by Lee Irby
“I went to find a woman I’ve been seeing. She’s one of my students.”
I can’t look at my mother, though her eyes poke me in the ribs where my heart used to be. The blackness of the coffee is all my vision can endure, offering me chromatic balance, black turned to black.
“You’re dating one of your students? Is that allowed?”
“No, of course it’s not. I’ll most likely get fired. No, I deserve to get fired.”
“Wait a second. But she’s here in Richmond?”
“She was. She’s gone now. It’s over, but it never should have started. Basically my life is a total wreck. I’m a horrible person.”
“Don’t say that!”
“It’s true.”
“You just made a mistake, is all. Because of how sad you’ve been. Bev broke your heart and your spirit, too. You haven’t been yourself, not for a long time.”
Footsteps tromp up the basement steps. Mead needs my muscles, flabby though they may be. At least I can be of some use. There’s nobility in manual labor. Too bad I know no trade other than scribbling.
The door swings open and Mead comes into the kitchen. My mother’s arm rests across my back, as though I might topple over if she lets go. Her support means everything to me and yet only increases my self-loathing. What would it take for her to disown me? A murder charge?
“There’s a problem,” Mead says sternly. “A big problem.”
“What is it?” my mother asks.
“That kid Avery is here and wants to talk to Graves. He claims it’s urgent and he won’t leave unless Graves comes down.”
Avery, yes, the owner of a pickup truck and presumably the destroyer of Robert E. Lee. This isn’t a positive development. Graves remains in the crosshairs, and my rescue of him last night has proven to be a temporary fix.
“What should we do?” my mother asks, frightened and perplexed.
“I know what I’d like to do,” Mead huffs manfully. “Break his little twerp neck.”
“Let me talk to him,” I offer, which Mead promptly brushes aside.
“You should stay out of this.”
“Too late for that. I’m pretty sure Graves is mixed up in this whole Lee statue thing, and so is Avery.”
“They are?” my mother gasps, horrified. “Why would you say that?”
“I don’t know. Graves has dropped suggestions to me. Maybe I’m wrong and misreading the signs.” A half-truth at best, but I won’t confess for the kid.
“Graves would never do something so stupid,” Mead flatly states.
“He didn’t, but Avery probably did, and Graves knows that.”
Mead rubs the back of his neck and flares his nostrils. He doesn’t want my help, but Avery won’t listen to him because they used to argue and Mead banished Avery…and so that leaves me as the only available conduit to talk some sense into the anarchist’s head. Together we can begin Gramsci’s “permanent revolution” and make the ruling class bend to our demands…such are the fervid dreams of the office-bound intellectual. I could tell Avery, my eyes bulging with bloodlust: Get Stonewall Jackson next. Or I could advise him to go to college, where for a tidy sum and a lifetime of debt he can get true enlightenment without having to suffer much, certainly nothing like what the Buddha or Jesus endured…
“What will you tell him?” my mother asks as I stand up.
“I’ll think of something.”
Mead smirks, unimpressed but powerless to stop me.
—
Avery has parked his truck directly in front of the U-Haul, snout to snout, bumpers almost touching, as if he’d wanted to drive his vehicle into the engine block of the larger truck. Typical in such bewildering situations, the man in question is nowhere to be found. Is he going to ambush me? He’s already annoying me beyond my limited patience. If he came to threaten Graves, he’s barking up the wrong tree, in that he is the one most vulnerable here, considering that Graves is guiltless whereas Avery is knee-deep in this adolescent rebellion. Avery took his best shot at Graves last night and failed. There are no second acts in an American life (just look at me).
“Where’s Graves?” I hear a voice behind me, from the boxes in the basement. Mead was probably unwise to leave his cache unguarded even for a minute. I spin around and see the unctuous urchin, attired in a polo shirt and cargo shorts, hair combed, freshly shaven…hardly the rugged mien of an enemy of the state.
“You should leave,” I say firmly, in my most serious voice, the one I use to conduct hearings on honor code violations.
