There’s a pause as the man on the other end of the transmission waits for a reply, but when he doesn’t get one, he continues and says, “Well, uh, I got a customer here who’s looking for a particular type of lady’s deodorant called Red Roses and…” A woman’s voice cuts in faintly from the background, her words fuzzy and indecipherable, and then the man corrects himself with, “Um, sorry, Bed of Roses, not Red Roses. She says she buys it from here all the time but she’s not seeing it and, um, I’m not either. I don’t even see a spot for it so I don’t think we could have sold out of it or anything. Do you know if we’ve got any in back, or did it get discontinued or something?”
The manager’s uninjured arm begins to move slowly, languidly, and for an absurd moment I think he’s about to reach over and grab the walkie-talkie, but instead he procures from the pocket of his pants a pack of Pall Malls, which he thumbs open and lifts to his mouth, pulling a cigarette out with his teeth and then letting the pack fall to the floor. He reaches back into his pocket and digs around before removing his hand, empty as it had been before its entry. His wasted eye rolls back towards me and he says in a low, croaking whisper, “You got a light?”
Maybe it’s just reflex caused by years of corporate brainwashing, an ingrained sense of submission to authority that permeates beyond the white walls of my own workplace, but my hand instinctively falls into my pocket and pulls out a Bic the same shade of orange as the pack of cigarettes on the floor. I look down dumbly at the wickedly innocent little device in my palm, surprised by its presence there due to the eleven days it’s been since I last used it or anything else of its kind. An until-now-unknown habit, I suppose, of continuing to carry lighters despite the recent cessation of my need to use them.
Its purpose fulfilled in a figurative sense before a literal one, the sight of the lighter causes a brief crackle of light to appear in the junkie manager’s hazy eyes, signifying a relief only added to that which he no doubt already feels, sweet orange frosting glazed upon a China-white cake. My sweating palm slickens it, and I feel it may slip from my hand if I do not soon rid myself of it. More so, I am suddenly afraid of it; it is a threat, it is mocking me quietly in a manner I cannot describe nor understand, but I must, must cast it away before it can do to me unspeakable things, things it thinks in its awful little metal head, grinning at me with fiery bile creeping at the back of its silver throat. My impending act of minor generosity has now become decidedly selfish, for I want the Reiner fellow to have the lighter far more than he knows that he himself wants it.
And all at once it is gone from my hand, slipping away with eager ease and arcing through the air in an awkward tumble of juvenile somersaults, its flight feeling more protracted than surely it must really be, and then it lands in the manager’s narrow lap to be scooped up and flicked, flicked, flicked until upon the third strike the anxious yellow tongue of quivering flame leaps up and gently caresses the end of the cigarette…I can hear that delicious little crackle as paper gives way to ash and ember and I watch with bated breath as pale cheeks sink slightly inward and I can almost feel the smoke galloping into his lungs and lingering before being released slowly again into the stale air, curling into cloudy blue plumes around his head. “Thanks,” he whispers, barely audible…he is already nodding away, falling into a gray trance neither here nor there nor anywhere, retreating into the vast dark recesses of himself and leaving me out here with a sobbing, shrieking child with soaked pants. Whatever connection previously unrealized we may have shared vanishes, a strained cord snipped at the center by a huge pair of kitchen shears stained greenish-red from the insides of proverbial lambs dragged squealing from the warm comforting tits of their mothers, carried out of barns once thought safe and hauled into slaughterhouses abuzz with the whirring sound of grinding saws. His eyes swing shut like doors slammed in the faces of Bible-wielding carolers and Witnesses and messengers of gawd. I cannot sing. I have no Bible. I do not eat meat.
I step back. Our business here is done, the junkie having been appeased and my advanced son having already emptied his advanced bladder, never mind that it wasn’t where it should have been emptied and that reeking golden puddle is huge. I consider locking the door as I pull it closed but think better of it; protecting this man from further discovery is a courtesy I either cannot or will not grant…the extent of my trained submission to authority figures only reaches so far.
The door clicks resoundingly shut and reality more or less reappears around me, its sudden sharpening of clarity like the reaffirmation of normal pressure and sound following high-altitude ear-popping. My son’s shrill cries are more penetrating than ever, and the buzzing drone of dozens of meaningless conversations is overwhelming nigh to the point of being maddening. From invisible speakers somewhere above, Mick Jagger croons about his inability to get “no satisfaction”, which is a double negative and thereby he should be plenty satisfied so I don’t know what the fuck he’s whining about, anyway.
…IF THE CONDITIONS OF THIS RESTROOM …
“I know you didn’t,” I say through gritted teeth at my son, who between sobs is announcing to everyone that he “didn’t make it, didn’t make it, didn’t make it.” He’s leaving a trail of yellow droplets behind him, and I am all at once filled with shame and embarrassment despite the fact that no one is looking, no one is paying attention, no one seems to have even noticed.
Is any of this happening? Am I happening? Is he? Did the abhorrent bathroom encounter happen? Has anything happened?
I feel disconnected, out of touch, like I’ve stumbled through one of those fabled holes in time-space and I don’t know where to go so all I can really do is wait for the men on the chessboard to get up and tell me.
