The Lemon Jell-O Syndrome

by Man Martin

  “I guess,” Bone said.

  “Well, I wish you good luck. I have to go now.”

  “To Leipzig,” Bone said.

  “To Leipzig.”

  If someone had asked Bone what he thought of Limongello’s prediction that the remedy would become a joyless exercise—less than joyless, dreary and dreaded—he’d have replied confidently that the double-doc was exaggerating. Bone expected, as most people expect, for life to continue in the stream it has generally run in up to then, neither significantly better nor worse. In this, he was, like most people, horribly, catastrophically mistaken.

  As the apricot sky silhouetted the pine trees on the hill, Cash came to discuss—Bone assumed—some issue of lawn maintenance with Mary in the spotted shadows of the Rose of Sharon. Bone had poured himself a glass of tea and was about to join them to ascertain if they were indeed discussing fescue and not matters of more dire import when the phone rang. Bone had tried to reach Grisamore several times over the past three days, but each time had gotten only the secretary: Mr. Grisamore hadn’t come in to work yet, Mr. Grisamore was out of the office, Mr. Grisamore was in a meeting, no, she didn’t know when the meeting would be over, yes, she would be sure to have Mr. Grisamore return the call, what was the name and number again? Today, however, Grisamore called Bone, an astonishing thing so long after office hours.

  “Did you get to read the chapters?” Bone asked. “Have you had a chance to look at it?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “What do you think about the introduction? That part still might need some work.”

  “Well, yes.”

  “I know it still needs polishing, but I wanted you to see where I was heading with it.”

  “Well, yes.”

  Grisamore’s “well, yes,” repeated for the third time, began to rub Bone’s nerves like a cheese grater; that leaden “well” had an ominous ring to it, a sound like things were not well at all, and in that dull, heavy “yes” was the undertone of something distinctly “no” in the offing.

  At the scent of gardenia, Bone looked up and saw Mary; whatever Cash had come to discuss, it seemed they’d finished discussing it. She stood arms akimbo in a I-have-something-to-say-and-you’re-probably-not-going-to-like-it pose. Bone signaled to be patient with a raised index finger. “You have read it, right? I know it needs polish, but—I mean, you have read it, right?”

  “Well, the fact is, I’ve been pretty busy, Bone.” This was when Grisamore let the hammer fall.

  “What do you mean?” Bone felt the blood leave his face, his dopamine levels dipping dangerously and his calcitonin climbing. His be-patient index finger, still poised midair for Mary, seemed to belong to another person.

  “A different author, Bone. I tried telling you the publisher wouldn’t wait forever. Someone else submitted a ready-to-go manuscript, and we’ve decided to go with it.” Rushing waves filled Bone’s ear. “It’s not your traditional grammar book. It’s actually a very interesting approach,” Grisamore was saying, “something you might want to look into. The idea is there’s no such thing as ‘correct’ grammar—” Bone silently mouthed several curse words. “—that all dialects have their own worthy grammar. In fact you might know the author. His name is—”

  “Oh, please God, don’t let it be—”

  “E. Knolton.”

  Bone’s numbed arm dropped the phone to the counter, and he put his trembling hand to his brow. When he found the strength to lift the phone again, Grisamore was still talking. “—y excited about him, and our sales team is already getting calls from bookstores. We’ll have to put a late notice out as it is, because it didn’t make the catalog, but he had a manuscript ready. We’re rushing it into galleys now, and we’ll have it out by winter. We are using your title, though,” Grisamore said as if it were good news. “Words.”

  Bone tried to stammer an objection, but only a soft clicking sound proceeded from the back of his throat, like one of those dreams in which just when your life depends on screaming your lungs out, your voice comes out as dim as the lifeguard’s whistle to a drowning man at the bottom of a pool. Meanwhile, an adjective here, a participle there floated from the phone to Bone’s ears: “… refreshing … glad … saved … don’t have to be alarmed …” The Kit-Kat Clock on the wall above Mary’s head blurred but did not stop smiling or operating; its tail wagged left, its eyes darted right, its tail wagged right, its eyes darted left.

