Circling the Drain

by Amanda Davis

  Hmmm, I said. Through the window I saw Dog outside, watching me with his head cocked. What felt right: to stay and forgive and start over? I thought of the loneliness of travel and wondered who I had turned out to be.

  I miss Dingo, I said. I know that.

  Maybe that’s all you need to know for now, she said.

  I hung up the phone and went outside to wait for Karla. I tried talking to Dog. I told him of Karla’s incredible gastronomic generosity and asked if he thought Bobby was worth it. I told him what I figured was the big gamble: that ultimately our compromises might make no sense at all. Dog panted a little and then lay down.

  And am I weak to go after a man who fondled the feet of other women? I asked. Dog looked up at me, then put his head back on his paws. I didn’t pour a red wine soufflé down someone’s shirt and get myself fired for nothing, I said. Right?

  Luckily Karla arrived then. I don’t think Dog was really listening anyway. We left him by the tree.

  5. Discovery

  Karla and I headed for Shelby’s Bar, the likeliest place in town to find anyone of age. I wondered if Dingo had been sleeping in his truck or at his mother’s or whether he’d shown up on the doorstep of one of the footsie women.

  I asked Karla what she thought.

  You give him such a hard time, she said. Maybe he just wants to make sure you really care.

  What are you talking about? Six Narrow, I reminded her. Eight Triple E! You think this was some kind of demented test?

  No, she said, and squeezed her lips into an irritated little line. I just mean that maybe it’s not so serious.

  Is something wrong? I asked.

  Lines of light from the road played over her face. Everything’s peachy, she said and smiled, all teeth. Her knuckles were white from clutching the steering wheel so tightly.

  I opened the glove compartment and closed it again. You and Bobby having problems? I asked.

  Charity. All the color went out of her voice in a sweep of air. I’m pregnant, she said.

  What? I turned towards her but I wasn’t sure what to do. A baby? I pictured tiny bowling booties.

  Yup, she said. And Bobby wants me to give up bowling.

  We pulled in the Shelby’s parking lot. Across the street, even though Bowl-Much was closed, we watched a neon blue ball on the sign above the alley hit a hot pink strike over and over again. In my mind I saw Dingo behind the shoe counter. We stayed quiet for a minute, my hand on the door handle, Karla’s on the steering wheel.

  What does one thing have to do with the other? I asked finally, and shook my head. Why would he ask that of you?

  He’ll have to pick up extra hours at the shop, and he says if I were to bowl with the baby it would take away from the attention I could give both of them. Her voice was thin and quivering. He says we can’t be a bowling family.

  That is the dumbest thing, I told her, and opened my door. We both got out and stood in the cool damp air.

  I feel like we live in a cartoon, I said, and threw my head back and yelled: The world is a fucking cartoon!

  Ugh! Karla bellowed, and started laughing. I want a glass of wine, she said. A big red glass of wine!

  Of course. I put my arm around her. You can have anything you want. But I thought of her sneaking away from Bobby Nuckle to paint her toenails in secret and even I didn’t believe me.

  6. Retrieval

  Shelby’s was a dark gritty place. Karla plopped down on a stool and ordered her wine as soon as we walked in the door.

  I scanned the length of the bar, studied the players in a pool game and waved to a few people I knew. I felt conspicuous but took a deep breath and walked towards the back, hands in my pockets. A cheerful old man in a red baseball cap winked at me. I smiled and looked away.

  The back room was loud and busy with people, but I didn’t see Dingo. There were a few men in jeans playing darts and at least four pool games. Across from me a tall blond guy in a white T-shirt leaned over the jukebox while a skinny girl with feathered brown hair fluttered her eyelashes up at him and leaned against the paneled wall. I edged along towards the rest rooms. A heavyset man with a mustache was on the pay phone. Naw, darlin’, he kept saying. Darlin’, darlin’, naw.

  It wasn’t until I turned to go that I spotted Dingo off in the corner. He sat on a bench with his back to the wall, drinking a bottle of beer. His boots were crossed at the ankles and he looked rumpled and tired. He saw me just about when I saw him.

