by Lee Upton
Instead he paced the room, carrying the woman about like a doll, tucking her into bed, calling her his little girl, and all the while we thickened, some of us climbing atop one another to peer through holes in the plaster, climbing, some of us, to the ceiling. And what we lived with: a ridge of mold, a mouse’s skull, another ridge of mold, softening raw and black, sinking into purplish and yellow and gray arteries behind the walls.
At first, there was no indication that the woman would be any better than the others: the tubercular-looking man who peeled at the walls before drifting into a deep sleep. Or the old woman who buried her face in her pillow. Our better hope: the architect who ran a blade across the ceiling as if slitting a giant cloud of plaster until his wife rushed into the room. Next there was a little girl who stayed behind during a game of hide-and-seek and—bless her—took a stub of charcoal and marked a vein along every wall. It was an escape route, a start.
But then the woman—this woman—looked at the wallpaper, looked and looked and looked, although she didn’t see, did she?
It was dizzying to watch the woman tilting her head, to watch her spinning this way and that. Her eyes followed the paths we made in the wallpaper, paths that we hoped would allow us someday to arrive beyond the elms and past the hedges, beyond where the trout lilies grow. Beyond where the moths pulse, to where the oak breaks apart in soft rot, where every burdock dries and bursts like a key made of smoke.
Whatever she touched in the room came off on the woman’s hands and clothes, pollen smudging her forehead, her neck, her shoulders.
And as she looked, we looked too. We stared into her eyes until we saw corridors stretch, arches rise, tunnels curl backward and split every which way. Tunnel after tunnel ran in all directions. The patterns were unmatched, a disaster, like a map of arteries tangled and clotted, more tributaries streaking away and splintering into darkness and still others collapsing and sinking entirely.
We stared and stared until one night we saw even farther into her eyes—into a narrow passageway, and little by little the passageway opened into a sitting room with velvet curtains and an antique globe and book-lined shelves. In the farthest corner emerged an opening where a staircase led to distant lower floors.
The room spun until we saw the woman herself standing at the top of the stairs. Her dressing gown was stenciled with a reddish-black pattern of long tendrils. In one arm she held her baby, her right hand free to open the stair gate, and then to grip the banister.
And then we understood. It was blood that crept down her gown. She was losing blood, the baby bundled close to her chest. Her breath came hard. She wanted air but could not breathe. She wanted out of that house she shared with her husband and his sister. Prickles needled at her scalp. Needled and rippled down her neck and into her arms. Still, she was strong enough. Even if blood soaked her gown, creeping downward, she was strong. Her legs were not trembling. Her legs would hold her.
Far below at the bottom of the stairs, the black and white tiles shifted. Shifted again, changing places. The tiles receded, dimming. Across from the banister the wall turned soft as a sponge. Then the wall retreated from her fingers. When she reached for it, the banister slipped under her hand.
A day later she will sleep in a bed nailed to the floor at the top of this old mansion, and despite the rising heat of summer she will stay in this high room of barred windows, metal rings planted in the walls.
Is a baby so new to the world in need of a formal burial? A baby less than a day old, its crushed flesh tucked and swaddled in a basket? Once they arrive at the estate, the husband carries the baby far beyond the gardens and the hedges. The soil deepens in a patch of coriander, and surely, eventually, the baby will only be a dream for the woman—for her mind is weak and she would never forgive herself if the baby’s death weren’t a dream. Let her believe the baby’s alive, at least for a while, alive in the house downstairs. That’s the kindest thing. And let her write on her little sheaf of papers. Let her tell a little story to calm herself.
But then no one had counted on us, how day after day the woman would crouch on the floor, her eyes following the waves in the wallpaper, the runners, the swellings where we crept for her. She knew there was something within the walls, there inside the walls where we bumped in our dumb show, where we were crafting our messages, messages she pressed against and followed as we wrote in fumes, in the fragrance of honeysuckle dipped in axle grease, in the smell of sweat-saturated wool burning under a steam iron.
We feared that what held us was stronger than the wallpaper that separated us from the woman. We would always be within the wall.
