Warped

by Rick Ochre

  “I forgot to tell you that the table came in,” Marcy’s email read. “They’re delivering it today. I’ll make scaloppini and we can break it in tonight!”

  Dalton had to think for a minute before remembering that they had ordered a new kitchen table from some jerkoff in Vermont who only made them one at a time.

  He was tempted to email Marcy back that he’d be stuck in the city for dinner, but that was risky. If the shit blew up today, he wouldn’t be sticking around, not even for the traditional outing to Methaney’s. He wasn’t sure if he could pull off the cynical, ruthless drinking and gossip that masqueraded as bonhomie whenever the axe came down.

  Another email from Marcy. “Statue” was the subject line. Dalton clicked on it with a sinking feeling in his gut.

  It was as bad as he’d feared. “Just thought you’d want to know, the Columbus Circle statue is a Russo,” Marcy had written. “And it’s spelled ‘Gaetano’ not ‘Gitano’.’” There followed a trio of smiley faces and a row of x’s and o’s, and below that, the text and images cut and pasted right out of the fucking wiki article, the familiar marble phallus looking unusually regal from the camera angle—the photographer must have lain down on his stomach in the middle of 8th Avenue to get the shot.

  Whenever Marcy corrected him, she did so with a flurry of affectionate little gestures, as if to defray the impact of her officiousness. This was a puzzle to Dalton. Whatever Marcy was, she wasn’t a complete idiot. She was cum laude in Psychology from Colgate, for Christ’s sake. So if Marcy, with her superior understanding of the human psyche, was aware of how it galled him, how it reached into his gut and tore him like a chain saw, then why the hell did she keep doing it?

  This last time was the Stark/Mrack dinner two nights ago. Lucy Stark was going on about being named to the board of the Burroughs Landmark Society, and she had tapped Marcy and Ginger Mrack for the benefit committee. The three of them were discussing what image to feature on the invitation as though anyone receiving it would actually give a shit. Lucy suggested the Columbus monument, and Dalton—why, why, why had he felt the need?—had decided to jump in and add a little something to the conversation, because he and Dick and Milt had been sitting there dumb and unmoving, like three gutted deer carcasses.

  “That was by Ximenes, wasn’t it,” he said, aiming for an offhand tone. Because the truth was—and admitting this to himself at 8:15 on a Monday morning that might well go down as the beginning of the end of his career, with the burn in his gut only slightly ameliorated by the Tums he was chewing one after another, was about as painful as, say, passing a kidney stone—the truth was that Dalton liked to think he knew a thing or two about the arts himself.

  During an awkward stage that arrived unexpectedly during his last year of middle school and lingered painfully until he went on to Portledge Prep, he had turned to art. He took the subway to the city several times a month to wander the Metropolitan Museum looking for the secrets to himself. Instead, he found the European sculpture court.

  That was why, when Marcy had gently asserted that the Columbus monument was a Russo, and Lucy and Ginger looked on with polite smiles frozen on their faces, and Dick and Milt smirked and topped off their cognac, Dalton had not only not backed down but had argued with some force that he was positive it was Ximenes. In the end, Marcy had given him a chilly smile, said “I’m sure you’re right,” and changed the subject to Ginger and Milt’s upcoming Baltic cruise.

  Dalton deleted the offending email, muttering “cunt” under his breath, then felt the blood hot in his face. That was a word he rarely used. Early in their marriage Marcy had taken a stand against it. The word, he had been made to understand, was political.

  Dalton continued going back through his email, deleting and archiving and replying. In this way he made it to lunchtime, and still nothing had come down. His assistant had a sandwich sent up from a place he liked, but today even the bread’s perfect crust could not cheer him, and he threw half of the sandwich away.

  At 2:30 Rezano tapped on the door to his office.

  “Did you hear?” he said. “They’re doing it tomorrow. They’re waiting for Kaminsky to get back from L.A.”

  “Christ, Kaminsky…” Dalton said, considering the implications, mentally limning the interdepartmental relationship grid in his mind, an imaginary org chart forming and breaking on the back of his eyeballs.

