The Fatigue Artist

by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

The trouble, I mused aloud, was way back. (It was the food, so warm and spicy, loosening my tongue.) Not when I got married, but before that. Not when you didn’t leave Susan, as I used to think, but even before. The trouble was that at the time you loved me you didn’t really want love but a way out. I was your tunnel to freedom. You dug your way through me. You’re still digging.

  Loved you! Q. burst out. Loved you! Ma cosa stai dicendo? What are you saying, Laura, as if it’s past? I still love you and always will.

  Ah! My frail efforts to keep things—Q.—at a distance collapsed. He loved me and always would. True, they were words that came trippingly off the tongue, especially of one who’d uttered them so often in costume, behind footlights. But I knew my Q. He had an air of authenticity. Perhaps only for the moment, in this enchanted little dive, but how permanent was anything? He loved me. And I? Could I call “love” the sulky feeling I kept for him, locked in a drear chamber in the vicinity of my heart like a chained attack dog drugged by time and disillusion, rendered harmless, dormant? While it slept in chains I carried on my life well enough. I could never get rid of the dog—that was too much to hope for, you never completely get rid of anything organic that once lodged in you—but it might well sleep forever. If nudged awake, though, it could yank on its chain and spring up with all the old ferocity, baring its pointy teeth.

  I tried to eat my burrito as if nothing were happening, but with each swallow I felt the chain shifting, its links softly clanking as the dog stirred.

  As if alerted by Q.’s outburst, the fertility goddess came over to ask how everything was. Q. praised the food; she had fulfilled her covenant of a bountiful harvest. She brought us more beer and said how pleased she was to have us in her restaurant, and how lucky Q. was to be with so beautiful a woman. He nodded abstractly. Surface beauty was not our issue.

  You love me, I repeated at last. Loved me, love me. I don’t know what to make of it. Sounds like a game or a riddle.

  Q. stared in surprise. I can’t see anything puzzling, he said. It’s what I’ve always told you. You’re a married woman, cara. Do you expect me to be the faithful lover of a married woman living in another time zone? You’ve never mentioned leaving him. Look, Laura, let’s order something more to eat. I’m suddenly ravenous. I had no breakfast. There was nothing decent in my father’s house—I cleaned out the fridge because he’ll be in the hospital a few weeks—and the train was so crowded I couldn’t fight my way to the snack bar.

  It was a long lunch. Our personal Ceres kept bringing food while we talked about our love. I felt the dog grunting awake, uncurling his stiff limbs. He wanted food, too. He’d been asleep for so long that he was voracious. He wanted hope and agitation. Turbulent feeling was what nourished him best. Pleasure or pain, it didn’t much matter. It was emotional foreplay that he craved.

  With the spices on my tongue, I talked. I told Q. things I’d never told him before, or never as intensely as I felt them. What he had meant to me all those years ago. How it had been when he vanished after I sent him away, the door closing so gently, a muted clicking into place. And as I heard the words forced out, the dog’s hungers translated into speech, I thought maybe it was my great error not to have spoken them before. Maybe, like a woman, Q. needed to be seduced and held by words. He was listening intently. He was more of a woman than I’d thought.

  The trouble with you, he said ever so kindly, is that you are too proud. Or reticent, or something. You never told me what you were suffering or how much you felt. You hid it in anger. You remember the awful things you said. Arrivederci e basta. You threw me out. You have no idea what women do. They tear their hair and scream and implore. Not just women. Men, too. When I was twenty years old and my girlfriend dropped me, first I banged on her door for an hour, then I stood in the shower and bawled at the top of my lungs and jerked off for all I was worth. I had the water running so no one would hear. You don’t do that.

  I should hope not. But it doesn’t mean I don’t have the same feelings. What an image. You never told me that before.

  Well, it’s not something I like to remember. Don’t go telling anyone.

  I suppose I can’t help what I do any more than you can. You know what they say about narcissists? When you love one, I mean? My cousin Joyce told me, she knows all about psychology. Give them a hard time but never threaten to stop loving them. Do you think that’s good advice?

  Yes, said Q. That is very astute.

  So you’re saying I fucked up?

