“I thought I’d never see you again!” she cries, and runs toward him, throwing her arms around him. He flinches, but allows her to do what she feels she must do. The woman suddenly removes her arms and steps back. “What’s wrong?” she asks.
The nameless man does not think in terms of right or wrong and so says nothing.
“You act like you don’t even know me.”
The man without a name recognizes the fatigue in the woman’s eyes, which had been there every time he saw her. “Mary,” he says, knowing that isn’t the name of her secret heart—it is only the name she shares with others—but she has never shared her secret name with him so Mary is all he can use.
“Bob, you’ve been gone for months—is that all you have to say to me?”
He looks at her, wondering what he can possibly say to her, thinking he’d have to be a genius in order to know the right thing to say. “I wouldn’t want to hurt you,” he finally begins, telling her the truth. “Believe me, I would give anything not to hurt you. We could have been married—I know that’s what you wanted. Maybe I wanted it, too. Maybe I still want it. We could be married and I believe we would have had a successful marriage by the usual standards. No huge betrayals, no precipitous decline in affection, certainly none of the arguing that continues at a low burn for years before finally erupting into something more than painful and possibly dangerous. We would have had children and I’m sure we would have raised those children well.”
Somehow he thinks saying those things will in some small degree be comforting. But he has always been stupid in relationships, and he is being stupid now.
“Then why did you leave?” She is screaming at him. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen her screaming before. “You just threw it all away! There’s something wrong with you!”
“I’m not going to say that you’re incorrect about that.” He looks down, unable to look directly into those angry eyes. “But if we had married, whom would you have married? In our relatively short time together, how much did you really learn about me? How much would you have known after three years? Five years? How much do I even understand myself? I would try to be honest with you, but am I going to tell you things I think will make you dislike me?”
“So how is that different from any other relationship?”
“I don’t think it is. I don’t know. Is my ‘self’ anything more than a random accumulation of brain cells? These things that are me, are they anything more than accidental?”
“Bob...”
“You call me that name, but does it identify me any more precisely than any other? It’s a label my parents gave me, and the government finds convenient, like a label on a file so that you can find it among all the other files. But you can put anything you want into that file, can’t you? If I married you I would have been Bob with wife and kids and a house at a specific address in an all too specific neighborhood, working at any of a number of possible occupations, with benefits. I would have been well adjusted. I would have been happy. But I’m not at all sure it would have been right.”
She stares at him for a long time. When she leaves without saying anything more, he feels embarrassed, but relieved.
The nameless man returns to his hotel room and sits in an overstuffed chair the texture of battered skin. He has moved this chair to face the window so that he might have a fresh breeze on his face. He replays his conversation with Mary. He feels genuinely sorry that he has hurt her but he is anxious about something much more important right now: what if she tells others where to find him?
What if she finds some way to get in touch with his parents?
He has never seriously considered the possibility before. Once she asked to meet his parents and he told her he hadn’t spoken to them in years. Which was perfectly true. When she asked him about what had happened he told her it was too painful for him to talk about, but that someday they would. The first part of that statement had been basically true but even then he’d known he wouldn’t be around long enough for the second part. He’s already made a few too many mistakes with her, giving her his real first name and inadvertently revealing the state where he had been born (and where his parents, as far as he knows, still live). Those two items shouldn’t be enough to track down his history but who knew how many other slips he might have made? That’s what happened when you got close to someone. Perhaps she had just enough information, and perhaps she was angry enough, to contact his parents.
He tries to imagine the resulting conversation, the trading of stories, the bonding of these people who cannot fathom his odd behavior. Contemplating it makes him ill. He thinks about them visiting one another, trading pictures, hiring professional assistance. He knows he will need to leave this place sooner than planned, but perhaps there is still a way to buy himself more time.
He grabs the disposable cell phone he acquired when he first moved into this city and dials her cell number.
“Yes?”
“Mary, this is... Robert. Bob.”
“I thought you were done with me.” She’s been crying. She’s resentful. He hears cars, street sounds. She’s obviously outside. He thinks he can detect panting, footsteps. She’s walking somewhere. He thinks he’s in terrible jeopardy here.
“I’m so sorry,” he says to her, pleading. “Obviously I’m not a well-adjusted person. And you’ve been wonderful to me.”
“I don’t... don’t deserve this,” she says and a sob escapes. “Wait. Wait,” she says. “I’m crossing... wait.”
A loud car horn. A muffled impact. A rattle, a rattle, distorted voices. The phone goes dead.
He stares at his own phone, drops it onto the bed. Where was he? What was he thinking? He feels light-headed, nauseated. He leans over, stretches out on the bed. Certainly she’s all right. A near miss. She just dropped the phone.
Suddenly desperate for fresh air, he stumbles from the bed to the window, prying it open with trembling fingers. He sticks his head out into the air of the alley, clutching the sides of the frame, sure that he will fall.
The nameless man looks down and sees the creature feeding off the garbage pile below. Some sort of goat or dog—hard to tell, it is so emaciated, probably ill. Large patches of its coat have fallen out. Something odd about its head. A horn, so it is a goat. But only one. And that one distorted, broken, oozing narrow rivulets of pus. It turns its head around and smiles up at him with broken teeth, a piece of a rat wedged in its mouth.
