Circling the Drain Read online

  No plows had come through, though; like most southern towns there were probably only two plows in the whole county and the shabby downtown seemed unpopulated and under-traveled—certainly not deserving of any more attention than it was getting.

  She could see hands, maybe a hip? She could see so much white upon white and she felt right then like snapping in two. Like everything in her was icicled also and might crack down the middle or shatter right there.

  She thought: Everything I have is Gary and I don’t want that.

  She thought: What am I going to do?

  She saw him cross from one side of the store to the other, from junk food to magazines, the way his jeans fit, the glare of fluorescent light.

  She thought: I have to get out of this room.

  Suddenly, after four days of staying, this seemed like the only path to air, and what she needed, really needed, was air.

  She grabbed her sweater and a coat. She unlocked the door and stumbled down the hall, tripping as though on new legs, pushing past the empty office and out into the blinding white street.

  The air was so sharp it brought tears to her eyes. She doubled over, gulped at it, breathed deep and stayed like that for a minute: blinking and breathing in the silence of the deserted town. And then she began to walk, without thinking or planning or knowing where she was headed, she began to walk up the hill and away from the hotel, ice crunching beneath her feet. But each step was a struggle. The snow came up to her knees and she had to lift and step, lift and step, until finally she reached the top of a very steep hill and at its crest was a snowy stone bench. She brushed snow to the ground and sat there, sank there, really, drained from the short walk, breathing heavily, cold air sharp in her throat, ears numb, hands deep in her pockets.

  To her left, down the hill just a little ways, she could see the fleabag hotel and the 7-Eleven. She watched Gary come out the door of it, lighting a cigarette. She thought: Just another minute and I’ll walk back. Just another minute of this fresh air and I’ll head back to the hotel and Gary.

  But something was wrong. The air was brittle and she realized she was listening to the hum of idle engines. That right in front of her, across the very wide, tree-lined street, was an elegant stone building—also snowy—with a parking lot beside it, full of running cars: police cars, their red lights like laughter in the cold white quiet.

  On the lam and in this unfamiliar town, Gary had holed them up down the hill from a police station. Without breathing she looked back down the hill. Against a backdrop of pale gray sky, there were distant streets and houses, roads and trees and lives. The land spilled into a valley, then rose again. Roads swept up, swept towards her and away. And there, against the enormous sky, was the low roof of the 7-Eleven and the small shape of Gary.

  She saw him drop his cigarette and grind it into the frozen ground. She imagined its hiss. Then, as though sensing her there, he pivoted and looked straight up the hill and at her and neither of them moved. She felt the colored lights play over her face, felt the hum of the motors inside her. And she realized quietly, there on the bench by the cops, that Mama’s hopes had come true. With Gary just down the hill, she had woken from him, but it was a little too late. What she carried with her, she would carry with her, even after it thawed. There was nowhere to go.

  FAT LADIES FLOATED IN THE SKY LIKE BALLOONS

  Fat ladies floated in the sky like balloons.

  That was the year we forgot our dreams and woke, bewildered, muttering. It was spring when I noticed them turning above me, this way and that, drifting gently on a breeze, bright splashes of color against the pale blue sky. They looked lovely from a distance but somehow I knew it was a bad sign. It could mean only one thing: my ex-boyfriend was back in town.

  Sure enough I ran into Fred Luck later that day. I was walking home from grooming the dogs when there he was on a bench by the town square watching the fat women twist against the cloudless sky. You! he yelled and leapt up. He was a man of surprises.

  It’s been a long time, I replied. I couldn’t quite look him in the eyes. I kept thinking don’t do it don’t do it but somehow I sensed it was only a matter of time. He had eyes like licorice, shining and bitter—they never failed to suck me in.

  Eloise! Fred called again though he was only inches away. I’ve been waiting for you to walk by!

  You can’t just march back into someone’s life, I tried to say, but it came out: Oh, yes, well.

