Love Warps the Mind a Little Read online

  Dale teaches with a 9-mm. Ruger automatic in a shoulder holster. He doesn’t mind if, once in a while, the students get a glimpse of the leather strap beneath his sport coat. Some days he looks over the class, at the rows of oil-field trash, and imagines drawing his weapon and firing a round into the forehead of one of those dumb, smart-assed ones in the back of the room.

  Dale has a new girlfriend, Theresa Plotczik, who’s a nurse at the regional hospital. Theresa says she’s never been to Ruidoso, which she pronounces “Riodosa.” Dale says they should go skiing for the weekend. When he picks her up Friday evening, Theresa hops into the cab of the truck, says, I hope you don’t mind. I brought along a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. I know you don’t drink. Dale checks the rearview mirror, says, I hope you don’t mind. I brought along a loaded.357 magnum. This makes Theresa laugh.

  Three miles east of Maljamar, Dale pulls off the highway and onto an oil-field road. He pulls over by a pump jack and parks. Theresa wants to know what’s going on. Thought we might go for a walk, he says. He leaves the headlights on, and they walk ahead in the river of light. There are a million stars in the sky. Dale runs his hand through a low sagebrush and tells Theresa to smell his fingers. She wants to go back to the truck. It’s cold. He says, I think this would be a good time to get a few things straight between us. I wondered what the hell Dale was up to.

  Spot started to bark like crazy. I went to the window and saw the truck from Petland, the two workers standing in the driveway with the doghouse. I had them set the doghouse near the back fence, and I signed off on the delivery. The doghouse was unfinished pine, cedar shingles on the roof. It smelled sweet and resinous. Spot barked at it. The word trousseau came to me and the image of my aunt Emma’s bone-white linens, starched and folded, my mother’s giggle. Theresa thinks of her two kids. She says, I’m not sure what you mean, Dale. I grabbed Spot’s collar. He growled. I shoved him inside the house and told him to stay. I could see he was panicked, but I figured he’d calm down with my petting and my baby talk. He snapped at me and lunged out. He ran a circle around the yard. Dale just stands there, not saying anything.

  I chained Spot to the fence with enough lead so he could get in his house. I begged him to please stop barking. I brought out bowls of water and chow I went inside the house. I found a Post-It note, wrote, Dale stares into the headlights until he’s blind, and stuck it on my story-so-far. The phone rang, the machine answered. A neighbor, Mr. Lesperence, complaining about the barking. I took a shower. Martha hadn’t packed my razor. I shaved with Judi’s.

  I walked downtown to Judi’s building. I thought I’d meet her for lunch, then go to the library to write, maybe do a little reading on New Mexico. There are three other therapists in Judi’s building, an old brown- stone on Irving Street. The offices are upstairs. Mr. Natural’s Health Food Store is on the first floor, which is where Judi told me to meet her in ten minutes.

  A bell jingled when I opened the door. I smiled at the woman there arranging a display of banana chips. She smiled back, said, Let me know if I can help you. I read somewhere that you get a warning before you’re hit by lightning. Your hair feels like it’s standing on edge and your skin tingles. That’s what her voice did to me. I had that chill in my neck and shoulders. I wanted her to say something else. Anything else.

  “Is there something wrong?” she said.

  “Nothing,” I told her. “I’m just waiting for Ms. Dubey.” I pointed to the ceiling. “You have a lovely voice.” Her eyes were gray God, gray eyes.

  “Judi’s nice,” she said. “Should quit smoking, though.”

  I had to stop staring at her, so I looked at the wheatgrass, the watercress. Dale might be into health food. Makes his own bread with—I looked at the barrels of flour—stone-ground rye. He has a juicer. Grinds lamb and bulgur for the dog. I pretended to be reading a can of Pritikin barley soup, and I watched her. I could see only parts of her at a time. The eyes and cheekbones, the top of an ear poking out of her brown hair. Her collarbones and the hollow at her throat. Her lips. I asked myself what I thought I was doing. I already had a wife and a girlfriend. I should get out of there. I stopped at the counter on my way out. She was on the phone explaining to whomever that watermelon juice would cleanse the kidney and bladder. I nodded. She smiled, gave me a tiny wave. She smelled like vanilla. I wanted to rest my face on her neck and leave it there and breathe her in. I was staring again. I smiled. I could tell she noticed my tooth.

