Love Warps the Mind a Little Read online

  “You flatter yourself,” she said.

  “Do you love him?”

  “My feelings for Marvin are none of your business.”

  “You know that crazy son of a bitch is going to end up calling in radio talk shows every night, warning Americans of the dangers of fluoride in the water.”

  She said, “Marvin and I have a history. I’m not even myself without him. I’m just that single mother, you know, who works at the health-food store. That’s how you see me. But that’s not who I am.” Pauline made a fist and put it to her mouth. “Maybe I resent it.”

  Pauline cried. She let me wipe her eyes, kiss her forehead. She stepped back, took a breath. “I can’t be Marvin’s friend,” she said. “I can only be his wife. I owe it to the family to try this.”

  We stood there on Elm Street in front of the copy shop. Pauline said, “It seems exciting to reinvent yourself, to become new again for someone else. But in the end it’s just hard work.” She kissed my cheek, and left me there staring at my reflection in the copy-shop window

  I looked at myself, a wrinkled fish-fryer with crazy hair, pale skin, baggy eyes, a tumor the size of an egg on my wrist, and an incandescent tooth. “You’re a glorious piece of work,” I said. I walked across the street to the Valhalla, sat at the bar, ordered a pint of Bass, and took out my memo pad. I found the name and phone number. I called Terry Cun-dall and set up an appointment for Martha and me. I called Martha’s machine, left her a message with the time and date, told her I had a lead on a mobile home out in Millbury.

  When I got back to Judi’s, I thought it was odd that all the lights were off in the house. Judi was lying on the bed, her eyes closed. Are you okay? I said. When she didn’t answer, I thought she must be sleeping. I took off my shoes and lay on the bed. I looked up at the two of us in the mirrored ceiling. I said, Judi, I called Terry Cundall and made that appointment. She opened her eyes. “Dr. Stouder said she felt something on my ovary”

  21.

  A Palpable Mass

  I GOT UP AND WENT TO THE KITCHEN. JUDI SAT AT THE TABLE, DRESSED FOR work, drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette. I sat down across from her. Her eyes were red, glazed, and fixed on some wrinkle in the tablecloth. No, she said, she hadn’t been crying. Didn’t get much sleep. I nodded, looked at the clock, at the sink, at the floor. Was she waiting for me to say something? I got up and poured myself a cup of coffee. I sat, stirred in the cream and sugar.

  Judi told me her dream. She’s in her office, listening to a client, a woman from Oxford, tell her about the ex-boyfriend who is stalking her, making obscene and threatening phone calls. The client is certain that this boyfriend is going to kill her, and she is panicked. Judi sits behind her desk (“which I never do”), leaning back in her chair, knitting her brow, and she realizes she is naked. The client, though, is so distraught that she hasn’t noticed, hasn’t even looked up. Judi can feel a tremor inside, and soon she feels her guts losing their hold, settling, sliding toward the seat, and then all this slimy internal business oozes out her vagina and plops to the floor. She tries not to seem alarmed. She doesn’t want to spook the client. Judi said to me, I looked down and saw it was all gray and red and slick, and my only thought is, I’ve been a sausage all my life. And there’s the meat, in a pile between my feet, and it’s throbbing, steaming, turning blue. And my client is screaming at me to give her some answers. She says, How do I keep this maniac from killing me? Judi looked at me. She said, Cancer is as blue as iodine.

  Judi told me that Dr. Stouder had identified an adnexal mass, had a CA 125 blood test and an ultrasound performed, and wanted to go over the results and stuff today in her office. I said I was going with her. She didn’t want me to. I didn’t care what she wanted. What time is the appointment? Noon. I’ll meet you outside your office at eleven-thirty. I said, You shouldn’t get all worked up over what is probably nothing. I said that, knowing that in her place I would be hysterical by now. I’d be breaking glass, punching walls, drinking the good stuff. Like when the doctor told me my wrist-egg might be Hodgkin’s, and I had to wait the weekend for the results. Are you really sure you want to go to work, Judi? She picked her keyes out of her purse. I’ve got a session at nine. I looked at her. She said, Don’t worry, I won’t sit behind the desk.