  I walked over. Hi there, I said, and kicked at the ground. I’ve missed you.

  Sweet Charity. Dingo smiled, a sloppy drunken grin. You came to find me. He leaned back against the wall and stared up at me with those dark eyes.

  Uh-huh, I said, and shoved my hands deeper in my pockets. Everything in me was stretched thin and tight. I tilted my head and took it all in: his crooked goatee, his disheveled hair, the way his eyes were bleary and sad.

  I want you home, Dingo, I said, and rocked back and forth on the heels of my boots.

  You want me home…he echoed, and we stayed like that for a minute, just watching each other.

  Then I sat down next to him on the bench, took his hands in mine and leaned in close. Do you love me?

  Yes, he said, but slipped out of my grip and drank from his beer again.

  Still, I felt a little better. Okay, I said. Okay.

  What do you mean okay? He was suddenly sober and serious. You said awful things to me, Charity.

  I know.

  Dingo shook his head and laughed a little, a sad short laugh. The bar was noisy, full of talking and music. I leaned my head back against the wall.

  Dingo smelled like shoe polish and beer. I wanted to bury my face in his plaid shirt but I didn’t. I rubbed at the knee of my jeans and watched a cowboy sink two perfect shots in a row. I stared at the scuffed gray floor, then closed my eyes.

  I love you, I whispered. I just can’t stand you playing around.

  I wasn’t cheating, he said. I told you, I’ll tell you again, I didn’t cheat.

  The music leapt and twirled. I could see each individual note in my head, stomping and spinning all around the people in the bar, flying through the air, over things and under them like balls of light. Each note swooped and dipped, came together and fell apart.

  How come it took you so long to come after me? he asked. How come, Charity? You know if you’d walked out on me I’d have come after you right away. I’d have followed you and dragged you back. That’s how I love you, he said. He rubbed at his empty green beer bottle and put it down by his feet.

  But you love from far away. Like it’s a prize you’re handing out piece by piece. Like maybe I’ll earn it and maybe I won’t. He exhaled. I really don’t know, Charity.

  I said some awful things, I told Dingo. My voice was thick and scratchy.

  Maybe it’s not the right love we have, he said. Maybe you’re waiting around to see what I’ll turn out to be, but this is who I am, Charity.

  Across the room the cowboy leaned down to give his girl a kiss. Nine in the corner off the six, I heard him call. The room echoed strangely. The cowboy sank another flawless shot.

  I don’t know what to do here, I told Dingo. Can’t we rewind everything a little and start over?

  No, he said, no.

  But he took my hand and squeezed it.

  I turned and hugged him, pressed my face into the smooth curve of his neck and plaid-shirted shoulder. Come home, I said, and held myself perfectly still. Take me home, Dingo.

  He didn’t move.

  Charity, he said quietly. He looked tired. Honey, I don’t know either.

  And I was afraid because I saw then that we were one big puzzle, all messed up.

  Let’s have a beer, he said, and smiled. He stood up unsteadily and squinted at me. Maybe we should throw a game of darts to sort things out, he said. You wait there, I’ll be right back.

  I’ll come, I said, and followed.

  7. Finally

  Later I told him ev
erything and it didn’t make a lick of difference. The moon still rose in its bright round shell and we still had worries. It still bothered me when he stayed out late and I still wondered where he went sometimes. But we commenced to let Dog sleep inside and I took comfort in both their breathing in the dark.

  Karla had the baby and stopped visiting the lanes. I came and saw her, Annabelle, all dressed up in pink and helpless, her proud parents crouching by her side like she was all the world contained.

  And then I woke one night. Beside me Dingo dreamed, and outside everything was still. I heard nothing, not a cricket, not an owl, not even a late-night driver headed home. I climbed out of bed and walked through the house and out the front door. And then I started walking towards the road. And I thought about disappearing. About sticking a thumb out and hooking it into another life, the life of a woman who leaves in the middle of the night. A woman who flies away.