A true unicorn, he thinks, not knowing why, but knowing it is so. That’s what they really look like. And now he knows Mary must certainly be dead. A vagrant wanders past the unicorn, neither apparently noticing the other. Mary is dead and he is at last forgotten, for now he knows his parents are dead, too. Because he is seeing unicorns the way they really are, raw and unglamorized. At last unknown, he has descended into the worlds of myth, of things unnamed and misnamed, of things unseen and things misunderstood. The grand consolation prize, he thinks, for anonymity.
*
When the unknown man goes out that evening it is only after reconsidering the events of the day until a certain sanity has been achieved. The delusion he had experienced was the direct result of the shock of Mary’s accident, or presumed accident. Presumed death. He could make some calls and find out for sure, but he knows he will not.
An author whose fantasy novels he has been reading for years is giving a signing at a bookstore nearby. The author is there in support of his recent autobiography, which the nameless man has read. He has his copy with him, tucked under his arm. He has a number of questions about the book, most having to do with its authenticity. He isn’t sure if he will risk asking them.
A drunk wanders out of a bar onto the sidewalk in front of him. The scruffy fat man turns, his sneer all the more disturbing because it is on a bull’s head sitting lop-sided on his shoulders.
Minotaur, the unknown man thinks, throwing up his arms in alarm. The book skids across the sidewalk and rests against the minotaur’s left foot.
/>
The minotaur stares at the book dumbly, as if it is a category of object he has never seen before. He bends awkwardly, the weight of the great head threatening to pull him over. He clutches the book between his two palms, fingers too short to be of much use—and pulls it up to eye level, where he sniffs it, then licks it. Finally he shoves it into his mouth, apparently tasting it as his eyes roll around and copious amounts of saliva drip onto the sidewalk.
The minotaur stares at the nameless man again, slack lips drooping into an avalanching frown. With an explosion of wind and saliva the minotaur spits the book back at him. It slams into the nameless man’s chest, and he hugs himself so it won’t get away from him again. He examines his catch: the pages and cover are damp, but readable. When he raises his head the minotaur is gone.
As the nameless man continues to the bookstore he wipes the cover and pages against his shirt until satisfied he can do no more. The book appears to have swollen to twice its original thickness.
A few doors down from the bookstore he pauses in front of a shop specializing in exotic fish and supplies, where a giant aquarium fills the front window. Disobeying the posted sign he taps the glass in an attempt to attract some fish. Almost instantly a cluster of fetus-like creatures swarms out from behind flowering vegetation, propelled by large, powerful tails. They gather in front of him, staring with partially formed eyes. Their chest cavities are filled by some sort of complex, inefficient breathing organ. Their mouths open and close in painful-looking spasms as they struggle for air. Mermaids, he thinks, poor, pitiful mermaids. Unable to witness this for long, the unknown man turns away from the colony and heads into the bookstore.
The nameless man is surprised to see that no long lines wait for the fantasy writer’s signature. In fact, other than a large man who might be the writer’s bodyguard (or younger lover?), and a few bookstore-clerk-looking types, the nameless man is the only person in the store. Suddenly anxious to finish his business, he walks up to the small table and plants the bundle of rustling pages in front of the startled writer.
The writer opens the book gingerly and examines a few pages. “You know, I used to love reading in the bath,” he says, as if that explains everything. He looks up and displays a vaguely bored smile. “Do you just want a signature, or would you like it personalized?”
“How personal could it be? I just met you. You don’t even know my name.”
The large man steps forward, but an impatient gesture from the writer stops him. He takes a step or two back, but the nameless man can tell he is ready for trouble.
The fantasy writer laughs out loud. “Good point.” Then he stops, looking slightly awkward, as if he’s left his script in his other jacket. “Do you even want a signature?”
“Actually, I don’t care for signatures very much. I do have a question or two, if you don’t mind.”
“I’ll answer what I can.”
“This book...” The nameless man touches the sloppy bundle on the table. It makes a soft rattle. “It purports to be your autobiography. Yet it reads just like one of your novels. It has suspense, rising and falling action, complications appearing just at the right points in the narrative. Real life isn’t all that neat.”
“I suppose you would have preferred that I fill it with descriptions of television shows watched, fast foods eaten, frequent trips to the bathroom, and long naps after too much drink?”
“Not really. I just don’t understand how I’m supposed to believe that any of this is true.”
The fantasy writer looks at him, considering. Finally he sighs and says, “I suppose we each have to answer that for ourselves. Writers are there to give experience shape, and that includes their autobiographies. The moment you write something down, you’re changing it.”
“The moment you name it,” the nameless man says.
“Pardon me?”
“The moment you name something you change what it was, what it was becoming. It was a living, evolving thing, and then you killed it by naming it.”
The fantasy writer laughs, then looks at his bodyguard. “Listen to this guy!” Then, turning around he says, “So maybe I shouldn’t have put my name on this book. If I hadn’t put my name on it, people might find it more believable?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But at least they’d be reading it without preconceptions. It might have more of a chance to be... magical.”