  I called my father. Sometimes he couldn’t remember things. Your mother told me that we went to Publix today and to the cardiologist’s. I told him I couldn’t remember things either. Yeah, he said, but with you it’s your—what-do-you-call-it?—your concentration. With me it’s the brain damage from the stroke. What stroke? Why didn’t you tell me about a stroke? I did tell you. No, you didn’t. He said, Did you come to your senses yet? What about? You and Martha, he said. Did you get your ass back home yet? In my day, he said, a man kept his affairs discrete, kept them out of the home. I didn’t want to hear what he may or may not have done. I said, Say hi to Mom for me.

  Peter and Caitlin (I thought I’d stick with that name) were upset that Smokey the Bear was dead. They were bored by the gardens in the park and by the museum displays. They liked the gift shop. They both got little plastic Smokeys they could talk to. The little Smokeys were in a fight immediately, and Theresa had to threaten to return the toys if the kids didn’t behave. The four of them walked across the street to a junk store. Dale noticed how always one of the two kids held on to Theresa’s hand while the other got between their mother and him. The old man in the store showed the kids fossilized dinosaur dung and fed everyone from a bowl of piñon nuts.

  Dale drove Theresa’s car, followed the Rio Bonito east on 380 to Lincoln. They checked into the Wortley Hotel. From the front porch, you could see the whole town, a single street wide. Dale said out loud, I’m standing in the exact spot where Billy the Kid gunned down Sheriff Pat Brady. Theresa took the kids upstairs to their room for a nap before supper. Dale walked to the Historical Center and then from one end of Lincoln to the other. He felt apart, untethered, and yet bound by the emptiness of the valley. He wanted to hurry the day, have supper done with, the kids scrubbed and tucked into their beds, asleep in their room. He wanted to be in bed with Theresa, holding on to her. This weekend had been his idea, but he was unhappy. And he knew he had no control over his happiness in this place where he didn’t belong.

  At the table in the hotel’s restaurant, Dale tries to make Peter laugh. He puts a spoon on his nose and lets it dangle there. Peter decides this is frightening and cries. Theresa hugs him and kisses his head, rocks him in her arms. Now Peter won’t look at Dale. This is the first time in his life that Dale has made a child cry.

  Theresa asks Dale to pass her a napkin. She wipes Peter’s eyes. Whom does this anger belong to? Dale wonders. He remembers when he cried as a boy his mother would tell him to shut up or she’d give him a reason to cry. He cried when he had to go to bed, when some miserable lizard he kept in a popcorn box died, when he couldn’t do a multiplication problem. He cried when he scraped a knee or had to eat every bit of his supper.

  The kids order cheeseburgers and Cokes. Theresa and Dale order the trout. Now it’s Caitlin who’s pouting. She’s kicking her legs under the table, shaking it, kicking Dale’s chair. Peter drinks his Coke in a second and wants more. Dale’s stomach is churning. He doesn’t know how he’ll eat under these circumstances. Caitlin kicks his leg. Theresa tells her to sit up straight, please. In doing so, Caitlin spills her Coke. Dale is about to stand up and leave—it’s that or scream at this little shit, tell her to sit still like a human being—when he sees a gentleman a couple of tables over watching him. Theresa picks up the ice from the tablecloth and puts it back in Caitlin’s glass. She tells Dale he could help. Dale sops up the Coke with her napkin, gets the attention of the waitress.

  When they’re settled again, Theresa apologizes for snapping at Dale. Dale says, We’re all a little tense. Caitlin says there’s nothing to do here. Dale smiles and says, How about we all get ice cream after supper? There’s an ice cream store across the street. The kids lov
e the idea, except Peter wants it now. Theresa tries to explain that first we eat our burgers and then we eat our ice cream. Caitlin says, My father is a cowboy and he has a white horse and a blue shirt and the horse’s name is Andrew, and I can ride it when my father comes to see me. The man at the other table is still watching them. He’s smoking a cigarette now. He seems amused. He nods to Dale when Dale catches his eye. Dale offers a smile and a long-suffering shrug. Theresa’s trout is cold by the time she can touch it. She’s feeding Peter one French fry at a time. Caitlin takes a bite of her burger and announces she’s finished. Dale wants to say, If you don’t eat your meal, no dessert. If I was their father, he thinks, they wouldn’t get away with this crap. Theresa looks at Dale, raises her eyebrows, says, Maybe this was a bad idea. Dale says, Yes, perhaps it was.

