the dog licks your fingers clean, he goes to the kitchen and laps up water. You say, Too much salt, and rub your own belly. You lie down with your boyfriend on the bed, feel the water ripple under your bare limbs, bouncing the two of you, you and him, up, then down, knocking your knees together. You draw the quilt up to your chin in anticipation of anything frightening.

  Invasion of the Body Snatchers comes on and he, your boyfr
iend, says, Oh, I love this one. You don’t bother to tell him this one is a remake, that the original commented more on communism and the Red Scare while this one, with Donald Sutherland, supposedly comments on relationships in the seventies. He will not care anyway. On TV, there’s a distinct absence of pods and snatchers. You ease the grip on your quilt and say, Hey, maybe this won’t be so bad. Everything seems innocuous, a world filled with dewy, peach-colored flowers and rain. What could be nicer? Oh, look, you say, that woman plucked one. You call her a plant murderer.

  Just wait, he tells you and smiles. Then he rubs his hands and says, Oh, yeah, so loudly that Chance, back from the kitchen, growls before he hops up and settles down at the undulating bottom of the waterbed.

  You give your boyfriend the bowl of popcorn, offer it as a gesture, a sign that you want to be close. Then you make a grunting sound and hold your stomach. Chance growls again, this time at your noisy belly.

  Your boyfriend says: It’s a shame you can’t ship that dog out to the Middle East.

  Remind your boyfriend that that would mean the dog would be with him.

  He asks why you ever picked a dog like Chance in the first place.

  You pretend not to hear. The truth is Chance had a sorry-looking face and was scheduled for the old heave-ho at the pound. You are a sucker for cases like Chance.

  You touch your boyfriend’s arm. On TV, people are beginning to act suspiciously, without feelings or emotions. They do not laugh at work. They cannot appreciate a joke. Sex? Forget it. What do they care? You think of earlier that night, when you and your boyfriend had sex, how he didn’t look at you, how he looked out the bedroom window instead, how, when you washed afterward, you had a red welt blossoming on your thigh. You think: This must be a bunker mentality, all aggression. No fear, no emotion. Just the facts, ma’am. Just spread ’em wide.

  It turns out the Chinese woman at the dry cleaner is an alien. Her husband just knows something is wrong but no one will listen: She won’t make love, won’t look him in the eyes, won’t iron and steam his shirts. You feel bad about all this and say to your boyfriend: What is it with these movies? You tell him that whoever you pin your hopes on meets the enemy. You say: Isn’t that the way it always is?

  He says he never pins his hopes on anything, so why should you?

  Remind him about Chance. Chance perks up his ears. You say to both of them, Yes, there’s always hope, isn’t there? When you say this, you make baby-talk noises.

  Work crews lug thousands of pods off overseas boats in an effort to create a world without hate or love, war, fear, joy, or anger. Not even bagpipes playing “Amazing Grace” can stop them. A man and a dog sleep too closely together. When they wake up, they have turned into a mutant.

  You say, Come here, Chance, but when Chance doesn’t listen, when he only raises his head and stares at you as though you are a stranger, a stranger with no food offerings, you inch toward your boyfriend instead. You take some small amount of strategic care not to let him know you are doing this, that you crave his skin, some knowledge of him there. You snuggle deeper under the covers and watch Donald Sutherland run into darkness, trying desperately to escape from what can only be inevitable doom.

  How can a person keep their eyes open for days, months on end? you ask. They can’t not sleep, you say. That’s obvious. You are nearing delirium yourself, after watching this marathon of movies.

  Sutherland leaves his lover to see if there might be an escape. He, your boyfriend, sees this scene and smiles knowingly. Here’s the good part, he tells you. You grab one of his pillows and hold it over your face. If you’re a puss, they get you, he says.

  They’re already here, you say. Aliens. You tell him you are certain Chance is one. We’re all monsters, you propose, changed slowly from the inside out until we’re unrecognizable. You remind him of sex earlier that evening but do not mention the welt on your thigh. You tell him only that his hands were a bit rough.

  He laughs and kisses your cheek. He tells you he thought it was supposed to be a fun night. Then he tells you that you’re acting like a prude, just like the woman at the dry cleaner.

  You don’t argue the point. Fine, you say. Let’s just watch the movie.

  He tells you he’s trying to watch the movie, that he thought the idea was to have a good time before he left. He says this as if you didn’t hear him the first time. You think: It must just be you, that you are the one who feels strange, who registers an alien difference.

  On the screen, Donald Sutherland tries desperately to wake his lover, but the pod people have gotten her, and now, in his arms, her face and body crumble. Behind her, a look-alike emerges, sheltered in the grass. She is nude, though it is unlikely that, being an alien, she will perform sexual favors.

