The Use of Fame

by Cornelia Nixon

  “Oh, don’t say that, please. I need you to live.”

  The sweet drink arrived, and she put it to her lips, sucking the sugar off the rim. Tears suddenly bulged her own eyes, surface tension only holding them, haloing every candle in the place. “A downhill scenario,” the cardio had called Ray’s prognosis, if they hadn’t caught it in time. Two years, the doctor said he would have had. Two years till cardiac arrest, probably while running up a hill. It was breathtaking to hear—Ray would have been dead now for eight years.

  They had found out only because his mother came to visit, and Ray had complained of chest pain—it was always something when he was exposed to her. Once they went to see her back east, and within two hours, Abby had to take him to the ER with violent stomach cramps—they gave him tranquillizers, and the two of them went home the next day. It was years before he told her the truth, that his mother had abused him as a kid. Once, when he was six, she had smacked his face so hard his glasses flew off, hit a wall, and broke, and he had to fix them himself with duct tape so he could see. She did things like that for years, and now his body seized in some way every time he saw her, though he was always fine when he got away from her.

  But Abby wasn’t going to mess around with chest pain—her father had died young of a heart attack. Ray didn’t want to go, but she made him an appointment with their doctor, who ordered a stress test. On the treadmill, Ray’s long legs ate it up so fast people came from other rooms to watch. But two months later, he was about to go teach at a writers conference when their doctor called their landline, and Abby answered it.

  “I showed the results to two cardiologists,” he said. “There’s something wrong. He needs an echocardiogram.”

  “Okay,” Abby said. “He’s leaving for ten days, but he’ll do it when he gets back.”

  “No,” the doctor said. “He has to do it now. Today.”

  That was their first clue. The echo showed his heart enlarged and half filled up with muscle, too little room for blood, and too weak to eject it normally. With each contraction, a normal heart pumped out about sixty percent of the blood it held, but Ray’s ejection fraction was twenty-eight percent. He canceled the conference gig and spent a day in the hospital for thirty thousand dollars’ worth of tests, including a heart biopsy through his carotid artery, while Abby sat nearby with Janis Joplin singing in her head. Take another little piece of my heart now, baby. Take another little piece of my heart.

  Idiopathic hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, the diagnosis was, and for ten years now he’d been on meds to rest his heart and help it heal. It had shrunk enough that he was allowed to run again, though he could do much less than before, and he had to see specialists in Berkeley and Providence. The past few months he’d complained of feeling tired, unable to run well, and she’d noticed he seemed to be dieting, doling out a handful of almonds for breakfast like a fashion model, sometimes drinking a foul brew called Kombuchka instead of beer.

  “I’m getting rid of my girl fat,” was what he’d said, and he now weighed less than he had in his twenties. These days he wore his hair just long enough to flare around his head, and above his stick-thin frame, the overall effect was like a lit sparkler.

  Worried, Abby watched him. “I wish you didn’t have to leave so soon. You’re going to be away too much this year.”

  He had already been gone all fall, replacing Hank, and soon he had to leave to do his regular spring semester at Brown.

  “You know I want a full-time job,” he said.

  She decided not to remind him of the job he had turned down at SF State. “That would be wonderful. You know I’d be delighted to teach less. I could go half time. I might even retire and live with you all year.”

  For decades, she had carried a full load. And of course he wanted a better job, now that he was famous for his work.

  “What’s Hank saying about the job?”

  Ray’s face went pale and grim. “He says it’s in the bag, but I’m starting to think he’s a lying two-faced jerk.”

  “Oh, honey, don’t say that. You know he’s on your side.”

  Ray raised his hand, signaled the waiter for the check, and when it came, she looked away—he always overtipped, glad for the chance to be generous. He liked to buy rounds for his friends and bring home gifts she didn’t need, clothes she’d never wear—sheer shirts and cheesy earrings. It was a clash of styles, hers preppy and classic, when Ray hated plaid. Plaid! Maybe because, though the Scottish clans were dirt-poor warriors, in this country their insignia reeked of privilege, like his students at Brown. Well, Abby had gone to Smith, and she loved tartans, Black Watch and Stewart especially, for the juxtaposition of colors, crosshatch of lines, the reassuring repetition of pattern. But she’d had to give them up.

  They had plenty of other differences—their taste in movies, for instance. In the old days, Ray went with her to the film society in Morgantown, then made fun of the black-and-white Czech films she liked. At home, every night, he searched the tube for stuff she couldn’t stand, about exploding heads, zombies, or aliens. That was the most astounding thing about him, that he watched such junk. He and Johnny both did, and when they were together, they went to theatres and actually paid money to see things like Alien 3. In fact, Ray owned the entire series.

  Was it something about their West Virginia roots that made them like such stuff? She could not imagine what its pleasures were. The one horror movie she had seen scared her, and she didn’t like to be afraid.

  She had worked it out with Ray—he could watch what he wanted, with the sound off, so she didn’t have to listen to the screams. But he refused to use earphones for the music he played extremely loud when he was home, and she had learned to tune that out, except for the pieces that she liked. That included everything by Iron and Wine, especially the one about One of us will die inside these arms, which she took as an anthem about her and Ray and how they would be together when one of them died.

  They drove up the hill to their apartment, where it smelled of lemon oil, because Ray had cleaned that morning before he picked her up at the airport. He hung up his jacket in the hall, and Abby walked into the kitchen. On the counter was a postcard from Johnny to Ray, manually typed, all lowercase.

  i admit that when i got your rather excessive reaction to my suggestion about writing something of a different mode, I thought that you were a little excoriating, but sarah said that your letter was in fact diplomatic as nine horses on amphetamines being pulled back at the camp town races with concertina wire, so I decided not to send you the long blond braid hairpiece of a little heidi girl throwing a hissy fit in her wading pool. And then I heard that the catholic family values council had already censured you for heretical thinking and I thought, aw, poor ole guy—no boat, no oar, harem desertion imminent—send him a poem. Odysseus, your wife is on line 2.

  She was laughing when she felt Ray come into the kitchen behind her. “What’s Johnny chiding you about?”

  When he didn’t answer, she turned—he looked wild-eyed, his hair electrified.

  He took a step closer, one hand over his heart. “I’m in love with someone else.”

  “What?” she said, still holding the postcard. Then she heard it. She was almost too astonished to speak.

  “Who?” she finally breathed faintly, and felt ridiculous. What did it matter who?

  His eyes, still wet, half popped out of his head. “Tory Grenier. I’m a dismal cliché, in love with a grad student.” He looked at her and begged. “Do something. Yell. Hit me. Stick a knife in me.”

  Trying to oblige, she threw herself against him and smacked his chest. “In love? How dare you? You couldn’t just fuck her, you had to fall in love?” But that felt fake—she dropped her hands and started to cry. “I only did that because you asked me to.”

  She went to their bathroom, splashed cold water on her face. How could she have been so stupid, after all those
rants? That was symptom number one of love, talking too much about someone. And the sudden texting, the diet—signs so obvious, no women’s magazine reader would have missed it, and how did she?

  She went back to the kitchen, where he still leaned against the sink, looking almost frail. “Do you have a hankie?”

  He pulled out one of the dozen she bought him each few years, fine white linen.

  She blew her nose. “Tory is what, twenty-two?”

  “No, she’s older,” he said quickly. “More like thirty. She was out of school for years. She’s been married.”

  “Half my age.”

  She could almost forget she was eight years older than he was—people assumed they were more or less the same. But now that she had crested sixty, what did he do?

  He didn’t answer, and she remembered something he had said, on one of those telephonic rants. “I thought she lived with her boyfriend. Steve.”

  He shook his head slightly. “She’s breaking up with him.”

  “For you. She’s breaking up with him for you.”

  He didn’t answer that, either, and Abby stood up straight. “You should go to her. Pack a bag. I’ll take you to the airport now.”

