BETH: I feel horrible and he says exactly the right thing to make me feel better.
Q: How often do you have a good talk, as you have described it?
DAN: Not for years.
BETH: Never.
Q: Describe a typical bad talk.
DAN: Sure. I come downstairs for breakfast and say good morning and she blasts me.
BETH: I have something important to say and he cuts me off.
Q: What are your fights like?
DAN: Unsatisfying. When I’m right, she can’t stand it, so she leaves the room, right in the middle of what I’m saying. I hate that. Why does she do that?
BETH: They hurt. They make me ache from top to bottom. They make no sense. We’ll both think we’re right, and sometimes I think we are, both of us. We need someone to sort it out. We’re stuck.
Q: Do you ever enjoy fighting?
DAN: Well, maybe I would if she didn’t always leave whenever I make a decent point.
BETH: Anyone who could ever enjoy fighting is sick.
Q: Who wins?
DAN: Excellent question. Excellent. (Pause) I don’t have an answer. (Laughs) I was going to say sometimes I win and sometimes Beth wins, but then I realized that when she wins, I’m still pissed off and I still think I’m right, deep down, and she’s probably the same way when I win. So nobody wins, I guess.
BETH: The way I see it, you both win or you both lose. If anything gets resolved, you both win. If not, you both lose.
Q: What’s your sex life like?
DAN: Ah. I knew you’d get to this. And I want to hear all about yours at the earliest opportunity. Ours is excellent. No problem.
BETH: It’s surprisingly good. We got in the habit of good sex when we were getting along, and it’s carried us through these times.
Q: How often do you have sex?
DAN: Oh … twice a week?
BETH: Once a week.
Q: Are you sure?
DAN: Yeah. Pretty sure. I think so. Why? Does that sound odd? That’s average, isn’t it? From everything I’ve read, it’s average. Isn’t it?
BETH: Like clockwork.
Q: Are you happy with that frequency?
DAN: Funny question. Yeah, I guess so. It’s something we’ve settled into, so we must be. Sure. Why not?
BETH: No.
Q: Who usually initiates sex?
DAN: You know, it’s funny. We’ve fallen into kind of a routine. We’ll be in the bedroom watching TV, and we’ll be fooling around, and then we’ll really fool around. Sunday night especially. During 60 Minutes—it seems to happen a lot during 60 Minutes. Robbie’s always watching Disney in the den, and if we don’t tell him to turn it off when it’s over he’ll just keep watching whatever’s on, so … What was the question? Oh—who initiates it? Well, the way I’ve described it, it’s mutual. I’d have to say it’s mutual all the way.
BETH: Morley Safer.
Q: Do you both reach orgasm regularly?
DAN: Helluva question. The answer is yes.
BETH: We’re very efficient.
Q: Who reaches orgasm first?
DAN: Oh … Beth, I guess. Yeah. Beth.
BETH: Me.
Q: Why?
DAN: It’s just something we’ve decided to do. We like it that way, I guess. Seems to work. Why mess with a good thing?
BETH: Dan hates to go on with it after he’s finished, so I always go first.
Q: Do you talk during sex?
DAN: Talk? Not really. What’s to say?
BETH: No.
Q: How has sex changed for you over the years?
DAN: Wow. That’s a biggie. Let’s see … How has it changed? Lemme think. Hmm. Maybe less often, you know? But better. More quality time, you might say.
BETH: When I met Dan, I had a history of meaningless sex. Lots of it, but no real closeness. With Dan, at first I thought I was getting that closeness, but looking back on it now, I don’t think I was. I thought I was, so it seemed better, and it probably was better, too—better than what I was used to, anyway—but now I know that it wasn’t the true thing. We were so young, such strangers to each other, I don’t see how it could have been intimate. It’s become more intimate since, over the years, and that’s made it a lot better. It’s not perfect, but it’s better. It’s changed in other ways, too. I find I require, or desire, a longer warm-up period. My ideal sexual experience would annihilate the concept of time. I’d like more dynamics, more rises and falls, more subplots to go with the main plot. I like to be surprised once in a while. My orgasms used to be tenser than they are now. I used to have to work for them. Now, if I’m relaxed enough, which I usually am, they just come of their own accord. It’s nice that way, very nice. As for Dan, he’s very good in bed—always has been—but he seems less overwhelmed by it all now. His climax is just this thing that happens. He doesn’t buck and snort like he used to. He says it’s just aging—physiology—and he’s probably right. He peaked sexually at eighteen or something, when I didn’t even know him—too bad!—and I’m still moving to my crest. It’s just getting better and better for me. I can’t seem to get enough, to be honest. So—does that answer your question?
