You must’ve mistaken me for a skinned deer.
You must’ve mistaken me for some coward.
Donald is no longer with us.
Donald died reading a poem to a bullfighter.
Donald was scratched to death by a peacock.
Donald passed away trying to make love two hundred meters under the ocean.
Donald left this world chiseling turquoise out of rock with his bare hands.
Donald’s fingers bled to death.
Donald swallowed one hundred matches and rubbed his body against a volcano.
He died instantly.
Donald got into an argument with the moon and died instantly.
Donald revealed how much he could love and died instantly.
Donald met his friend for a beer after work and died instantly.
Donald has to explain to his children what happened and will die instantly.
Donald will touch his wife’s thigh and die instantly.
“I just want to say it’s so awful what happened to you—you’re all over the news!—but just, like, know that everyone is on your side and sending you prayers . . .”
Donald dies instantly
“. . . I’m so sorry to ask, but would you mind if I got a selfie with you?”
Two
A MAN NAMED DONALD RETURNS TO A HOUSE WITH a wife after seven days in a hospital. Donald carries a plastic bag filled with personal items given back to him after he was discharged. Donald enters a house where, it’s said, he’s resided for over a decade. Donald finds the belongings and stranded activities of children scattered around the living room, as if they were kidnapped right in the middle of what they were doing. Donald has no recollection of the house. Donald has no recollection of its potted plants. Donald has no recollection of its smell. He sees framed photographs of children and a wife all over the living room. He sees a framed master’s degree for a man named Donald. Perhaps Donald once dreamed of becoming a famous novelist or poet. Donald now dreams of nothing. For he is a no one. Donald sees a slice of bread dropped on the floor next to the kitchen table, sees that all the lights have been left on, sees paintbrushes sitting in a glass full of foggy paint water. The house looks more like a museum of a life than the longtime home of a man named Donald. Donald has no recollection of the man named Donald who he sees in a mirror. Donald has no recollection of the staircase in the house and where it leads. Donald has no recollection of breath. He takes a long time to ascend the stairs, counting each one as he goes. Donald has no recollection of what comes after five. Donald seems to recall seven but can’t be sure. In a bedroom, Donald cannot identify personal items. Donald opens a sock drawer to find that it is actually a sweater drawer. He swears it’s always been a sock drawer. He tries to sit on the bed in the bedroom but it hurts to sit, so he just stands in the middle of the bedroom that belongs to a man named Donald. He sets the bag of personal items from the hospital on a nearby dresser and sees another framed photo of children. These must be the children of the man named Donald, as he’s seen them all over the house. Donald notices a dark figure standing in the background of the photograph. Some creature with a wild, tangled mouth. Some ghost. Fear surges through Donald’s body as he worries for the safety of the children in the photograph. Donald blinks and realizes it is just Donald in the photograph with the children, not a ghost. Donald takes the photograph out of the frame and looks closer to make sure. Yes. It’s just a man. A creature, still. He places the photograph on the carpeted floor of the bedroom. Donald takes a wallet out of the hospital bag and puts it in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. Donald removes the reading glasses from the hospital bag and drops it out the second-story window. Donald takes out a watch and places it in the shower. Donald is settling in just fine. The hospital did not include Donald’s personal clothing in the hospital bag, perhaps because it is evidence now. Donald is evidence now. Donald retrieves the last of the items and places them on the floor with the photograph of the children and the creature. Donald enters a closet filled with the belongings of a man and begins pulling out all of his belts. There are many of them. Donald places the belts on the floor with the other items; a bed of snakes. They move. Donald quickly retrieves a lighter and lights the den of them on fire. Donald has no recollection of burning. Donald has no recollection of objects. Donald has no recollection of pain. Donald watches as the carpet around him begins to smolder. Soon the carpet is also on fire. The smoke in the bedroom sets off a loud alarm and triggers a sprinkler system in the ceiling. Water rains from the stucco. Donald recalls a thunderstorm when he was a child that killed a local dog. Donald recalls leaning over a railing in the arms of his mother and running his young hand under a waterfall. Donald recalls learning how to swim. Donald recalls the dark woods. Twigs piercing into his back under the pressure from above. Donald recalls the above. Donald drowns. The room burns as a woman screams a man’s name from downstairs.
Donald! What’s going on up there?
Donald what’s going on?