  “Yeah. Doesn’t look good.” Rezano gave him a smile that was mostly grimace, and slugged the door frame one last time, decisively. “So…. Methaney’s?”

  Dalton produced a smile of his own—what’re-you-gonna-do, he tried to telegraph—and shook his head. “Marcy’s doing scaloppini. I better get home.”

  Rezano nodded. “Okay, tomorrow, then.”

  “Tomorrow. Yeah.”

  Getting the grin off his face took conscious effort as though, once trained, his muscles had lost their memory.

  #

  He made the 4:40, but it was dark as midnight when he got home. In the house, there was a faint new scent, and he sniffed at it while he put his coat in the front hall closet—like some sort of exotic decay.

  “Come see!” Marcy called from the kitchen.

  He went with trepidation. Every time some new purchase came home, he was called on to admire it, and he never seemed to get it right: too unenthusiastic and Marcy sulked, too much enthusiasm and she regarded him with suspicion.

  In the kitchen she was standing with her hip against the thing, hand resting reverently on its surface. But it wasn’t any one-of-a-kind piece from some craftsman in Vermont; it was dark and ancient-looking, like something that might have come out of a blacksmith’s barn, wormholes and deep grooves and what looked like charred areas incongruously polished and waxed to a high shine.

  “What happened to the Vermont thing?” Dalton asked.

  Marcy’s smile slipped a little. “Dalton—you know we cancelled that. Remember? We decided to do Italian rustic?”

  Dalton didn’t remember a damn thing like that. He looked at the table, resting on the tile that Marcy had spent the better part of a week driving out to a warehouse in Queens to choose one by one, and he hated it. Hated the uneven ends of the century-old planks, hated the smell, hated the big square pegs that some poor peasant bastard had driven into the boards with a stone sledge.

  Without a word, he went to the cabinet and got the bottle of Jameson’s and a tumbler and came back, and slammed them both down on the table. The chairs were new, too. Or more precisely antiques with new cane seats, probably done for eighty bucks an hour in the designer sweatshop in town. He didn’t feel like sitting in the chairs.

  “Oh,” Marcy said, a little nervously, the corners of her mouth stretching into deep-lined brackets, “I know this is silly, but, you know, just that it’s so new—”

  She reached for a little drawer tucked under the table on the long side, slid it open—it slid smoothly, Dalton observed, and had nice-looking tongue-and-groove joints—and took out a cork coaster. She put the coaster on the table and picked up Dalton’s tumbler and centered it on the coaster, and then she looked at him with just a little edge of defiance in her eyes.

  Dalton stared back, feeling his heartbeat ratcheting faster in his chest even though he didn’t move a muscle. “You want me to use….a fucking….coaster?” he demanded, his voice cracking unexpectedly.

  There was a jingle from the family room, and Dalton looked through the arched doorway just in time to see Bentley jump delicately off the blue chair and come trotting into the kitchen, an expression of concern on his face.

  The dog knew he meant business.

  Bentley came halfway between Dalton and Marcy and looked up at him with an air of challenge.

  “I said you want me to use a fucking coaster?” Dalton repeated, roaring now. He picked up the tumbler and slammed it down on the table, and the glass shattered, shards flying all around the kitchen. “How much of my money did you spend on this piece of shit, anyway?”

  Mar
cy looked a little scared, but more than that, she looked excited. Her lips parted slightly and her face flushed with color, and she absently tucked a few strands of her platinum-blond hair behind her ear. “I’m not going to answer you,” she said breathlessly. “Not when you’re like this. I’ll wait until you’re calm enough to talk about it rationally.”

  “You want to wait—” Dalton slammed his fist down on the table, which was surprisingly solid. “—until I’m fucking calm?”

  Slam.

  Marcy folded her arms across her chest and gazed at him. “Is this really about Gaetano Russo?” she asked.

  For a moment neither of them moved, neither said anything. Between them was a volley of stored grievances electric with tension, a gulf of resentment that had been exquisitely nurtured for decades.

