First You Try Everything

by Jane McCafferty

  “Changed. Different things. Drag this out.” She sounded like a shell-shocked parrot.

  “People get bitter when they drag things out.”

  “It’s a good thing this is all just a dream, partner,” she said, suddenly deeply exhausted. “And why am I so tired? Did you slip me a drug of some kind? Have you tried to murder me to make your getaway easier?” She smiled; her face felt strangely lit from within for a moment, as if it could serve as a night-light if need be.

  “We’ll separate for a bit,” she said. “People do that. But it won’t be forever. I can feel it. We’ll be finding our way back together even as we’re moving apart. Happens all the time. Remember those people in Boston? What were their names? Finnolis?”

  He narrowed his eyes, looked toward the window, the moon, and she felt his enormous sadness and how heavy it made him feel.

  “That Barb Finnoli went around the bend one year, then came right back the next. And then they were so happy. And they realized it was mostly the stress of their life that split them up. It wasn’t that they didn’t love each other.”

  He kept looking at the moon.

  “Can’t you just change your mind?” she said. “And then I’ll do whatever you need me to do.”

  He sneezed and got up and went into the bathroom and blew his nose. He almost never got colds.

  “The stress is breaking you down. I could make you something. Soup.”

  “Please don’t.”

  “I think I’ll get plastic surgery.”

  “Jesus, Evvie, stop that. It’s nothing to do with how you look. You look great.”

  “I think I’ll get implants. And a new face. I think I’ll charge it on my new Visa. I could be a real knockout.”

  “What the hell. Evvie, come on!”

  Ruth walked into the room and jumped on the bed, stretched out by Evvie’s side, and laid her head between her paws, looking at her. “Ruth, tell him we’re mixed like cement. Tell him we’re a family and this can’t happen.”

  Silence.

  “Your words. Mixed like cement,” she said. She was burning like a child with a high fever and shivering. She looked at the black-and-white poster of an old carousel in Paris that hung like a portal on the wall; Ben could slip through. He could go anywhere. Find a young lover and head for France and ride that carousel forever.

  “Did I just get to be too much?” Evvie said.

  “It’s not you at all. It’s me.”

  “Don’t say that! Feel my head. I’m burning up.”

  He put his hand on her forehead and she closed her eyes. His hand was cool and light, and then it lifted. She opened her eyes.

  “Maybe I’m coming down with something,” she said.

  “You don’t feel that hot to me.”

  “I’m burning up.”

  She thought of her mother. Even when her mother was hungover and wore a terrible back brace, whenever any of the kids had a fever, she would fold a cool cloth on their foreheads. She took her cell phone out of her pocket and dialed her mother’s number now, but got the answering machine. Howdy, folks. Why don’t ya go right ahead and leave us a message, her mother’s voice said, more like someone ready to hop on a horse than a seventy-four-year-old in a Philadelphia row house. This had been on their machine for years, but Evvie heard her mother’s voice as if for the first time. She tried, but couldn’t speak.

  Her mouth was filled, as if with newly settled ash.

  “It’ll be OK, Evvie,” Ben said. She looked at him.

  Ben

  Ben moved into the second-floor apartment of a stately old brick house on a tree-lined street, in walking distance to all the stores and restaurants on Liberty. The wooden floors and slanted wooden pine ceiling were beautiful, honey colored, and the windows were broad. But it wasn’t well heated, and in the apartment below him, a couple fought terribly at night. The first night he’d moved in, he’d opened his window and leaned out, thinking he could touch the branches of a giant pine. He’d sucked in the cold air while below him a woman’s voice screamed, “You fucking threw a gallon of milk on me? Did that really happen? You fucking threw a gallon of milk on me?” But the milk had not doused the flames of that fight. They’d gone on into the night while Ben lay in his bed, near the window, watching the tree’s branches lift in the wind, thinking he’d find another apartment in the morning, fighting a feeling of despair. He’d wanted peace and quiet more than anything.

  But the next day, the couple had emerged from their door arm and arm, smiling and wishing him a great day after telling him about the pancakes they were headed to eat at Pamela’s in Squirrel Hill. “You could totally join us,” the young woman said, and Ben said no, thanks, but marveled at her wide-open expression, how her eyes were washed clean of the night before, how neither one of them looked especially tired or broken. He and Evvie had rarely fought like that, but when they had, the next day they’d barely been able to function. They’d moved like zombies, wept with pity as they apologized to each other, lost their appetites, called off work. Finally they’d drink too much wine to celebrate how the echoes of the fight were fading. Neither one of them had been built for conflict.

  He’d left Evvie almost everything, taking only his clothing, some music, some books, and the single mattress. It was like being in college again, only you were haunted—your expectations mostly collapsed and in need of serious, and probably impossible, restoration—and yet there were moments when part of him took flight, through a set of heavy doors that opened to a whole new life.