  All my life I’ve had trouble with my teeth—soft enamel, spongy gums. Fillings, bondings, extractions, root canals, bridges, scalings. I don’t even want to talk about it. Anyway, my last dental adventure a week earlier had been this crown on my front tooth—upper-right central incisor. The cap looked lovely in the dentist’s hand, white and flawless. Looks good, I said. So Dr. Shimkoski cemented it to a post drilled into my gum. He handed me the mirror. It looks like a white picket in a gray fence, I said. You’ll get used to it, he said. It’s just the novelty of the thing.

  We had lunch, Judi and I, at Kalil’s, a Lebanese place with four tables. Judi finished her salad and spinach pie and picked at my tabbouleh. She said I seemed distracted, did I want to talk about it? I told her about the doghouse. She said avoidance won’t make it go away.

  “What’s that?” I said.

  Judi smiled. “You’re going to have to talk to Martha sometime.”

  I nodded, sipped my coffee, thought about Dale talking to Theresa. They haven’t moved. Right now he’s smiling like everything’s a big joke. “Don’t play games with me, Theresa. Okay?” Dale steps toward Theresa, takes her hand in his, snuggles his cheek into her neck.

  “Did you ever consider marriage counseling?” Judi said. She put down her fork and wiped her mouth with a napkin.

  “We talked about it.”

  Judi fished through her purse. I told her lunch was on me. I said, “Do you think we should?”

  “What?”

  “Go to counseling.”

  “Do you love her?”

  I swept crumbs of cracked wheat into a pile with my hand. “I don’t know” I shook my head. “It’s not that simple.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Maybe I love Martha but not marriage.”

  “Or vice versa.”

  “But if I love her, why aren’t I happy?”

  “So maybe you love her.”

  “Even if I’m really in love with her, but I think I’m not, then I feel like I’m not. That’s the way with emotions—even if the source is fake, the feeling is true. And if I can doubt my love, can imagine not being in love, then maybe that’s proof I’m not. Does this make sense?”

  “What do you feel?”

  “Like I’ve quietly lost my life. It’s the awareness of that. Like I woke from a nap and realized I wasn’t who I dreamed I was. Whatever you call that is how I feel. Scared, maybe.”

  Judi looked at me. My eyes dropped to the table, to my little mound of crumbs. I blew on them. I said, “You lose a wallet or keys or something and you notice in a second. But your life can go missing and you don’t even know it.”

  Judi put her elbows on the table, rested her chin on her folded hands. “Does turbulence make you feel more creative?”

  “Tranquillity. But you might be on to something,” I told her. “Maybe that’s why I don’t want to wrestle with problems. Too much turmoil. I’ll have to think about that.” I thought about my characters, how their troubles were more interesting than my own. Then something occurred to me, and I said, “Some problems are worth intensifying, you know. The more you worry, the harder you struggle, or choose not to, the more you learn about yourself.”

  “Sounds self-destructive to me,” Judi said. “And self-centered.” She grabbed her purse, stood. “Anyway, I’ve got to run. Grief group at two.” She checked her watch, kissed me on the cheek. “I’ve got tennis after work. Be home around eight.”

  “You play tennis?” I said. What kind of world had I walked into?

  5
.

  Whose Dog Are You?

  I WAS ON THE PHONE TRYING TO EXPLAIN TO JUDI WHY I HAD TO TIE SPOT TO the deck—that way he can sleep under it. She said, What do you mean he ate the doghouse? I heard the doorbell, checked the time. This would be the mailman’s signal. I said, He’s been munching on it right along, but that thunderstorm last night must have made him crazy. Judi said, That’s the most bizarre thing I’ve ever heard. I told her that’s nothing, told her how one time Spot chased a Jeep up Blossom Street, caught hold of the vinyl fender, yanked it off, ran to the park, and ate it. I didn’t tell her how he’d chewed up and splintered most of a wicker ottoman that first lonely night in her cellar. Judi said, Well, what if he eats the deck? I said, He can’t. It’s redwood. She said, That dog needs help. I knew that. I also knew it would do no good. I’d already got my money back from K-9 Kollege. One of their obedience counselors had wired a cordovan house slipper so that every time Spot chewed on it, he’d get a shock. Turns out that Spot kind of liked the jolt. The guy turned up the juice, said he’d never seen anything like it. Now you couldn’t get the damn slipper away from the dog. The counselor said any more voltage would just fry old Spot, so we stopped. Judi said she’d be home after step-aerobics.