  We stood for a moment studying each other, each with our motives tucked just out of sight. Actually mine weren’t very well-hidden. Fred, when he could take the time to focus on me, had been an incredible lover and I was feeling a little bit lonely.

  Fred, I started.

  It’s Jack now, he said, I changed my name.

  Jack Luck, I asked? I was thinking with noodles. I was thinking with duck sauce and white rice.

  He nodded. I think I look more like a Jack than a Fred, he told me, and shoved his hands deep into his pockets.

  It was true. He did the name Jack justice.

  You were bringing up the property value of Fred though, I said, and blushed. Redeeming it, kind of.

  Thanks, he said, and smiled.

  That part was simple. I brought him home when I knew my house would be empty and made dinner. On the way there he told me how wrong he’d been to leave, how much he’d missed me. I knew his words were empty, the empty husks of beetles long wandered off, the shell game I always lost. Still I let him touch me. Gentle now, I said.

  He had his problems. Disappearance wasn’t the worst of it, nor was the plight of the innocent fat ladies. Fred couldn’t control himself. He was what Florence, my godmother, called bad news.

  He’s natural disaster and you’re trailer city, Florence rasped, then took another drag of her cigarette. He’s an itchy rash, a pimple under the skin. He’s a toothache and you’re just numbing the gum, girlie. You need to pull his mean self out and toss it away.

  But I love him, I said in the smallest voice those words could afford.

  Oh girlie, Florence said, that’s the worst of it.

  When we first met I was more trusting. I had just begun to groom dogs and I thought it sweet when Fred showed up at the shop to meet me. I was so swept along by his sexy ways that I didn’t complain when he launched the Apesons’ poodle into the highest branches of the sycamore in front of the library, or somehow elevated the Hendersons’ Affenpinscher and left it running circles in the air above the kennel roof. I thought to myself he’s an unusual guy, soul of an artist, I’ll have to smooth some edges is all. Then he impaled the Lorsinskis’ cat on a lamppost and dropped a city bus on the Lawsons’ Dalmatian.

  How the hell did he learn those tricks? Florence had asked me, sucking on a cigarette, curled in smoke.

  I don’t know, I told her, twirling my hair.

  Well, why can’t he stop it?

  I don’t think he knows what he’s doing until it’s too late, I answered. I was looking out the window of her house at the Meyersons’ puppy, romping around in their yard. I don’t think he means to, I said, but I wasn’t entirely sure about that.

  I’m leaving something out. See, the other thing is my laugh. I have a terrible laugh, all my life a wretched, horrible laugh. When I laugh sounds come out of my throat that violate the rest of the world. My laugh causes injury: it makes people nauseous or crazy. Stop that awful sound, they scream, running from my vicinity with their hands clamped over their ears. It’s so bad that the movie theater wouldn’t allow me in to see films. That’s a violation of my rights, I told them until they set up private screenings. The projectionist would leave the building and sit on the sidewalk. I went and got him when each reel ran out.

  So you can imagine what it meant to meet a man who didn’t mind. The first time I laughed around him—we were sitting on my porch when a nervous frantic giggle escaped and I tried to snatch it back with my hand, to stuff it back down my throat—he just tucked a curl behind my ear and whispered, You are
so beautiful.

  And like that I was putty. It didn’t even bother me that the potted plants that had been resting so quietly beside us on the porch were floating near our heads. It didn’t even bother me when they smashed to bits during our first kiss. All that mattered was Fred and the way he held me. All that mattered was the idea of watching a movie with someone else.

  Now by the time Fred became Jack, I had married a guy named Steve. So of course I brought Jack home to meet him. Steve wasn’t his real name—his real name sounded like a kind of sausage—but he’d paid me a lot of money to become his wife, and felt Steve made him sound like a naturalized citizen. Though he didn’t like my laugh, he’d hired me to be his wife so he wouldn’t be deported to the gray, depressive country that spawned him. When Steve learned of Jack it seemed to upset him, though his inner life wasn’t always clear to me. We had trouble communicating.