Q: What does he/she do that bugs you?
DAN: Gee. I don’t know. I’m not sure it’s even worth talking about. I suppose I could name a few things, if I think about it. Let me think. (Pause) Well, I guess I could say something about the mail. She never puts it in the same place. When I get it from the mailbox I always put it right there on that table in the entryway. When she gets it there’s no telling where it’ll end up. On top of the piano. On the toaster oven. Under the newspaper. It’s like an Easter egg hunt. I hate it when she beats me to the mail. Hate it. And she never really goes through her mail properly. You know what I mean? Me, I have three categories. Pitch, read now, read later. She doesn’t have any categories, as far as I can tell. She just shuffles it all around and leaves it, and important stuff gets lost and the junk mail kicks around the house till next Christmas. Another thing—when she sends mail, she never puts the zip code on it. I shouldn’t say never—I don’t want to be unfair—but she leaves it off more often than she should. And she’ll stick it out in our mailbox, wedging it under the lid, instead of walking down to the corner with it. A good wind comes up and that baby’s gone, blown away and lost in the ivy. Give Beth a letter to mail and the odds are no better than fifty-fifty that it’ll make it to its destination. (Pause) Well, that wraps up the mail, I guess. You see, to answer your question, I decided to break it down room by room—what is there in each room that reminds me of things she does that bug me. I started on the front porch, where the mailbox is. Now we can move on to the interior of the house … [twenty-two minutes not transcribed].
BETH: He knows exactly what I want but he won’t give it to me. (Pause) What are you waiting for? Next question, please. Oh, we’re done? Hmm. Well, I can’t say this is the most useful exercise I’ve ever engaged in, but we’ll see what happens, I suppose. Good night, Jeremy.
His transcription and collation concluded, Cook slammed his pen down, groaned, and went to bed.
But when his head hit the pillow his mind took off, hurtling and stumbling through the events of the evening, from his arrival right through to the end. He jumped back up, turned on his light, and went to his desk. He took a yellow legal tablet and wrote a heading across the top of it: THE HORROR! Underneath this he entered a simple declarative sentence.
Then he went to bed—and to sleep.
Eight
“She’s a bitch, Roy.”
“What?”
“She’s a bitch.”
“Oh come now.”
“That’s the horror, isn’t it? She’s a bitch. But you said it’s the same horror in every marriage. Is the woman always a bitch?”
“Oh my,” Pillow said. “Oh my.”
“That’s it, isn’t it?” Cook stretched the long phone cord from the third-floor landing to his window. He looked out to the street below, where B
eth was vacuuming her car. He wanted to be sure she was still there, out of earshot. “That’s the horror, isn’t it?”
“No.”
“No? Listen. She kept attacking me last night. Said I didn’t know beans about commitment.”
“Mmm.”
“And when she had the chance to say something nice, she passed it up. She held back. It was obvious what she was doing. In sum—a bitch.”
“Mmm.”
“She overreacts to everything, she complains, she—”
“We do not accept bitches, Jeremy.”
“What?”
“The Pillow Agency does not accept them.”
Cook tried to clear his head. He wished he had had his morning coffee before calling Pillow. “What are you saying?”
“We don’t do bitches. You can’t save a marriage with a bitch in it.”
“But how do you identify them? How do I know your idea of a bitch is the same as mine?”
“Don’t do that, Jeremy. Don’t say we speak a different language. Don’t.”
“Hey. She’s vacuuming my car now,” said Cook, for she had opened the door to his Honda Coupe and was doing just that.
