The Full Catastrophe

by David Carkeet

  “You just did,” Dan said sadly.

  Beth shook her head.

  “You said it beautifully.”

  “Oh God,” she said, and she seemed to heave all her anguish out in those two words.

  The phone rang. Cook leaped to grab it before anyone else could, jostling Dan aside as he did. He wanted them to keep talking, to stay on track.

  It was Beth’s mother. As soon as Cook said, “Hi, Rose,” Beth signaled with a violent head shake that she didn’t want to talk to her and left the kitchen. Dan was right behind her. Cook told Beth’s mother no one else was there. He put off her attempts to be sociable with him and hung up. But by the time he reached the second floor the bedroom door was already closed.

  He went back up to his room and lay down and listened some more. Then he went to his little yellow desk. He was definitely done with “Roy Pillow, Jr.,” the little bastard, and was glad to turn a new leaf of The Pillow Manual:

  DAY SIX

  Mrs. Pillow.

  He went to the phone. For the first time in his experience, Roy Pillow was not at the office. Cook let the phone ring and ring. He dialed Pillow’s number a dozen times in the next hour, both at the office and at home. He felt disoriented, abandoned, orphaned. Pillow at the office—this was a fact of life he had come to expect. Pillow not at the office meant that something was wrong. Unless Pillow was out tracking down Paula? He comforted himself with that thought. But what if something was horribly wrong? What if Pillow had dropped dead? That would mean he wasn’t on Paula’s trail at all. The thought terrified him.

  Cook went down to the first floor and out onto the deck. It had rained the night before—the thunder had nearly thrown him out of bed once—but the day was hot now and muggier than ever. He went back inside, turned on the air conditioner in the sun-room, and closed the French doors. He turned on the radio and stretched out in the recliner, waiting for further developments.

  Some time later, he heard the thud of the front door. He jumped to his feet and went to the living room window. Beth was getting into her car. He watched her drive off and went upstairs. The bedroom door was still closed. He sighed and returned to the sun-room.

  A few minutes later, Dan came into the kitchen and got himself some iced tea. Cook turned off the radio, joined him in the kitchen, and followed him into the living room. They both sat down.

  Dan took a long drink and said, “Something has happened.”

  “What? Where did Beth go?”

  “Just to the drugstore, to get some stuff for the trip. I didn’t mean that. I meant there’s been some give. She appreciates my position. She’s still freaked out, but she can see my side now.”

  “I knew she would. You said she storms out of an argument when she senses you’re right. That’s why she got out of the car. I knew she suddenly saw it from your side.”

  Dan smiled slightly. He took a swallow of iced tea.

  “You’re right about her, Dan. Her views are traditional as hell. Mainstream American.”

  “Yeah. It’s a bitch.”

  “Money. Manhood. You’re completely right.”

  “Yeah. I always did think I had a legitimate beef.”

  “She’s got to change—”

  “Yeah. And I think she will. She’s got a helluva lot of character.”

  “—but you’ve got to change first.”

  Dan seemed to trip in his forward progress. “Beth’s screwed up, so I’ve got to change?”

  “Let me explain,” said Cook.

  “No.”

  “You see, Beth’s got this weakness—this major, major weakness. But you’ve got to be strong enough to let her be weak in that way. You’ve got to absorb it. Everybody’s got a big weakness, okay? And everybody who loves somebody has got to know their big weakness and absorb it.” Cook had said all this fast, for fear of being interrupted. But Dan was listening, so he slowed and caught his breath. “Right now, Beth’s weakness hits you right where you’re already insecure, so you lash out to bring her down, which makes her lash back. Imagine it differently. Imagine her being weak, and instead of getting mad you go to her. You comfort her. You say, ‘There, there.’ Hell, you did it when you got out of the car and went after her.”

  “I didn’t say, ‘There, there.’”

  “But you went after her. Unlike yesterday. Remember? We were watching Beth and her parents on the sidewalk, and you said Beth was upset, and what did you do? You went and stuck your head in a posthole. What an asshole!”

