Fum

by Adam Rapp

  She opens her eyes, brings her attention back to her brother’s room. The light from his window seems weak, doleful. There is nothing wrong, not a single thing that is unexpected or out of the ordinary. It might be the most orderly, most boring room she’s ever been in. Everything about Channing’s life until now has been prescribed, well executed, expectant.

  And then she sees it: On his bedside table, next to the digital alarm clock, rests a tiny wooden wolf, the size of a walnut, carved with great detail, its snout facing Channing’s pillow.

  Corinthia picks it up, places it in the center of her broad palm. It’s heavier than expected. There’s a density to the wood. She taps it against the corner of the bedside table. It’s solid through and through.

  She replays the last thing her brother said to her, the evening before the tornadoes came:

  If you sit still enough in the presence of a wolf, it’ll talk to you. . . .

  She makes herself as still as she possibly can, and simply stares into its eyes.

  “Talk to me,” she tells it with her mind. “Talk to me, little wolf.”

  That evening, Marlene Bledsoe finds herself in Louisville, Kentucky, at Lynn’s Paradise Café, a colorful kitsch diner on Barret Avenue with a gift shop that sells giant gummy worms, kooky T-shirts featuring phrases like I’M THE ONE WEARING THIS KOOKY T-SHIRT and MY DOG TALKS TO ME IN SPANISH, as well as the brand of salt-water taffy that Lemon Tidwell brings to their Tuesday-night Group meetings over by the Yum! Center.

  She left a note on the refrigerator for Brill. A simple note composed in blue ballpoint ink:

  Brill,

  Hi, sweetheart!

  I’m off to run a few errands. If you hear anything about Channing, please call my cell.

  Love,

  Marlene

  Out front, set beside the entrance to Lynn’s Paradise Café, is a life-size polished aluminum horse with an enormous slice of white bread rising out of a rectangular channel where its spine would be. This is the legendary Thoroughbread Toaster. Marlene is so tickled by it that she purchases five bags of assorted taffy and a cat calendar entitled Cats Rule the Kitchen, which features various species of cats commandeering can openers and espresso makers, as well as baking tuna casseroles and grilling Chilean sea bass. Sometimes crossing the Ohio River gets her so excited, she just wants to buy things. She stands beside the horse, finds a good angle with her iPhone camera, and snaps a selfie. After she crops it to her liking and applies a flattering filter, she posts the picture on Instagram and waits for the appropriate cue, which is for it to be “liked” by a particular person.

  Brill Bledsoe has no idea that his wife has an Instagram account or that she’ll sometimes post photos on it to let a friend know that she’s around the corner or on her way to a rendezvous. Regarding Brill’s smartphone, beyond utilizing its most conventional function — as an actual telephone — he barely even uses it. He’s not much of a tech person. At home he prefers the landline to his cell phone. He also favors cooking soup in a pot on the stove top to using the microwave. And don’t even get him started about popcorn.

  As of late, Marlene has found that her husband of twenty years’ telephone persona has grown tiresome. Sometimes she’ll call him at work to ask him what kind of vegetable he’d like for dinner, and he’ll utter “Green beans” or “Spinach” or even “Up to you” with such indifference, it makes her feel like she’s talking to a bored billing assistant from the electric company. At times he comes off as downright uncaring. His stoicism is what originally attracted her to him — he was so quiet and mysterious in high school — but after all these years, it’s starting to feel like apathy, even bloodlessness.

  Not thirty seconds after her selfie post, her iPhone chirps, notifying her that her photo has been “liked” by the appropriate party, and she crosses the Lynn’s Paradise Café parking lot, double-checking that her car is power-locked, and scoots in her newly purchased Mark Lemp open-toe flats a few blocks east and onto Bardstown Road, where she anxiously waits for a traffic light to give her the pedestrian walk signal. She looks down at her toes, which peek through the front of her flats. She is pleased with the tuxedo-red polish she applied only a few hours before. My feet are still good, she thinks. I’ve always had the feet of a dancer from the Copacabana.