And we feared that a nurse would be acquired. How convenient to keep the woman on the estate that had so long needed a permanent tenant, away from wagging tongues in the city, where a physician’s profession demands discretion. And so the woman would be with us, locked away as we were in the room where the littlest of us touches noses with her whenever she comes close to the wall.
But that is not what happened. This is what happens:
The woman works as her fingertips bleed and her wrists bleed more. She strips at the yellow wallpaper until every wall is bare. And we float.
We float and know that far back in the woman’s mind her memory is uncoiling. In days she will ask to hold her child. She will demand to hold the child until she’s answered.
To whom was the woman writing? How did she know we would answer?
Feathery scruff, thistle down, speckled caraway, poppy seed, milk thistle, the trout lily’s disintegrating throat, the carp’s scale, the waxwing’s spot, gold blush on dewlaps, from the dust you came and to dust you will return, breathable dust. Sifting, foxed, disintegrating into spores, mold.
There’s a gate by the stairwell and a lock lower down. We float past the gate and the lock. It is morning, and a mist gathers, cool and growing.
We know our way.
We float through mold, leaf, and loose soil, each of us bulbous and eyeless, softening near crumbling forgotten memoryless flesh.
Mustardseed, Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth. Fairy dust. Dust to dust to dust, dust of dust, dust of the old, dust out of books.
What Doesn’t Kill You Makes Me Stronger
Anselm was in the bar with two other men from the retreat: Toby, a minister terrified of speaking in public, who was married to a woman who was having an affair with his father; and Dick, who worked in some secret capacity for what he called the cosmetic surgery industry. Anselm himself was in recovery from his father’s death—which he tried not to think about—and a succession of bad jobs, which he couldn’t stop thinking about.
To escape the camp, Anselm and his new acquaintances Toby and Dick had hiked to the tavern. All three had endured enough of the sessions meant to increase their self-confidence.
On the television above the mahogany bar squatted a sumo wrestler who looked like Alfred Hitchcock inflated in a milk bath.
“This place reminds me of a strip club,” Toby said, craning his neck.
“For a minister you seem a little too preoccupied with nudity,” Dick said. His head grazed a patch of buffalo hide nailed to the wall next to their table.
“You can tell a lot about a person if the clothes come off,” Toby said.
“Yeah, like you can tell if you should get the hell out of the room,” Dick said.
“It’s authenticity I’m interested in,” Toby said.
Dick sighed. Even in the dim bar light his prematurely white hair glowed. “What makes you think people are any more authentic when they’re naked?”
“They can’t hide much,” Toby said, spanking his thighs. His bicycle pants gave off a faint light.
“Oh no?” Dick said. “Have you lived? No, you haven’t. My bet is that the biggest faking takes place when people are naked. Women anyway.”
As the other men bickered, Anselm brooded over his employment failures, all of which followed a clear progression—from tending the artifacts of the dead at the allied historical s
ocieties headquarters, to granting desires to the unneedy at a charitable organization, to serving, supposedly, the interests of residential and corporate lawns for Green Growth. The latter corporation specialized in treatments so ecologically criminal that a misapplication in one suburban neighborhood left sparrows fluttering around the bases of flagpoles, unable to lift off. Seven chipmunks ventured through a mail slot and were found in comas on the hardwood floor of a beautician’s foyer. After hearing about the sparrows and the chipmunks Anselm left the firm. His current niche: freelance tax and investment adviser. Three neighbors, two never unaccompanied by dogs, hired him for matters less to do with their bank statements and investments than for reasons of acute loneliness.
By now, the barroom was bloating. “Let’s have a toast,” Toby said, like a stage drunkard, even though he hadn’t had much more than foam to drink. Dick was right. It was hard to believe Toby was a minister. Not so hard to believe about his problems with his wife.
Anselm told himself that maybe soon he could leave his obsessions about his employment failures behind. Maybe he could tell himself everything had been a choice. That’s what some of the discussion sessions at the retreat had been about: choice. Besides listening to blowhards, the retreaters had swum in a pond, picked berries, and handled snakes. But nothing seemed as useful as this nonprescribed activity: escaping the retreat and drinking beer. Before long the three men would have to hike back to their cabins, each of which resembled a minimalist high school production set for Annie Get Your Gun.
