The Lemon Jell-O Syndrome

by Man Martin

  He gurgled, “I’m glad you’re using the correct case.”

  “What?”

  “You said ‘you and I’ instead of ‘you and me.’ I was congratulating you for using the correct pronoun case.”

  “Oh.” A longish pause while Mary waited for Bone to speak. “So, you wanted to go out?”

  Mary, it transpired, had already picked a place and date, sparing Bone the chore of planning suitable entertainment. At her townhouse, he spent the obligatory awkward minutes with Laurel until Mary emerged in a scrumptious short black skirt and red blouse which offered the additional advantage, which Bone naively believed she did not suspect, of revealing her breast in profile.

  It rained; getting lost only once—a shared mishap that seemed to seal the bond between them—they threaded their way through black, rain-bright streets between streetlamps punctuating the night like an ellipsis to the Vietnamese restaurant Mary had chosen. Bone’s hot blood roared in his ears, the fine hairs on his neck tickling his collar as if he were sitting on an electrified fence instead of next to this beauty in mute wonder; what glad change of heart accounted for this good fortune? Had he made a better first impression than he’d thought, and was it only bad timing and bad luck that had kept them apart?

  The waiter asked if they wanted iced coffee—an odd suggestion coming before they’d even seen a menu. Meeting their puzzled looks with a puzzled one of his own, the waiter explained that Çhao Gio was renowned for iced coffee, implying it was unusual, if not unheard-of, for customers to be unaware of this. Bone and Mary exchanged looks, and Bone said yes, they would have the iced coffee.

  Their wait was relieved by an awkward coincidence when Dr. Gordon and his wife arrived. It was a small restaurant, and the couples sat at adjoining tables. Time dripped in strained camaraderie before the waiter reappeared.

  “We ordered the iced coffee,” Bone announced.

  “Yes,” Gordon said. “It’s the specialty.” Gordon was his insufferable self, reclining with his arm extended over the back of his wife’s chair. Mrs. Gordon, who even smiling wore frown lines of a long campaign to stay slim and attractive, asked if Mary enjoyed her position and if it got very hard being under her husband, a strange, fierce fire in her eyes. Gordon asked Bone something about teaching, not concealing his lack of interest in Bone’s reply; Gordon was after all a dean, and Bone a mere lecturer.

  A surreal and uncomfortable situation, but Mary reached across the tablecloth to hold Bone’s hand, and beneath the table, her knee pressed his own. In his joy, he lost his discomfort; a thousand Dr. Gordons could have marched in with a thousand wives, and he would have snapped his fingers at all of them, aware only of that sweet touch against his hand and knee. Bone said something clever and offhand, a remark that later he could never remember, a modest put-down, at which Gordon’s nostrils dilated in mild displeasure and Mrs. Gordon laughed.

  Mary squeezed his hand, and the waiter returned with a tray to prepare their coffee.

  In an era of Starbucks’ ubiquity, iced coffee is as mundane a beverage as any, but the folks at Çhao Gio served it with all the solemn ceremony of High Church mass; the only things lacking were a crucifix and incense ball. Before Bone and Mary, the waiter set down two miniature coffee pots, frosty cocktail shakers, and tall glasses with a finger of beige semiliquid that Bone guessed was partially caramelized condensed milk; the waiter made Mary’s first, pouring the hot coffee into the cocktail shaker, giving two judicious rattles, then pouring it, chilled but undiluted, over the condensed milk; the result was a glassful of gray dawn: midnight black near the top, tapering to creamy taupe, and finally the antique white of the condensed milk at the bottom. Mary reached for her spoon, but Gordon said, “Don’t stir.”

  Obediently Mary set the spoon back down and watched as the waiter completed the coffee-making operation for Bone.

  Velvet.

  Each flavor feathered to the next like the color in the glass. The closest thing Bone knew to compare with it was chocolate milk, except it was nothing at all like chocolate milk. Too soon his glass was empty, but he saw it would be gauche to order a second; besides, a single glass, he discovered, was the perfect amount. If only he hadn’t finished so quickly.