  While she stands there, even through the fits of two-way traffic — Bardstown Road is a busy thoroughfare, after all — she can see him seated at a booth inside the fast-food Mexican restaurant Burritos As Big As Your Head! The back of his full head of gray-brown hair gives way to his strong weathered neck and his broad shoulders.

  Marlene feels a little wobble in her heart, and she quickly brings her hand to her mouth, cups it, and exhales, conducting a quick breath-freshness check. She’s had lifelong anxiety about halitosis, and even though the family dentist, Dr. Linus Hyberger, always puts these fears to rest, assuring Marlene that, if anything, there is a subtle natural spearmint aroma tingeing her breath, her anxiety still persists, especially now that Marlene is forty-two and one of her rear molars zings whenever she drinks hot or cold liquids and she swears that there are instances throughout the day when she thinks she can smell an oddly vegetal odor leaking out of her mouth, like a pan that had been used for cooking broccoli.

  The pedestrian walk signal finally flashes and Marlene crosses Bardstown Road and enters Burritos As Big As Your Head! She is greeted by the smell of, well, burritos. Tinny easy-listening rock plays. It’s a Carpenters song, the one about being on top of the world and looking down on creation. To Marlene, Karen Carpenter always sounded so sad and soul-starved, even when she sang about love and happiness. If only the radio deejay would play some Michael McDonald or James Ingram. Or better yet, a song featuring both of them, like the 1983 hit “Yah-Mo Be There.” Or Luther Vandross would be the absolute best, but you can’t just walk into a random fast-food place with a questionable name like Burritos As Big As Your Head! and expect to hear Luther Vandross. Luther is on a whole different level.

  Lemon Tidwell is reading something on his iPhone when Marlene approaches.

  “Is that the six or the six plus?” she asks.

  “Believe it or not, I think I’m still using the five,” he says. “Hey, Marlene.”

  “Hi, Lemon.”

  “Sit, sit,” he says, placing his phone down.

  She does so.

  He is wearing a turquoise ring that she’s never seen before. Despite being a widower, he still wears his wedding band, and this touches Marlene to no end. But the turquoise ring is new, and he’s wearing it on his right hand. It has a thick silver band that Marlene briefly fantasizes about removing from his finger and putting in her mouth.

  “Is that new?” she asks, pointing at the greenish-blue stone.

  He says, “I’ve had this old thing for years.”

  “It’s very nice,” Marlene offers. “I’ve always liked turquoise.”

  “The stone fell out a few months ago, so I had to get it reset. Just got it back from the jeweler.”

  “Did your wife give it to you?”

  “No, Nance didn’t give me this.”

  “Sorry,” Marlene says. “I didn’t mean to assume that.”

  “I bought it down in New Mexico after I got out of the army,” he says, easing the conversation away from the deceased. “I spent a coupla summers working on a rattlesnake farm.”

  “Rattlesnakes, wow!” Marlene says. “Was that dangerous?”

  “Absolutely dangerous,” Lemon replies. “But if you’re smart and tape up your ankles and invest in a good pair of boots, it’s not a death sentence. Plus they always kept a good amount of antivenin on the premises.”

  “Were you ever bitten?”

  “Once. But it was a little one, and it barely penetrated my boot. They gave me a dose of antivenin and I was right as rain. All and all I enjoyed my time down in New Mexico. Learned a lot about myself. Good money in catchin’ snakes.”

  She is suddenly taken with his mustache, which seems
to pulse with a bristly intelligence. She almost feels powerless to it, as if it has seduced her, independent of its owner. Marlene has an impulse to reach across the table and touch it, but she sits on her hand instead.

  “Hungry?” Lemon asks. “The burritos here really are as big as your head. Well, maybe not my head. Mine’s the size of a bread truck.”

  Marlene chuckles at his self-deprecating humor.

  “I ate over at Lynn’s,” she says.

  “What’d you have?”

  “An omelet.”

  “Oh, which one?” he asks.

  “The Matador.”

  “The Matador’s one mean sonuvagun,” Lemon says. “The chorizo sneaks up on you. You got it with the chorizo, right?”

  Marlene nods primly.

  “Hot sauce?” he asks.

  “I’m not exactly a hot sauce kind of person,” Marlene replies.