My head is beginning to hurt. My hands are shaking. Blackness is creeping in from the corners of my vision and
…DO NOT MEET YOUR SATISFACTION…
my palms are sweating so I lose grip of my son’s hand and
…PLEASE NOTIFY A MANAGER…
someone else is crying, someone else, someone not my son, and I look in the direction of the cries and find my vision pointed down the long smoking barrel of the water aisle, where the foreign woman still remains, but she is now on her knees and weeping, weeping, weeping and muttering something I can’t understand, something that isn’t English but is so much more beautiful, like wind chimes in a cool, rainy breeze…and yet there is tragedy in those unknown words, tragedy beyond comprehension, and I look from her to my son and then back to her and think, That there, that is suffering, that is something worth crying about. My son has wet his pants, and right now he knows no tribulation more intense than that. This little incident is the end of the world to him, but I can hear something in that woman’s voice and in her strained sobs, something that renders not only my son’s accident but my whole family’s entire lives completely irrelevant. That woman knows misery unlike anything I or my son or my wife will ever even begin to comprehend.
“GOD BLESS AMERICA” reads the bumper sticker on our minivan.
I am nauseated.
Hand clutching stomach churning with disgust, I force myself to walk forward, force myself not to think of the woman in the water aisle, force myself not to think about the man
he can’t be a man because he doesn’t smoke the same cigarettes as me
in the bathroom, not listening to the boy at my side, just thinking, one step at a time, don’t think, don’t think, don’t think, just hang on, hang on, this too shall pass, your problems are miniscule and they will pass just as they all do.
Blindly I stumble through the crowd and suddenly I am there and she stands before me, brimming shopping cart beside her, a stick of Teen Spirit antiperspirant in a delicate hand decorated with long lacquer fingernails, and her makeup-saturated face is pulled down in a frowning grimace wrought with frustration and annoyance.
“They don’t have it,” she says, her eyes still scanning the aisle as if her preferred deodorant may suddenly appear in a miraculous act of sup
ernatural kindness bestowed unto her by an otherwise-uncaring universe. “For years I’ve always gotten the same deodorant, and now all of a sudden they don’t have it. And the kid who works here couldn’t even find a goddamn manager. If I had the time, I’d write a complaint letter, or something. I want to know just what kind of show is being run here.”
I look at the stick of Teen Spirit in her hand and the only thing I can think to say is, “I didn’t even think they made that anymore.”
She looks at it and then tosses it bitterly into the overflowing cart. “Yeah, well, apparently they do. I wore Teen Spirit all through high school so that’s what I’m going to get. I just can’t believe they don’t have my deodorant. I just can’t believe it.”
“You’re not a teen anymore.”
She narrows her eyes at me, and then her gaze shifts to our son, who has stopped crying but his breath is still hitching and he’s wiping great green globs of snot from beneath his nose.
“He didn’t make it to the bathroom?” my wife asks, her face darkening, the fury beginning to fill up the eyes that I fell in love with in days seeming long past, long dead.
“No,” I say, my voice deadpan, and I realize with revulsion that I can smell it. The nausea is returning. “No, he didn’t make it.”
She sighs through gritted teeth and says to our advanced son, “I’ll deal with you when we get home. Pull it together and stop drawing attention to us.”
The boy nods, but more tears are beginning to stream down his red face and I fear another episode of sobbing is imminent. I’m not going to be able to deal with that. I’m going to need to get the fuck out of here before I lose it, if I haven’t already lost it, have I already lost it? I’m thinking of cigarettes that I’m not going to smoke, of all the things I’ve sworn I won’t do but that seem so goddamn enticing at the moment, and then my eyes fall to something in the shopping cart. My wife’s gaze follows, and then we lock eyes and she says, “Don’t fucking judge me. Just because you’re all enlightened now doesn’t mean I have to get up on your high horse with you. Don’t you fucking judge me.”
I’m not judging her, I’m really not. I’m just trying to think of something to say. For years I’ve always had something to say, always fighting to have the last word, but now I just can’t think of anything.
* * *
Something’s wrong with Daddy again. He sees something else he doesn’t like, but now it’s in Mommy’s cart and that makes me scared. I don’t know why Mommy would have anything that Daddy doesn’t like but she’s mad and he’s mad and they’re mad at each other and they’re mad at me and just mad mad mad and I’m so scared and I’m trying not to cry but I feel it coming, just like the pee, all of these things coming and I can’t stop them and it makes me mad just like them and it also makes me scared. Mommy is saying something to Daddy about horses and she’s saying the words I can’t say because if I say them she squirts soap in my mouth and makes me swish it around in my mouth and I don’t like doing that at all. They’re looking at each other all mean and I think they’re about to start yelling just like they always do at home and sometimes outside in other places like the store but not as much but then Daddy takes the jingly keys out of his pocket and they go jingle jingle jingle and he holds them forward to Mommy but Mommy doesn’t take them, she just looks at them all mad and says what do you want me to do with those and Daddy says take them and when she doesn’t he just drops them in the cart and then turns away and starts walking and I try to follow him but Mommy yells at me real loud and says to come back here, where do you think you’re going, and maybe she’s talking to him or me or both of us but I stay put just in case, but Daddy keeps going and I don’t know what’s happening but it seems bad. Mommy yells at Daddy and says you can’t just walk away from me, where are you gonna go, and Daddy keeps walking and says I’m going home and Mommy says how are you gonna get there dumbass, and then Daddy stops and turns around and says real quiet I’m going to walk, I’ve been walking for some time now, you should try it sometime, you’re just standing still, you’re just running to stand still. Then he walks away and Mommy is just standing there and I’m just standing here and we’re both just standing.