  “Good, isn’t it?” Gordon said, as if iced coffee, the Vietnamese restaurant, and Vietnam itself were things brought into being for his private amusement, but which, for the sake of their edification, he graciously condescended to share.

  After the restaurant, parked in front of her townhouse, a streetlight shining in the gleaming puddle at the curb, Mary was unexpectedly willing to learn all there was to know on the subject of Bone King; even if she were pretending, Bone, unwilling to end the evening, was unusually garrulous.

  He talked about growing up in Tennessee, the sharp, sweet smell of sawmills, gullies choked with rusted car chassis and black plastic garbage bags. He told her about Red Man–chewing junior high boys who loved the music of fists on skin and terrified pleading. He told her how, when still a child, he’d discovered his love of the written word in the Cook County Library, and how his work on Words would be not only his dissertation but an expression of that love. He said that in spite of certain memories, he dreamed of going back someday, having a few acres and maybe a couple of chickens, and she said he was really something and kissed him.

  She told him that night that he was real, that he didn’t play games, that she was sick of playing games. Bone sensed that she was comparing him to someone else, but he was too wise or lucky to ask whom.

  Was that all there was to it? Did Mary, like Othello’s Desdemona, love Bone for the dangers he had passed, and did he love her that she did pity them? No, there was one other triumphant moment.

  It was when they’d been seeing each other about three months, and Bone had taken Mary out for her birthday, his mood made more festive by the chill January night that made her huddle against him when they left the car. He’d recently read an article on backformation, removing what seems to be a suffix or prefix to form a new word, deriving buttle from butler, burgle from burglar, and, more recently, an African American neologism, conversate from conversation. Walking arm-in-arm to the restaurant, they played at making backformations of their own: “I might seem feckless, but I’ve got loads of feck.” “Give me a hammer, I need to ham some nails.” “I am so happy. Tonight I am full of hap.”

  Seeing the homeless man sitting on the sidewalk outside the restaurant, Bone automatically reached into his back pocket—he’d picked up new habits from Mary. The smallest bill in his wallet was a five, but what the heck; Bone gave it to him without further thought.

  “Where are your shoes?” Mary asked.

  “Someone stole them.”

  Inside the restaurant, Bone happily studied the menu. Everything looked so good. Did Mary want to start with an appetizer? Mary stared at the menu as if it were indecipherable. Her chin trembled. “I don’t understand,” she said. “How could they steal that man’s shoes?” A tear went down her face.

  A month of anticipation, ruined. It would be useless saying not to worry about the man outside, that there were shelters, that Bone had already given him five dollars. Disappointment, frustration, and annoyance flashed by like overhead lights marking the distance in a long, dark tunnel. Then he saw what he must do.

  “Excuse me,” he said. He returned a few minutes later, his face about to split from his grin. “I think we should start with that artichoke-cheese thingy,” he said.

  Tears still in Mary’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just can’t stop thinking about it. That poor man.”

  “Look down,” he told her. He lifted the tablecloth. For a second she stared at his toes wiggling in his black socks without understanding. Then she cried again. Then they laughed. That was the night she said she loved him. That was the night he felt worthy of it.

  C, c

  From the Semitic gimel (c), “sling” or “throwing stick.” Hence, the three great achievements of the Early Bronze Age, a
s represented by the first three letters of the alphabet, were domestication of animals, man-made shelter, and warfare.

  calque: A word formed by translation from another language. Typically, English adopts words wholesale, as in “déjà vu,” “amuck,” or “kindergarten,” but makes calques of particularly picturesque or apropos phrases, as in “losing face” from the Mandarin diu liãn, or “scapegoat,” possibly a mistranslation of azazel, a demon of Hebrew mythology, for 'ez ozel, “goat that escapes,” i.e., [e]scapegoat.

  Christ: From the Greek khristos, “anointed,” akin to the Sanskrit gharsati, “to grind oil from seeds,” from the Proto Indo-European, ghri-, “to grind,” whence also grind, grist, and grits.

  cliché: I will forgo the comical catalog of clichés a lesser lexicographer would mistakenly think witty and original. French printers called a ready-made phrase cast as a single piece of type cliché, onomatopoeia for the liquid slap and hiss of a hot letter mold dropping into cold water.

  cuckold: A derisive term for a wronged man, from cuckoo, a bird famed for laying eggs in other birds’ nests, from the Middle English cukeweld or cukewold, from the Latin cuculous, and thence from the Greek koukos.

