Often, when she cried on the couch at home or shrouded her head with a pillow in bed, I could see the dismal walk from Aunt Patty and Nancy’s curbside car to Saint Francine’s in San Francisco, where she and her twin sister attended elementary school. I could see various stepfathers and one particular boyfriend’s reign of terror begin. I saw a distant unloving mother wearing sunglasses and practically always hung-over, walking through Golden Gate, hands slung in pockets and licking the head of an ice cream cone or whatever it is that she actually licked in movie theaters and parked cars while a live-in step-grandmother and company beat the twins with brooms and whatever other over the counter appliances they could get their hands on. Whatever I perceived in the crystal sphere of her eyes while she cried, and there was much of it, I knew it to be the abandoned third grader in the months following her father’s death.
Barbara intently listened in, immaculately dressed, one slender leg crossed over the other. “Yes,” she finally said. “You’ve told me all about the tragic death of your father, and we’ve discussed your mother, her poor choices in life, and childhood abandonment issues. Now, let’s swing it around full circle to the present and talk about how this reflects on your marriage.”
I was kind of hoping the subject would turn to something I was better attuned to, like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight or the exploits of Don Quixote.
“Joshua,” Barbara continued, “Elise has expressed that you’re gone from home much of the year.”
“Well, sort of. I know I work most weekends. But I always return as soon as I can.”
“I’ve calculated the time that you’re gone,” Elise said, wiping tears from her eyes. “You’re not around at least sixty percent of the year.”
There it was…the fork in the highway. Frost said it. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both…
Sparky revoked my hand.
“Elise, at least when I’m home, I’m home. I leave all of that behind me. But mentally, you’re almost as frequently gone. You’re getting your doctorate in psychology, for crying out loud, always pouring through your mental notes and the people you want to help. Whenever we’re together, just the two of us, it’s like your patients are still parked on the couch. I feel like everyone gets precedence over me.”
“It’s not the same.”
“We’re both very ambitious people, Elise.”
“How do her expressions of abandonment make you feel?” Barbara looked to me.
“I’m terrified,” I told her, mouth parched. “I mean, I don’t want to be a failure…. at anything I do, which are very few things, mind you. It’s just, what else is there? Elise signed up for this when she married me.”
And be one traveler, long I stood and looked down one as far as I could…
“If things don’t change,” Elise wiped away a steady stream of tears. “I don’t know if there can be a marriage. Joshua, I don’t know how else to get this across to you, but I’m so very alone.”
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by....
6
It was less than a mile walk from Doctor Kennedy’s office on Second Street to our apartment in Belmont Shore. We were holding hands as we went, though she was putting very little effort into it. Whenever I walked anywhere with Elise people often slowed down to stare, sometimes sizing me up in comparison. It was humbling.
“I guess tonight is sex date night,” Elise sighed with a hint of hesitation in her voice. “Because Barbara gave it as a homework assignment this week to you know, keep our marriage on the right track.”
I thought about the right track for a moment.
“Why is this so difficult?”
“What, sex?” She said.
“It’s not just that, it’s happiness in general. Elise, you’re the life of the party when our friends are around. You have this laugh, this self-pleasing howl of individuality that only happens when you’re with other people. I love that laugh. But it’s not reserved for me at all. As soon as everyone’s gone, when it’s just the two of us, it’s back to sloshing around in a stooped depression.”
Elise took in a breath. “I know. I…. I don’t want it to be like this between us. It’s just…. it’s my career, as you well know. It’s the tens of thousands of hours I still have being evaluated in my doctorate program. It’s the constant failures and criticisms. I don’t think I’m going to make a very good therapist.”
“I wish you’d stop saying that.”
“It depresses me, you know, watching other people with problems and not being able to fix them. I guess I take it out on you.”
“You’re kind of like your mother that way.”
“OK, don’t ever say that again.”
She let go of my hand.
“I’m sorry. I just want our lives to be the way they used to.”
“Me too.” Elise squeezed my hand again. “We’d talk for hours about science, about religion, art and psychology. We’d talk about us; our future, where we saw ourselves in ten years, our children, and when we were fifty. And the sex….”
“I know.” I sighed. “I rather miss that part.”
“It’s not fair to you, Joshua, the way I haven’t adequately pleased you over the last couple of years. You know, there was grad school and starting up my career. You’ve been very patient with me.”
I thought about sex for a moment. I thought about Second Street and how much I loved our home, and then I thought about our marriage and why it couldn’t become exactly as we imagined it to be.
“I guess all we can ever do is try to become the person we pretend to be.”
“Joshua?” She said after a time. “Will you wait for me?”
I thought that was a rather odd question to ask.
“I don’t understand. Of course I will.”
“I just…. I want to be happy again. I guess I’m afraid…. afraid that I’m not making you happy, that you’ll grow tired of waiting for me to untangle myself. I’m afraid you’ll find another woman.”
“You know I only like French girls.” I kissed her on the head. “You’re the only girl for me, the only girl I’ve ever truly wanted, and lucky for you, the only actual French girl that I happen to know, aside from Josephine.”
“You promise…you’ll wait for me?”
