by Greg Baxter
And have feelings, she said.
If you say so, I said.
You need a vacation, she said.
I leaned back and sank into the low chair. I put my arms out. I was totally at ease there. I was totally at ease with Anna. I said, I am on vacation.
She stood. She had finished her glass of wine—I hadn’t even noticed her drinking—and was going for more. I picked my own glass up to check it, but I hadn’t even had a sip. I put it down. Anna was standing over me. Her hand was dangling right beside my arm. Maybe it was accidental and maybe it wasn’t. Maybe she was thinking about patting me on the shoulder, or placing her hand there. Maybe she wanted to say something sweet about Miriam. Or maybe it was something else. I took her hand in my hand. She didn’t pull it away. I examined the scar—it went all the way past her wrist, down into her palm. It forked up toward her elbow, and met again above it, then up to her shoulder, where it disappeared inside her clothes. It was a thick scar, with deep indentations where the muscle was gone, depressed lengths of scar tissue. Without another word—and perhaps to avoid further examination—she got down on her knees, so that our eyes were level. We kissed for a while. Then she said that her knees were hurting, so we stood and I followed her into the bedroom. She closed the door and pulled the curtains closed over the white light from the street, over the white haze that had settled over the road, and the room went absolutely dark. I was disoriented and felt for the bed, and sat down on it. She began to undress. I could not see her, but I could hear her. I got undressed, too. She got on the bed and we met at the center of the bed. She put her arms out. I reached out. She held my arms. I think she was trying to avoid being touched while naked. But finally she let go and I touched her. I felt the huge grooves on her body. She was covered in them. The accident must have skinned her alive. I could not get aroused. Finally she stopped, crawled under the covers, and sighed. She pulled the covers up to her eyes. You don’t have to explain, she said. I said, It’s the darkness, I cannot do this in darkness, I can’t see your face. She didn’t say anything. I said, Do you know what the darkness makes me think about?
What?
About Dolores.
The woman from tonight?
I said, Yes. Can I crack the curtains just a bit?
A bit, she said, and her reluctance gave me something like a thrill. I got out of bed and walked to the window. I opened the curtains, and I saw that the haze was moving, just a tiny bit, but it was lifting, rising, like a very light but uniform snowfall rising slowly back into the clouds. Check it out, I said. Anna looked but she didn’t say anything—I guess it probably wasn’t a big deal for her. The room was full of white light now, and Anna pulled the covers up higher. I looked around. So this is your bedroom, I said. She looked around. There wasn’t much space. The bed filled most of it. There was a wooden dresser with a mirror on it, but it didn’t seem like the bottom drawers had the space to open fully. This is my bedroom, she said.
I said, Bedrooms are strange places.
How do you mean?
I don’t know, they’re strange. You never know how strange they are until a stranger comes over and gets in your bed. But they are always strange.
What’s the bandage for? she said.
This? Nothing.
On her walls there were more paintings, Hindu, spiritual, full of purples and golds and bright reds, and also a big corkboard full of photographs—people in sunny, green places, near beaches, wearing sunglasses and bathing suits. I got back in bed. She said, I thought you were just going to crack the curtains. I said, I didn’t expect the view to be so nice. I got under the covers beside her. We began to kiss again. Everything was fine. She gave me head for a long time under the covers, and then I pulled the covers off her, to see her. Then I pulled her away and got on top of her. She looked just as I had expected. She was pretty badly sliced up. Some of the scars were so deep that they seemed like disfigurements. But it didn’t look or feel unnatural to me. It was nice. But then I started thinking that it shouldn’t be nice, and that I ought to feel disgust or pity for Anna—not the human being but the mutilated shell of her flesh—instead of pleasure. It got heavy and rough. My scar started bleeding. By the time Anna and I had finished, my bandage was soaked through with blood, and the sheets were bloody, and our hands were bloody, and we had bloody fingerprints and handprints all over. Whoops, I said. She got up and immediately put a dressing gown on. What happened to you? she said. I said, I don’t dare admit it. She told me to follow her to the bathroom, and sat me down on her toilet and took the bandage off. She looked right at the wound without flinching. It’s not so bad, she said, but you need stitches. Forget it, I said. It’ll never heal properly, she said. I’m too old for this to heal properly, anyway, I said. She wiped it clean, then put some alcohol on a swab, and applied it. I’d been doing the same thing twice a day. She was about to put a new bandage on it when she looked up at me with sudden alarm.