  Other times he’d be standing at the sink and find himself suddenly weeping.

  The simplicity of the space was both soothing and jarring. He missed Evvie, in moments. Missed Ruth too, and in one of his dreams the dog could talk on the phone and told him to get his ass back home. A few times he’d driven back to the house, parked a block away, walked toward the old front door, and almost knocked, but then at the last minute had turned away and walked across the street to see the river below in the dusk, a view he’d taken for granted when living there.

  He’d played guitar for hours tonight and was happy not to have Evvie in the other room wondering when he’d stop. Happy not to feel her need so thick in the air it had been hard to breathe in that house for the past year or more.

  On the answering machine was Evvie’s voice, as always. It had been two months already and she showed no signs of accepting what had happened. His patience was beginning to wear thin.

  Hiya, Ben, just wanted to say hi. You all right? Call me. Cedric says hi, he misses you. Not to mention Ruth. I guess she can come stay with you next week. If you want. She seems a little down. The vet was thinking she should go on some kind of Prozac, and I was like, no way.

  He always called her back—the first forty times he’d been kind—and now with reluctance that bordered on anger. “I’m fine,” he said, emphatically.

  “How is that possible?”

  Her voice was childlike. She had been stripped right down to the bone. She was not angry, but bereft and confused. It was not easy to hear. It hurt him. He braced himself against it and, like Cedric, reminded himself that there was far worse agony in the world; plenty of things were worse than a broken heart.

  Soon cultivated anger would shift in his gut like tectonic plates.

  “Did you read about Saviour?” she said, barely audible. Was she holding the receiver away from her mouth or just pretending to be catatonic?

&n
bsp; “No. Can you speak up?” Night in the window was filled with wind and rain. He didn’t want to picture her in the old house or ask if the roof was leaking. He knew it was leaking.

  “In Nairobi this stray dog, Saviour, found a newborn baby girl in the woods. She was in a bag, and the dog dragged her across a busy road through a barbed-wire fence and into a shed where her puppies slept. The dog laid the baby girl down next to the puppies. The baby’s picture is on the front page of the paper, and so is the dog’s.”

  “That’s a nice story.”

  “The baby’s just fine. It’s a great story. So come back home! I’m dying here without you. So is Ruth. I’m hallucinating. Please. Just come over and watch a movie with us. I’ll make popcorn. You can still be my friend, right?”

  “I can’t, Ev, at this point. Not yet.”

  “I don’t get it! Why not?”

  She needed to have him repeat things a hundred times. It was as if she had no brain anymore, no comprehension.

  “It’s not good for you to talk to me like this. It just keeps you attached.” He walked with the phone into the kitchen, and opened the door. The night was wild and cold, and wind washed over his face as he closed his eyes. “It keeps you thinking like we’re still married.”

  “We are still married!”

  “We’re separated.”

  “Maybe you are!”

  “That’s my point.”

  A silence fell.

  “Remember that other story about that crazy kid in the Bronx who started hearing voices coming out of his meat?”

  “Yeah.” He opened his eyes to the low moon, the torn purple clouds.

  “Well, I’m going to the Bronx to find that kid and I’m bringing him home. That kid should be mine.”

  “OK.”

  “OK? Just like that?”

  He stepped back, and closed the door. “You’re an adult, and a free citizen. If you want to go abscond with a psychiatric patient in the Bronx and get arrested and go to jail, you should. By all means you should do what you want.”

  “Are you trying to be funny?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You don’t even care that I’m going crazy?”

  “I care deeply. I think you know that. But I’m not the one to help you. The more I try to help, the worse it gets. You end up passed out in a bar, remember?”

  “You’re the only one who can help. I’m coming over.”

  She hung up.

  Then called back. “I wouldn’t come over there if we were getting nuked and you had the last fucking bomb shelter on Earth.”

  “OK.”

  “Oh. Isn’t it sweet to have all the power in the world, Ben? Especially on a night like this, when we’re getting a tornado?”

  “Sweet wouldn’t be the first word that came to mind. And we’re not getting a tornado.”

  “I really don’t like how calm you sound. I really don’t. You can sit there and think how crazy I am, Ben, how glad you are that you put me in the Dumpster, and then you’ll hang the phone up and forget about me within five minutes! You haven’t even bothered to check in and say hi to Cedric at Giant Eagle! And what about Ruth? We’re the discarded, I guess. On with your new life. Trading us all in like a good American. It’s become the national sport, so why not join in?”

  She slammed the phone down.

  For the first time, she was really angry, and he was grateful. It meant she might be halfway normal after all.

  Late the next night she managed to climb into his window. Using all her strength, she’d hoisted a ladder (their landlord’s ladder, which he’d used to paint their top shutters last year) against the side of the house, climbed up to the second-story apartment, whistling no less, and pushed the slightly open window up as high as it would go. He watched from his mattress as she did this. “This is not happening,” he chanted. He watched as she climbed in through the window dressed in his old coat, his old high school football helmet!, and flannel pajamas. No doubt she wore the helmet to protect her head in case she fell from the ladder, but she looked insane, and now she was singing Lou Reed’s “Coney Island Baby,” a song they’d both loved.