  “Not everyone is,” he says. “Next time you gotta try their Paradise Pancakes. You might have to loosen your belt a notch or two afterward, but it’s definitely worth it.”

  “Next time,” she says, pleasantly surprised by his passionate knowledge of the menu over at Lynn’s Paradise Café.

  “And by the way,” she adds, “your head’s just fine.”

  “Well,” he says, “it is larger than the head of your standard Homo sapiens, but you’re kind for saying so.”

  Marlene chuckles again, perhaps a bit too excitedly this time — she can actually hear herself — so she bites her lower lip.

  Lemon is wearing a blue denim shirt that brings out his eyes. Marlene can see that he doesn’t bother wearing an undershirt, and the faintest hint of chest hair creeps through the opening of his collar.

  Oh, the breakfasts they could have together!

  Marlene would cook him omelets and pancakes and brew the best French-press coffee this side of the Ohio, and he would never want to leave the house. She imagines thrusting her face between the loaves of his furry chest, inhaling deeply, bathing in his manly musk. She almost audibly sighs.

  “By the way, here,” she adds, reaching into her purse and pushing a bag of sky-blue taffy across the table. “Just like you told me at Group: Lynn’s Paradise Café offers an impressive selection of taffy.”

  “Blueberry!” Lemon beams. “My favorite! Thanks, Marlene!”

  “I got some for myself, too!” she says excitedly. She has no idea why she just shared this with him, or why on earth she blurted it so loudly. She closes her eyes, hoping to restore what little poise she’d arrived with. She exhales, really trying to slow down her breathing. “I got the blueberry, too,” she continues, opening her eyes, calmer now. “Plus a bag of the pink. Well, it says sour cherry on the label, but they look pretty pink to me. I also bought a bag of assorted flavors.”

  “You’re set for the apocalypse,” Lemon jokes.

  “I always like it so much when you bring it to Group,” she hears herself say.

  “You gotta try the chocolate caramel mocha,” Lemon offers. “But proceed with caution.”

  Marlene laughs in a schoolgirl fashion and wiggles a little in her seat. She is suddenly worried that she’s worn too much makeup and touches her cheek self-consciously.

  A young boy from behind the counter is now sweeping up beside them. He has a pasty, pale, acne-riddled face, and Marlene finds that he moves with a slowness that is all too common, clichéd even, in lazy, shiftless teens. His name tag says KYLE, and his proximity to them makes Marlene feel anxious.

  She turns to him.

  “Do we need to order something, Kyle?” she asks.

  He touches his name tag, seemingly surprised that a customer would call him by his actual name.

  “Whoa,” he says, clearly amazed.

  “Well, do we?” she asks again.

  “No, you’re cool to chill,” he replies, loping along in his low-top Chuck Taylors, whose soles barely lift off the linoleum surface of the floor. He engages his flip-flopping dustpan and sweeps up some paper straw sleeves. When he is finished, he moves away and resumes his post behind the counter.

  “So, can I ask you a question?” Lemon says.

  “Of course,” Marlene replies. “Ask away.”

  He strokes his mustache and says, “Why the Instagram thingy?”

  “Oh, it’s just a game I like to play when I meet a friend.”

  “Phone games,” he says.

  “Yeah,” she says. “Phone games are fun. By the way, I really enjoy scrolling through your feed. Those posts of you and your son are just wonderful.”

  “Cecil and I have a good time,” Lemon says.

  “The one where he’s wearing the box of cornflakes on his tumor. What a hoot!”

  “Breakfast of champions,” Lemon offers, smiling.

  “That was such a good caption!” Marlene practically sings.

  They both laugh, and Marlene sighs sort of uncontrollably and in a way that suggests she also might start to cry or even wail, but she doesn’t — she holds it together, and after her sighs decay to something approaching silence, Lemon says, “So, what can I do for you, Marlene? What did you want to see me about?”

  “I’m ready to share,” Marlene says.

  “About your daughter.”

  “Corinthia,” she says. “Yes.”

  “Well, that’s great,” he says. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m positive.”

  “That’s a big step. An important one.”