  You and me are bloodletting, he said while Jack was in the bathroom.

  You and me are bouillabaisse, he tried again. Bakers.

  No, I said, flipping the pages of a shiny magazine. I didn’t even look up.

  Borrowing, he said. Burrowing.

  Blowing? I offered. I enjoyed frustrating him.

  No! You are not understanding. You and me like tree, he tried.

  Bush? I flipped a page.

  No!

  (Flip, flip.) Brain!

  Jack is borrowing wife, he began again, his desperate hands flailing about. Husband forgets husband is forgotten.

  I threw down the magazine and rose from the armchair as Jack reentered. Back later, I said.

  See, love was not part of the bargain. I know love never is, etc., etc., but I expected more respect. I’ll be your wife, I had told him, professionally. Like a job, I’d said. You hire me and that’s my job: wife. Nothing else.

  Right, he’d said, beaming. Wife.

  It wasn’t until later that I realized how little he understood.

  So he didn’t like Fred. But everyone liked Fred. It was part of the way of the universe: people met and liked Fred. That was how the world was formed. But not Sausage Steve. The first thing he said when he met Fred was: He is not the good man. He is not the husband for you.

  Right, I told him, you hired me. He disappeared. He’s just my obscenely perfect ex-boyfriend who has a strange effect on people.

  Steve didn’t get it. He is the no good, he muttered, and glared at Fred.

  Jack née Fred was many things, I must agree, but not really a bad person, exactly. I mean he acted irresponsibly, sure, but generally because of a helpful impulse, I thought, not a malicious sensibility.

  Still, I felt stuff in the back of my head, forgotten dreams maybe, fleeting thoughts, the sense that I had a running list of things I was losing, things left behind. When we walked out of the house, I looked at Fred but he had his hands in his pockets and was staring at the night sky, the fat ladies blocking the stars like black holes, like gasps of breath, like forgotten clouds. I shook my head at the way that I felt, yearning for his touch, the anger I’d been storing hidden somewhere distant. He waited for me to catch up, then he put his arm around my shoulders, kissed my forehead and I followed him home.

  In the morning we had breakfast at a diner near the park. I sipped coffee and Fred gnawed a banana muffin. The staff watched us, frightened—they had seen the damage Fred could do. This probably isn’t such a great idea, I began in my head, but what I said was, Nice day.

  On the radio there was much debate over how to get the fat ladies down from the sky. They waved happily in the daylight but I imagined they must be hungry by now.

  Then I thought maybe this was the evolution of things, the way the world spun. Maybe this was the way things changed and maybe that was true for the fat ladies also—that one minute something was an orange and the next it was a peach. One minute the world holds you down and the next it lets you go. And maybe they would drop quietly as they lost weight until they landed here like the rest of us, drawn, haggard and dreamless, all their glorious roundness gone.

  TESTIMONY

  1.

  About 2 years ago I had a dream…. I walked outside with my classmates and the sky was a ruby red. I…felt very frightened by the color…. In the sky was large Hebrew writing…there was a voice that read it aloud. The voice was very deep and loud (I knew it was God) and he said, “Kneel before me.”

  Nacogdoches, TX USA

  In the city there were trees outside my window but they were very far away and small. Mostly I saw apartment buildings, housing projects, people struggling through their day. The city was a vigorous place, and at first it suited me.

  I moved there after my brother, Jack, died. I wanted words, a voice, something, and I quickly became addicted to other people’s prophecies. Most of them were dark dreams that I read on the Internet: dreams of doom, or slow disorderly destruction. Not many were hopeful, but in the gray light of my bedroom, the green glow of my computer, they felt intimate and familiar.

  As I wandered through the visions night after night, I saw lines weaving and dipping: war, anarchy, rubble. I collected these threads, strung them across my apartment, confused myself in their web and slept hard and dreamless.