“There, now,” said Pillow. “That doesn’t sound like something that a bitch would do. That’s not bitch behavior.”
Cook marveled at Pillow’s concrete sense of this word. Pillow seemed to know what a bitch was the way Cook knew where his socks were. Cook kept his eye on Beth. She was hunched down, really going at it to clean the floor of his car, sucking up the trash of his private life.
“It’s a shame you won’t be able to thank her for the nice favor,” said Pillow.
“What? Why not?”
“Haven’t you read ‘Day Two’ yet?”
“No, I haven’t. I just—”
“Well, you know where to find it. Now, Jeremy, I must say something to you. You know I have fond feelings for you.”
Cook stifled a yelp.
“I do enjoy chatting with you,” Pillow continued, “but—how shall I say it?—you have been calling home rather a lot. Read ‘Day Two’ and …” Pillow stopped and said in a sharper tone, “You didn’t just get up, did you?”
“Well, actually—”
“You aren’t still in your pajamas, are you?”
“Of course not,” said Cook, yanking his hand out of his pajama bottoms, where he had idly been playing with himself.
“I hope not,” said Pillow. “It’s almost eight-thirty. Time to go to work. I’ll initiate our next contact, when it’s time for your date.”
“My date?”
Pillow was silent.
“What do you mean, Roy?”
“I’ve arranged a date for you,” Pillow said matter-of-factly.
“With a woman?”
“Don’t sound so surprised. What do you think we took that blood sample for? What did you think?”
“I didn’t think anything. I had no idea. Christ, Roy, I can’t buy this at all.”
“How’s that?”
“I don’t do blind dates. It’s that simple.”
Pillow gave an indignant snort. “I wouldn’t call this a blind date, Jeremy. That would slight the research that has gone into it, wouldn’t you say?”
“But what’s the point?”
“Ah. Let me ask you this: What is the point of the Pillow Agency?”
“That’s easy. To drive me out of my mind.”
Pillow paused, as he did with all of Cook’s sarcasms, in sober consideration. “I don’t quite follow, Jeremy.”
“Okay, okay. The point is to save marriages.”
“Yes. Yes.” Pillow fell silent. Evidently he got stuck gazing on the beauty of this vision. “And to save them we must understand them. Marriage is … Well, what’s the etymology of ‘marriage,’ Jeremy?”
“I don’t know.”
“Neither do I. Never mind. If we are to understand marriage, we must know who fits best with whom—an empirical question subject to experimental inquiry. The linguists on the staff normally cooperate in this endeavor by dating subjects I’ve selected for them. I hope you will cooperate, too.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Come again?”
“I won’t even come once, unless I do it by myself, because the answer is no.”
“You’ve managed to confuse me, Jeremy.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
“If you say no, I’ll have to fire you.”
“What?”
“This aspect of our work is that important to me. I’m fond of you, Jeremy—very fond of you—but I’ll drop you like a rock if I have to.”
Cook wanted to bite the mouthpiece off the phone and spit it to the floor. “You’re a freak, Roy. Do you know that?”
“Don’t say anything you’ll regret, Jeremy.”
“You’re totally weird. You’re a dip and a doofus.”
“Mmm.”
“I hate working for you.”
“I shall be in touch about the day and time.”
“And you still owe me an apology, goddammit. For the way you reacted when I told you—”
“Shame on me,” Pillow said, so quickly that Cook barely understood him. “I was so nervous. I was afraid you would turn us down. Shame on me.”
“Nervous? But—”
“I’d followed your work for years, Jeremy. I was scared to death of you.”
“But you were mean to me. You acted like you wanted to withdraw the job offer.”
“Yes! That’s the devil of it. That’s what insecurity does. I was convinced that the Pillow Agency was so beneath you, and you were so … so exalted, that when I saw that little bit of tarnish on you, yes, I became mean. I thought, ‘Why, I’m not as bad as I thought I was. He’s the bad one.’ I became unkind. Then, over the weekend, I gave myself a good talking to and sorted things out. When you reported for work Monday morning, I was the happiest of men.”
“Good God,” said Cook. “I had no idea.”