  “What an asshole!” said Dan—but not in agreement. He seemed to be experimenting with the words, testing them.

  “You’ve got the power to make her feel all better when she’s unhappy. You’ve got the power.”

  Dan shook his head. “Where do you get this stuff? You sound so sure.”

  “I am. I can see what Beth wants, because she doesn’t want it from me. She wants you to be a man, and that means you’ve got to stop being a man.”

  “What is this—Zen counseling?”

  “You’ve got to stop being a man in the sense of being an isolated dumbshit. You’ve got to be big and strong for her. Like in ‘The Man I Love.’ She plays it all the time. It’s about what she wants: a man who’s big and strong. You’ve got to be big and strong enough to become more womanly with her.”

  Dan laughed. “Jesus. Did she tell you all this? Is that where you got it?”

  “No. No woman would put it this way. They see it as being manly when you become womanly.”

  Dan snorted. He took a drink of iced tea.

  “My advice to you now, Dan, is to chat.”

  Dan laughed.

  “I mean it,” said Cook. “Chat. That’s how people are people together. They chat.”

  “I don’t want to chat. I hate to chat.”

  “You’ve probably never tried it.”

  “What do you mean, anyway? Chat. Does that mean talk about what she wants to talk about?”

  “Well, when you’re with her, what do you want to talk about?”

  “Nothing.”

  This time Cook laughed. “You’re such a man. You’re not a prick or a failure. You’re just a man.”

  A wild look of incomprehension swept over Dan’s face.

  “What do you want?” Cook asked. “To be alone? Is that it?”

  “I want peace—peace in the valley. I just want to get on with my life.”

  “Is Beth included?”

  Dan took a sharp breath. “Not like she wants to be. She wants to be … She wants me to think of nothing but her.”

  “What were you going to say?”

  Dan hesitated. “I was going to say she wants to be the most important thing in my life.”

  “Why didn’t you say it?”

  “You know why.” Dan stood up and looked out the window. “She’s supposed to be the most important thing in my life. You think I don’t know that? Hell, that’s why I hate talking about this stuff. I know I don’t have the feelings I’m supposed to have, and I hate myself for it.”

  “But you can have them.”

  “God,” Dan said, shaking his head, “I’m just like her. I know what I should say, but it’s so hard.”

  Cook stood up and joined Dan at the window. “It’s hard because the two of you have been enemies. When that changes, everything will change.” Through the trees in the park he thought he saw Beth’s car. “Is that Beth?”

  “Yeah.”

  Cook watched the car approach the corner of the park. “Someday she’ll say stuff that used to hurt you, and you’ll be able to hold her and say ‘There, there.’ And all the other stuff will be a joke, too.” He gestured out the window. “There’ll come a time when she pulls up to the curb and scrapes the tires, and you’ll just say, ‘Why, that’s Beth! She’s home! Isn’t it wonderful?’”

  They watched her round the corner of the park, slowing without shifting down. When she accelerated out of the turn, they could hear the engine strain and ping. When she came to a stop, they h
eard the cruel sound of rubber and hubcap scraping on the curb.

  Cook looked at Dan. His mouth and eyes were wide open in a frozen look of wild good cheer. Cook wasn’t sure if Dan was mocking his prediction or trying to make it come true.

  Twenty-two

  While Dan and Beth packed and talked, Cook put in a lot of one-sided phone time, trying to find out what “Mrs. Pillow” meant. Cook caught snatches of Dan and Beth’s noise whenever one of them came out of the bedroom for something. The rest of the time, they were behind that door, going cold turkey without the linguist.

  When Cook wasn’t trying to reach Pillow, he was in the sun-room, reading and listening to an FM station’s pledge drive, interspersed with classical pieces requested by the listeners. After a couple of hours of this, he took Robbie’s portable radio out to the front porch and listened to part of a Cardinals baseball game. He had seen St. Louisans doing this on their front porches, and he wanted to see what possible pleasure there could be in it. The old guy from next door came out onto his porch to take stock of things. He spied Cook and waved, but he did not call him Dan. He asked Cook what the score was. Cook had no idea, so he made one up, and the old man swore and went back into his house.