“I need to talk to him and I know he’s here.”
“If he wanted to talk, don’t you think he would? It’s obvious he wants nothing more to do with you. Take the hint and take a hike.”
He blinks repeatedly like he’s trying to deliver a message in Morse code. Or he’s flummoxed, unsure of his next move, not having planned an exit strategy beyond the Act itself, the strike against tyranny that’s resulted only in his vilification. This city won’t sleep until he’s brought to justice…stupid kid, he should be in Ohio by now, not hanging around as the rats jump ship.
“I want to help him before things get too heavy,” he explains in a burst of disclosure that makes no sense.
“Help him how?”
“You don’t get it, bro.”
I bristle at the sobriquet of “bro,” the usage of which is indication of rank idiocy. “What don’t I get, bro?”
“None of it. I need to talk to him. Wake his ass up.”
“Why were you after him last night? Huh? Why was he running from you? Don’t come slick at me. I know more than you think.”
He takes a step at me, teeth exposed like a junkyard dog. But I’m not scared. Far from it. This confrontation is energizing, visceral in intensity, and the perfect remedy to rid me of Lola’s betrayal. Obviously I haven’t been in many showdowns of this variety, but something has snapped in me—starting last night when I stared down Jeb Wardell and John Graziano. Maybe I can take control of my life and weather the storm. “You got it all wrong,” he counters acidly. “He was coming after me. Why do you think I’m here? I’m no punk. I’ve been trying to talk him out of it.”
“Come on, I don’t have time for this. Just get out of here or we’ll call the cops.”
“You won’t call the cops.” He chuckles in delight, patting one of the boxes. “You can’t call the cops. Whatever, I tried. Graves is on his own now.”
“We’re all on our own, always and forever.”
Avery cocks his head in derision, snorting at my armchair existentialism. “After he blows up a couple thousand people, you won’t be joking around much anymore.”
“He’s not going to do that.”
He gives me a satirical thumbs-up. “Sounds like you’re on top of it. Let’s hope you’re right. Peace.”
Then he breezes by like he’s out for a leisurely stroll, cocksure and haughty, hands wedged in his pockets like he’s fishing for loose change. At this point I can’t claim to know what’s going on or whose version of the truth is correct, since each has blamed the other for the vandalism. Most likely, both are lying a little, but I don’t want to untangle the knot. At least I’ve succeeded at one level: Avery is getting into his truck and driving away. To the victor go the spoils.
—
The U-Haul truck is loaded and I’m going to die. Some of those boxes were bulky and weighted down with heavy artillery, and now I’m the one who needs a back brace, or just a trip to a chiropractor.
A chiropractor!
Bev used to go to one, a Dr. Entasse, of whom she once said, “He’s very handsome.” An innocent comment made at dinner, delivered dispassionately, with the kind of remove characteristic of a chaste woman. A better man might have laughed it off. But the tailspin I fell into! For months I was sure that she was sleeping with this guy, since until then she’d never complained of her spine being out of alignment. Presto, change-o, she started going to a hunky doctor weekly for treatments I didn’t think sh
e needed. One could argue that my jealousy began the decline that ended with flaccidity, divorce, and Igor. How so? Well, because I made my own appointment with Dr. Entasse, without Bev’s knowledge, just so I could glean information such as the size of his hands (very large) and his sexual prowess (undetermined). Ridiculous, demented, uncalled for—but there I was in his office, seeking out evidence of Bev’s infidelity as if her panties would be stuffed in a drawer of tongue depressors. Not my finest hour, to be sure, but what I didn’t know then was how far I still had to go before I touched bottom…apparently I’ve got fathoms left to go…but I eventually told Bev of my visit to Dr. Entasse, propelled by my envy, and instead of thinking it a cute but misguided declaration of my undying love, Bev saw the first glimmer of soul sickness. I can’t believe you did that. Why would you ever think that? Because I said he was handsome? I think all kinds of men are handsome and I’m not jumping into bed with them. I never should have told her. Some events must to the dustbin of history go. Things were literally never the same between us. Even as I tried to live it down, Bev discerned more evidence of my failings. The bright sunshine in our bedroom darkened like the plains before a dust storm, all because of a lumbering, dimpled chiropractor with hands the size of frying pans and presumably a crotch to match…which we spoke of one night, with Bev coolly speculating that Dr. Entasse was a stallion because he reminded her of an ex from high school, a basketball player she dated who was “massive” and then, right there, I felt my major organs shrink into raisins, leaving a void that has never been filled…my sexual functionality became sporadic and then nonexistent…until Lola rescued me…
“You follow me to the storage place,” Mead instructs as I wipe gallons of sweat from my skin. “Then we’ll drop the U-Haul off and I’ll drive back. I parked my car there.”