“Insecurity, Jeremy. The family of civilized man is bound in a chain of events linked by insecurity.”
“But why didn’t you tell me any of this before?”
“You’re right, I should have, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Pillow was chock-full of anguish. “I was ashamed to. Oh, shame upon shame! Such a fraud! Such a hypocrite! Here I am preaching communication, and I can’t even—” He broke off. “I can’t—” The next sound was Pillow’s phone rattling into the cradle.
Cook hung up the phone and carried it back to the table on the landing. Pillow wouldn’t have to worry about any more phone calls from him for some time.
He took another look out the window. Beth had finished vacuuming and was coiling up the extension cord as she headed back to the house. What an odd thing to do, Cook thought—vacuum his car. Was she often moved to spontaneous charity like this? Did that mean she was not a bitch? Or was she a bitch and a snoop too? And what had Pillow meant when he said Cook wouldn’t be able to thank her?
He went to The Pillow Manual and popped the second seal. There was his answer:
DAY TWO
Watch. Say nothing.
“Okay by me,” Cook said aloud to himself. “I mean, what the hell, hunh? Why not? You bet. Hey, go for it.” In anticipation of his day of speechlessness, he continued talking to himself in this idiotic vein while he showered and dressed for breakfast.
“It’s useless,” said Beth. “Save your breath.”
“What do you mean?” said Dan.
“He’s not talking.”
“How come?”
“I don’t know. Part of the routine, I guess.” Beth bent close to Cook, who was seated at the kitchen table, and said loudly, “Part of the routine—right, Jeremy?”
Cook leaned back a bit from the force of her voice and nodded. He had been using nonverbals with her all through breakfast. He hoped they were allowed.
As she carried her dishes to the sink, Beth said, “By the way, Jerem
y, I ran the vacuum cleaner through your car. I figured since I had it out I’d go ahead and do it. I hope that was okay.”
Cook nodded and gave her a smile.
“I’m afraid I accidentally vacuumed something out of the little tray in front. It was metal—I could hear it go up the tube. Was it something important?”
Cook’s smile faded.
“It is important, isn’t it?” she said. “Hell, I’m sorry. I’ll fish it out of the bag. I should be able to find it in there. What is it?”
Cook shook his head. The one-year anniversary of Paula’s exit from his life was coming up in a week. He had been waiting until then to part with this little relic—a tiny heart-shaped earring of hers that had been rattling around in the tray for fifty-one weeks. He might as well let it go now.
Beth was looking at him curiously. He shook his head again. She shrugged and turned to the sink.
“Okay,” Dan said. Cook had observed that this was his favorite transition word. He sat down at the table and looked at Cook. He seemed about to speak to him, but then he turned toward Beth. “Honey, you forgot Robbie’s Hershey Kisses. He looked through his lunch in the car and said they weren’t in there.”
“I couldn’t find any,” Beth said. “I thought he took them with him.”
“Nope,” said Dan. “He was pretty upset. Dessert’s important to him.”
“I know that. But they’re just not here.”
Cook’s face was buried in his coffee cup. The brutal truth was that in the course of his long night of tape transcription he had plundered the Hershey Kisses, emptying the bowl in the living room into his pockets before going up to his room, and then tiptoeing back down later for the half-full bag in the kitchen.
Dan was looking at Cook as if he were a sculpture. “This is neat. You going to just hang out and watch us?”
Cook nodded.
“We just go about our business?” Cook nodded.
“How long you gonna be like this?”
Cook thought. He made a circle by bringing his cupped hands together. He made this circle rise from a point to his left, just below the table, in an arc that ended below the table again to his right. He felt like a dumb Indian in a dumb movie.
Dan’s grin grew as Cook’s little sun rose and set. “Great,” he said. “Okay. Let me bring you up to date. I just took Robbie to school. This is his last week. Beth’s got a couple parent conferences this afternoon. Me? I’m here, at your service.” Dan’s smile faded a bit as he ran out of gas. He looked at Beth. “You know, I have this urge to tease him. I can’t take him seriously like this.”
The Full Catastrophe Page 9