  I listened to all that stillness, all that vacant possibility. I stood listening until my toes were cold and my lids felt heavy, and then I turned and went back inside. I climbed into bed and curled around Dingo in the dark. He murmured something—maybe about my cold toes. Dog raised his head and lowered it again. I stayed right where I was and fell asleep.

  ENDING THINGS

  I don’t know when I disappeared, but one day I couldn’t stand the smell of you, couldn’t take the way you paused in the middle of a thought, scratching your cheek. I felt my teeth clench if you stared off while I was speaking or tried to quiet me with a kiss. It was then I first began to leave you, slipping away while you spoke, to a rainy window or a perfect moon—drifting off to a place made of different choices.

  You swept me away when I met you, so serious and sexy in your smudged glasses and rumpled clothes, gnawing your way towards a Ph.D. in art history. I took each book that you returned and held it to my cheek, tried to smell you in its cover, or pored over it to see if it held your reflection. My days belonged to quietly searching the stacks for you, creeping through the old wood-paneled reading room. Reshelving just to be noticed. I wanted to captivate you with charm and wit, to be your muse, your inspiration. I’d just finished college and everything in my world seemed to be made of water, but you.

  We’ll grace each other’s lives, you whispered over wine and cheap gnocchi, and I thought I glowed everywhere I went. Each day I watched you, still sleeping softly as I crept off to my monotonous job, to stand behind a desk and answer simple questions. To move my hand from an ink pad to a book and back. I was secretive there, quiet and disconnected—you were what I harbored.

  You loved paintings that throbbed with color, alive with abstract pain. I listened to your endless revelations, your theories and opinions. I let you fill each empty page in me. Your dissertation extolled Helen Frankenthaler. Marvelous, you said as you lifted your fine, soft hands from the typewriter to reach for the strong coffee I made you. Marvelous, I murmured as I watched you, hazed by the afternoon light streaking through the one grimy window, my own rough hands clasped behind my back.

  I stole the books you needed. I crept into my boss’s office and erased your fines. When my co-workers gathered for drinks after work, I slipped away to you and sanctity. Soon you cleared me a drawer and I kept only the clothes that fit inside of it. We spent Sundays in bed with the paper and expensive coffee, our sweaty, naked bodies creating glories that left us panting, full.

  When we made love I wanted to devour you. I wanted to be everything you needed and later I found myself looking for traces of your smell on my wrist, my shoulder. I believed I knew nothing. I believed I was learning life every minute, soaking up whatever I could, gathering the stories and images you tossed like candy. I couldn’t imagine anything else.

  I loved the way you stood in our closet with your feet in fifth position, absent-minded hand plowing your thick red hair as you searched for a sweater, a shirt. I remember my naked body bundled in sheets, but I don’t know what I looked like watching from behind you on the bed. I don’t know what I looked like then at all. My hair was short and spiky. My clothes were plain and loose. There was nothing to draw attention to me. I blended with the blank walls, with the spareness of your life.

  And you became so much to me that I tortured myself with your removal. When you missed your bus one rainy Tuesday, I wallowed in the ache of your disappearance. I fantasized I’d caused it, erased you with some careless act. I watched the clock tick slowly and was unable to breathe. Everything was filthy and grotesque. You arrived home to our tiny studio to find me on my hands and knees, scrubbing the kitchen floor and sobbing. You dropped your books and held me and we made love on soapy linoleum, sliding on the wet, squeaky floor.

  Then in absent moments, I thought you were an accidental gift, a present I didn’t deserve. I ironed our clothes every week, the curtains, sheets and towels, too. I vacuumed under the cabinets, scoured our window until it was invisible to birds. When I killed two cardinals you said: Take it easy. I wanted to tell you: I’m trying to earn this. Instead I arranged our shoes in pairs, defrosted the freezer, painted the windowsill blue.

  I woke in the middle of the night to make sure you were still there. You tossed an arm over me, murmuring in your sleep while I held my breath and recited the alphabet backward in my head.