Maybe, Anselm considered, his problem was that he tried too hard. Maybe he had driven colleagues away with his perverse friendliness, smiling like a demented clown. But was it all his fault? His historical society colleagues, what did they know? They couldn’t date with accuracy a gallon of milk, let alone a muskrat’s skull. Seeking understanding through the scrupulous display of artifacts. There were more authentic and chronologically precise exhibits on the walls of a Cracker Barrel.
As for his colleagues at Green Growth—they would crop-dust the Amazon, chemicalize the most fragile artery of the Chesapeake. And as for the Dream Your Dream Foundation—the witless choice of a name was the true key to any organization’s secret nature: they dreamed his dreams for him. They scrubbed the light off the future—the future that once had gleamed for him like the inside of the bone-colored shell he kept on his desk when he was a boy.
“You from that yoga camp?” The words bellowed from the twilight of the defunct cigarette machine. The man who shouted them scraped his chair back. Hunched next to him was his spotter—a younger duplicate. Professional bar types, Anselm thought. Bar guards. Like dogs that take too much interest in their dog houses.
“It’s not exactly a yoga retreat,” Toby called over in his informative nervous-minister voice. “Some of the people might do yoga, but it’s not a retreat for yoga.”
The squat fellow said, “You look like one of those yoga guys. In those tight yoga pants.”
The blood was leaving Toby’s face, and his pupils overrode his normally translucent eyes. What was left: Raggedy Andy’s eyes.
Dick bent toward Toby. “Aren’t those uncomfortable?” he asked.
“No. They’re stretchy.” Toby picked at the right leg of his bicycle pants, just above the knee. “Like a second skin. Dolphin skin.”
Anselm saw familiar eyes staring. Astonishingly enough, it was Ray Trunkajar from Human Resources at Green Growth. A memory descended like an acid helmet: Ray Trunkajar at the sexual harassment workshop. Ray had emphasized his one piece of advice: always keep your office door open. Given that they all worked in cubicles, including Ray, where everyone knew if you unwrapped a cough drop . . .
“How’s it going?” Anselm asked, unsure how he had managed to get over to Ray Trunkajar’s table. Above Ray, mounted on the wall, leered a stuffed jackrabbit with antlers nailed into its head.
Ray motioned to a chair, the back of which appeared to be made of a coat hanger.
“Just wanted to say hello,” Anselm said. “Acknowledge that we have more in common than anyone else. A shared past. I didn’t expect to see you here.”
Anselm meant the tavern, but Ray said, “Oh yeah, well, I do this sort of thing. A strength retreat—sometimes you have to take your own advice. I’ve sent enough employees to crap places. It helps though. I don’t mind telling you that I haven’t been pleased about seeing you at the retreat. I can’t escape my past.”
So Ray was at the strength retreat—not just at the tavern—and had been watching Anselm, possibly monitoring him at the campfire and at the buffet and maybe at the berry-picking session and during that snake-handling session when Anselm humiliated himself by shrieking.
“You’ve got a nice girlfriend,” Ray said. He wiped at a circle of wetness on the table with his cocktail napkin.
“I didn’t know you knew Janine,” Anselm said. He felt better now that he could tag Ray as one of those single guys who fantasizes about other men’s girlfriends.
“My wife’s at a comic-book convention,” Ray said. “I couldn’t take it—not another year. My wife likes the superheroes. I tell her it’s like being married to an adolescent boy.” He paused dramatically. “I decided to try the retreat, and it’s better than I could have hoped for. Quiet time. I’m becoming a convert. What about you?”
“I’m getting the hang of it.”
“When I saw you I have to confess I thought I’d blown my cover. You’re not going to blow my cover are you?”
“What’s your cover?” Anselm asked.
“I don’t mean I’m lying. I’m just holding back the Human Resources angle.”
“Nothing’s wrong with Human Resources.”