  When Mary picked up Bone from the hospital, she quizzed the staff, getting nothing but good news, which is always strangely dissatisfying. The Etch-a-Sketch of Bone’s heart had risen and fallen all night with perfect regularity, his vital signs as vital as ever, his blood pressure neither too high nor too low, his urine all that good urine should be, if not more. Bone’s bill of health was a clean one.

  “I think we ought to cancel the appointment with the neurologist,” Bone said as they drove home. “I know it was scary, but I think I just freaked out for a while there. I’ve been under a lot of stress, and I just freaked out.”

  “What’s stressing you?”

  Bone might have responded he was worried she had something going with Cash Hudson but said instead, “Just the usual. My editor’s losing patience waiting for me to finish Words. And of course, my dissertation committee’s breathing down my neck.”

  Mary said nothing for a time. He put his hand on her knee, but she ignored it. “You still need to keep the appointment,” she said.

  Bone couldn’t have said what he expected of his homecoming, but it wasn’t what he got. It wasn’t as if he thought there’d be a banner reading “Welcome Home.” That would have been ridiculous. Still, it felt odd that everything was exactly the same as it had been before. Instead of a ritual to smooth the transition, he and Mary did as always: Bone sat on the couch and read The Journal of Etymology, and Mary talked on the phone to her friends. They watched TV without speaking. It felt strange acting as if nothing were strange, but at least there was a bright spot about gliding back into the familiar routine: Saturday night in the King household was the customary night for sex.

  At bedtime, Bone sat on top of the covers, stripped to his boxer shorts, a singsong going through his head: tonight, tonight, tonight, going to make love tonight. He’d taken care not to disarrange the covers because he wanted to share sliding into a fresh bed with her—like breaking the crust of crème brûlée—pushing their feet down through cool, tight sheets as their arms and bodies sought each other out.

  Mary, in the bathroom, was brushing her teeth with astonishing thoroughness, it seemed to Bone. After a while, feeling foolish and self-conscious, he pulled back the covers and got in. So much for his and Mary’s getting into bed at the same time. He lay on his side in a roguish pose, head in hand, elbow sunk in the pillow. Toilet flush. Mary came in the bedroom but immediately left.

  “What is it?”

  “Forgot to set up the coffee maker.”

  Bone’s wrist was going numb. He rolled on his back, hands folded across his chest. Tonight, tonight, tonight. Then she was in the bedroom. She took off her skimpy flower-print robe and got in bed. Her summer nightgown was little more than a slip. Tonight, tonight, tonight. Bone reached for her but only knuckled an elbow. Now she was trimming her toenails. She propped against the pillow and opened her murder mystery. Bone kissed her bare shoulder.

  “It’s Saturday night,” Bone reminded her hopefully. This was not turning out quite the magical evening he’d imagined.

  “You just got back from the hospital.”

  “So?” He waggled his eyebrows.

  “I don’t work that way. I can’t just turn it off and on.” She stared at him. “Are you going to sulk about this?”

  “Aren’t you glad to have me home?”

  “All right,” she said. She bookmarked her place, set her mystery on the nightstand, and turned off the light. Her legs were wonderfully cool and smooth. She held his face in her hands and gave him a businesslike kiss.

  They weren’t exactly setting the night on fire, but even bad sex is better than no sex at all. He kicked his briefs out from under the covers, then turned to kiss her again. But now the angle was wrong; their mouths didn’t seal, and a little drool dripped onto the pillow. Putting a hand on either side of her head, he lowered to her mouth in a push-up. The angle was better, but now there was something under his hand.

  “Move,” Mary said.

  “What?”

  “Move. You’re on my arm.”