  Had to play football for the coach . . .

  “What the fuck are you—”

  He sat up. It was true. This was happening. Inside his room, she stood in the middle of the floor, hands on hips, singing. Then stopped herself. In an almost eerily odd voice, a voice that recalled The Wizard of Oz, like a mix between the good and bad witches, she said, “What have we here?”

  “Evvie! What the fuck are you doing!”

  For a moment he believed she really was crazy and had come to kill him. She breathed heavily, stood looking at him. Did she have a gun in the coat? Was he really asking himself this?

  “This is not a dream, my friend,” she said, whispering, as if someone might be overhearing all this. “This is not just the glory of love.” Then she took off her coat, dropped it to the floor. “This is, how you say? Real life.” She spoke in a Russian accent of sorts. She took off her pajama top and stood topless, hands back on hips. A laugh escaped her.

  “I have not come to collect money,” she said, and now the accent changed. “Because you do not have it een you to care for the neeglected ones standing at the door of death. Indeed, they remain numbers to you. Perhaps the universe can forgeev us all thees how you say? Thees lack of under-stand-ing.”

  She paused, breathing. She crossed her arms over her breasts.

  “This is called breaking and entering,” he said. “I think you should climb back out now.”

  “Ha! In fact it’s pitiable that you’ve turned your heart into a piece of black ice.” Now the accent was as Australian as that crocodile guy’s on TV she didn’t like, but some of the words were slurred.

  “Black ice being the most dangerous sort, the kind a person can’t see on the road. The killer ice, it’s been called.”

  Was she drunk? He thought he could smell alcohol on her. She could never handle drinking. But always it had unleashed the performer in her. She took off the flannel pajama pants, kicking them high in the air, laughing a little. “Introducing. My first striptease.” She had lost so much weight she looked ill. Ribs. The endless limbs. Finally she removed his football helmet. Then stood naked, stepping into a streak of light from a streetlamp. She made a microphone with her fist and spoke into it in yet another accent.

  “Iss so good to be here wiz you! I know you’re awake, Meester Benjameen. And I know you want to laugh, so laugh, laugh!”

  For one moment his heart ached for her.

  “Jesus, Ev. I wish you could see—”

  She was walking toward him, and kneeling down by his mattress, her cold, trembling hand stroking his head. He didn’t move. “Ben, I can’t do this,” she said, a penitent with a desperate prayer. “You don’t understand. I can’t do this anymore. You can’t just disappear like this. You’re not a monster, Ben. Move over—I’ll sleep beside you.”

  He sat up. She sat down next to him, and he held her. “Ev, this is beyond crazy now. You need to get ahold of yourself. I keep telling you! I sound like a broken record but you’re not listening. I really want you to reach out to people who can help.”

  He was shocked at how unfamiliar her body felt, how Lauren’s body had rendered Evvie’s the strange one. She kissed his cheek, and thanked him.

  “Don’t thank me. Evvie. I’d be glad to—”

  “I love you.”

  �
��But if you love me, you shouldn’t have broken into my place!” he said, anger obliterating pity for a moment.

  “Shhh, you’re too loud. Let’s just be quiet,” she said, nuzzling into his chest.

  “Please get dressed, Evvie. And please, get out. Immediately.” He let go of her and stood up.

  “What?”

  “Get dressed and get out,” he said. “I really need you to do that. This is called breaking and entering. I’m trying here to establish—”

  “So who is it, Ben? Your new secretary?” She stood up. “When can I meet her? Is she good in bed? A real acrobat?”

  Watching her get dressed, he said nothing. He didn’t even have a secretary, but to say so was futile.

  “Are you on drugs?” she said. “Is that what happened?”

  “Could you just leave without saying another word?”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Really?”

  “Leave, or I’ll call the police.”

  She laughed. “You just said that, didn’t you? You actually just said you’d call the police. I’m gonna quote you on that when we get back together. And please. Call the cops in right now, because I can curl up here on the floor like the, like a dog. Like the queen of the dog-wives, and when they come to get me I’ll run to the window and howl at the moon and then turn around so I can bite the shit out of their ankles.”

  But when he turned on the overhead light, she looked at him with terror in her eyes, and shame. He had to look away. “Ben!” she said. “Stop this!” He couldn’t look at her. “Did you ever love me, Ben? Was I living life in a state of delusion or what?”

  “Of course I loved you!”

  “Loved?”

  The past tense clanged like a prison door shutting, and changed everything; the room itself was transformed by it, the bed, the dresser, the bare floor, the window, all seeming to step back while absorbing the word’s singular power.