Donald
Donald
DONALD
I sit in front of my therapist, Irene, once a week. I do not talk, or I talk about the news, the Olympics, the different kinds of charcoals one might use for barbecuing; I talk about landscaping, the sculptures of Koons, the vegetables I’m pissed they were out of at the farmers’ market. I do not talk, or I talk about old wars, my daughter winning first place at the science fair, my son’s slipping grades. I talk about the origin of toothpaste, which I’ve read has a Nazi connection. I talk about Rachmaninoff, my desire to go horseback riding someday, my disdain for the Green Party. I do not talk, or I talk about seeing the Hells Angels come through town once, I talk about my desire to see the Grand Canyon, I talk about having no desire to see Mount Rushmore. I talk about Camilla’s successful recent eye exam, the best ways to store fresh herbs in the fridge, the Mets, the new Chinese restaurant that opened up in town, the weather. I talk about the prose of Anne Carson or the plays of Chekhov. I talk about spending my twenties aspiring to be a writer that was somehow a combination of the two. I talk about the new line of razors I’ve discovered, the different uses for valerian root, the stupid closure on the 20 that made us late for my follow-up doctor’s appointment. I talk about Judge Judy, my new favorite TV show; I talk about physical therapy; I do not talk. I do not talk, or I talk about the invention of the rocking chair, mutts versus purebreds, the health benefits of sunflower seeds, the new bristleless broom I ordered off Amazon. I talk about the walking shoes I just purchased, the best brands of mosquito repellent, the time I was mutilated and left for dead in an alley, the time I went rafting with friends for my forty-sixth birthday. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. Or I talk about the effects of wind on different sizes of birds. I talk about taxidermy. I talk about golf.
Three
WELCOME BACK, MR. ELLIS, WE MISSED YOU!” READS one of the dozens of cards cluttering my classroom desk, where I haven’t sat in over four weeks, since what happened happened. Every condolence cake, every overstayed sympathy hug or half-assed buck-up-buttercup smile is another re
minder of how much I’ve disappeared. Am disappearing. I shove the cards and a bouquet of flowers into my desk drawer. I move slower now. I have to. Walking is very hard for me. Some days the pain is so bad, I can’t sit, either. I just have to stand, wherever I am, without moving. Amanda and Jake call it “statue time,” standing alongside me in cafés or on a street corner. I tell them Daddy is just thinking, he needs to stop to think. They are happy to play this game with me. It’s safer for their imaginations if they do. They still see how slowly I put on my shoes, how I’m careful when bending over. The measured unease of getting in and out of our car or climbing stairs in a building with no elevator. There is no game in that.
I’ve arrived almost two hours before class so I can prepare. It is my new routine. Sometimes I’ll arrive at an appointment three hours early just so I have time to stare out my car window. I watch and try not to think. Everything is a film: a fly on the windshield trying to get in, a delivery truck parked in front of whatever to deliver something I will never savor, a plane carrying flesh messages across the sky. The movie is wonderful to watch when I’m not in it.
The early-arrival routine also allows for time to practice smiling in the rearview. I tilt it toward me until I can see only my mouth. At home, I do the same. When I get out of the shower and wipe the fog off the glass, I check the stubble on my chin, clean my ears, staring at the lobes. But I avoid my eyes. Always. I run my fingers through my wet hair and consider its line, receding like a riverbank in a drought. When my daughter, Amanda, calls me into her bedroom to ask which outfit she should wear to school, holding each pair of overalls up to her small chest, I look her in her eyes in the full-length mirror and tell her I love the blue one with the sea otters on it. I am not afraid of my daughter’s eyes. At the front door, I check my tie, my collar, and the nick on my chin from my razor. I check my brows, even, and am able to wipe the crusts off my lids without looking directly into my own eyes. Every once in a while, though, it happens, and I’ll catch them by sheer proximity. My pupils are stabbed into my head like black thumbtacks pinning my entire face in place. My eyes are no longer a part of my body. We do not know each other. I see them, but they do not see me.
The rearview in my car is the best mirror to practice my smiling because it’s small. I can focus on the one part of my face I’m intending to, and see nothing else. I start with one side of my mouth, lifting the invisible strings of my lips, then dropping them back into resting. I lift the other side, half smiling, and drop it back. Half smile, rest. Half smile again, rest. Then I lift both at the same time, slowly, spreading the meat halfway across my face like a loving bow. The human smile no longer makes sense to me. Why is it a sign of happiness? Who decided that? Why not the crinkling of the nose, or blinking, or a hard swallow? Who invented the word smile and gave it its meaning? Smile is the shape of my mouth Amanda wants to see when she comes running out of the science fair, pushing her lime-colored glasses up her nose and shrieking with good news. Smile is the shape of my mouth my therapist looks for when she asks how I’m doing. It is the shape of my mouth Camilla wants to kiss when I return from a day’s work. The shape of my mouth my neighbors and colleagues desire to set them at ease. It makes others feel safe with my story. I practice this smiling, this mouth’s shaping, in the mirror. I do it for them.
“MORNING, DONNIE,” MY COLLEAGUE EUGENIA, A TENURED, ECCENTRIC boil of a woman, says, sticking her shriveled head in and rapping loudly on my door. She teaches math in the special-ed department and eats mustard on bread—not toast—every day for lunch. Eugenia isn’t known for her warmth, which garnered her the nickname Genie the Meanie from some of the first graders, and it caught on with some of the adult staff, as well. Genie the Meanie wears patterned tights with Crocs and jean vests still pinned with buttons from the ’60s. She always paints her nails a bright hooker red and wears no makeup. The faculty spend their lunch breaks gossiping about Eugenia over home-prepared salads with dressing on the side.