  “And I’m ready to take it.”

  “Group meets in two days,” he offers.

  “I know,” she says, “but I’d like to share with you first.”

  Lemon Tidwell smiles and strokes his mustache again.

  “Well, I’m flattered, Marlene,” he says. “I really am.”

  When he says her name, she feels something go weak within her, a sensation that her spine is dissolving, that she’s turning to yogurt.

  “I brought pictures,” she says. “From when she was a little girl. And, of course, the more, well, difficult ones. They’re on my phone here.”

  She starts to pull up the pictures on her iPhone.

  “You really should save this moment for Group,” Lemon offers.

  But Marlene continues scrolling through her photos.

  “The best results occur when everyone is present for your first share. And I think you know this, Marlene.”

  “Lemon, please,” she says. “Can’t I just show you now?”

  “I’m sorry,” he replies, “but if the process is going to work — if real healing is to occur — we all have to abide by the statutes that are put in place. The first share must be a Group share. Those are the rules.”

  She capitulates and sets her phone down, flips it over so the screen is facing the table.

  “My son disappeared,” Marlene then blurts desperately. “Channing.”

  “Oh, my God,” Lemon says. “When?”

  “The morning of the tornadoes.”

  “That’s just awful.”

  “And no one’s seen him since.”

  “I’m so sorry, Marlene.”

  Marlene’s face starts to convulse. Her mouth and chin spasm and contort into a visage of grief and horror. She wants more than anything for Lemon Tidwell to take her hand — the one she hasn’t been sitting on — in both of his. She just knows his hands would be so warm and dry and large and strong, and the very thought of them causes Marlene to burst into tears.

  “Hey,” Lemon Tidwell says. “None of that, now.”

  His slow, deep voice is like a healing hymn. And he doesn’t smell like meat, no, not in the least bit, which is something she’s had to deal with her entire life, it seems, the perpetual stench of slaughtered beef emanating from Brill. It’s in his hair, his hands, the fibers of his clothes. And it’s always been this way, even when Marlene bought him those special shampoos and detergents and the charcoal-and-lavender hand soap he used for more than a year.

  Lemon Tidwell smells more like a man who makes campfires;
Marlene Bledsoe knows this in her bones. He is a man who builds roaring campfires and sits beside them unflinchingly and maybe smokes a pipe with a spicy ship captain’s tobacco, and then very nonchalantly he’ll take out a pocketknife and whittle a piece of wood into, say, a panther’s heart and then hand it across the fire to Marlene, who would then ask, “What’s this?” and he’d answer, “A panther’s heart,” and then she’d scoot around the sawing flames to join him and lean her head on one of his extremely broad, denim-clad shoulders, and then the things they would do under the infinite starlight, in the great Wilderness of Love, the rich, sweet smoke of the campfire mingling in their hair, the shapes their bodies would make beside the crackling flames . . .

  Marlene’s sobs continue, so Lemon Tidwell gets up from his side of the booth and slides in beside her. He wraps his arm around her shoulder and pulls her close.

  “There, there,” he says. “Don’t cry, now, Marlene. Your son’ll turn up.”

  “You really think so?” she practically squeaks.

  “I really think so,” he assures her.

  “I just pray to God he’s not dead,” she says, more of a beleaguered squeal this time, the words barely heard. “My . . . my baby boy . . .”

  Marlene can smell Lemon Tidwell’s musky aftershave.

  There it is, she thinks.

  His smell.

  He smells like a man who knows how to camp and whittle panther hearts and handle horses . . .

  And then Lemon Tidwell finally does it. He takes Marlene Bledsoe’s hand with his free one, the one featuring the turquoise ring. His hand is surprisingly smooth, warm, virtually hairless. Prominent veins travel between the peaks of his knuckles.

  On the radio, Captain and Tennille’s “Muskrat Love” is now playing. Though she never really liked this particular song, Marlene finds herself falling through the ether of its melody, Toni Tennille’s voice signaling a kind of mid-’70s promise that’s being broadcast directly to Marlene Bledsoe’s tender heart. During the love-happy chorus, she allows Lemon Tidwell’s strong arm to comfort her.