Ricky, p.8
Ricky, page 8
This is also the part where you see beyond The Engine. A summer of guests with their rented bikes and checkered shirts. Ninety days of the Cliffs, wandering the property midmorning in their keen pants and V-necks. Three months of Quincy shrinking. Three months of the pumpkin growing. There’s the curious influx of the town. The local journalist arriving with his clipboard and pumpkin questions. Parents snooping with kids and cameras. That boy from the ferry, that one with the lighter. Biff. Here he is again, on the property, whistling impressed at the pumpkin. He’s offering to come with a forklift, he’s shaking hands with the Cliffs, he’s looking side-eyed at Corey who’s looking side-eyed at him. This is how the dream always ends. As a nightmare. With you sitting up, alone on the futon in a cold sweat. Waking from a dream within a dream. Knowing that Quincy is gone. That Corey has left. That the pumpkin has split on its driest side to show what it’s made of.
Waking up from this dream is always a relief, but always comes with a haze, a daze. You’re out of the dream but still in the fog. The dream sticks with you for two or three days, and the only cure seems to be laundry. Only washing and drying and ironing bedsheets for a bed large enough for two people is what melts the fog. Is what talks you off the cliff.
Love Blue
Vi’s divorce was final, and Marlo was taking her to the museum and lunch to cheer her up. In Marlo’s mind, the outing was a celebration. Good riddance to Allen! She’d never liked him. Allen had bottle-brush eyebrows that he puppeteered around his forehead in false earnestness. Once, at a dinner party, while everyone else was playing charades, Marlo had gone into the kitchen for tonic and discovered Allen eating a baked potato over the kitchen sink, two-handed. “That’s what I’m talking about,” he said to the potato. “That’s more like it.”
Allen had always struck Marlo as a fraud, so it was no surprise that fraud was what he was going to fun-jail for. Vi was way better off unmarried, but Marlo couldn’t say that out loud. Vi was lovelorn, languishing. She had lost eighteen pounds and was now driving a dented PT Cruiser with advertising wrap on it: Karmen’s Kettle Korn. Worse still, Vi was giving some New Age guy free tax prep in exchange for “emotional osteopathy.” Vi was so blue she claimed that even her “skin felt dead.” So, Marlo had to pretend to sympathize, when really Marlo was pleased. The more single friends Marlo had, the happier she was. She’d been flying solo for more than a decade, and after years of feeling rotten about it, she had come to see herself, and those in her position, as superior. Love, like religion, was for the weak.
“Do you think I need a coat?” Vi asked. They were standing in the foyer of Vi’s condo. The condo was bright and marbly and on the market and Vi was bereft about it. “Tell me what I need to bring, Marlo.”
Marlo pointed to a poncho. The name of the exhibition was Where Love Went, but she didn’t tell Vi that. Her plan was to pretend she hadn’t known what they were getting into. To be honest, Marlo really didn’t know anything about it. She had decided on the exhibition based only on its name, the same way she bet on racehorses. Maybe the exhibition had nothing to do with love. Maybe it was about nuclear weapons. Who cared? If it got bad, they could go down to the museum café and eat overpriced crudités and salted cashews. They could drink sake, talk about wireless bras, Marlo’s gum surgery. They could go into the gift shop and buy some glossy space-age salt and pepper shakers the color of cherry tomatoes. Anything was better than staying at home and standing in Allen’s closet, staring at his white-collar shirts.
“The museum will get your mind off things,” Marlo said. “That’s why they made museums.”
Vi put on the coat that Marlo held out. “I’ve never understood art,” she said.
* * *
It was a rainy fall day. Not too cold. The streets were shiny silver, and here and there on the sidewalk were yellow and orange leaves, dropped like children’s mittens. There were puddles tinged with gasoline, giant thumbprints of moonstone. Marlo thought it was delightful. She and Vi were both dressed in black coats and carried black umbrellas and Marlo thought they looked like witches. What witch spent too much time pining for a man who ate a potato with two hands? Still, Vi looked miserable. Did she even see the double-decker bus with the soggy tourists? The wincing Chihuahua paralyzed by his rain boots? Marlo didn’t think so, and it was a shame; their misery was comedic.