  Dalton looked wildly around the room, which he saw now had changed more than he realized; though he’d been sort of aware of the hand-painted backsplash being installed; of the painter-with-an-art-degree and her endless plastering; of the new drapes showing up one day on the massive iron rods—though he’d marked the steps of the renovation by writing checks and glancing at paint chips and flipping through the Consumer Reports on dishwashers—all at once he saw that it had become an alien place, a place where he was no longer welcome.

  On the counter next to the veal flattened between sheets of plastic wrap was the meat pounder, a heavy, expensive, all-metal model Marcy bought at Sur La Table. He picked it up. Then he bent down and picked up the dog, and slammed Bentley down on the table. Bentley made a surprised yelp and scrabbled frantically, but Dalton held him on his side with one splayed hand.

  It was ridiculously easy to keep the dog in place.

  Dalton looked at Marcy and noted with satisfaction that finally—finally!—her smug expression slipped, that in its place was a look of genuine horror. She expelled her breath in a hoarse “huhhh” sound and Dalton knew that he had only a moment to make his decision.

  Only a moment before Marcy found her wits and came at him with all the fury of her years of suburban dissatisfaction and the sheer power of that personal-trainer-cultivated firm body.

  He hefted the meat pounder and his lips curved into a smile at the realization that it was wide open—he could choose either. He would bring the pounder crashing down with all the force of his fury and coiled readiness and it would release him, it would free him from the terrible waiting and uncertainty that had been settling over him for months now.

  His wife. His dog. Dalton grinned in anticipation because finally someone was going to be held to account.

  ##

  THE FUN ME

  The last straw wasn’t the letter that came after I got locked up here at the psych wing at County. I put that letter down on the table in the Activity Room and I had to lay my arms out on both sides to read it ’cause they got one girl here, Ashley, she’ll take anything from anybody. Rod, the guy with the scabs they had here a few days last week, he hit her in the mouth when she went for his can of Nestea—and she still kept on coming. She took the knitting right out of this old lady’s hands, who was just sitting on the couch humming—Ashley grabbed that sweater and walked fast down the hall, unraveling it all the way, a ball of yellow yarn trailing behind her, and time they got her to stop there wasn’t nothing left of that sweater but a pile of kinked-up yarn.

  So I laid that letter out smooth and started to read. Tack starts up all polite—how’s the food, do you got a TV, what’s wrong with your roommate. Nothing he couldn’t of asked me himself, they got visiting hours here, folks are just crazy, not contagious. He hasn’t come once though. He didn’t ask me about the stitches in my wrist, but those are healing up fine. Fuck you, I said quiet to the letter, but the only person in the Activity Room was Little Dick, who don’t say anything to anyone, all he does is take it out of his pants and wave it at you, unless you’re mean to him first. So I went ahead and said it again, loud, Fuck you, part so Little Dick wouldn’t get started, and part to Tack’s letter.

  I finished reading the front side and turned the page over and Tack went on to say Larissa had moved on into the trailer and he’d drove my stuff over to my brother’s place in De Soto and put it in the shed they got. That pissed me off cause Dave keeps all kinds of shit in that shed, motor oil and fertilizer and I don’t know what-all. They don’t have a basement but still. As for Larissa, I already knew she’d probably be over there with Tack by now. She called the first night I was in the hospital. Lied and told them she was my sister and when I came to the phone, she said If I’d of known you were going to kill yourself over it, I would never of fucked Tack.

  That made me a little bit mad, but that still wasn’t the worst thing.

  I wasn’t even that pissed off about Tack. Tack’s not much to fuck anyway. He’s one of those, he’s got a way he does things that you can’t shake out of him. Couple minutes with his tongue in your mouth, couple minutes squeezing your tits and then it’s all about Tack and he just jumps around until he’s done. Whatever. Plus I knew it was just a matter of time. Tack and Larissa, they had a thing a long time ago, one of those things that ain’t done when it’s done.

  What sent me over the edge, was, about two months ago when it got really bad with me, there was one Friday I didn’t go to work. And if you’ve never been there let me tell you, you have no idea. Don’t tell me you’ve been depressed, I don’t want to hear it. Your mom treated you bad, your girlfriend broke up with you, your boss is a dick—yeah, whatever, life is hard. You want to knock some heads or get fucked up and forget about it, okay. But you get over it, right? Give it a little time, you get over it.

  This other—it’s nothing like that. It’s like the darkness hurts all over but light hurts worse. You lie on the floor because you’re so tired, your arms and legs weigh a hundred pounds each, your eyeballs are heavy in your head. Your heart is lead and it’s weighing down on your guts, crushing them. And in the part of your brain that’s still thinking, you know what you’re feeling isn’t really pain, not physical pain anyway, and then you get to thinking maybe if someone jammed a nail in your skin that might be a relief. That it might feel better. Only, the idea of finding a nail, of standing up and walking across the trailer to the junk drawer, it sounds harder than climbing up a mountain. So you just lie there, your own smell in your nose because you don’t remember if you showered yesterday and you damn sure didn’t shower today.

  I was lying there on the floor like that when Tack comes home. He’s got Capper with him and some of those guys, and Capper’s all into the tequila these days, he’s got a couple-three different kinds, they got girls with them, some weed, and I’m lying on the floor. And I say Please Tack please baby just go somewhere else, please I don’t care if you party you can get some money out of my purse only I don’t feel good, and Tack turns on all the lights and points at me and says—

  “That’s my girlfriend there, you’d never know it but she used to be something to look at. She used to be fun.”

  She used to be fun. Those were the words that lit up my skull like hammers pounding from the inside out and when Tack took his foot and shoved me with it I was almost happy because even while I was crawling away from him, away from them gone all quiet and embarrassed in my own damn living room while I crawled down the hall, it hit me that for the first time since I could remember I was feeling something different.

  I was angry.

  I was angry, because I knew what kind of fun I used to be. Not so different from Larissa. Fun girls, us—drank to keep up with the guys, put on a show, made sure there were pretzels in the bowl and clean towels when someone threw up and never fussed when there were people passed out in the living room on Sunday mornings, just pushed back on that emptiness that never quite went away and put the smile back on and got ready to do it again. Only, one day, there was nothing left, and all those people who used to come around, well, they didn’t see anything they liked anymore when they looked at me. Just a girl who used to be fun.

&nb
sp; I don’t much like being locked up here, but I’ve learned a few things, and if I’d known about the meds—if I’d known they really work—I would of come in the easy way. The way where you don’t bleed all over the couch and they send a fire truck along with the ambulance. This Dr. Kate who works here, she keeps saying it’s just a disease like diabetes or something, too much of this, too little of that, you take the right medicine and it all gets balanced out.

  Dr. Kate and me get on good. She spent extra time with me, telling me exactly what the pills do and how they work and what happens if you take too many or too few. I liked learning about it. I got to thinking, things were different, maybe I could have studied all that. Done something with it, you know.

  Took almost four weeks but now they’re about ready to let me out I feel mostly normal again. Good, even. A few days ago I had my brother’s wife Tiff bring me some of my things. I wasn’t even mad Dave didn’t come with her. When you got it as bad as I did, the only thing worse than your own company is other people’s. But when you’re back to normal they’re just people again. You can talk to them, shoot the shit, it’s all good. I told Tiff I’d come for the rest of my stuff and she said no, come stay in Dave Junior’s room for a while, the kids could share the other bedroom. I said okay, I’d be over once they let me out.

  Tiff brought me my makeup and my black bra that pushes everything in and up. I put on that top with the stretch and tight jeans, and I spent some time with Greg. Greg is an aide, but he has keys to the dispensary. The first couple times I blew him it was just for something to do, something to get my mind off the fact that it was taking so long for the medication to kick in. Finding out about the keys was luck. But I figured it was about my turn for some luck anyway.

  Besides, what’s Greg going to say? It’s just one bottle, one little bottle of amitriptyline. I can’t much pronounce it, but thanks to Dr. Kate, I know what it can do. The reason they’re all using the SSRI’s these days—the shit that’s keeping me normal—those old TCA’s like amitriptyline have some bad side effects.