  Your boyfriend whistles. He sits up, and Chance, in no mood for the undulating mattress, starts a yapping fit until your boyfriend throws a pillow at him, a little too hard.

  You don’t say anything about his offense toward your dog, about his ogling the alien enemy while lying in your bed, or about the welt that throbs on your thigh, because you don’t want to fight before he leaves. You’d rather strike out, in little ways, against the thing that you can’t name. And if you can’t do that, you push and clamp down on it forever.

  Trapped under a grate, Donald Sutherland prays. When next he appears, he is already transformed. You see him walking in unison with other alien people, resuming his duties, not joking about sex, staring off to some distant focal point, devoid of all feeling.

  All’s well that ends well, you say. Aliens rule the earth.

  He wasn’t strong enough to cut it, your boyfriend tells you. His mistake was leaving his troops; that’s how they get you, when you’re alone. Luckily, he tells you, he has his men, and they stick together.

  You tell him you need a change of pace, that you’ve had enough alien action for one evening.

  Your boyfriend says, What’s wrong?

  Oh, I don’t know, you say. The world?

  You coax Chance into the living room with a pillow and a trail of popcorn. Once on the couch, you find an old movie, The Sound of Music. As you watch Julie Andrews run across the mountains and spread her arms wide as if she could envelop the whole world in them, when you hear her sing that the hills are alive, you decide you have no choice but to take it on faith, to reach deep and bury all the dogs within you that bite.

  CERULEAN SKIES

  Sylvia flops down on the love seat—the one item Raulp didn’t relocate after he turned their small sunroom into a studio—and pulls away green, knobby pills from the cushions. Around her, canvases litter the room, some stacked up against the walls, others lying on paint-spattered tarps that cover the carpet. Soon Raulp will have his eye on renovating the sunroom, too, she thinks irritably, using it to store spare supplies and abandoned projects, and before she even knows it the whole house will be a testimony to broken dreams and outlandish aspirations. And then where will they be?

  Still, she assesses: Where they are is in the sunroom/studio, on an otherwise pleasant and bright Saturday morning in May. Raulp stands amid a clutter of Folgers cans filled with flat brushes that spread out like miniature fans. “Hello, husband,” she says good-naturedly, but Raulp’s c-o-n-c-e-n-t-r-a-t-i-n-g. He’s been concentrating so much lately, in fact, that he’s finally mastered the age-old art of tuning her out. He’s also getting absentminded about things like showering in the morning or remembering to take lunch and sometimes dinner, and while other women might worry that both neglect and weight loss in a middle-aged man points to an affair, Sylvia knows better: Raulp is simply self-absorbed. He looks lean and careless in his slumping khakis and a black T-shirt that hangs out over his belt. A bohemian goatee has replaced his once fastidiously shaved face, and instead of looking like the businessman he once was, he now resembles a Beat poet, or a more muscular, hairier version of Bob Dylan, both of which aren’t entirely disagreeable to Sylvia, but neither of which she would want as a husband, either.
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  As she pulls at the cushions, Sylvia traces, for the umpteenth time, the path of Raulp’s midlife crisis and subsequent lunacy: First, there was the layoff from the bank, recent downturns, the housing-industry debacle and ensuing credit mayhem, followed by his prolonged use of the word undervalued, and his rather bizarre idea that fate had somehow saved him, at age thirty-nine, from a life of mediocrity and pushing through loan applications for newlyweds and pregnant couples. Then there came his decision to cash in stocks, take an evening class at the college, and paint again. Sometimes now when the mood strikes him he even speaks in French, talking about his tour de force and his succès d’estime.

  It’s all sheer and utter madness. Sylvia misses the times when she could practically chart Raulp’s moods in accordance with the Dow Jones and the near sorcery-like predictions of Warren Buffett, but after years of marriage it is no longer so easy to figure out Raulp. She watches as Raulp tucks a wisp of graying hair behind his ear and runs his hands over the blank canvas. A mercurial expression spreads across his face, and Sylvia becomes aware, once again, of the changeability of his moods.

  “Oh, look,” she says, picking up the classified section of the paper. “Job listings.”

  “Sylv,” he says distractedly. “You have your job at the bookstore, and I have a job doing this.”

  “You have unemployment benefits, a retirement fund, and a hobby,” she tells him gently. Then, when he frowns, she adds, “Just kidding! Of course you have a job, sweetie. Of course!” She says all this in an animated, too-bright way, because, Jesus Christ, she reasons, she should at least try to be cheerful. Raulp is her husband, the man she loves, after all. And he’s dedicated himself to his art again. He has! She has watched his formal considerations change over the course of class, marked how his field of vision, once bent on abject realism, has grown to add new weight and shape, more irregular patterns, less repetition. She’s commended him on his earnest study because, she reasons, she should be supportive. And mostly she has been.