  When Cook came back inside, Dan and Beth were in the kitchen, talking. Cook paused at the swinging door, cracked it open slightly, and listened.

  “God,” said Dan. “They’re playing all the most boring ones you can name. The worst ones.”

  “Yeah,” said Beth. “‘Bolero.’ Give me a break.”

  “And ‘Academic Festival Overture.’”

  “Agh. Really?”

  “Yeah, while you were out. And that ‘Greensleeves’ thing.”

  “No!”

  “Shall we call something in? Something tolerable to listen to?”

  “Sure. But what?”

  “I know,” said Dan. “No English composers. That’ll be our request. We’ll pledge at the hundred-dollar level if they promise to play no English composers for an entire year.”

  Beth laughed. “Better make it fifty dollars.”

  “Why?”

  “You know why. Got to cut back. Downgrade.”

  Cook heard noises. Conflict? He listened hard. The noises proved to be scampering footsteps, and he jumped back from the door as Beth shot past and up the stairs, with Dan close behind. Both of them laughed to see him there.

  Cook stared at himself in the wall mirror and listened as they predictably romped their way to the bedroom, where the door closed, as he knew it would. What next? Would that horrible nightmare of college life be replayed—hearing your roommate go at it through the walls? He went back to the sun-room, closed the door, and turned the air conditioner fan on high.

  About a half hour later, Dan came in and nodded to Cook. He sat down on the couch. Something seemed to be on his mind. Beth came in a moment later and stood next to the couch.

  “Shall we tell him?” she said.

  “It’s no big deal,” said Dan.

  “I agree, but he should still know about it.” Beth turned to Cook. “A few minutes ago, we tried to … Well, what happened was—”

  “It was a failed fuck,” Dan said bluntly.

  “Pardon me?” said Cook. He hoped he hadn’t heard right.

  Dan shrugged. “It happens.”

  “I didn’t know you had a name for it,” Beth said with a little laugh.

  Christ, Cook thought. The one subject he had been lucky to avoid so far, and now here it was. “Tell me all about it,” he said.

  “It just wasn’t there,” Dan said. “We packed it in.”

  “We’re getting along fine right now,” said Beth, looking at Dan. “I can’t figure out what went wrong.”

  “It happens,” Dan said with another shrug. “It’s like a bad meal somewhere. You move on. You write it off.”

  There was a long pause. They seemed to expect Cook to say something. “How far did you get?” he asked.

  “I was exactly nine minutes from ejaculation,” Dan said.

  “Get serious,” Cook said. “I mean from the other end.”

  “We don’t fool around with that,” Dan said sternly.

  “Ooh,” Beth said.

  “There was that one attempt though, wasn’t there, honey? In New Orleans?”

  Beth laughed. “God, what possessed us?”

  “Damn it,” said Cook. “You know what I mean. From the beginning. How long had you been at it before you gave up?”

  “Quite a while, actually,” Beth said.

  “What happened at the moment of failure?”

  Beth looked at Dan, as if for help with her answer. “You spoke first. You said, ‘You’re not here.’”

  Dan frowned. “No I didn’t.”

  “Yes you did.”

  “No way. I said … something else. I’m sure of it. Let me think. I said, ‘Where are you?’”

  “Okay,” said Beth. “It’s the same thing.”

  “No it’s not.”

  “Sure it is. You were complaining that I wasn’t into it.” Dan looked as dumb as a two-by-four. Suddenly, understanding seemed to dawn on all parts of his face at once. “No no no. You misunderstood me. I wanted to find out where you were in terms of arousal. I wanted to know what you wanted next.”

  Beth’s face went blank. “Oh,” she said, also rather dumbly. “Gee. You don’t usually ask, you know. I mean, you don’t usually ask.”

  “I figured we should try to communicate more.”

  She smiled ruefully. “Nice try.”

  “You thought I was accusing you of not being involved?”