“Sounds good. You lead the way.”
I jump into the Honda and even before I start the engine I fish Lola’s phone out. No one has called. Throw it out the window, a voice urges me. Get rid of it. Send it to oblivion. To do so would be to give up on her, but phones can be replaced…what of love? Can the Apple Store ease my pain?
Edgar A. Poe again! How many of his characters were driven mad by a possession they just couldn’t rid themselves of? Has this iPhone become my oblong box? Never a good sign when you can compare yourself with one of Poe’s manic, deranged narrators! There’s a wooded lot right across the street…as a child I never played in there because once the authorities found a dead body buried in a shallow grave, and my mother was adamant that I refrain from venturing into this bosky grove. But what a fitting cemetery for Lola’s phone…for our love…because once I toss this last artifact of Lola’s away, the end will come and we will be no more, my beloved and I.
Can’t do it.
The U-Haul slowly pulls away, and for a few seconds it looks like Mead is going to run into the ditch, but then he straightens out and makes it to Traylor Drive. We proceed, after I turn my Honda around and catch up to him. Lola’s phone is still in my hand, and I’m driving like a teenager unwilling to let go of the most important inanimate object ever invented. And the worst. In 1985 Lola never could have driven to Richmond to torture me like this. I wouldn’t have known she was here, unless she stopped by the house to see me in person. I could’ve gone through the weekend in relative peace and calm, unaware of her determination to ruin me. Because somehow that became her ultimate goal, and for the life of me I can’t figure out why. Why? Why? Why did she turn on me? She said she was sorry for ever telling Dahlia, but she did so only because she thought I’d want to know about the threesome they’d had with Thor. In effect, she claimed that she was going to ruin my life in order to please me, which is the kind of strained logic we used in the Vietnam War, where the village was destroyed in order to save it. Of course I pointed out that Lola could have told me all about the threesome with Thor without alerting Dahlia, but Lola didn’t think that was fair to Dahlia. But the truth is, Lola wanted to tell Dahlia about us, she delighted in rehashing the worst of my obsessions, and together the two of them could laugh at my pathetic hang-ups, tittering away as they watched YouTube and admired Thor’s boner and mocked me for being what I am, a degenerate who deserves mockery, of that there’s no dispute…mockery and worse…calumny, ridicule, detestation…heap all on my head. But she professed to love me. She’d promised never to tell. It was supposed to be our secret.
Her infernal phone continues to sabotage me! I could roll down my window and let it drop out of my hand, where it’ll crash against the black pavement of Chippenham Parkway and break into a hundred or so pieces, become unrecognizable, because that’s what happens when you fall from grace. Will the healing process begin once I summon the strength to eradicate what’s left of Lola from my life? A better question: how long did I keep some of Bev’s stuff in the apartment after she’d moved out? Answer: I still have her tennis racket, some swim flippers, a spatula, two nonstick frying pans, and a bathroom scale, which has lost its calibration and makes everything five pounds heavier. I should’ve moved, too, and found a new place, somewhere to start over, instead of wallowing in the mire of the love nest we once shared. It’s a fun game, thinking of all the things you could’ve and should’ve done differently…
Now we’re on Hull Street, also known as Route 360, in the heart of Richmond’s blue-collar grit. Mead heads west but not for very far, before turning left into a dusty parking lot, home of Longstreet Storage, which has seen better days. The fencing that surrounds the ramshackle collection of buildings looks strong, however, robust and topped with barbed wire. Mead stops the U-Haul in front of a gate and jumps out to come confer with me.