* * *
“Oh, great,” Vi said when they reached the museum. It had been recently redone and was the size of a regional airport. Its steel and fiberglass gave off a sterile, government-funded optimism. “Where Love Went. Did you plan this, Marlo? I’m going to kill you.”
“Well, look at that,” Marlo lied, eyeing the hot-pink banner. “Maybe we can learn something.”
The two women entered, obedient as schoolgirls. They closed and shook their umbrellas under the awning. They checked their coats and tucked the numbered stubs in their wallets, then tucked their wallets in their crossbodies. They bought their full-price tickets and waited, without fidgeting, for the elevator to arrive.
“I don’t require a headset,” Vi said. “I’d rather feel dumb on my own time.”
“You’re not dumb,” Marlo said, but she said it because she felt she had to. She was starting to feel sorrier for herself than for Vi. Maybe Allen had committed fraud because Vi was so unstimulating. Maybe this outing would be so excruciating that Marlo would end up eating a potato over her own sink tonight, two-handed.
* * *
The exhibition began in a small round room. The walls were painted with a mural of farmland in various shades of blue. At the center of the room was a blue kitchen table. On the table, blue dishes displayed glossy blue apples, a blue roasted turkey, blue string beans, a blue loaf of bread with blue slices falling away.
A recording played on overhead speakers. “In 1957, in the heart of the Wheat Belt,” it declared, “Little Tiger Cat Food Company came to the small town of Chaffton and built its world headquarters. All of Little Tiger’s buildings were painted a distinct shade of blue known as Love Blue. The company’s fleet of trucks, also all painted Love Blue, clogged the prairie town’s roads. The company donated a Little League ballpark with Love Blue bleachers. It built a Love Blue-bricked opera house. A Love Blue-tiled waterpark. Little Tiger even offered free Love Blue fencing to any household in need of a fence. After the 1962 tornado, it replaced the town’s roofs with Love Blue shingles. In 1963, the town was renamed Love Blue. By 1965, Love Blue had the highest suicide rate in the plains states. Love Blue also had the highest teen pregnancy rate and the highest divorce rate in the state. Love Blue, the color, fell somewhere between cyan and cadet. It had been formulated by a World War II psychiatrist who based it off the eye color of his pet Siberian husky, Fyodor.”
Marlo and Vi watched as a blue family inflated before their eyes at the blue kitchen table. A father expanded. A mother with a beehive hairstyle put on pounds with a gentle hiss. A balloon boy, in a light-blue-and-dark-blue striped shirt, extended a fat hand toward a glass of blue milk. A plump daughter, clearly an airhead, stared blankly at her bowl of blue soup.
“Everything tastes blue,” a girl’s voice said overhead.
“Everything smells blue,” a boy’s voice said.
“I love blue,” a man’s voice said.
“I am blue,” a woman’s voice said.
The recording went on to play the clinking sounds of dinnertime. To Marlo, blue forks and blue spoons and blue knives sounded more intolerable than stainless ones. After some time, the blue family slowly deflated and the lights came on. When Marlo and Vi exited the round room, an attendant handed them each a small blue card the size of cracker. On its reverse side it said: YOU ARE LOVED.
Vi read the card and sighed. “Was,” she said.
Marlo wanted to say something snide, but instead she slid the card into a side pocket of her crossbody like a secret wish. She thought about the blue town. About everyone trying to escape its predictability through sex and death, affairs and babies. The cause of bad behavior was always monotony, monogamy. Marlo had learned this the hard way. The whole world was painted Love Blue if you looked at it right.
“What if I run into him here?” Vi was still holding the card. She didn’t have the self-respect to hide it like Marlo had. “What if, as his last hurrah before jail, he’s here? Wandering around? Allen. It’s something he would do.”
Marlo snatched the card from Vi and offered it back like a parking ticket. “Put this in your pocket, will you?” She looked around for the next exhibit. “Allen is drinking a martini somewhere. Eating a Wagyu steak. He’s not the answer, Vi. Especially not now.”
Vi took the card but did not put it away. “You know, Marlo. Unlike you, I happen to believe in love. I say: ‘Better to be lost in love than to have never tried to lose.’”
Marlo stopped in her tracks and shook her head. “That’s not how it goes, Vi. Not the saying, not life. And especially not love.”