  “What was that last part?” Bone said through a throat as dry as thistles.

  “Knolton says we don’t need to be alarmed about the changes in English. Language can’t be corrupted; there is no ‘pure’ language. Living languages change; they evolve. It’s a very refreshing thought when you think of it. All the change we see going on around us is a testament to the vitality of English. Change is natural and inevitable.”

  Lots of things are natural and inevitable, but we still fight them tooth and nail, and we damn well ought to: soil erosion, rust, food spoilage, death; just because something’s natural and inevitable doesn’t mean we abet the process or even look on indifferently.

  “So when do you want my manuscript?”

  “What?”

  “My manuscript. The manuscript I’ve been working on for two years. Words. Words, Words, Words. When do you want the completed manuscript?”

  “It’s not really what you said it would be. We were expecting a book on grammar.”

  “I can write a book on grammar. I can write a goddamned book on grammar. Give me a chance.” Bone hadn’t meant to sound so desperate.

  “I’m sorry,” Grisamore said. “Listen, I’ve got to go to a meeting.”

  “Oh, a meeting! Right! A meeting! Anytime you want to avoid me, just go to a mee—” But Grisamore had hung up, and Bone was holding only a buzzing receiver. Muttering a succession of Anglo-Saxon words, Bone replaced the phone in its dock. Mary cleared her throat.

  “We have to talk,” she said.

  “Does it have to be now?” Bone felt if he took his hands from the counter, he might fall. Only by applied concentration could he remember to fill and empty his lungs. “Do we have to talk about it now? I have just had the single worst conversation of my entire life. In one short exchange of words,” he gestured to the phone, “someone completely ripped the rug out from under me and ruined my life. Whatever this is about, can’t it wait?” Bone believed the worst thing that could happen to him had already happened; again, he was proven cataclysmically wrong.

  “I’m not going to spend the night here, Bone. I need a night out of this house.”

  N, n

  From the Phoenician nun (n), “fish.” Between the waterfall, mem (M), and the lightning-bolt leap of fish, nun (n), comes the alphabet’s midpoint, dividing the most common letters, placed within easy reach, from the least common, shoved to the back. A typical dictionary devotes a hundred pages to aardvark to azygous, whereas we can get all the way from xanthate to Zyrian in less than ten.

  nonce word: A word coined for a single occasion and never used again. One might reasonably ask if such a thing can even exist. For example, if someone made up the word “gurk” to mean “I’m unable to breathe,” could this properly be considered a word at all if it were never repeated? And once spoken, if it were printed in a dictionary somewhere even as an example of a nonce word, wouldn’t it cease to be one?

  After Mary’s announcement, the grinning Kit-Kat Clock’s tail wagged left and eyes went right, and the refrigerator hummed uneasily, filling the silence.

  “You’re kidding me,” Bone said. The air seemed brittle and thin, and neither of them moved.

  “I know you’ve been trying lately—the card, I know—but you’re just too—distant. It’s something I’ve got to do until I work some things out.”

  “Let it go, man,” Cash said. Bone realized their neighbor had come into the kitchen without his noticing. Cash stood, arms folded, biceps slightly flexed, like a defensive tackle blocking the way to Mary, except he wasn’t standi
ng in front of her, but behind.

  “Jesus, are you spending the night with him?” Bone had the sensation that if he looked down, he would see his knees shimmering as if they were behind a waterfall. Did he even have knees anymore? He felt as though he weren’t standing on the floor. In situations like this, weren’t you expected to fight your rival? Should he do that now?

  Mary left the kitchen, and Cash said, “Don’t try to stop her. This is something she’s got to do.”

  Bone said, “Christ, you’re spending the night with him? Right in front of me? God, are you crazy?”

  What Cash said next was, “She’ll be back when she’s done,” but what Bone heard was “when I’m done,” at which every individual corpuscle in his brain went off like a hand grenade, and his ears roared like a train crash.