  My co-workers would have been surprised to learn of my fascination with prophecy. At twenty-nine, I worked in a bookstore, buried myself in words and mostly kept to myself. That’s what I did on the normal days, the days like other days. I listened for salvation, but pretended to get on with things. I worked and watched and waited.

  2.

  The warning I say is that…canned goods should be stocked up on and water. The water is soon to run out. Everyone love each other and do not commit crime against your neighbor…. I am pleading with the world. Stop the madness or it will be your undoing. People who abide by what I have said shall be saved.

  jenny thomas calgary, ab canada

  It was three o’clock in the afternoon on a late autumn Friday that I saw the woman. She was draped in shawls. Mauve, gray and dusty blue cloth layered and piled around her, so that she moved through the store like a stuffed sock. Experience with shoplifters made me follow her, but she took nothing, just drifted from New Nonfiction to Cookbooks, then quickly pivoted and dashed into New Age/Self Help. Was it something in her movements I recognized? Familiarity prickled me, but who was she?

  I stayed in Geography and peered over one of the new pine bookshelves trying to get a better look.

  Her face was slack and uneventful. Her features slid softly, as down a mud hill. She was not pretty: her mouth was a garnet slash of uneven lips. Her hair hung in straight gray wisps. I had never seen her before, but I knew her. I knew, somehow, that she posted her dreams on the Internet and that I had read them. I felt it like a shudder: a current she gave off, or a barely perceptible shift in the world’s gravitational clutches. I stepped out into New Age/Self Help as though I could say something that mattered, could redeem both of us. Then I balked and charged past her into Women’s Studies and stood there cursing myself for being so clumsy, so insecure, so invisible.

  3.

  The symptoms were obvious. Thinking back, I see old driver’s ed movies of our lives with red lines around the warning signs: Beware, car turning without signal. Look out, there are voices living in your brother’s head.

  With Jack, there were no absolutes. Rules dissolved in the vicinity of my brother: places we were not allowed to go, curfews, strict guidelines for conduct—all delineations evaporated in the glow of his laugh. Exceptions were always made for Jack. My big brother was the king of exceptions.

  People gravitated toward him. He was thoughtful, responsible, meant what he said and unfailingly did what he promised, but he was never normal.

  Then the definite, unmistakable episodes began.

  In our quiet house, while my mother, father and I slept, Jack rearranged all the furniture. Lined up the couch and chairs as though giving a presentation. He took all of the dishes from the wooden
cabinets in the kitchen, put them in the bathtub and covered them with syrup, or once, with potting soil. He took the clothes from his dresser and lay them out in the backyard so that they carefully covered the grass. He disconnected all the appliances and pulled them into the center of the kitchen.

  These fits happened at night and were nearly always discovered when Jack was in the act of trying to undo whatever he’d done. At first we ignored it. He was a remarkable person, and no one wanted to admit he was broken. It challenged our faith in everything: that the sun rose continually, that the earth rotated on its axis, that the sky was held firmly above us.

  My mother mentioned sleepwalking and cheerfully crossed the lawn gathering Jack’s shirts and trousers. But when the frequency increased, my parents asked Jack to come with them to a psychiatrist. He refused.

  I’m sorry, he said, I really am. It won’t happen again. It was a bad dream. I dreamt I had to rescue the plates. I dreamt I had to hide them underground.

  I was ten when he finally came to me and begged to be tied to his bed at night. I refused and told my mother, who put her head in her hands and began to cry. We were in the living room. My father was out in the garage trying to remove the glue with which my brother had filled the toaster. His quiet curses drifted in through the open door.

  I touched my mother’s shoulder. Maybe he doesn’t want to go to college, I said, needing to find a way to escape what wrapped around all of us. My brother had been accepted to Harvard for the fall. My mother’s shoulders shook under my hand.

  He has to go to a doctor, I said, surprised at my own words but believing them, just the same. We did not protect him from himself, I knew. I left my mother and went upstairs. Jack lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling.