The First Bad Man: A Novel

by Miranda July

  “Cheryl.” He suddenly put his hand on my hand. “We want your blessing.”

  His hand had a heat and weight that only real hands do. A hundred imaginary hands would never be this warm. I kept my eyes on his blocky, primitive fingernails.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Well, I want to, and she wants to—but the attraction is so power­ful that we almost don’t trust it. Is it real or is it just the power of the taboo? I’ve told her all about you and our relationship. I explained how strong you are, how you’re a feminist and you live alone, and she agreed we should wait until we got your take on it.”

  I spit into the wine again. “When you were explaining our relationship, what did you say?”

  “I said you were . . .”—he looked down at my red knuckles—“someone I had a lot to learn from.” With a firm push he pressed his fingers between my fingers. “And I told her how perfectly balanced you are in terms of your masculine and feminine energies.” We began making a small undulating wave, threading and rethreading our hands. “So you can see things from a man’s point of view, but without being clouded by yang.”

  Now we were doing it with both hands and looking each other square in the eyes. Our history was bearing down on us, a hundred thousand lifetimes of making love. We rose and stood with just a hot inch between us, our palms pressed together.

  “Cheryl,” he whispered.

  “Phillip.”

  “I can’t sleep, I can’t think. I’m going crazy.”

  The inch was half an inch now. I was throbbing.

  “We have no elders,” he moaned. “No one to guide us. Will you guide us?”

  “But I’m younger than you.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “No, I am. I’m twenty-two years younger than you.”

  “I’m forty-nine years older than her,” he breathed. “Just tell me if it’s okay. I don’t want someone like you to think I’m—I can’t even say it. It has nothing to do with her age—you can see that, right?”

  Each time I inhaled, the soft dome of my stomach pressed against his groin, and each time I exhaled it gently pulled away. In, out, in, out. My breathing grew sharper and faster, a thrusting kind of breath, and Phillip was gripping my hands. In another second I would use my innocent, fingerless paunch to grope and explore him, shimmying up and down. I stepped away.

  “It’s a tough decision.” I picked my dinner napkin off the floor and placed it carefully over the row of uneaten pink fish meats. “And one I take seriously.”

  “Okay,” said Phillip, straightening up and blinking as if I had suddenly turned the lights on. He followed me to the closet, where I found my purse and jacket. “And?”

  “And I’ll let you know when I know. Please take me home now.”

  CLEE WAS HALF-ASLEEP WATCHING TV. When I came in she looked up, surprised, as if it wasn’t my house. Just the sight of her pretty face and big chin made me furious. I threw my purse down on the coffee table, which was where I used to put it before she moved in.

  “You need to get your act together and start looking for a job,” I said, straightening the chair. “Or maybe I should call your parents and tell them what’s been going on here.”

  She smiled slowly at me, her eyes narrowing.

  “What’s been going on here?” she said.

  I opened my mouth. The simple facts of her violence slid out of reach. Suddenly I felt uncertain, as if she knew something about me, as if, in a court of law, I would be the one to blame.

  “And anyways,” she said, picking up the remote, “I have a job.”

  This seemed unlikely.

  “Great. Where?”

  “The supermarket, the one we went to.”

  “You went to Ralphs and filled out an application and had an interview?”

  “No, they just asked me—last time I was there. I start tomorrow.”

  I could see a man’s trembling hands pinning a name tag to her bosom and I remembered what Phillip said about her fat store. Just a couple of hours ago we were sitting in his car and I was thinking, Let’s not waste our time talking about her when we have so much else to say to each other. I lifted the end of her sleeping bag and yanked out one of the couch cushions.

  “This couch isn’t meant to be used as a bed. You need to flip the cushions so they don’t get permanently misshapen.” I flipped it over and started pulling at the other one—the one she was sitting on. My muscles were tensed; I knew this was a bad idea but I kept tugging at the cushion. Tug. Tug.

  I didn’t even see her get up. The crook of her arm caught my neck and jerked me backward. I slammed into the couch—the wind knocked out of me. Before I could get my balance she shoved my hip down with her knee. I grabbed at the air stupidly. She pinned my shoulders down, intently watching what the panic was doing to my face. Then she suddenly let go and walked away. I lay there shaking uncontrollably. She locked the bathroom door with a click.

  PHILLIP CALLED FIRST THING IN the morning.

  “Kirsten and I were wondering if you’d had you a chance to think it over.”

  “Can I ask one question?” I said, pressing a bruise on the back of my upper calf.

  “Anything,” said Phillip.

  “Is she gorgeous?”

  “Will that impact your decision?”

  “No.”

  “Stunning.”

  “What color hair?”

  “Blond.”

  I spit into a hanky. My globus had swollen in the night—I couldn’t swallow at all anymore.

  “No, I haven’t decided.”

  For the next three hours I lay in bed, my head where my feet should be. He was in love with a sixteen-year-old. I had spent years training myself to be my own servant so that when a situation involving extreme wretchedness arose, I would be taken care of. But the house didn’t function as it once had; Clee had undone years of careful maintenance. All the dishes were out and the general disarray was beyond carpooling—there was nothing between me and filthy animal living. So I peed in cups and knocked over one of the cups and didn’t clean it up. I chewed bread into a puree, moistening it with sips of water until I could slurp it down as a horse would. Only liquids could slip past the globus, and only with a swallowing scenario. The Black Stallion for bready water. For plain water I was Heidi, dipping a metal ladle into a well. It’s from the end, when she’s living in the Alps. For orange juice I was Sarge from the Beetle Bailey comic, where Sarge and Beetle Bailey go to Florida and drink all-you-can-drink orange juice. Glug, glug, glug. It worked because it wasn’t me, it was the character swallowing, offhandedly—just a brief moment in a larger story. There’s a scenario for every beverage except beer and wine because I was too young for alcohol when I invented this technique. I let my mouth hang open so the spit could roll out easily. Not just a sixteen-year-old, a stunning blond sixteen-year-old. She was driving him crazy. Someone came in the back door. Rick. The TV blasted on. Not Rick.

  She was home from Ralphs: it was later than I thought. I pulled myself upright and listened to her flipping channels arrhythmically. My back was sore where she threw me down, but this was almost a welcome distraction from the globus. My neck felt like an object unrelated to me, a businessman’s misplaced briefcase. When I tapped my throat it made a bony sound, and then suddenly the muscle began to tighten, and tighten, like a pulled knot—I panicked, shaking my hands in the air—no, no, no—

  And then it locked.

  I’d read about this online but it had never happened to me. The sternothyroid muscle becomes so rigid that it seizes up. Sometimes permanently.

  “Test,” I whispered, to see if I could still talk. “Test, test.” Very carefully, without moving my neck, I reached for the glass bottle on my bedside table. Using the Heidi scenario I drank all the red. Nothing happened. I gingerly carried my neck to the phone and called Dr. Broya
rd, but he was in Amsterdam; the message invited me to call 911 or leave my name and number for Dr. Ruth-Anne Tibbets. I remembered the two stacks of business cards in their Lucite holders—this was the other doctor. The one in charge of watering the fern in the waiting room. I hung up, then called back and left my name and number. The message felt too short for a therapist.

  “I’m forty-three,” I added, still whispering. “Regular height. Brown hair that is now gray. No children. Thanks, please call back. Thank you.”

  DR. TIBBETS SAW PATIENTS ON Tuesdays through Thursdays. When I suggested today, a Thursday, she countersuggested next Tuesday. Six days of liquids; I might starve. Sensing my anguish, she asked if I was in danger. I might be, I said, by next Tuesday. If I could come right away, she said, we could meet during her lunch hour.

  I drove to the same building and took the same elevator to the same floor. Dr. Broyard’s name on the door had been replaced by DR. RUTH-ANNE TIBBETS, LCSW—a plastic placard that slid into an aluminum strip. I looked down the hall and wondered how many other offices were shared. Most patients would never know; it had to be unusual for a person to need the services of two different unaffiliated specialists. The receptionist’s area was empty. I read a magazine about golf for fifteen seconds until the door swung open.

  Dr. Tibbets was tall with flat gray hair and an androgynous horsey face; she reminded me of someone but I wasn’t sure who. This was probably the sign of a good therapist, seeming familiar to everyone. She asked if the room was warm enough—there was a small space heater she could turn on. I said I was fine.

  “What brought you in today?”

  A bento box sat on top of her day planner. Had she stuffed herself as quickly as possible after the previous patient? Or was she waiting, faint with hunger? “You can eat your lunch if you want, I don’t mind.” She smiled patiently. “Begin when you feel ready.” I turned sideways on the leather couch but quickly discovered there wasn’t enough length for my legs, so I swung myself upright again; she wasn’t that kind of therapist.

  I told her about my globus hystericus and how my sterno­thyroid had locked. She asked me if I could recall any triggering incidents. I didn’t feel ready to tell her about Phillip so I described my houseguest, the way she moved around the living room, swinging her giant, heavy-lidded head like a cow, a dense, stenchy bull.

  “Bulls are male,” said Dr. Tibbets.

  But that was just it. A woman talks, too much—and worries, too much—and gives and gives in. A woman bathes.

  “She doesn’t bathe?”

  “Almost never.”

  I described her total disregard for my home and acted out the different things she had done to me, pressing on my own chest and squeezing my own wrist. It was hard to yank my own head back.

  “This might not look painful because I’m doing it to myself.”

  “I don’t doubt that it’s painful,” she said. “What have you done to resist?”

  I released my arm and sat back down.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you fight back?”

  “You mean self-defense?”

  “Sure.”

  “Oh, that’s not what this is. It’s really more a case of very bad manners.” I smiled to myself because it sounded like I was in denial. “Have you heard of Open Palm? Self-defense that helps you burn fat and build muscle? I pretty much invented that.”

  “Have you yelled?”

  “No.”

  “Or said no to her?”

  “No.”

  Dr. Tibbets was quiet now, like a lawyer who had no further questions. My face crumpled, and my globus swelled painfully; she held out a box of Kleenex.

  I suddenly realized why she looked so familiar.

  She was Dr. Broyard’s receptionist. It was outrageous. Was she even Ruth-Anne Tibbets or was she Ruth-Anne Tibbets’s receptionist too? What had she done with Dr. Tibbets? This needed to be reported. Who could I call? Not Dr. Broyard or Dr. Tibbets, since this usurping, masquerading woman would undoubtedly answer the phone. I slowly gathered my purse and sweater. It was best not to agitate her or let on.

  “This has been a great help, thank you.”

  “You have thirty more minutes.”

  “I don’t feel that I need it. It was a twenty-minute problem and you addressed it.”

  She hesitated, looking up at me.

  “I’m going to have to charge you for the whole session.”

  I had already prewritten the check. I took it out of my purse.

  “If possible, please donate the thirty minutes to someone who can’t afford therapy.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Thank you.”

  CLEE WAS AT RALPHS, SO I stayed home and applied hot compresses, working to gradually relax my throat. Occasionally I pressed a warm metal spoon against it; some people say that helps. Just when I thought I might be making progress, Phillip called.

  “I’m seeing Kirsten tonight. I’m picking her up at eight.”

  I said nothing.

  “So should I expect to hear from you before eight, or . . . ?”

  “No.”

  “Not at all tonight? Or just not by eight?”

  I hung up. A shaking fury quietly rose through my chest into my throat. The lump began to seize up again, tightening like an angry man’s fist. Or my fist. I looked at my veiny hands, slowly curling them into balls. Is this what she meant by fight back? The thought of the receptionist’s smug, horsey face made my globus even harder. I jumped up and scanned the spines of my DVD collection. I probably didn’t even have one. I did: Survival of the Fittest. It wasn’t our most recent release; Carl and Suzanne had given it to me for Christmas about four years ago. Of course I had many opportunities to learn self-defense in the old studio, just never the desire to embarrass myself in front of my coworkers. The great thing about our DVDs (and streaming video), besides burning fat and building muscle, is you can do them alone without anyone watching. I pressed play.

  “Hi! Let’s get started!” It was Shamira Tye, the bodybuilder. She doesn’t compete anymore but she was still very expensive and hard to get. “I recommend working out in front of a mirror so you can watch your tush shrink.” I stood in the living room in my pajamas. Kicks were called kicks but punches were called “pops.” “Pop, pop, pop, pop!” Shamira said. “I pop in my sleep! And soon you will too!” A knee-slam-to-groin movement was presented as the can-can—“Yes you can-can!” If someone was strangling you, “the butterfly” would break their hold while toning your upper arms. “It’s a catch-twenty-two,” Shamira mused at the end. “With your new ripped bod, you may actually get attacked more often!” I fell to my knees. Sweat ran down the sides of my torso and into my elastic waistband.

  Clee came home at nine o’clock with a box of trash bags. I hoped this was an olive branch, since we were out of trash bags and I didn’t really have any intention of fighting her. But she used all of the bags to gather up the clothes and mildewed beach towels and food items and electronics that apparently had been in her car this whole time. I watched her park the four bags against the wall in the corner of the living room. Each swallow took concentration but I kept at it. Some people with globus only spit; they have to bring a spittoon with them everywhere they go.

  At eleven fifteen Phillip texted. SHE WANTS ME TO TELL YOU I RUBBED HER THROUGH HER JEANS. WE DON’T THINK THAT COUNTS. NO ORGASM. All caps, as if he was yelling out of his penthouse window. Once read, the image was impossible to keep at bay—the tight jean crotch, his stubby, furry hands rubbing wildly. In the living room I could hear Clee crunching ice like cud. The chewing was so loud I began to wonder if she wasn’t doing it sarcastically, to aggravate me. I pressed my ear against the door. Now she was imitating the imitation—it was a chomping sound with a double set of quotation marks around it. Too late I realized there would be no end to this line
of thought—her self-impersonation quadrupled, and then sixteenified, her eyeballs popping out of her head, ferociously rubbed jeans, teeth like fangs, tongue whipping around the room, ice flying everywhere. I spit on my sleeve, yanked open the door, and marched over to the couch. She looked up at me from her sleeping bag and quietly regurgitated a single ice cube.

  “Could you please not make that sound please?” I shouldn’t have said please twice, but my voice was low and my eye contact was direct. I held my hands in front of me in a position of readiness. My heart was hitting the inside of my body so hard it made a knocking sound. What if she did a move that wasn’t on the DVD? I glanced down to be sure my stance was grounded.

  She squinted at me, taking in my hovering hands and planted feet, then tilted her head back and filled her mouth with ice. I grabbed the cup out of her hand. She blinked at her empty palm, slowly chewed the ice, swallowed it and looked past me at the TV. It wasn’t going to happen; we weren’t going to fight. But she could see I wanted to. She could see I’d gotten all geared up—a forty-three-year-old woman in a blouse, ready to brawl. And she was laughing about it, right now, inside. Heh, heh, heh.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  It took a day to become calm and gather up my pride. Delicate was the word Phillip had used to describe me. A delicate woman would not throw punches in her own home. What a barbaric mentality! As if there weren’t a million other ways to deal with conflict. I drafted a letter to Clee. It was clear-cut and unequivocal. Reading it aloud was quite moving, actually; by inviting her to engage in a civilized manner I was probably showing her a respect that few people ever had. Dignity was on its way. I spit into an empty almond butter jar; there’s something kind of quaint about a spittoon. She didn’t need to thank me for my honest forthrightness, but if she insisted I would be forced to accept. I accepted a few times for practice. I put the letter in an envelope labeled CLEE, taped it to the bathroom mirror, and went out so I wouldn’t be home when she read it.

  At the Ethiopian restaurant I requested a fork. They explained that I had to use my hands, so I asked for it to go, got a fork at Starbucks, and sat in my car. But my throat wouldn’t accept even this very soft meal. I put it on the curb for a homeless person. An Ethiopian homeless person would be especially delighted. What a heartbreaking thought, encountering your native food in this way.