April Showers
So much grime.
All of the self-contrived problems of the “sick”, all their whining complaints and pitiful lamentations, their bleating pleas for a pill-shaped panacea to a chronic condition that can be diagnosed only as life, and whose prognosis is always nothing less than certain death…all of this grime, all of it and more, sliding from April’s body and swirling around the shower drain before being mercifully sucked down into the abyssal sewers beneath the shrieking pit of retarded children that is the World of Man.
The steaming water pelts her with its forceful urgency, bursting forth from the shining chromium nozzle like revitalizing rainfall upon a barren desert wrought with drought and decay. She is purified once more, or at least as much as is possible at this stage in her rapid descent into the very ailment she claims to treat.
Salty tears mix with the water streaming down her face. From the stereo in her living room comes Framing Hanley’s “Built for Sin”, just barely audible over the sound of the shower. Her house is empty. If music plays and only Dr. April Diver can hear it, does it still make a sound?
When she is at last cleansed and the water runs cold, she twists the nozzle and for a few long minutes just stands dripping in the tub, shivering in spite of herself, listening to the droplets of moisture plink down onto the porcelain. Everything else is silent; the music has stopped, leading her to believe it was indeed never playing in the first place.
Or that something turned it off.
This all feels eerily familiar. Like déjà vu, but worse.
She tries to hear her heartbeat and cannot, and two delicate fingers pressed to her thin, faintly pulsing wrist is her only confirmation of her continued feeble existence. A brief look at the razor on the edge of the tub opens a world of possibilities, but only for a moment, for the thought is as fleeting as the glance itself.
She gets out of the shower and dries herself off.
She can already feel the grime beginning to collect again.
“It’s not because of the accident,” April says, looking out over the lake. “That’s really not the reason at all.”
Jake lights a cigarette and waits a long time before he says, “Bullshit.”
And April doesn’t say anything.
The sky is gray and the water is calm, quiet. The bench is damp from a recent rainfall and they have their bare feet buried in the cool, moist sand. The beach is empty save for the two of them.
Jake says, “If it wasn’t for the accident, things would have turned out differently. Between us.”
“You don’t know that. It was years ago. Anything could have happened between then and now.”
Jake shakes his head, slowly but with a firmly-clenched jaw. “It was because of the accident,” he says.
Again, April doesn’t say anything. She watches a seagull continue to dive into the water, coming up empty every time. For some reason this makes her feel profoundly melancholic.
“I’m going to join the priesthood,” Jake says after another period of silence.
April looks at him but he doesn’t look back; he just keeps looking out at the water, smoking his cigarette with strange diffidence. “Why would you do that?” April asks him.
Now Jake does look at her, and he says, “What else am I supposed to do?”
“Anything. Anything other than that. It’s silly. You don’t even believe in God.”
“No. But I believe in something, I think. I’m going to live in celibacy for the rest of my life, anyway. I might as well do something that requires it.”
“Jake...”
“I want you to know I don’t blame you, by the way. It’s an important part of a relationship. You really can’t have one without it.”
“Please stop, Jake.” April has tears in her eyes, but she c
an’t figure out if it’s because of the conversation, or because the seagull is still failing in its attempts to catch a fish. Maybe it’s neither.
There’s something else she’s supposed to say, April knows, but she can’t think of what it is or how to say it so they both just sit there.
“I’ve always thought Lake Erie was ugly,” Jake finally says after a while. “It’s the color. That slimy blue-green.”
“Yeah,” April says. That’s the only word she can muster. Lightning flashes over the water far out on the horizon.
“It’s fitting,” says Jake.
A sudden gust of wind blows April’s hair in her face and she brushes it aside, tilting her head a little. “What do you mean?” she asks.
“Ohio. The Midwest. The country. The planet. It’s so ugly so the lake just fits right in with everything else.” He drops his cigarette to the ground and uses his foot to cover it with sand. He lights another and says, “All of it could be beautiful if there weren’t any goddamn people to fuck it all up.”
April wants to tell him he’s too cynical, but that would be profoundly hypocritical; he’s heard her speak of her patients…both the ones at the asylum as well as those she sees through her private practice. She wasn’t always so pessimistic about mankind, but extended glimpses into pathological human psyches can take a toll on one’s sympathies.
“Anyway,” Jake says, getting to his feet and picking up his shoes, “I should get going.” April starts to say something, but he speaks first and says, “And…I’m happy for you and Walt. Really, I am.” He gestures with his eyes to the ring on her finger. “I won’t be able to make it to the wedding. I’m sorry.”
Just to See Hell Page 2