  “You—” Bone began, unable to add anything worse than the bare pronoun. His vision blurred, and he swung his fist. Then everything went white, and his knees buckled, but he didn’t hit the floor; a second later his tardy brain caught up with events: his misaimed fist had brushed Cash’s face, and Cash had moved forward and seized Bone in a position as impotent as it was perplexing and exasperating. Bone’s arm was pressed against his ear, and his other hand was seized in Cash’s; the crook of Cash’s elbow squeezed Bone’s Adam’s apple. Bone tried explaining that he couldn’t breathe, but the most he could get out was “Gurk.” Meanwhile, he was doing his best to claw Cash with his free hand, but given his predicament, his arm was as feeble and ineffective as a tyrannosaur’s.

  “Just let her do this, man,” Cash advised calmly. He repeated, “She’ll be back when she’s done.” Done with what? was Bone’s riposte, but it only came out as a gastric gurgle.

  “Will you please try to be mature about this?” Mary’s voice said.

  “He started it,” Cash said. “If I let you go, you promise not to try anything? I don’t want to hurt you, man.” You seem to be doing a pretty good job, Bone thought, but he nodded. His vision cleared. “You ready?” Cash released his hold, and Bone tottered. Drool broke from his lower lip and wet the ceramic tile. Bone rose and realized Cash was talking to Mary.

  She had her blue overnight case. Christ, while he’d been lollygagging in the kitchen getting manhandled by the neighbor, she’d been casually packing her things. Bone hadn’t even followed her to see what she’d put in there! “Is your diaphragm in there?”

  “You always think everything’s about sex,” Mary said. “Everything’s not about sex.”

  “Let her go, man,” Cash said. “Just let her go.” With both hands, using only his fingertips, he gently pushed Bone back.

  After they left, Bone stormed room to room, cussing, hollering, howling, laughing, and sometimes doing all at once. How could he lose both his book deal and his wife in one evening? It had taken her only a day after her “mountain trip” to announce she “needed to stay over with Cash” to “work some things out.” Goddamn, what a fool Bone was. Mountain trip! She needed to do some “painting”! The walls reverberated with maniacal laughter. He ought to throw something, punch holes in the Sheetrock, overturn bookcases. He grabbed Misplaced Modifiers and hurled it, but the pathetic thud it made was so anticlimactic, he did not care to repeat the experiment and instead sat on the sofa, wringing his hands between his knees, rocking, roaring, and moaning. This couldn’t be happening. God, he would go insane! He would!

  He jumped up and went outside. It was too deliberative getting in the car and turning the ignition, as if he were off to the Stop-n-Go for eggs and milk; the only fitting response was storming over on foot. A man can storm on foot, however, three to five paces at most before beginning to feel foolish, and long before reaching the end of the street, Bone felt exceedingly foolish indeed, but by then it was too late to turn back.

  He held his thumb on Cash’s doorbell until it went numb.

  The door opened, and light filled the front stoop. “What the hell do you want?” Cash blocked the threshold, one hand holding the top of the door, still wearing his shirt and jeans. Good Lord, was it possible Mary was telling the truth? That they were only talking? But wait. Cash was barefoot. For some reason those ten little piggies made Bone tremble as violently as if Cash had come to the door wearing only jockey shorts and a sheen of body oil.

  “I want my wife,” Bone said, trying and failing to keep the tears from his voice.

  “Go the hell back home, man; go the hell back home. Don’t ring my doorbell again.” The door closed.

  Bone stood, shaking in spite of the evening warmth.

  It was too early in the season for the cicadas to set up their stupefying roar; instead there was just the mindless bri-i-i-c, bra-a-a-c, bri-i-i-c, bra-a-a-c, of the crickets. On any night but this, Bone would have thought it was beautiful. Fireflies rose in sparks from the lawn, and the luminous backs of the magnolia leaves shivered in the full moon’s light.

  Bone didn’t linger by the kitchen window but climbed the chain-link into the backyard, piercing his hand on the tines and tumbling ignominiously to the other side, twisting his ankle and getting a piece of bark in his eye—if he’d gone the other way around, he realized belatedly, he could have used the gate. He crouched, gathering his breath and vainly trying to subdue his trembling. It hadn’t rained recently, but Cash watered his lawn religiously, so the English ivy dampened Bone’s ankles as he crept up the hill where he could look down at the back of the house through the picture window and into Cash’s living room.