* * *
In the second room, doll-sized coffins were hung from the ceiling with fishing wire. They were all painted high-gloss black and propped open to reveal red-velvet insides where doilies were pinned with hat pins.
“Oh boy,” Vi said. “This one is going to be a doozy.”
Marlo squinted. She walked toward a swaying coffin and put her hands on her hips. Her determination to interpret the art was growing with Vi’s bewilderment. “BUTTERCUPS,” read Marlo. “And this one says MY PET CHICKENS HERO AND PECKY. What does that one say, Vi?” Marlo pointed.
Vi stood on tiptoes. “MY HAND BETWEEN MY LEGS,” she said. “Is it vulgar or funny? I mean, please don’t tell me it can be both at the same time.”
Marlo moved on like she knew the answer and read the coffins silently to herself. SALT AND OIL. DIGGING WITH A STICK IN THE AUTUMN DIRT. THE LOOK ON MY FATHER’S FACE BEFORE HE SNEEZED. A FINISHED MATH PROBLEM. A LIFESAVER SUCKED DOWN TO A TINY RED GLASS RING. WHEN CHURCH IS OVER. THAT ONE GENTLE SUMMER MONDAY IN THE TOYS “R” US PARKING LOT. YOUR SAD SOFT STOMACH OVERHANGING THE WAIST OF YOUR FAVORITE PANTS AND YOU NOT FEELING LIKE YOU HAVE TO BE SELF-CONSCIOUS IN FRONT OF ME. COLD MUSHROOM SOUP IN THE BACK OF MY GRANDMOTHER’S HARVEST GOLD FRIDGE.
Marlo stood and stared. A feeling rose in her. It began as nostalgia, then morphed into a wave of grief, then a wave of anguish. For an instant, Marlo remembered fondness, which was too close to remembering love, which was really no different than remembering tragedy. The coffins swayed … or was it Marlo? She caught a whiff of funeral lilies. Was she going to go there? To that place she had gotten really good at not going? Yes, apparently, she was. She was going to go back to her old bedroom. Their bedroom. To the doorway and his silhouette over her silhouette. To Marlo watching the silhouettes, too mortified, too betrayed to interrupt. Eventually she’d gone out to her car. Where Love Went. That was where love had gone. Out to a sangria-colored Jeep Cherokee. Thank God there hadn’t been a gun in the glove box. If there had been a gun it would have gone into Marlo’s mouth. Or maybe first to the back of his head and then second to the front of whoever she was’s head and then third in Marlo’s mouth. Would there have been a chance Marlo would have spared herself?
“I think this exhibit is about all the good things that have died,” Vi said. “I think I get it! I think I can relate! Think about all the things you’ve loved, Marlo, that have died, been buried.”
“I’d rather not,” Marlo managed.
“Well, I like this!” Vi gave a little smile of renewal. “I think this speaks to me! Maybe I’ll go out of this world with all sorts of coffins filled with all sorts of old loves.” Vi gave a short, satisfied sniff. “This was a great idea,” she said. “This museum. Really, Marlo.”
Marlo glowered. She felt like day drinking. She moved on to the next room without comment. On the wall hung an oversized canvas painted black. If Marlo stood too close, she couldn’t see anything but the color black, but if she stood further back, where the heart stickers were stuck on the floor, where the other patrons had begun to gather, she could see there were letters painted beneath the black paint. It seemed the letters were also painted in black, but perhaps in a different texture or direction. Marlo could make out a D and an E. She couldn’t say if she saw a T or an F.
“What does it say?” she asked a woman next to her. Her voice sounded uncharacteristically forlorn. “Can you see what it says?”
The woman shrugged and moved away. Now the feeling was rising, rising in Marlo. She had to bite her tongue, clench her buttocks. She’d felt this way at Vi’s wedding, as the maid of honor, right when Vi had walked down the aisle. Don’t pass out, she’d told herself. Don’t throw up. Vi had been so beautiful. So innocent in her silly tulle. So full of faith that everything would turn out okay. Marlo could have told her otherwise. Marlo gave the black canvas a good long stare until the T could also pass for an I. Until her anxiety could pass for terror. Then Vi was there, standing behind Marlo. Marlo could sense her presence, her warmth. It was as if the exhibit were filling Vi up with joy and energy, height even, while Marlo was swaying, shrinking, melting.