“You know I will.” I started to smile. But I hadn’t the time to form it.
That’s when she tripped. Fingers floundered from my hand, and Elise went spiraling down over the curb and into the street.
“My God, I’m so sorry.” I bent down to help her up.
Elise pushed me away.
“I think I sprained my ankle or something.” She limped back to the curb and sat down. The palm of one hand looked bruised from the impact. “And my wrist hurts.”
“I’m so sorry.” I repeated my apologies.
She dialed the white of her eyes up and directly into mine, frowning with disgust. “Why didn’t you hold my hand? Your fingers were limp. You let me fall.”
“Elise, I didn’t mean to let you fall. My guard was down. I held your hand limp this one time.”
“And look what happened.”
That was Elise and I in 2008, during the sunrise of our summer. It hadn’t always been that way, but as happenstance would have it, we might as well have been three thousand miles away.
7
“I can’t… I can’t do this.” I told my wife from the leather couch in our living room.
“Why, what’s wrong?” Elise lifted her head. She was sprung on her knees in-between my legs and my pants were pulled down to my ankles.
“I can’t do this. I can’t orgasm if I know you’re not enjoying it.”
“Joshua, why do I have to enjoy it? I’m doing this for you. It’s what you wanted.”
“I do want it. I mean, every guy wants an oral fixation at one time or another in his life.” I pushed a pillow over the topic of conversation. “Just not under these circumstances. It doesn’t fe
el real.”
“Really, Joshua. Since when has you getting a blowjob not been real?”
I sighed. I thought about the worst sex I’d ever had, which was still strangely immaculate, and then pushed the pillow away. “OK, you’re right. It’s what I’ve always wanted, and you’re willing, so….”
“Just tell me when you’re about to spill the baby gravy so that I can pull away.” She collected herself, tightened her ponytail, and returned to her mission. I tried not to sigh from the discomfort of it all. “What…what is it?” Elise wanted to know.
“Honey, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m not trying to complain or anything. It’s the teeth. That’s all. It feels like you’re trying to grade a carrot or a block of cheese or something.”
“Fine, whatever, I’ll lose the teeth.” Elise wasn’t happy. “Whatever that means.” She dug back in, employing just as must teeth as last time.
I sunk my bones into the couch. Nothing was comfortable. A crumpled blanket hugged my spine. I listened to the clock tick away the seconds. I watched her ponytail sway side to side. Elise chugged her head up and down in vertical bobbing motions. She bobbed it faster-and-faster as her impatience grew, exaggerating slurping and sucking sounds, even letting out a fake self-pleasurable moan simply, I suspected, to encourage me. But it wasn’t working. I shifted awkwardly.
I prayed to God that he’d allow me to orgasm. The irritation of her teeth and her movement was discouraging. Just allow me to orgasm, God. I thought about her breasts. I tried to think about them in an assortment of angles, draped vertical from the side or perhaps lumbering over my head while she saddled me from above. God didn’t answer my prayer. I thought about Margaret Thatcher giving a speech. It keeled over in her mouth…. limp.
And then my wife began to cry.
“Elise, I’m really sorry. We don’t have to do this. We can snuggle in bed. I’m totally cool with that.”
“No, it’s not that.” She wiped her eyes. “I can’t do this anymore.”
“What are you talking about?”
Her tears hurried from a steady flow to a gush and the groans in her throat sounded real this time, only miserable. “I…. I don’t know how to tell you this,” she said, sprawled out in-between my legs on the floor. I was worried now.
“Tell me what? Elise, just say it.”
“I’ve been unfaithful.”
I opened my mouth and closed it.
“You mean, with another man.”
“Yes.”
I pulled my pants up, zipped its teeth shut, and took in a deep, quivering breath. No, this couldn’t possibly be happening. I considered the possibility that I’d just been mowed down by a sledgehammer. “How long has this been going on?” I tried to make the words out.
“Only a couple of months,” she sobbed.
“How often?” The thumping of my heart drowned out the ticking of the clock. Blood scampered to my ears.
“Lately?” She wiped another onslaught of tears. “Almost every day.”
I couldn’t breath. I tucked both hands behind my head and paced the floor.
“What’s his name?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Elise, what is his name?”
“I’m not giving you his name.”
“Why? Just tell me why.”
Elise struggled to find a steady stream of breath. It rippled in waves. She wiped snot from her nose. “It’s because you’re rarely around anymore, Joshua. You’re off on the road, away on your damn adventures, and I’ve been so very…. lonely.”
I tried to collect myself. I stared at the studio wall and its many canvas prints. I centered my eyes on a singular image, a glacier eternally tumbling into the ocean. I listened to my own heart bleating out the seconds of the clock. Entire boulders of ice crumbled and roared with animated anger into the ocean. I spun my head around the studio. I fell through a shallow pocket of ice into the water – so cold. The shower curtain pulled back and Norman Bates’ mother stabbed me over and over again. Only it wasn’t Norman’s mother. It was the Arctic Ocean knifing into my lungs. A hand reached down under the water to save me.
“Will you keep on seeing him?”
She didn’t answer. She started to say something, opened her mouth, and clamped it shut. Then she opened it again.
“I think so. Yes.”