I wave her in and put on the shape of my mouth I’ve been practicing.
“How are you doing, son?” she asks, her bangles clanging on her wrists as she drops a wrinkled paw onto my shoulder. It is the most common question I am asked, and I know everyone wants to hear only one answer.
“Good,” I say.
“Bullshit.”
I look up from my desk.
“You’re not good, Junior, but that’s okay, you will be. You’re a damn mess, I can see it on you.”
I play with my tie.
“Don’t worry, son, no one else can see it. You’re not good right now, but you will be.”
She pats me hard, her cigarette-and-Dijon breath crawling down my throat.
“Thanks,” I say, “appreciate it.”
The bell rings.
Genie the Meanie marches out.
“Hey! No running in the halls, you bunion!”
I’ve arrived an hour and ten minutes early to Irene’s office.
I move the rearview. I practice the shape of my mouth.
I take a deep breath and do my staring.
I watch the movie play around me.
I think about my students. Today’s class. Their easy eyes welcoming me back. The big meadows of their minds, open. The grief loosens its jaw from my neck but doesn’t let go. Jimmy Hillstein, a quiet redhead who lost his father in a trucking accident when he was five, stayed seated in the back of the room. Jimmy developed a bad stutter over the year following his dad’s death and soon stopped speaking altogether. Speech therapy helped him find his voice again, mostly through singing. In class, he would raise his hand and sing his answers to me. His brave alto would push out words to the tune of “Yellow Submarine”: “It-wasn’t-Columbus but Leif-Er-ikson, Leif-Er-ikson.” He sang a lot of answers in this tune, getting creative with syllables and consonance to make each one fit the melody. It wasn’t just Jimmy’s ability to bloom in the face of such pain that got to me but also the tenderness of his fellow students. They never made fun of Jimmy’s silence or his stutter or his singing answers, ever. I understand Jimmy’s fragility. My father died in an accident when I was a teenager, though I dealt with my grief less quietly. We stared at each other from across the classroom. He got up and adjusted his shirt so his belly wouldn’t peek out from underneath. He came to my desk and squinted. He handed me a note.
“How was your first day back, Donald?” Irene asks after I do not talk.
Yes, I am still breathing.
No, I am not living.
Yes, I can feel my legs.
“I’ve been putting on a good face, Irene. Each day grows toward its death. I try to forget. Forgive. Every day I die again. My family lives a life of burial. Everything makes me want to cry. Everything makes me angry. Everything makes me numb. Repeat. I’m tired. Paranoid. I’m cold most of the time, wearing full sweaters in the hot spring.”
No, I cannot feel my genitals.
“I’ve had to relearn how to go to the bathroom. I’m still wearing a catheter. I can’t make love to my wife. I fake it with my children. There is no difference between meanings anymore. A cereal bowl is a pillow is a trash bin is a knife is a fistfight on the street.”
Yes, I can see.
“I can’t stop thinking about what I could’ve done to stop it that night.”
“I’m listening.”
“I went into the bar to meet my friend Mark for some drinks. It was a Wednesday. He left early to meet his wife for dinner. I struck up a conversation with someone. They say I left the bar alone. They say someone entering the bar saw me and said I looked disoriented. Someone . . . the offender . . . was outside. Maybe they had been inside? Watching me? I felt dizzy. I needed to sit down. The offender took me out into the woods. I ended up in the grass under the trees, though no one knows how I got there. They said my pants were taken off. I was barely conscious at that point. Sedated. I couldn’t stop the—I couldn’t do anything . . .”
No, I don’t want to look.
“My arms were held
down, I was too weak to struggle. My legs pinned. Barely conscious. The offender . . . The offender rubbed back and forth on top of me, with . . . clothes still on. With thick, rough jeans. The offender rubbed against me until . . . Until there was nothing left of me. Until every part of me, below . . . was destroyed.
Yes, I am still breathing.
“I was dragged back to the Green Tavern and left there in the freezing cold, behind the building, next to the trash. Without my clothes on. Covered in blood. The offender . . .”
No, I am not living.
A long silence. I can no longer speak.
A demon reaches into my mouth and rips out all the bells.
Sobered, angry, wordless, impossible to explain, explosive, remorse-hung, humiliated into morbidity. My life. My life. Smeared across the wall like feces in a ward. I weep. Wipe snot and tears away from my face and grind my knuckles deep into the suede of Irene’s couch, sweat forming, my ass levitating off the cushions with a pulsing shame. I want to smash my many hearts against a spike. I want to run. I give in. Give in to my skeletal now, my peachless unease. “The offender,” I call my attacker, ashamed. I cry so hard I have to adjust the tube connected to my urine bag so as not to pinch it. I lean forward and hold one hand on the tube and the other hand over my face. This face I used to own, cawing a boy’s breaking, my entire body trembling in its zero-foot, life-sentenced cell.
“May I sit next to you, Donald?”
“Yes.”
Any Man Page 2