“I’ve had enough,” Marlo said, still facing the painting. “It’s all obscure for the sake of obscurity. I don’t see how this is doing you any good whatsoever. This is no place for the heartbroken.” Marlo sniffed. Her limbs were gelatinous. “I need food,” she announced. “I’m going down to the café to spend more money than I should on salted cashews just to get away from this nonsense.”
Marlo sped through the three remaining rooms of the exhibition in a cold sweat. From what she could tell in her haste, one room was filled knee-deep with empty takeout containers, another played a slideshow of roadkill. In the final room, Marlo went briskly past a yellow synthetic car sponge on a pedestal. Another overhead recording played, but the only word Marlo could make out at her speed was PANCREATIC.
“Absurd,” she muttered. “Insulting.” Now, she was out into the hall with Vi at her back. She went into the stairwell and down one flight, her footsteps clomping like a loose, panicked horse, Vi’s clipping along behind her. At the third-floor landing, Marlo felt close to hyperventilating. She stopped at the fire door and clutched its lever, panting. Then she turned around to face Vi, who turned out to not be Vi at all. Instead it was a man. A strange and unexpected man in a blue shirt and blue pants—smiling. Earnest.
“Oh …” Marlo wheezed. Her heart was really worked up now. How it was keeping her alive made less sense than anything in the museum.
“I’m Dex,” the man said in a way that sounded apologetic. “The artist.” He held out his hand to Marlo, but Marlo just looked down at it. The man’s fingernails were painted the color of a chlorinated pool.
Is that Love Blue? Marlo thought to herself.
“This is Love Blue,” the artist said, admiring his nails. “The one and only.” Dex gave up on a formal handshake and dropped his hand to his side. He nodded at the fire door with his head. His hair was parted, wet and perfect as a child’s. “I could tell the exhibition was really doing a number on you. I was afraid you might faint. Believe it or not, I’ve seen people faint. I like to get a reaction out of my visitors, but going unconscious is never the goal. Why don’t I buy you lunch? Could I buy you lunch?”
Marlo let her breath return. She was famished. And cheap. Why not? she thought. She didn’t know him, but they’d be in public, safe. In her mind, she saw a little coffin, suspended, and inside it a doily that read: GOING IT ALONE. After a moment, Marlo exhaled. She pointed to the door lever and nodded.
In the café, Dex ordered two glasses of sake. And a little cobalt bowl of smoked almonds. He also requested a plate of crudités, which came to the table, damp and vivid, in all different colors, carrots mostly: wine red, bruise purple, gleeful yellow. All of them had been curled by some darling device that created a platter of energetic tendrils. An explosion of edible streamers. Surprise.
“You know. To catch a rabbit, you don’t chase a rabbit,” Dex said. He made bunny ears with his fingers and bounced them over to the plate of vegetables and pretended to sniff. “I haven’t been on a date in eleven years.”
Marlo drank her sake in one gulp. It tasted like an overripe banana. Her heart was nearing normal. What was Vi thinking up there in the exhibition? Was she just standing, staring at picture after picture of wounded raccoons, thinking about Allen? Was she thinking about her condo, its view, the cool feel of its marble under her bare feet? About how someone else would walk into her kitchen in a few months and say How did I get so lucky?
Marlo looked at Dex and Dex looked at Marlo. She wanted him to answer all her questions, but she knew she’d have to ask them first. Instead, Marlo just said, “Twelve. It’s been twelve for me.”
I’m Your Venus
In the bad winter of 1994, Minerva awoke at three in the morning during the fourth blizzard and pulled her suitcase out from under my bed. “Your bed” is what she called it even though we’d been sharing it for six months—longer than Minerva had been with anyone else exclusively. She slept around. Not in a sexual way, but in a let-me-hold-you-while-you-cry sort of way. She was the village witch that tended to the village idiots. Her business card said Minerva Lamplighter: Professional Spooner. Soothsayer. Doom-Slayer. She’d been in the bed of most every local man between the ages of twenty-five and seventy-five, curled up behind them, saying: “Now, now. There, there. Mommy’s here. Tell your troubles to Mama.” She didn’t like her job. She wanted to be a carpenter. But the Universe had other plans for her.