Is this what you were going to show me?
I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I said, Well, um…
She stood and threw the bandage at my face.
Were you trying to be funny?
No, no, not at all, not a bit, no, I’m sorry, I hadn’t even thought of that.
I took her hands. I apologized again. Then I said, I did it myself, with a knife. She looked at the wound and said, What kind of knife? A steak knife, I said.
Why?
I have no idea, I said. I was in Luxembourg with my father, we’d been arguing.
Anna’s eyes got very wide. Then she put her hand to her mouth. I thought, Now I had better get dressed and get out of here. But she started to laugh, she laughed through the hand that was covering her mouth. I’m sorry, she said, I don’t mean to laugh. And then she laughed some more. That’s okay, I said. She knelt back down, picked up the bandage, and taped it to my body.
I got home—to the penthouse apartment—at around two a.m., and my father was awake. He had gone to sleep around nine, but, he said, he woke at eleven, and now he couldn’t sleep. He was sitting in front of the television, watching a dubbed Hollywood movie. He turned it off. I had a glass of water. I had such a headache. I could taste blood in my mouth. I felt like my teeth were going to fall out. I felt like if I brushed them, they would crumble out like teeth in a dried-up jawbone. How did your drinks go? he asked. I said, They went well. He said, I’m sorry I didn’t make it, Trish came over, we didn’t have the energy to travel across the city. That’s fine, I said. He said, You meet anybody interesting? I said, I met an artist who wanted to sleep with me because I lied and told her we were Jewish. He said, That’s a funny way to play a trick on somebody. Then he disappeared into his room.
Trish called the phone in the apartment at nine in the morning, and it rang and rang and rang, because neither my father nor I had the energy to get out of bed. Then I got a matter-of-fact message on my phone. Miriam’s body would be released. And that was effectively the end. I woke my dad up, showered, and trimmed and shaved my beard.
My phone starts ringing, but my hands are full of bags, and anyway I can see Trish already, she has her phone out, she’s calling me. She is standing and my father is sitting. I shout. I say, Ho there, ahoy! They look over and I raise the bags in the air. They look at me in horror. First I think the horror is a response to the bags and bags of clothes, but then I realize that the wound is bleeding again and my brand-new shirt is ruined. What the hell happened to you? my father asks. Ah, shit, I say, forget it, can we move? We need to get you some help, says Trish. What the hell happened? my father asks. I say, I crashed my bike, got scraped by something metal, weeks ago. My father says, I told you, you’re crazy riding that bike. What’s in the bags? asks Trish. Suits, I say. You should really get that looked at, she says. I put the bags down and pull up my shirt. It looks worse than it is. I try to explain this. I say, if I go get this looked at, we’re going to miss our flight. He’s got a point, says my father. My father looks worse than when I left him. I
say, I’ll get fixed up in a bathroom near the gate.
Maybe we should go, says my father, it will be a long walk. Yes, we should go, says Trish. I’m ready, I say. Then my father says, I like your headphones. I take them from around my neck and let him try them out. He puts them on and says, Nice. Hold on, I say, listen to this. And then I play him some music. What the hell is that? he says. I say, Sorry, and play him something else. I hand him my phone. I gather up our cases and bags. He takes the headphones off, gives everything back to me and says, They sound expensive. He holds them by the headband and says, They weigh expensive. How much did you spend? Trish says to my father, Let’s get a cart to drive you. My father says, I can make it.