  In Dr. Stouder’s office, I wanted to hold Judi’s hand, but I thought that might make things worse, might make her feel more vulnerable, or it might suggest that I was frightened or something. So we sat like I suppose defendants sit in court waiting to hear the jury’s verdict. You can’t sit still, and yet you can’t exactly move. Dr. Stouder said, We have reason to be optimistic, and I looked at Judi. She hadn’t changed expression. Dr. Stouder explained that the pelvic mass was not clinically suspicious. It was mobile, mostly cystic, she thought, unilateral, and of regular contour. This doesn’t mean we’re out of the woods, she said. But the prognosis is hopeful. I didn’t like that word hopeful I didn’t know why.

  Dr. Stouder flipped through some pages in Judi’s file. She said, The blood test was inconclusive. They often are. The ultrasound revealed the mass to be six centimeters. The size works in our favor. Dr. Stouder’s inclination was to start Judi on a regimen of hormonal suppression. I made a mental note of that phrase. Taking out my memo pad would seem like bad form, even to me. A regimen of hormonal suppression. Sounded like junior high school. That would simply mean taking oral contraceptives for a couple of months. What we’ll do, Dr. Stouder said, is suppress and observe. My guess is that the mass will begin to regress. If it doesn’t—and we’ll do regular pelvic exams and ultrasound—if it doesn’t, then we’ll have to consider surgery. Dr. Stouder had already consulted a surgeon and an oncologist, just to be safe, to get them on board, she said.

  In the car, Judi said, The only thing worse than having cancer is having it again. You’ve had it before? I said. Jesus. She said she’d died of it before. I wanted to tell her to stop talking like that. This is the real world, Judi. But I didn’t. I said, You don’t know you’ve got cancer. Weren’t you listening to Dr. Stouder? If you worry, the stress is only going to make matters worse. We were quiet. I asked Judi how she was feeling. Like stone, she said.

  22.

  The End Was Still Far, Far Off, and the Hardest and Most Complicated Part Was Only Just Beginning

  WHY WAS I SO PISSED WHEN I GOT THE ANNULMENT QUESTIONNAIRE IN THE mail? Wasn’t this, after all, the consummation I so devoutly wished for—the end of that married part of my life, the death of Husband Proulx, the repudiation of Teacher Proulx, the disavowal of Sterling Citizen Proulx? Was I upset, then, that Martha had usurped the privilege of making the final decision regarding our marital status while I was off pissing away my time across town? Was I angry at Martha’s attempt to void the last dozen years? Or was I angry that Ms. Voice Mail wouldn’t respond to my calls, but she could send me this, and just when I make the initial overture at reconciliation? You can see how completely deluded I was. Forget it, I’m not calling her this time. So I walked downtown and went to Martha’s office in the Chancery, just as if I had the right to be offended and surprised. I didn’t even knock, didn’t so much as nod at the receptionist in the outer office. Martha told whomever she was talking to that she’d get back to him or her.

  I said, “What the hell is this, Martha?” I held up the questionnaire.

  “I think you can read.”

  “What are you trying to do here? Are you trying to pretend the last twelve years didn’t happen? Are you trying to obliterate the past?”

  While Martha answered the phone, I took the seat across from her at her desk. She used to keep a photo of the two of us on the desk. We were on the Casco Bay ferry and our hair was blowing across our faces. The photo was gone. She hung up.

  “Didn’t you get my message?”

  “About the marriage counseling? Yes, I did.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “That’s my answer in your hand.”

  Well, that shut me up. She told me she had a job to do, and, more than that, a life to live. I said, “You think I don’t?” I couldn’t believe the way this was ending. I looked at the papers, at Martha. I said, “This isn’t the way a marriage ends.”

  “It seems to me it ended a while ago, Laf.”

  “So you don’t want to work on this?”

  “I will not be your cliché, Laf.”

  “Fine,” I said. “If that’s the way you want it. I’ll fill out your questionnaire.” I stood and walked to the door. I imagined little priestly ears listening at the other side. “Good-bye.”

  Martha said, “So this is it?” She grinned. “This is all you care about our marriage, is it? You’re just going to walk away from . . . everything?” Martha stood at her desk. She put her hands on her hips. “Is that it?” She began to cry.