  Ray looked panicked. “No. What are you talking about? I haven’t slept with her! I’ve kissed her exactly once. I’m not a creep. Here, let me show you what I’m not.”

  He strode to his study, came back with a piece of paper, and handed it to her. “That’s Hank’s instructions on how to have an affair with a student.”

  Don’t send mixed messages.

  Make sure the girl knows it’s just for now and you will not leave your wife.

  Don’t tell your wife.

  Leave no evidence. Be very careful with emails, credit-card and phone bills.

  Swear the girl to secrecy. She can’t tell even her best friend or her mother. Nobody.

  If you think there’s any chance she won’t be able to keep quiet, end the thing.

  Don’t be an asshole. Don’t tell your wife.

  Abby felt disgust at Hank, and exhaustion and grief. She gave it back to Ray. “Thank you for not being Hank. It was very brave of you to tell me. No wonder you’ve been so insane. You must have been in pain.”

  He stared at her and gave a strangled sob. “I thought you would be so mad. How can you be kind to me? You should hate me, that’s what I deserve. It would be so much simpler. I can’t stand it that you’re being kind.”

  Ray’s study had a bed in it, and he slept in there, while Abby gazed into the dark from their big bed as astonishment and disbelief gave way to shame. With sudden clarity, she saw herself: she was a ridiculous person. All her life had been a quest for love, and now she had lost the only guy who’d ever given her enough. He had convinced her love was not a sham, that men do sometimes love you back and even stick around when you’re being a jerk. With Ray the love had felt inexhaustible, a steady source of happiness, like a spring that bubbled up inside of her, constantly renewed. Twenty-five years of that. Losing it would be like having something amputated, all that mattered of her life.

  It was just too hard to believe. Ray had never had a midlife crisis, and he’d been devoted to her all this time. Beyond romance and sex, he had shown real love for her. Back in Morgantown, the initial diagnosis of her mystery illness was “poisonous spider bite,” and Ray had washed every piece of clothing, every curtain, blanket, and throw rug in hot water and bombed the house with exterminating aerosols. He found a gap in her closet that opened to the crawl space, boarded it up and posted a sign with a picture of a spider in a circle, crossed by a red line. When her joints swelled so badly she moaned in her sleep, and her eyelids became red blisters, he had carried her from the bed to a hot bath every morning.

  When her rheumatologist declared it lupus, Ray was in the room, and Abby didn’t notice he was crying till the doctor handed him a box of tissues and told him he could wash his face next door.

  When he left, the doctor said, “He’s a good man. Some don’t take it so well.”

  Abby had missed a beat. Ray, a good man? She thought of him as sexy, dangerous, talented, and smart. But good?

  She shrank deeper into the bed—did she really want him to stay? The truth was, there were times when she had fantasized the end, and no one would blame her if she left him now. She hated to admit it, even to herself, but there was a flip side to his love and had been almost from the start. Before their wedding, he had been intense, but playful and charming, the way most people saw him all the time.

  But afterward, she seemed to slide into the place of his mother, whom he loved and feared, and he had started to control her. It was one thing to know that an abused child would grow up to be that way, and another to have him tell her what to do and demand to know where she was every second of the day. He loved it when she slept late, immobile in bed—it made him feel secure. But if she went out and did not come home the instant he expected, he turned into an abandoned infant.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” he had shouted too many times to count. Once when she came home late from caring for her aged mother, he heaved a bottle of Liquid Paper at a wall, splattering an aureole of white on blue—they had to repaint the room. He had never hit her, but in one of their worst fights, he had grabbed her purse and dumped its contents out, and in another he had thrown her keys out a window.

  And yet, in the mornings, he could be the sweetest man. His smile was like a child’s, pure innocence, when he brought her tea in bed. No matter how bad the fight, he could reverse emotions, enraged one second, wry the next. He made fun of himself. “Here I am on my puny pulpit, setting the world straight!” he might cry after a rant.

  Gradually, she had given up the things that threatened him. He refused to share her with anyone, so they had no kids. If he didn’t like a woman who might become her friend, saying she was crazy, or untrustworthy, or too aggressive, Abby gave her up. He asked her to remove all trace of other men, though it meant tearing up the pictures of her first two weddings and honeymoons, the first in Italy, the second barefoot on a local beach, when they were grad students and broke. She used to think of herself as a free-range animal, for whom the globe wasn’t big enough to roam—she loved to travel, ski and surf, climb mountains, but Ray wanted only to stay home. Finally she had started riding horses, because it was an adventure she could have nearby, with other women, and still get back in time for dinner, to keep him calm.

  But even if they stayed home, he could melt down, in part because of how he drank—well, both of them drank, it was something they shared, leftover from their carefree younger days. One year, back in Morgantown, when she had the mystery illness, she had quit and discovered the true boredom of their social life, the evenings in front of someone’s woodstove, while the others turned their blood to wine. Two couples they knew had weddings that summer, and at both events she was the only guest still trying to converse while everyone else did the Watusi in a conga line around the pool. So of course as soon as she was well again, she rejoined the alcoholic tribes, allowing herself a few glasses of wine.

  But Ray could sometimes go on benders, to separate himself from bourgeois caution, live on the edge—though afterward, he might throw up for days. Sometimes it gave him a migraine, and he had to lie in bed in a dark room with a cool cloth on his head. Abby had designated an old tin pot for him to vomit in, so he wouldn’t have to get up. When he barfed in it, she cleaned it and gave it back. Travel, too, gave him constant nausea, though it was years before he told her that—he thought everyone felt sick when they flew, and all Abby knew was that he turned into a jerk on planes. Once he yelled at her in front of several hundred people, because she let someone exit ahead of her, holding him up for ten seconds.

  Abby sighed, a sense of failure yawning wide inside of her. She didn’t want to lose Ray—she loved him, she loved his poetry. She loved taking care of him, gettin
g him to the cardiologist, making sure he ate good food, didn’t drink too much, and slept. He needed that—he had been abused, and his heart was giving out. Sometimes she felt so protective of him that he might have said the same of her, that she tried to control him, too. They were a system, fiercely focused on each other, and they always had been. In their first years, when they spent evenings with friends, she and Ray liked to squeeze together into one big chair.

  “At least they’re not sitting in the same chair anymore,” friends noted wryly after they stopped doing that.

  And these days, when they fought, it never lasted long. Just a few months before, one summer night, they had gotten in a tiff, and Ray slept in his study. But in the middle of the night, an earthquake rocked the building, and he threw back the study door and shouted, “Bean!” They ran to the kitchen doorway and stood braced, his body wrapped around hers from behind. When it stopped, both of them were trembling, and they had to crawl on all fours to their big bed, where they lay entwined.

  And just, what, a month ago? When she was stressing about her paper for the MLA, and Ray was still in Providence, she sent him an email about an awful dream, in which she wrote a gory poem about partial-birth abortion and showed it to the mother of a girl who rode with her. In the dream, the woman was so upset she complained to their trainer, “because she was concerned about a person who could write such a thing.” Ray wrote right back, pointing out the link to her MLA paper. He said he would be home soon and would “kiss you into better dreams, I promise.” Could he have said that if he was really in love with someone else?

  Enough—she just wanted to sleep. Current thinking about lupus connected it to stress, and doctors believed it never really went away, so they gave her sleeping pills and tranquillizers, a lifetime supply. Getting up, she downed an Ambien, which soon knocked her out like a death wish.

  Five

  Ray had always been able to sleep when he needed to, but tonight he couldn’t stay there long, and when he woke up, it was still dark. Opening his eyelids to the blackness, he saw the familiar outline of his desk, bookshelves, and typewriter from a new angle, in ambient city light, and it gave him a sense of doom. Something wasn’t right. Something was trying to get him.