  Don’t take it personally, love. Everyone does, with me.

  Q.’s face was suddenly so bare and ragged that I almost reached out to smooth away the lines with my fingers. There was a long pause, an impasse of pain. He drained his beer and grinned sadly. We’re so close to the bone, he said. It’s all so raw.

  So if you love me, now what? What happens next?

  Here? he said, gazing around at the bullfighters and señoritas on the walls. What can happen here? Under the watchful eye of Isis or whoever she is?

  You know what I mean, I said. You throw everything into turmoil, then get on a plane and leave me with the mess.

  But how could he know what I meant? That I was thinking we might begin all over from this raw but exhilarating place. Which suitcases and books should I take? I’d fill out those little change-of-address cards from the post office. Could I stand his noise, his early rising, his housewifely love of order? How much would Ev miss me? Passionately, tenderly, moderately, not at all, as French children chant, plucking the petals off daisies. But I said none of this. I waited.

  Well, before we do anything let’s have coffee, Q. said, and the woman appeared promptly, with prescience.

  Thank you so much. Wonderful food. And that coffee smells good, he told her. So, Laura, I’m staying at Peter’s. Do you want to come back there with me?

  Our hostess saw us to the door. She wished us well as though giving her blessing before a perilous journey, and as a matter of fact we decided the subway would be quicker than a cab in mid town. Amid the dirt-streaked tiles and debris, the hunched addicts and beggars holding out Styrofoam cups, we walked hurriedly, holding hands, frightened of what we had come to. Q. opened the apartment door and we fell against each other. He dropped his suitcase and his hand was under my skirt in one motion.

  Please close the door, I said.

  Oh, I forgot.

  Is anyone home?

  I hope not. God, it’s been a long time, Laura.

  Wait a minute, you’re strangling me. It doesn’t open like that.

  He pulled back, holding my hand as in a dance, and gave an antic bow, an Elizabethan courtier’s bow. I await your pleasure, he said.

  By the time the sun was slanting down toward the river I had had my fill of him. The dog nestled back in his chamber in the vicinity of my heart, not drugged but sinking into a sweet, snug sleep.

  And now? I thought. Do I await his pleasure? Lying warm in his arms, I knew. We’d continue our meetings, parting miserable or parting, as today, ecstatic, full of mindless hope, wild as weather. Yes, we’d think in our separate ways, perhaps we were fated to be together. Yet somehow, perversely defying fate, we weren’t. Lying in his arms, I was warmed also by a thrill of triumph. Whatever else, I had shown him the truth. Shown myself, too. He had a poor memory, short and selective. He would remember it only until the next event to engage his attention—phoning his father, seeing Peter and Arthur when they came home. Our lunch and our truth would recede to a remote cranny in his mind. But it would be there.

  What a blow, early this summer, when he suggested going back to that restaurant where so much—and so little—had happened. Had he forgotten utterly? Or did he want to make it happen again? Didn’t he know such things never happen twice in the same way? To attempt it again would be to write over it, as the computers say. !Attention! If you continue, your experience will be overwritten! Do you wish to continue? No, no, never back there.

  I WOKE WITH THE RECEIVER ON MY LAP, emptied of Joyce’
s voice, the curly cord limp on the sheet. If only I’d drifted off like this when Hortense told me about the three worst years of her life, or even better, during Q.’s tale of Nadine, the sexual savage from El Paso.

  The moon was gone from my window, risen high above the roof. I must have slept for nearly two hours. Every joint and muscle whined, an aching cacophony. I wandered around the dark apartment to get unknotted. At the front window, straining to make out the river, I felt a vibration. That eerie feeling that you’re not alone. Could it be? Yes, who else would crouch in exactly the curve I knew so well, the hairs of his tail stirring and reflected in the window pane: wearier, sicker, oblivious to my taps on the screen. “Love calls us to the things of this world,” a poet wrote. But the squirrel no longer heard or heeded the call. Perhaps, like a saint or a Buddhist monk, he had passed beyond desiring the things of this world. Maya, illusion, nothing. He was curled up in his nest like a young bird. By tomorrow morning he’d surely be dead. The corpse, the orange gloves, the brush and dustpan, the trip to the basement with the bag oozing the stench of death.