  The lights were on, but there was no sign of Bone’s wife or neighbor. They’re already in the bedroom! his thudding heart exclaimed, and delaying only long enough to trip on a root and roll three feet through the wet ivy, Bone went to the bedroom window—easy to locate since Cash’s house was the inverted twin of Bone’s—ominously dark but too high for easy surveillance. He grabbed the brick ledge, jacking himself to the window in a shaky chin-up, knees scraping and the wound in his hand throbbing against the rough brick. He hung, panting, shaking, elbows on the ledge, toe-balanced on a seam between brick tiers, cheek so near the windowpane, he felt its coolness. He saw nothing, but did he hear something? Was it his imagination, or was there heavy breathing?

  “Oh, God.” He recognized Mary’s voice. “Oh, God.”

  It wasn’t coming from the bedroom, but behind him. He started to fall, but not before someone grabbed him by the belt and pulled him away from the bricks.

  “You are the biggest butt-hole I ever knew,” Cash said. He still wore jeans and a tee shirt, but he’d slipped on Docksiders to come outside. Mary stood behind Cash in her night robe, light from the full moon and picture window illuminating her in her beauty and fury. “If you come here again, I’m gonna—” Cash didn’t finish, but his silence was filled with insinuations of humiliating and painful ass-whippings. Cash pushed Bone again, and for the third time that night, he fell. “Don’t come back again,” Cash warned, and Bone, the pain from his wound vying with his jarred carpal bones, rose and left, letting himself out this time through the gate.

  Bone had already learned that the distance between his house and Cash’s far exceeded the maximum range for storming on foot, but he made a go of it, tears blurring the moon-washed streets. Goddamn her, anyway. Goddamn her. Who needed her?

  Next morning Mary, flush-faced, returned to the kitchen where Bone was waiting, white-faced.

  “How could you?” he asked. He’d pulled a chair up to the kitchen door and sat in it all night so he’d know the moment she came in. “How could you?”

  “I have to see if this thing is going to work out. Between me and Cash. I’m confused right now, and I’m figuring things out.”

  “You’re a bitch.”

  “Nothing happened between us, if you really want to know. We just stayed up and talked.”

  “Oh, like I believe that.”

  “Believe whatever you want. It’s true. Are you going to let me by? I have to take a shower.”

  “What, to wash him off you?”

  �
�Jesus, Bone. I told you nothing happened. And anyway, it was already over between us. We both knew that.”

  “I didn’t know that,” he protested and, sitting in his chair like the pathetic cuckold he was, did the one thing he’d sworn he would not do: he began to cry. “I love you. God help me, I love you. You can’t be doing this to me. Not now. Not on top of everything else.”

  “These things happen, Bone. Just … these things happen.” She opened the refrigerator door and plucked out a square of watermelon from the bowl of cut fruit and ate it. “It’s nobody’s fault. It’s just something that happens.”

  “It doesn’t happen unless you want it to.”

  She eased around him on her way to the shower.

  He should just throw her out. Take all her things and just throw them into the yard. Let her be with Cash if that’s what she wanted. The hell with her. He could hear the shower running as he passed the bathroom door on the way to the bedroom. He yanked a dresser drawer open but, facing the froth of her lacy bras and panties, couldn’t bear to throw them out. Instead, he went back and stood at the bathroom door, listening to the shower. He tried the door, but it was locked. So he pounded. “I’m going to throw your goddamn stuff out of the house! Do you hear me? I’m throwing out all your goddamn stuff.”

  The shower stopped, and a minute later, the door opened. Mary stood in a towel. Even now, even after everything—seeing beaded water on her smooth shoulders, her thick, wet hair pulled back like a heavy rope, her dark eyes bright with contempt—if she had put her arms around him, he would have forgiven her in an instant. He fought an impulse to drop to the floor and clasp her knees.

  “Bone, please don’t be immature about this.”