  My affair was an empty punishment, a test. I’d brought a stranger home from the library for you to find us. I wanted to hurt you, to shatter the glass pane that pressed my life flat into yours. I’d felt myself slip into transparency and I needed to make sure you knew I was real. You left, disgusted, and I wallowed in the misery I deserved. I sat in the dark for those two weeks. When you returned, I was haggard, our apartment filthy.

  We cried and I made promises, offered explanations, and you made me soup and turned on the small lamp by the sink.

  Sometime later our life fell quietly into place. I hid my rituals from you and got a job at a bookstore where I met Louisa and then Anton, then Jim. As I began to find things in common with people, to feel connected to the world by more than one thread, I started to see beyond our apartment, beyond the image of us entwined. I began to see my life from the inside, as though I’d been off to run an errand and had just returned.

  The world had sounds and smells that seemed familiar but it had been a while since I noticed them. I read voraciously, worked overtime. I still listened to your stories of your students, your colleagues, your days, but I began to have my own.

  And you seemed to see through me. I felt my words skid past you as you jotted notes or sipped tea. I wondered at your few friends, at your clothes, your taste. I questioned the place you claimed to have in your department. Where were the invitations or phone calls from colleagues? My throat tickled at the repetition of your life. When you reached for me I held my breath. You must have noticed me pull back, turn inside out to avoid your touch? When we walked down the street I didn’t take your arm but buried my hands in my pockets, felt my foot placed in front of my leg, my leg in front of my body. You spoke to me and I did not respond. You asked if I had heard and I nodded.

  I really think I brought you to this cafe to break you. You’ve never been slow at people and their motives but this doesn’t save you from the inevitable. I had to bring you to a place where my absence could be thorough, where the echo of our conversation could rush around and around you. It’s been ending slowly in this faded winter light, our common gestures bloodless and empty. We’re just a shadow play of what we once were, ghosts, floating here and there.

  This room is loud and chaotic. I can’t focus on you, my eyes drift to the people around us: a tall gangly boy with glasses scratching his cheek as he watches the smoking brunette across from him; the sweatered men tackling a game of chess in the corner; the fluffy blond women behind you, their heads together over foamy white glasses. They are all talking and laughing while we are still, immobile, lost in the thickets of a miserable conversation, a shattered, bitter evening.

  When I was small, I often dreamt that I could not
find my home. I walked down my street and each house had been stripped of its color. Old women stared at me from the driveways, washing clothes in large steel tubs. My house was always just around the next corner, just beyond the next bend. With each turn I made, I found myself back where I’d begun. I woke with balled fists, gulping for air.

  I feel that now. Every curve of our conversation is so familiar but I can’t find us. I speed through every sentence, breathless, frightened. I sense us floating out there somewhere but I can’t catch up.

  You say you want to understand, you want me to understand, but I am very tired and I am leaving you. I smooth the rumpled red sweater you gave me for a birthday, wind around my neck the long blue scarf you knit the winter you broke your foot and couldn’t leave the apartment. I kiss you softly on the cheek and reach for my coat, the old gray backpack that once belonged to you.

  I feel that old me rise up to reach out, to touch you. I almost want to grab on and squeeze you here, in this crowded coffee shop, until I can rewind it all and find us in these gestures, but instead I pay our check and push my way outside, into the fresh air, the chilly streets. And I tell you, really, it’s not my fault that the door swings closed as though I was never there.

  SPICE

  Billy Foo knows how to spice things just right—sizes folks up when they push through the door, assesses them in a snap. The sign outside the restaurant is a faded red marker. Food, it says, nothing else. But folks find themselves there feeling hungry and lost, when they need a real lift, when things haven’t worked out their way.

  They don’t even bother choosing their own spice (although the waiter always asks Do you won medium or won spicy or won mild, that dish?), trusting Foo to know just what they need. Besides, Billy Foo has the power to override and he exercises it.

  Foo’s fed everyone: kings, queens, witches and anarchists. He’s spiced soup for dignitaries, merchants and fools. He’s made bouillabaisse for baseball teams, stew for softball leagues, gumbo for lion tamers and bisque for those in pain.