“Give me a break. I heard you were terminally ill. But that was a long time ago. You’re okay?”
“I’m not sick, Ray.”
“The things people say. It’s good to relax. I don’t have to hear any complaints. I’m glad you’re not dying.”
Dying? Why would Ray think he was dying? Dying—Anselm didn’t intend to be dying.
Another memory crouched on Anselm’s chest—before Green Growth, before Ray. A memory from the Dream Your Dream Foundation. After a few months a weird cushion of air inserted itself around Anselm, a no-go zone, like he was a bubble boy. Did they think he was dying—back then, even before his colleagues thought he was dying at Green Growth? That could explain a lot. Like the time he was stepping off the elevator at the foundation. Those two accountants who looked at him like he was a male stripper molting into a skeleton before their eyes. Terminally ill, Anselm thought. Back then it was his father who was terminally ill.
A weird rumor—but a long-lived one. Someone said Anselm was dying. The rumor spread. From one job to another. The looks his colleagues gave him were looks of pity. “Rumor has a way of self-generating,” Anselm offered.
“I don’t judge,” Ray said. “I really try not to judge lifestyle choices.”
Anselm drew in his breath. “What do you mean?”
“Okay,” Ray said. “I somehow can’t believe some of the stories anymore.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Okay. Two things. Your health.”
“And what else?”
It was a long time before Ray spoke. “Bestiality,” he said.
Anselm had to think. Feasibility. Did Ray say feasibility? He made Ray repeat himself.
“With animals?” Anselm asked. He laughed. Sweat broke out on his back.
A memory again. The sexual harassment workshop at Green Growth. The guy from technology services asking, with a straight face: Are sheep covered? Much shifting in the seats around Anselm.
“What kind of animals?” Anselm asked.
“You would know.”
Why is it that whenever Anselm passed between store theft detection devices he felt guilty? He felt guilty now. He didn’t even like animals all that much. Had Janine known? All that worry, all those days, months, years of feeling disrespected and dislike
d at work, and what was the problem? People thought he was dying and in love with sheep. He tried to fill in possibilities. Squirrels, rabbits, ducks. What is bestiality? Goats. Species across species attraction. More like one-way attraction. What did terminal illness have to do with it? He guessed that the rumor kept people from asking for the truth.
“Let me assure you,” Anselm said. “I think you could ask Janine. It’s not like . . .”
“There was the chicken story,” Ray said, folding his hands. “Listen, I’m sorry. The stories were vivid. And your girlfriend looked miserable.”
“How could anyone believe that? How could you believe it?”
“Perversions are common.”
“Did everyone think I was—you know?”
“What?”
“Perverted?”
“I thought you were dying. Now you tell me you’re not even sick. I believed you were terminally ill. What—was I going to deprive you of a pleasure that didn’t hurt anyone?”
“Except for the chickens. Jesus. You must have pitied Janine.”
“Of course. But not everyone knew.”
“They knew. Bestiality. It’s not a rumor that has limited value as an item of circulation.” Anselm glanced up at the jackalope above Ray’s head. He looked away quickly.
“An insecure attachment to human beings,” Ray was saying. “That’s what occurred to me—but I don’t mean to say I believed it entirely. It was just there, you know. It was something to take into account.”
A young waitress offered them all a ride back to camp, including Ray. Anselm sat in the front seat next to her, with Toby squeezed against the side door. Ray and Dick and some other guy whose name never came clear were crowded into the back seat.
Shadows flew at the windshield. With each bump in the road something tickled Anselm’s chin. He batted at air.
“Oh, geez,” the waitress said, tapping the rear view mirror. “Sorry about the feather.”
A wave of panic swept through him.
The next morning Anselm stepped out of the concrete shower stall on the camp’s rim and shook his arms as if they crawled with worms. He shaved, splashing the placard of instructions for employees to wash their hands, where a scold had written in black pen, “That means you!” Scolds. His colleagues at the allied historical societies had been worse than scolds. Staff meetings were like that Afghan sport where men rode horses and batted around a dead goat head.