  I held up my walking papers. I shook them. “I’m sick of your fucking games, Martha.” I was very close to reaching that delirious point where I start slamming things—a lamp into a wall, my face into a window, my body into a bookcase—when all the words I’ve ever learned melt down, and I release some bloody scream. I shut the door quietly behind me and ignored the two nuns sitting in the anteroom awaiting their audience with His Excellency, heads buried in National Geographic, and thinking, no doubt, that long ago they’d made the right choice in fleeing to the convent.

  I went to Moynihan’s, bought a beer, took a booth near the window for light, and took out the annulment questionnaire and a pen. Five pages of questions. I began.

  Q. Is there a history of mental illness in your family?

  A. Ample history, indeed, and all of it documented in the two-volume study by Eunice Travers, Examples of Mental Aberration in the Devolution of a Franco-American Family: A Study in Depravity (University of Lowell Press, 1989). A more recent example, not included in the book, is a letter my cousin Louie wrote to the Ford Foundation, and which was published in its 1992 annual report:

  Dear Sirs and Madams,

  I’m not writing to you just on account of you have money to help me out. I’m writing cause God has chosen you to help me out. One night, I made a plucky and selfish prayer. I told God I would discover a live dinosaur, either that or the bones of Pope Joan. For this, God’s end of the bargain was he’d force my ex-wife, Baby Jane Proulx, to let me see my kids, Victor, Henri, Little Louie, and Arlene. Well, guess what? Jesus showed me an honest-to-goodness real live young triceratops in answer to my prayer. I have left the dinosaur alone for seven years, thinking it was better off in the wild. But then, you know what? Jesus returned to my dream and told me the dinosaur needed to be discovered, and I must hurry before greedy men (unlike yourselves) find her.

  Here’s where you come in. I’ll need scuba equipment (and diving lessons) and caving gear and a submersible video camera with light collecting lenses of reputable brand (in other words, no knock-offs). And two hundred feet of braided nylon rope. I have priced all the stuff and it runs to like $15,000. Petty cash for you dudes. I’ll also need a plane ticket, but I can’t tell you to whereto. It will all be written up in my final report.

  Now, I could have asked for money for an apartment as I am one of the million of homeless in this country or to see a dentist before my staph infection kills me, but I asked for this instead. Where to mail my check, you might ask. To: Father Peter Barrett, St. Pelagia’s Mission, 12 Elm St., Leominster, Mass. 01453. He will hold it for me.

  Respectively Yours,

  Louis A. Proulx

 
; Q. What was your mother and father’s relationship and how did it affect you?

  A. They were husband and wife. It made me their son.

  Q. Describe the relationship with your former spouse.

  A. If you refer to the plaintiff in this case, the former Martha Williams, I would say that we’re not getting along that well.

  Q. What were the main features that attracted you to your former spouse?

  A. Her mind and her breasts.

  Q. How long did you date?

  A. Often till three in the morning.

  And so on for eighty-six questions. I could see that question 47 and some of those in the fifties, having to do with procreation, might prove embarrassing to Martha with her boss since we had no kids, and she had been taking precautions. I appended a P.S. to the questionnaire: “Is it true that all shepherds fleece their sheep?” and mailed it off to the Diocesan Council on Matrimony, just like the cleverest of asses.

  23.

  Martha Marie Williams Proulx

  A. “A MYSTERY”

  Judi once showed my story “All’s Hell That Ends Well” to a therapist friend of hers. The story was about a withering marriage. The narrator’s wife’s name was Marsha Mary Roberts. Judi mentioned Martha’s name to her friend, Robert Wigdor. Dr. Wigdor read the story and told Judi that I had raised passive-aggression to a whole new level. I was a retribution artist, he said.

  I fell in love with Martha because she was graceful and polite, enthusiastic and kind. She was beautiful, clever, and curious. I’d never met anyone like her. I couldn’t believe she’d noticed me, never mind liked me. I loved the way she hopped a bit when she walked, the way she looked at me out of the corner of her eye. I even admired her naïve fidelity to Catholicism, the way she dismissed the hypocrisy and repression as tangential to faith. And I loved her for what I couldn’t understand about her. Love searches for the mystery in the beloved, seeks the unknowable. I couldn’t feel the attraction to what was hidden in her anymore, and I didn’t know why.