  I found two manila envelopes in the mail addressed to me in my handwriting. I could feel my manuscripts inside, but I told myself that maybe the editors wanted some small changes before they published the stories. I set the envelopes on the kitchen table beside the typewriter and perked another pot of coffee. I ate an apple. I called Our Lady of the Sea Fish & Chips to get my hours for the weekend. I don’t know why I do this, why I refuse to open the mail, I mean. It used to drive Martha nuts, the way I’d leave a letter from my brother, say, sitting on my dresser for days. She’d say, What if something terrible happened? I’d say, Then he would have called. I took a tennis ball from the top of the fridge and went outside to play fetch with Spot. He ate the ball on the first toss. I went back to the kitchen, sat down, and opened the envelope.

  The editor of Rick Rack thanked me for letting him read “The Soft Hiss of Vinyl,” which he found “well-crafted” and “a delight to read,” but not quite what he was looking for. Try us again, he wrote. The second response was less encouraging. It read, “Please read Incomplete Flower before submitting! The literary arts have been reduced to imploding pus with material rewards reserved for vapid stylists and collegiate pud suckers. We publish writing that counts, friend, that redefines and reshapes the world. Too much of what we receive appears to have been submitted after getting a B in Professor Scribbles Creative Writing Workshop. Your story, ‘Hammered to Smithereens,’ is maybe a C+.” The letter was signed, “The Incomplete Flower Collective.” I looked at the address—a P.O. box in Cambridge.

  Now I was too agitated to write. If I had tried to do a scene now, Dale would just end up drilling three bullets into Theresa’s forehead or something, and I didn’t want that responsibility I called Martha at the Chancery She’s the bishop’s administrative assistant. I left a message on her machine, thanked her for sending along the mail. I asked her did she want to get together to talk, have a drink, or whatever. I waited a second. I said she could call me at Our Lady of the Sea all day Friday, nine to nine. If you’re there, Martha, please pick up.

  I put my two stories into new envelopes with SASEs and addressed the envelopes to the next two magazines on my list, the New Hampshire Review and Raw Material, and headed downtown to the post office. I was trying not to think about my fantasy of pummeling the Collective’s minister of communication with a Louisville Slugger. I thought about Martha instead, how I knew her better than she knew me. I knew she didn’t always mean what she said. Or, let’s say, she meant what she said, it just wasn’t true. Not that she was a liar. I’m the duplicitous one. Just that she didn’t know herself any better than she knew me.

  Martha and I had graduated from Worcester State College with our education degrees. We got married and made a deal: I’d work until she got her master’s, and then she’d work while I wrote my novel. It took Martha a year to get her master’s, and me twelve years to get out of the classroom. Twelve years teaching English at South High. The only good that came of that time was my friendship with Francis X. Harvey, He taught history. Twelve freaking years.

  Every April I’d tell Martha I was going to quit, and every April she’d cry and tell me all the practical reasons why I couldn’t—car payments, rent, retirement. Retirement? Jesus, Martha, I haven’t started living yet. She’d tell me to grow up. And every year, I’d give in. So then two years ago, I just didn’t tell her until after I’d quit. You’ve ruined our old age, she said. Better than our middle age, I said. Things were pretty tense from then on. And then, as you know, I went and took up with Judi.

  I mailed the stories and walked to the Jersey Bar for coffee. C+, my ass. They keep the story six months, and they don’t have the time to justify their goddamn grade. If you’re going to be nasty, have the decency to be specific. Write, Dear Lafayette Proulx, We don’t understand the central character’s motivation at all, nor were we impressed with the puzzling and unedifying shifts in viewpoint. Though your grammar, usage, and spelling in this Joycean pastiche are impeccable, we find little else to recommend this plotless, pointless piece of trash, and we humbly suggest you find yourself an entry-level position in the food-services industry, where we’re certain you’ll be jolly and prosperous. Yours truly, The Collective Unconscious. At least then I could respect them.