  Meanwhile, if I didn’t call Joyce back she’d have the police at my door, their sirens wailing for me this time.

  “I’m really sorry, Joyce. Something made me drift off and the next thing I knew, I was asleep. I mean, the next thing I knew, I woke up.”

  “Thank God you weren’t murdered in your bed. The phone was off the hook, the operator said. I nearly called the police, but Lizzie always tells me to lighten up, so I controlled myself and figured I would have heard any struggle.”

  “Well, you can relax. So what happened with the Mexican bus driver? I was left hanging. Unless it’s too late and you’re in bed.”

  “Not at all. This is a good time. I’m here in my study, totally naked. I’m feeling great, especially now that I know you’re okay. I just took a bath with Vitabath bubbles. The room is dim and I’m burning a stick of incense. I had my first and last cigarette of the day in the tub, listening to Billie Holiday, and before I go to bed I’ll do the Times crossword puzzle. An evening of bliss. It almost beats sex.”

  “Where’s Roger?”

  “Roger is sleeping. Roger is a morning person. You know how men have their favorite hours, and what can we do?”

  Ev was a night person. Q. was an afternoon person. Unless afternoons are in the nature of love affairs. Had we lived together for a long spell he might have settled into a more conventional routine.

  “Frankly,” Joyce added, “at the moment I’m more involved in Lizzie’s sex life than my own. Not that I choose to be, I assure you, but she tells me. We never told our parents in such vivid detail, did we? She tells me, but she doesn’t want to hear what I have to say. Then what is she telling me for, I’d like to know? You know how Lizzie’s been running around with boys and men since she was thirteen years old? Love is just one chapter out of many, I keep telling her. But she thinks it’s the name of the book. What do you think? Laura, are you there?”

  “Yes, yes, I’m here, Joyce. I don’t know. I’ll have to think that one over.”

  “Well, now, out of the blue, she wants to settle down. She’s gone and gotten involved with a man who’s divorced and has a ten-year-old daughter. They’re madly in love, she says, they talk about marriage, but he doesn’t want any more children and she wants babies. Mad for babies, suddenly. Knowing Lizzie, I could wind up taking care of it. I could always bring it to Africa, to the Tsumati. They don’t mind extra babies. They’re considered community assets.”

  “Joyce, the notebook,” I prodded. “The Mexican woman who moves heavy vehicles.”

  “Oh, yes. So I called her and described the notebook. Naturally the one she had was mine. I never asked why she kept it in her locker instead of bringing it to the lost-and-found. Why take chances? Probably she forgot. Anyhow, she was in a hurry to get home and said to call again at night to arrange when to meet. So I did. I would have done anything she said. She’s bringing up two kids on her own in the Bronx, scraping by on her bus driver’s salary. She must be a strong woman. Carmen, her name is. We had a long talk about this and that, raising children, mostly. I even told her about Lizzie, because it’s weighing on my mind so. Carmen said any man who doesn’t want to have children with the woman he loves is no damn good, but I realize that’s just her opinion. I don’t really know where she’s coming from. ...”

  “Joyce! Joyce, you astonish me sometimes. This Carmen is a complete stranger. She may know how to maneuver heavy vehicles but she’s hardly an expert on Lizzie’s future.”

  “Okay, don’t scold me, Laura. You know I can’t bear to be scolded. I guess I can’t contain myself. There’s no harm done, is there? After all that, we arranged to meet on the bus today at noon. They run on a schedule, though you’d never know it. I went out this morning and got her a little gift, a beautiful alabaster egg, and wrote her a card to go with it.”

  Joyce’s cards are the stuff of legend. She chooses handsome reproductions of paintings, extravagant paintings, Caravaggio, Fragonard, El Greco, and writes with a thick-nibbed black pen, every letter perfectly formed to make certain her message gets across, every line of script as regular as a child’s drawing of ocean waves. Classically legible. She would have won the approval of the Outer Cape’s Handwriting Committee. And yet the communiqués themselves are florid. Never one for minimalism, Joyce loves all adorning accretions of punctuation: hyphens, commas, and exclamation points wherever feasible. She labels the pages of her cards with a numeral and period, and draws an arrow at the bottom of page 1., along with “continued” in parentheses, to ensure that not a word or sequence will be missed. She shuns abbreviation and writes out the words Street and Avenue on the envelope, as well as New York, New York. Everything conceivable is done to enhance the reading experience and ward off the possibility that life is just not all that much.