  “Not accusing, really. I wouldn’t say accusing. I don’t like that word. Accusing.”

  “Whatever. You thought it was like an impatient whine or something. ‘Where are you?’ Like, ‘Where are you, because you’re certainly not here.’”

  “Yes.” Beth nodded swiftly several times. “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you correct me? You were into it, right?”

  “Sure. Couldn’t you tell?”

  “If I was mistaken, why didn’t you correct me?”

  “Because I thought you were trying to tell me you weren’t into it.”

  “Jesus!” Dan laughed a big, full-throated laugh. “What a pair we are. Come on. Let’s go back.”

  Beth smiled, reached out, and took his hand.

  As they left the room together, Cook nodded with satisfaction. That wasn’t so bad, he thought.

  Fifteen minutes later, Dan came back into the sun-room. Cook sensed something was wrong again. Dan had the downcast look of someone plagued by nagging constipation.

  Dan looked forlornly out a window onto the backyard. “Once you get off to a bad start …” His voice died.

  Beth came into the room. “Let’s face it—we weren’t in the mood. It’s no problem.”

  Dan gave Cook a funny look. “Geez. We get along and now we can’t screw.”

  “It’s not you,” said Cook. “It’s the trip. Nobody can make love when they know they’re going to fly over the ocean the next day.” Eager to discourage any follow-up questions, Cook stood up and offered to take them out to dinner. He had noticed a Jamaican restaurant in the Loop and said he wanted to take them there. Beth said that was nice, but she was worried that they had too much to do. Cook said he would go get some takeout. They said great and gave him their orders.

  At dinner, Beth raved about her chicken and asked Dan to try some. She held it out right in front of his mouth. He took it and chewed it. A funny look crossed his face. “I’ve always hated that,” he said. He blinked the rapid eyeblinks of a man with a new insight.

  “What,” said Beth.

  “When you feed me stuff.”

  Beth tensed. “What are you saying?”

  “Don’t get nervous. I’m just registering this feeling. It’s never occurred to me before. I hate it when you feed me.”

  “It’s not like I do it every five minutes.”

  “Even if you did it onc
e a year, I would hate it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I can feed myself.”

  Cook laughed.

  Beth looked at Cook. “You’ve got this new behavior, Jeremy. This inappropriate laughter. It’s really annoying. Knock it off.”

  “Sorry,” Cook said. “It’s just another little thing. From your point of view it’s a sharing thing—you want to share an experience with Dan. But he sees it as being fed. For you it’s romantic, but it makes him feel infantile.”

  Beth said, “When he gives me a taste of something, I don’t feel infantile.”

  “But you’re a woman,” Cook said.

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “Something,” Cook said. It was the best he could do. He looked to Dan for support.

  Dan groaned. “God, it never ends.”

  After dinner, Dan and Beth finished packing. They let Cook into the bedroom at that point, asking him to brainstorm with them about things they might have forgotten. Beth produced an Italian phrase book and slaughtered this daughter of Latin. Cook taught her the values of Italian c and g, and he introduced her to the foreign joy of pure monophthongs and unaspirated consonants. As for Dan, Cook taught him the rich array of Italian gestures—the forearm jerk, the cheek screw, the eyelid pull, and the chin flick—cautioning him to use them only from a safe distance, from a passing train, say, or a departing jet. He also sat them down and admonished them strongly to keep colorful bits of Italian out of their cards and letters home.

  When it was clear that they would finish packing with some time to spare, Dan mysteriously slipped out of the house for about twenty minutes. When he came back he held a videotape in the air.

  “The African Queen,” he said to Beth. “You said we saw it in the sun-room together, and you had a nice thought about the many films we would watch there, and I had no memory of it at all. I want to start over.”

  “Aw,” said Beth.

  So when they were all packed, they watched it. They watched Bogey become transformed by love from the scrappy, independent Mr. Allnut into the cuddly Charlie. The more cuddly Bogey got, the more cuddly Dan and Beth got. Cook finally excused himself with the explanation that he was afraid of leeches and wanted to avoid that scene.