“So, do you write?”
The unknown man feels unaccountably anxious, reluctant to reply. Then he says, “A little. A diary, of sorts.”
The fantasy writer turns the warped book around and offers the unknown man a pen. “Then you sign it. Personalized, please.” He laughs. “Say, ‘To my good friend.’ It’s a lie, but perfect strangers ask me to put that down all the time.”
Without hesitation the nameless man takes the pen, writes ‘To my only friend,’ and signs the complete name he was given at birth.
The fantasy writer turns the book around and puzzles over the scribbled handwriting. “Hey, I can’t even read this!” he says, but the unknown man is already going through the door.
Outside it has grown dark, and all over this part of town lights are going on, individually and in groups, with a peculiar kind of rhythm that fascinates the unknown man, who actually begins to smile until his own light explodes inside him, and he feels himself pitching forward, a skyscraper containing thousands of souls in the last throes of demolition.
When he wakes up there are people leaning over him: a woman, the bodyguard, a man in uniform (postman? policeman?), and the fantasy writer, who is scribbling madly in a small bright red notebook. The unknown man wonders if he is about to become a fictional character.
And floating above the heads of these people are the angels: tiny rat-like creatures with oily, burnt leather wings, long square teeth and loopy grins. Several are blind—all have something wrong with their eyes. Now and then they bump into each other, and then punish themselves with their long fingernails, which they scrape against their cheeks over and over making frayed patches of blood.
“Your name,” the officer says. “What’s your name, sir?”
The nameless man speaks, saying his name over and over again. But he can tell by their faces they do not understand.
SATURDAY AFTERNOON
Now, this place has no mirrors. They were all removed before I came. Rowley, who seems perfectly normal except for his worship of the letter “T,” says it’s because of the glass—potential sharp edges and all of that—which makes perfect sense, of course. The fact that I didn’t think of that right away, that the danger wasn’t immediately apparent, could be symptomatic to a professional’s eyes I suppose.
In any case, I suspect that it’s more than an issue of shards of glass and the damage they might do to hands or a face. Sometimes I imagine what it must have been like for these people, the only friends I have left in the world, when they had mirrors to contend with. To be on your way to a dinner party at the Queen of the May’s tree house, anxious to discuss the rise of unsweetened misery with her grand counselor the unzippered fly, and then to have to confront this image of an old man in a hospital gown, his butt hanging out, hair much whiter than he remembers, and the expression on his face so frail and weepy—well, it would be quite a come down in the world I think, quite a trip down to the abandoned shore.
So why encourage the upset? Banish the mirrors. Rowley tells me that the first step, however, was to remove the smaller mirrors but to cover the larger ones with thick layers of cardboard and tape. What a scene that must have been! To see these great panels with their reflections draped—and to wonder—and you just know they all did—what secrets were being hidden from them.
The one in charge (Is it another doctor? I have no idea.) would have done well to have asked Rowley, or the General, Stuttering Will, any of them. Ask a madman. The faces of the past are everywhere, rising out of the shadows, shining in the windows, curled into the folds of stained pajamas. Ready to cling and travel with you like ai
rborne seeds or balls of cat’s fur.
And still there are worse things than memory. There is regret, and failed anticipations. There are those faces as well, the lives you have turned your back on.
The General marshals his troops. The chairs with their sturdy legs perform admirably—no resistance there. But the lamp and the seat cushion refuse to cooperate at every opportunity, not even waiting for the General to turn his back. He reaches out a hand to steady them into place, but the hand is shaky. It’s the new medication but I’m not sure if the General realizes this. He thinks he’s getting too old for this, but he’s really only thirty-six.
I have heard that at one time the General had quite a responsible job. Vice president of paper clips and coat hangers or some such. Then at some point he could not do it anymore. He missed his place, lost his bookmark. Forgot his lines. It’s almost surprising, the number of men in here simply because they forgot their lines and couldn’t do their jobs anymore. I think that is part of what happened to me, but maybe not all of it.
The ballerina crashes into the TV whilst performing her pirouette. The others complain, but I help her up. “I left my slippers on my other feet,” she tells me, and dances off toward the sunroom.
On television a man in a nervous black suit delivers a lecture on job interview techniques. In their battered chairs my fellow audience members hang on his every word, but do not take notes. Some combinations of medicines play havoc with a person’s handwriting. They may make it more difficult to read. It has been three months since I last opened a newspaper, and my fourteen letters home remain unwritten.
“Who better to sing the song of the tragic tractor?” John whispers into the ear I reserve for secrets.
Ants perform an intricate maneuver across the wallpaper by my left shoulder. One line of their travels duplicates the slogan of a popular cold medication.
Sitting in the darkest corner of a too-bright room, Bob says goodbye all day long.
And by the door to the lunchroom/visiting room, one of the male nurses attempts to wave me over. A young actress from an old television series peers like a scared bird from beneath his left arm. From the way the male nurse stands, I do believe he wants to have sex with her.
Onion Songs Page 16