  Beyond birthdays, holidays, or visitations of good fortune, she can make an occasion out of anything. “Dear Laura, What a nice surprise, running into you in Urban Outfitters yesterday. I realized how long it’s been. You were looking radiant. ...” That was after an exquisite afternoon in bed with Q. in Peter’s apartment, a while after I lost the baby. Let’s run away, he kept murmuring. To an island with a beach. All islands have beaches, silly, I whispered in his ear. Would you, Laura? Can you see yourself doing that? Oh, I can see it very well, I said. I’d get to the airport with my bags and you’d have forgotten all about it. I’ll tell you what. Call me when you have the tickets in your hand. Meanwhile . . . Q. looked down at me and sighed. Meanwhile, he said, you be the island and I’ll be the explorer.

  I’d almost drifted off again. “So right at noon,” Joyce was saying, “the bus pulled up and sure enough, there was my precious book, exactly as I last saw it! I stroked it. I pressed it to my bosom. Carmen was very touched. She couldn’t open the gift right then because she was driving, but maybe she’ll call. So how do you like that, Laura? My notebook is back!”

  “I like it. I like it a lot.” I also understood her relief better than she could know.

  “You’re very patient to bear with me. How are you feeling? I’m almost afraid to ask, you don’t seem to like it. ...”

  “Fine, thanks. Pretty good.” Anything to avoid another unsolicited opinion. Sugar, my dentist claims—the universal culprit. Tests show women who get this are highly suggestible, the psychiatrist upstairs volunteered when he found me swaying dizzily at the mailboxes. Dr. Atkins, my mother keeps urging over the phone.

  Besides, my ailment per se no longer interests me. It’s tolerable only as I keep finding metaphors and stories to wrap it in. These I enter one by one in the composition book—a patchwork stitched together by touch, unruly as the capes of the color-blind cape-maker—risking my fortunes, as he did, on the hope that it will make a garment against the elements.

  16

  Past Labor Day and the temperature back in the nineties, the river shining with reflected heat. Dusk was coming down like soft mosquito nett
ing. From my window, the benches lining the Drive looked inviting. If I could transport my body with a click of the heels and a wish, I’d sit under the trees alongside the old people taking the air, watching the dripping joggers in disbelief and the few children still languidly playing on the grass. But I was achy and feverish, inert; the desire refused to blossom into the act.

  As the precious light slid slowly down, I tried conjuring up an image of myself sitting outside gazing at the river. And my visualizing practice paid off: a phantom me appeared on a bench, yet the real me still refused to move, rooted at the French doors where once a rat had skittered past and I’d hardly blinked, because of Q.’s sustaining voice on the phone.

  The traffic patterns on the Drive below were mesmerizing. It’s a two-way street divided by a strip of cobbled pavement barely wide enough for a pedestrian caught between zooming cars on either side. They rush toward the bridge to escape the city as though this undulating, leafy, river-hugging stretch graced with old stone buildings were one of their freeways. At this hour, though, traffic was sparse, a trickle of cars on the voyage out and even fewer headed downtown. The occasional bus lumbered by, usually without stopping; the occasional biker in slow motion, subdued by the heat.

  Suddenly, without my thinking, the impulses coalesced and this alien body jerked into motion. Sandals, keys, mugger money, and I was at the door—an electronic toy guided by remote control.

  “Hi, Luke.” He sat on a plastic lawn chair alongside his parked car, the last three fingers of his left hand wrapped in a bandage stained a brownish color. With him was Vernon, a younger, stockier super from around the corner. “What happened to your hand?”

  “I was settin’ over by the park eating my lunch and a squirrel come over and bit me.”

  “People like to feed them,” Vernon remarked in a melodic West Indian accent. “They shouldn’t. The squirrels get the idea they can come and eat out of your hand. Eat your hand, too.”