  Well, this was getting me nowhere. I took the notes to my story out of my overnight bag, got another coffee. Let’s see, Dale’s staring into the headlights. Theresa takes a step back. So there are the lights, high beams flooding Dale’s eyes, so bright and painful that Theresa thinks she sees a tear in his eye. He can’t hear what she says. She wonders why he won’t look away from the light. He says, I love you, Theresa. But he doesn’t look at her. Dale had thought this could be romantic, alone at night with Theresa in the desert, all the quiet. But it’s not, is it? He doesn’t know how to act. He’s never been in love, never tried to be tender to a human being. Theresa says, Are you all right, Dale? I don’t know, he tells her. Theresa touches his arm. Say it, Dale, she says. He says, I love you, Theresa, and turns to her, but he is blinded and cannot see her smile. Let’s get in the car, she says. She slips her arm around his waist and leads him.

  I cracked my knuckles, flexed my hands. I liked the turn the story had taken. I liked Dale and Theresa, and I was sure other people would. But suddenly, I was back to editors and feeling steamed again. Then I wished I was going to Ruidoso with Dale and Theresa tonight. We could sit around the Horsemen’s Lounge and shoot the breeze. I’d know when to make myself scarce. Well, I could do that—be with them, I mean—right there in Judi’s kitchen tonight, but, then, it wouldn’t be polite to ignore my hostess when she got home.

  What was I doing with Judi anyway? I didn’t love her even though I told her I did. She didn’t love me and never bothered to lie about it. I could see that my life was a mess in many ways. I was living out of a suitcase, working part-time with no benefits. I had no home. An uncertain future. I had hurt my wife. I was a mess, sure, but I was writing.

  6.

  Echo

  I SAT IN DENTALAND’S WAITING ROOM AT THE GREENDALE MALL AND STARED at the framed print of an amaryllis that looked more like a red machine or a horsey fungus than a flower. I planned my strategy for Shimkoski. I’d be reasonable, tell him I deserved matching teeth. If he put up a fuss, I’d go to Plan B, which included threats—letters to the Better Business Bureau, the newspaper, the attorney general, and the ADA; an informational picket line outside his office; calls to radio talk shows and to my lawyer, as if I had one.

  A woman with pearl-gray hair sat across from me, an issue of Time open on her lap. Her eyes were closed. The man beside her, fiftyish, thin red hair, rosy-cheeked, soft of flesh, held her hand and jabbered away a mile a minute. In a single breathless sentence, he mentioned televisi
on, a bus ride, Indians, a flashlight, a sore toe, and sunglasses. Then he talked about a photograph that had something to do with his uncle William, who was trying to trick him. “I know he is. I know he’s trying to fool me. I know that. I know his tricks. Uncle William is.” And then he said he wanted a blue toothbrush today. Not a green one. Blue. He said this to his left hand.

  He is her son, I realized. I saw the resemblance now in the pinched lips, the snubbed noses. And I knew that he’d been chattering like this, nonstop, since he first learned to speak. His mother has never gotten used to the noise, but she understands that this is how her boy makes sense of his world, that he cannot think without talking, that he lacks a silent dialogue with himself. She has sacrificed everything for her son—her marriage, her career, her dreams, her friends—and she resents him for it. Resents him because there is no one else. He has driven them away. She loves him. She wants what’s best for him. She knows what it’s like to love someone who cannot love you back. Someone who needs you, holds you, yes, but someone who will never know that love is the knife in your heart, that it moves the sun, that love exalts the lover and the beloved, and that it vanishes. All she receives is the resonance of the love she gives, the familiar and unsubstantiated echo of her own dire passion. Nothing fresh, nothing she can embosom or taste.

  She wishes he would die. Not always, but at times like these, when their lives are public. She wants relief. She’s not yet seventy. She could still have a life, she thinks, a bit of one anyway. She could travel, eat at restaurants with men who would talk about books and ideas. She could sleep at last without the interruption of her son’s tears or his footsteps on the landing outside her door.

  The receptionist slid open the pebbled-glass window and said, “Mrs. Diggins.”

  The woman opened her eyes for the first time since she’d sat down. “Take Charlie first,” she said.