I flung my fingers over the desk. A weeklong pile-up of mail scattered across the floor and coffee table. I swore. It was a four-letter word…all caps. It started with an F and ended with a K. It wasn’t FORK. From the corner of my eye a polar bear was swimming in my direction. It caught up to me. It’s claws ripped into my flesh and tore open my ribs. I steadied my eyes on the ceiling and swore again.
“Joshua, you’re angry right now.”
“Yeah, you think?”
“I’m not talking to you while you’re angry.”
“That’s fine. I’m taking the dog for a walk. Go have yourself a free-swinging nut-butter party.” I pulled Aristotle’s leash and collar from the desk. Aristotle maneuvered from underneath the coffee table, tail tucked between his legs, where he’d been watching our transition from awkward mating rituals to eruptive argumentation.
Only I didn’t walk the dog, at least, not right away. Elise chugged through the studio for the bathroom like a locomotive fleeing from Dante’s fifth level of hell and slammed the door behind her. My portrait of the glacier tumbling into the ocean fell and crashed onto the floor. I listened for a time to her miserable sobs. I thought about flushing my anger aside, knocking on the bathroom door, and perhaps comforting her. What can I do, I wanted to tell her, to make this better? I walked across the living room and stood in the hall. I fingered for the doorknob. And then I swore again, the same four-letter word. It wasn’t FORK. I said it louder than last time and it suddenly occurred to me, halfway through my pronunciation of the word, that I could throw it all away. I pictured my wife on her knees bobbing away on some other guy’s erection, and then I imagined my life as a poem. I crumbled it up in my hands and tossed it across the room – a perfect rim shot. Then I took the dog for a walk, making sure to slam the door from behind.
I think another picture fell.
8
Elise had already packed a rolling suitcase and pink carry-on sized handbag by the time I entered through the front door with Aristotle an hour later. I apprehended her as she stammered out of the bathroom for the bedroom.
“Where are you going?” I counted her luggage.
“Nowhere,” she said.
“You’re going to stay with him, aren’t you?”
“Maybe…maybe not. But what do you care? You apparently don’t want to talk about it. You just left me like you always do. I confess my deepest, darkest secret and you just walk away with the dog, so…” She brushed past me in the hall.
“You want to talk? You’re telling me that you want to talk? Then let’s talk.”
“I don’t like you’re attitude.”
“You don’t like my attitude? You’re my wife! You’re a cowgirl balls deep with another man! And you didn’t just confess, Elise. You made it clear that you’ll keep on seeing him!”
“Quiet,” she hissed. “The tenants can hear.”
My mind slipped into the dark and ugly place. “You’re probably giving him oral sex fixations, aren’t you? That’s where you learned that sucking-gurgling-moaning trick of yours.”
“That’s not nice,” she said. “Call me when you’re ready to talk about this like a grown-up.”
I considered begging her to stay. Let’s give it until morning. I’ll sleep on the couch. You sleep in the bed. And then we’ll talk about it over coffee and breakfast. I’ll scramble the eggs.
“What’s to talk about? Elise, I can’t believe you’re about to walk out that door to be with another man! Why don’t you call me when you’re through giving him the horizontal bop.”
Now she slammed the front door. Nothing fell…. except for our marriage. That spiraled down,
landing face down on the floor, and shattered.
A WORLD WITHOUT ELISE ACCORDING TO THE LOS ANGELES ZOO
1
I liked it better down here under the surface of my Jacuzzi. Especially at night when the sky was dark and the underwater lights illuminated nothing but the voices in my head. Underneath the water, with its constant big bang explosion of bubbles, I needn’t worry about wiping my tears. The first dosage of alcohol boiled in my blood. I speculated how long I could hold my breath. I considered holding it for ten minutes, twenty minutes, perhaps even an eternity. I concentrated on the water swelling into every crevice of my exterior body, how the water and I were organically one.
Get out of the water I heard a voice say.
I gasped for a fresh breath. My lungs ached, and I recognized the voice. No, it wasn’t the ancient accent from the burning bush. At least I didn’t think it was. It was someone or something else, but I couldn’t place it. I held my breath and dropped under a second time. I liked it better down here beneath the surface of my Jacuzzi.
From within the rim of my circular grave of water I heard a woman crying, and then on a completely different note I thought about Elise and I on our honeymoon, several years earlier. It was Washington DC, April 2002. She danced for my camera within a stirring of cherry blossoms. The Jefferson Memorial hung in view. Back in our hotel light poured through a window and illuminated her breasts as she sailed a bed sheet above our heads. I saw myself at the age of twenty-one charging through a Las Vegas Parking lot, horny as hell. And then suddenly I was back in the streets of New York, twenty years old and covered in pulverized ash.
I closed my eyes to concentrate on the seeping of water through every crevice of my flesh. The voice wept again. When I opened them, it was the woman holding a pair of red heels from her fingertips. I had first seen her in the elevator and then again in the stairwell. She was completely submerged on the opposite step, hand shrouding her face. Have you seen my husband? She wept into her fingers. Oh God, I can’t leave my husband.
Wrong Flight Home (Wrong Flight Home, #1) Page 7