“I’m going to open this gate, and you follow me inside,” he says excitedly. “But be quick about it, because the gate will swing closed in five seconds.”
“Sure thing. I hope I make it in time.”
“Me too. That gate is pretty unforgiving.”
I steady myself as Mead hops back into the truck. Performance under pressure has never been my forte. I’ve been known to snap. I can lose my cool. Like when Lola told me about Dahlia. She honestly didn’t think it was a big deal because Dahlia would never tell anyone. The young are so trusting! So unable to imagine the worst! Even after I described the various ways that Dahlia could harm me—I mean, she signed up for my Advanced Nonfiction class in the fall—and let’s say that I were to give one of her essays a B, which in today’s collegiate landscape is akin to failing—she could dangle Thor in front of me, batter me with that sausage-like appendage, and hold me hostage until her grade was more to her liking. I can’t operate under those conditions, but Lola’s attitude remained consistently naïve, dangerously so: Dahlia is my friend, she’s cool, she can keep a secret…
The gate swings open, and Mead slowly lurches forward. Very slowly, eating up precious seconds, so that now I’ve got to decide whether to risk following him and getting caught in the gate or just holding back for another attempt. Why does everything have to be so hard? Why so much struggle? Throwing caution to the wind, I step on the gas and floor it, hoping the gate doesn’t swing into the front grille and smash my headlights. My tires spin against the gravel and then I feel the gathering force of acceleration propel me through the gate that begins its return swing just as I go through the opening, barely escaping a collision by no more than a few inches.
Breathing hard, I continue to trail behind Mead as the U-Haul navigates through a series of turns that takes us finally to building twelve, where Mead rolls to a stop. He seems to know his way around this labyrinthine facility, like he’s a frequent visitor; all the more strange that he just didn’t put his collection in storage to begin with and spare us all the trouble. Whatever, I’m here to do my part and not question motives.
I park a few yards behind the truck so that we have room to unload. My body already aches from the strain of the loading and I dread dragging myself through another round, especially in this heat. There’s no shade in this blasted landscape, j
ust asphalt and sun, a toxic combination in July.
Mead hitches up his trousers as he waits for me to get out of the car, his face as imperious as a pasha surveying his lands. I search hopefully for a dolly or any wheeled conveyance, but find none.
“Let me go open the unit,” he says, producing a huge ring of keys that must weigh a ton. We enter building twelve and then walk down a long hallway that is deathly silent, the only noise the click of our shoes against the concrete floor. I don’t talk because there’s nothing to say. I just want this to end and for me to crawl under a cold shower for the next hundred years. Making it to the wedding seems impossible.
Out of the corner of my eye I spot a dolly. Inwardly I rejoice as I go retrieve it. Mead stands at an imposing door of rivets and steel and tries to unlock it, though this task is impeded by the sheer number of keys he has. Eventually he curses the door and looks around helplessly.
“This is the right one,” he mutters but gets no affirmation because we’re alone and I have no idea what is right or what is wrong anymore. “Goddamn it, I don’t need this in my life. They switched the lock out without telling me.”
“Maybe we should ask somebody,” I suggest, stating the obvious.
“Oh, that means I have to walk all the way back to the office.” His head drops glumly and he tries a few more keys, the last gasps of a foiled plan. “Why would they just switch my lock like that? They probably want more money. It’s like a form of extortion. I hate this place. I honestly do. The guy who owns it is a criminal. I kid you not. I’m pretty sure he lets people stow dead bodies in here.”
“Have you been paying the rent?”
“Yes, of course, to the best of my knowledge.”
Spoken like a true dissembler! Always add a qualifying statement to soften any absolute, something the American political class has mastered. “Then it’s probably just a misunderstanding.”