  Bone got out of bed.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I have to pee,” Bone said. “Back in a second.” Down the hall in the bathroom, Bone peed and flushed. As he washed up, Bone looked in the mirror and reflected. When had their sex life turned into this dreary cycle of anticipation and letdown? There’d been a time, and not long ago, when adjectives such as “spontaneous” or “joyous” could fairly be applied to their lovemaking, or at the very least “mutual.” Mary enjoyed sex, Bone supposed, but she didn’t believe in it, its power to heal, to make whole, to justify the shabby round of existence. He wondered how he and Mary had allowed themselves to turn into these people. Could they ever turn back?

  Bone cut off the water and walked down the hallway to the bedroom door.

  But that was as far as he got.

  Go on in. How do you go on in? Tell yourself to move. How do you tell yourself to move?

  His immobility had struck again.

  Mary said, “What are you doing?”

  “I can’t move,” Bone said. “Oh, God, it’s happening again. I can’t move.”

  Mary got out of bed. “I’ll get Cash.”

  He cursed her, which shocked them both, and instantly felt ashamed and said more mildly, “Please, God, no, why do you have to bring him into it?” He saw her mind was made up, and said, “If you have to bring Cash into it, at least put something on me.”

  Bone uttered a cry of horror when he saw what Mary had in mind, but she ignored him. A crisis is no time to be fussy about dignity. Getting Bone dressed in this condition, his entire body rigid as any mannequin, ruled out slacks and a polo shirt. He blocked the door almost entirely, leaving little room to operate, and it took several unsuccessful trials before she worked his arms, frozen midswing, into her flower-print robe, finally putting it on him backward like a hospital smock and cinching the belt around his waist.

  “I’ll be back in a sec,” Mary promised as she squeezed past him into the hall.

  “Don’t leave! It’s too small! You didn’t get the belt tight!” Bone shouted, but he already heard her naked feet pad down the hall and the kitchen door close. “The knot will never hold,” Bone said quietly, and as if it to prove that knots could hear, the belt loosened behind his back and undid itself like a vine forced into a shape it will not willingly hold. The robe fell open, and a breeze from the air-conditioning vent ran up his backside.

  Bone wondered how long it would be until she returned. How long had it been already? Time hung suspended the way it does when nothing happens to mark its passing. Had she taken the car? He hadn’t heard the engine start, but surely she hadn’t run over to Cash’s house barefoot. Cash lived a street away. Bone imagined Cash answering a doorbell and finding Bone’s wife sli
ghtly out of breath, dressed in a slip nightie that barely reached her thigh.

  Bone’s reverie was interrupted by a strangled gurgle emanating behind him that told him Cash Hudson had arrived on the scene. The neighbor, however, did not comment on Bone’s wardrobe but merely knelt and set to work getting Bone through the door, which was somehow worse and more humiliating than anything else he could have done.

  Bone contemplated the consequences of his actions. If he’d absolutely had to use the bathroom, why hadn’t he put on his briefs so at least his gleaming backformation didn’t stick out behind like two white loaves? This, however, is the sort of thought that strikes one only after it is too late.

  Cash gripped and lifted a calf, causing the robe to shift and slide silkily from Bone’s shoulders, down his arms, and onto the floor. Now Bone was completely naked.

  I will not cry, Bone resolutely told himself. I refuse to cry.

  So naturally, a fat tear rolled from his eye, burning his cheek, and frozen as he was, he could not even lift his arm to wipe it away.

  D, d

  From the Semitic daleth (d), “door.”

  day: The interval between sunrise and -set. The d- rises straight up before sinking to a squinting -a-, after which –y descends beneath the word’s horizon, curving back again toward d-. The Proto Indo-European root for day, déi-no-, is unmistakably kin to the root for god, déyw-o-, that is, “shining.” From these two derive, therefore, not only date, dial, and diary but also deity, theology (owing to a consonant shift d > th), and divine.

  door: The sideways lid of a room. The word opens with the ideogram for door itself (see D), a downstroke with a knob on one side. We pass the portals of two -o-s before reaching -r, a panel with a latch closing the word on the far side. The Proto Indo-European root, dhwer, leads back before doors themselves, to the late Paleolithic, evidently a meaning assigned existentially, its creators not knowing what lay behind it.