We start to walk. We leave our seats beside the history exhibit. We enter the mouth of the tunnel that leads to our gate. The tunnel is tremendously wide, like the deck of a ship, and it gently descends. The roof of the tunnel is glass and arched. We have a good view of the tarmac and the planes, and the green beyond the airfield, and the mountains. It is easy to see how crisp and cold it must be. We arrive at some escalators. The people all around us hurry down them. But we stand. We wait. We breathe. We go very still and don’t speak. It is such a long way down.
In about twenty hours, my father and I will be driving through a swamp, and the night will have heat in it, and there will be mosquitoes. Every time I’ve been home, I’ve come home on a hot night. I always fly through either Atlanta or Houston, and in the jetways there I get a sense of the heat and humidity, but then I’m back in the coolness of the airport for a while. I tend to get stuck with long layovers. I plug my laptop in somewhere and write a bunch of e-mails about work I’ve been doing on the flight. After an hour or so I pack up my computer and find a big window to sit by, and I watch the planes taxi around in the hot afternoon. I always feel as though it’s been a lifetime since I last visited—or else I wish it were. I feel old. I feel as though the life I might have had there has become unattainable. Even in my twenties I felt like that. After a while I leave the window and go find a bar that serves food and has a lot of televisions. I forget sometimes that I, too, as an American, love to watch sports and financial news on screens next to each other, or boxing on one screen and baseball on the other, or two football games at the same time. Or all these things on half a dozen screens in a row. I am pretty sure that if I had stayed in the US, even if I had gone somewhere with an intellectual life, such as New York, I’d have never learned anything about music. I’d have stopped reading all books but sports biographies and political or financial nonfiction. I’m quite lucky to have escaped American sports. While I’m eating and drinking, I keep a close eye on the time. I wait until the last call, then I walk to my gate. I traverse another jetway and board the plane, and I look to see if there is anybody I know. There never has been. Then we land, and it’s dark. It’s a little cooler but no less humid. My father waits for me in the little terminal. We wait for my bag together, then we walk outside to the parking garage. He always lets me drive. We get home quite late and I grab a beer from the fridge. I spray myself with mosquito repellent, I go outside and light some citronella candles in a bucket, I turn on the UV bug lights, and we sit and drink quietly together. He might say it’s nice to have me back at home, and I might say how much I’ve been looking forward to the warm nights. The house has not changed since my mother died. The carpets are the same, the walls the same coat of paint, the same old paintings. The same tableware, silverware, glasses, and coffee mugs. I suspect my mother’s clothes are still folded in her dresser, her coats and dresses still hanging in her closet. Nothing has been moved, not the dressers, not the nightstands, not the mirrors, not the paintings. Only the television, so my father can watch it in the room nearest to the swimming pool. Everything is cleaned once a week, but nothing is rearranged. My room, which is exactly as it was when I was twenty, is right next to Miriam’s room. My father’s room is a long way away. Not because the house is particularly big, though it isn’t small, but because it’s such a maze, and on so many levels. It’s a house that resembles madness, that never comes together, that will go on confusing you forever, and which even has dead ends—you walk around a few corners, find a door, and behind that door is a boiler. It’s the only door down that hallway. What in the world is it doing there? There are hallways that connect two entrances to the same room. There are rooms that you must go through rooms to reach. There is a big kitchen and a small kitchen. It is the kind of place two people could inhabit without ever encountering each other, unless they went swimming—there is only one swimming pool.
We reach the bottom of the escalator, and it is clear from the gate numbers that we are facing a very long walk. There are moving walkways, and we take the opportunity to stop on them as well, catch our breath. We go by a Qatar Airways flight to Abu Dhabi. We go by a Lufthansa flight to Johannesburg. We pass by an Air India flight to Hyderabad. We go by an Air Berlin flight to Varadero. There’s a flight to Newark. And there’s our flight, to Atlanta.
I am disappointed that the crowd at our gate isn’t nastier, louder, more like Americans I think I hate, so that I can carry some dread with me on the flight. Everybody seems quite chilled out, quiet, waiting without complaint. We’ll make our connection, and our layover won’t be as long. There are people at the flight desk. It looks as though things are about to happen. I go to the bathroom to change the dressing on my scar, and to clean it. I have some alcohol wipes in my case. I get them, and a new bandage. The lining of my jacket is bloody, but just the lining.
I find an empty stall and walk in, wipe the toilet seat off, take my shirt off, hang it up on the hook behind me, and slowly pull the tissues back. The tissues have stuck to the skin, so by pulling them, I tear the scar back open. There is a moment of such intense pain that I think I am going to scream, which makes me put my hand to my mouth to prevent the scream from coming out. The pain subsides and I sit on the toilet seat. The wound starts bleeding heavily, so for a few minutes, maybe ten minutes, I have to keep taking wads of toilet paper to sponge it up, and I have to keep getting up so that the sensor will flush the toilet paper down the toilet. This is such a dumb near-catastrophe. Eventually the bleeding slows, and I can start to see the wound properly. Maybe when I get home I’ll see a doctor. Maybe I could use stitches.
I go back to the gate and find Trish and my father in an embrace that is a little bit avuncular and a little bit awkward. They have taken my absence as the opportunity to say good-bye. I nearly turn and walk in another direction, but my father sees me, and he does something unexpected. He winks. I go over to them. My father lets Trish go. She turns and sees me. She’s been crying. We speak for a little while. My father says, Trish has me thinking about writing another book. That’s great news, I say, what about? Well, he says, my memoirs. Oh? I say. Anything else will take too much research, he says. I say, I think it’s a great idea, if the book is honest. He waves the comment away. I hope everything will go well on that end, says Trish, without saying, but meaning, with Miriam. I’m sure it will, I say, it’s been a real pleasure. It’s been my pleasure, she says. There’s a pause, and I say, Maybe I’ll see you at the launch of my father’s memoir. Definitely, she says. There’s another pause, so I say, I’m going to look out the window. I leave them. I go to the window.
Once, a long time ago, back when I was still married, my wife struck up a friendship with a very famous old poet—she came from a family who knew families with famous poets in them. He is still mildly famous. Or he is dead. No, he must be dead, otherwise he would be a hundred. The man had a scandalous, rich, wonderful, absurd life. Two of his children were not his children. Other children who belonged to other families were actually his children. My wife thought he was charming, and she truly loved his poetry, which was, in the forties and fifties, scandalous. I met him on a few occasions. He kept telling me that my wife was his last love, but it was neither romantic nor erotic love. What do you love about her? I asked. She’s so pretty, he said, she’s the last p
retty, young girl who’ll be my friend. I see, I said. Do you think she loves me, too? he asked. I said, I hope so, otherwise she’s after your money. Everything I said disappointed him. The only interest he had in me related to my unworthiness compared to him, but I did not compare myself to him, I did not even care that he existed. Finally, when he realized he could not break me, he could not make me see him as a rival, he stopped inviting my wife over to his country house, stopped telling her about openings he was attending, and wrote her out of his twisted life.
A truck pulls up alongside the airplane. A couple of men get out. They speak for a while with the baggage handlers. Then the baggage handlers step aside. They stand side by side, and they stand in exactly identical ways—heads down, arms down, hands clasped. The back doors of the truck open up and Miriam’s coffin is removed. I look back. My father is watching Trish walk away. He is waving at her. Then he stops. Then he waves at her again. And he stops again. And he waves again. I guess she keeps turning around. Finally he stops and sighs, and crosses his arms. He looks at me. He appears peaceful, a little bit heartbroken, but also, unmistakably, determined. He waves me over to him. It’s time to come back now, sit down, prepare for boarding. It’s over. The trip is over. I don’t move. He waves again. I ignore him and turn back around. In a few moments he is beside me. He says, What are you looking at? I don’t need to say anything. He looks down at the men carrying the box with Miriam’s coffin in it to the loading vehicle.