by Bennett Sims
‘Tell him,’ Michelle added, ‘tell what happened when you were moving.’
‘When I was moving?’
‘Her son,’ she said.
My face flushed with shame. I looked to Michelle in appeal, but her own expression was blank and severe. In that moment I understood how thoroughly she’d prepared for this. ‘Go on,’ she insisted. ‘Tell him.’
I had never told this part of the story to anyone else. In truth, it wasn’t even ‘part’ of this story—not a coda or capstone—but its own narrative altogether. ‘The Meanest Thing I’ve Ever Said To Anyone.’ It just happened to involve Fredricka.
It was my final day in the apartment. I’d already moved the bookcase and was returning for the last of my boxes when Fredricka came into my room to discuss my safety deposit. There would have to be deductions, she informed me. With undisguised glee she began to itemize the different messes I had left: I hadn’t washed one of the pillowcases—she would charge me for that; there was the broken plate—she would charge me for that; I’d left a crumpled Post-it in the wastebasket—she would charge me for that. And so on. I played along: ‘What exactly am I paying for?’ I asked. ‘The labor of emptying the trash?’ Oh, she cooed, I’d find out soon enough—I’d see what she charged for her services. Finally, in her obvious coup de grâce, she casually mentioned that I would also be paying for ‘that bookcase that you stole.’ I laughed outright. So this had nothing to do with the lease or the deposit: it was simply her way of getting the last word in. ‘The police declared it mine,’ I reminded her. She was ready for this: ‘They had no right! It wasn’t their jurisdiction!’ I asked how much she proposed to charge for it, a piece of trash left on the street. Seventy dollars, she said—half what her neighbor claimed to have paid. This was so idiotic that I became incandescent with rage. Yet I said nothing, for I knew that the price was arbitrary. There was no point disputing it. This was the last word—at least where the bookcase was concerned—and I let Fredricka have it. But as I was walking out of the flat, I turned a final time to look at her. She was standing in the hall, watching me go, her arms crossed. Her dumb face sagged, as if in sadness. I felt it as a pressure building inside me. Before slamming the door, I shouted back to her—shrieked, actually—‘I HOPE YOUR SON ROTS IN HELL!’
Every year or so, while lying in bed, I remember this sentence—I picture Fredricka in the hall, stung by my pointless cruelty—and I wince.
The night I told Michelle this story, early on in our relationship, I warned her that she would think less of me for hearing it. I even made her promise never to tell any of our friends. So when in our living room that afternoon she encouraged me once again to tell Ira, I looked at her in confusion. I couldn’t believe she was bringing this up now, for me to broadcast on national radio. Except of course she was bringing it up. She’d likely come to the interview with nothing else in mind: simply to ensure that the story was told from all sides, that both Fredricka and I were characterized as fully, as comprehensively, as possible. If this meant disclosing the evilest thing I ever said to her, or indeed to anyone, then so be it. And if I wasn’t willing to tell Ira—if I feigned forgetfulness—Michelle would be happy to tell him herself.
As if reading my thoughts, she nodded grimly. It didn’t occur to me then that Michelle might have been staging this confession—with Ira in that bookcase like a shriver in his booth—for my own sake. That she believed it would clear my conscience to express remorse; or else make me seem—to Ira and to listeners—like the mature, compassionate, sensitive man she knew I had it in me to be. This did not occur to me. All I was thinking, at that moment, was that she was out to humiliate me. She wouldn’t quit until the bookcase story was unsalvageable, I thought. And it wouldn’t be enough for me to just admit my guilt. No, then—on top of that—I’d have to charitably consider all of Fredricka’s possible motives. Maybe she had her reasons for stiffing me seventy dollars, I would have to concede. Maybe she was broke. Maybe she was bulimic! I tried to picture Fredricka listening to TAL in a few weeks’ time, hearing my voice again as I narrated all this. Hearing me shriek—again—‘I HOPE YOUR SON ROTS IN HELL!’ If she ever told the story herself, this was almost certainly the way it concluded: That time, after my son died. And a strange young man moved into his bedroom. And terrorized me. This was the story Michelle wanted me to tell. She expected me to broadcast Fredricka’s version to the whole world, preserving it for posterity in a podcast. I gritted my teeth. The thought of just laying the story, my story, at her feet like that—I couldn’t.
Yet Ira and Michelle were both watching me, waiting. I had to say something. And here’s the thing: part of me would have been happy to confess, so long as it never left that room. Part of me really did want to be the man Michelle wanted me to be. I quickly weighed the likelihood of Ira’s ever actually airing it. He was still cramped inside the bookcase, waggling the microphone, and I remembered that mine was the story he was here to hear today. Michelle had said as much herself, q.v. prong number three: I was supposed to be the sincere, relatable narrator. TAL’s listeners didn’t want a callous bully for a protagonist. If I deviated too far from this script—if I divulged certain cruelties to Ira—he could be trusted to just edit them out in post. Any mean-spirited or unsympathetic or unflattering footage of me would be left on the cutting-room floor, along with the flubs. And to be entirely safe, I could always email him afterward, asking him to delete it.
I cleared my throat. Ira smiled encouragingly, aiming the microphone at me. The green light winked. The important thing to remember, I remember telling myself, is that I am not this story. This story isn’t me. I can confess it to Ira, and no one else will ever hear it. I breathed. ‘It was my last day in the apartment,’ I began.
5.
Well, our program was produced today by Robyn Semien and myself, with Alex Blumberg, Ben Calhoun, Jane Feltes, Sarah Koenig, Jonathan Menjivar, Lisa Pollak, Alissa Shipp, and Nancy Updike. Our senior producer is Julie Snyder. Production help from Eric Mennel. Music help from Jessica Hopper. Seth Lind is our production manager. Emily Condon is our office manager. Our website, where you can get our free weekly podcast: thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International. WBEZ management oversight for our show by our boss, Mr. Torey Malatia, who became very angry this morning, when I suggested we try a bring-your-child-to-work day. Nancy Updike just wanted to show her son the office, and here, here’s what he said to her: ‘I HOPE YOUR SON ROTS IN HELL!’ I’m Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
Ekphrases
I.
There is a famous photograph taken at the edge of death: inside a car parked by the sidewalk are all manner of large dogs, looking directly into the camera. They stare through the windows without smiling, with a peculiar severity, like women and men in 19th-century portraits. The photograph is black and white. Studying it, one commonly wonders, How did they get in there? or remarks aloud, This is something else altogether. And indeed there is something unsettling about the sight of those large animals, packed quietly into the abandoned car. The photographer maintained that there were no dogs present when he took the picture: his subject was an empty automobile. A week after he developed the photograph, he developed cancer, and within a year he died.
II.
There is a famous painting composed at the edge of death: a broad cabinet is lined with cubbyholes, each of which is deeply recessed and shadowed, and in each of which a dollmaker has left a half-finished wooden hand; in the foreground, a small boy stands beside a doll of a girl, both of their eye sockets empty. Looking at the painting for the first time, one commonly assumes that the hands are reaching out of the cubbyholes to seize the boy and girl, who cannot see to defend themselves. On repeat viewings, however, one begins to sense that the boy and the girl—eyeless, mute—are themselves summoning the hands, which reach not for either of them but for the viewer. The painting bears no signature. Its first owner killed herself, and i
ts second owner killed his family before killing himself, in both cases within a year of having acquired the painting. Its present owner is storing it in a warehouse in New Jersey, where he will occasionally arrange a viewing. On the question of whether, in moonlight, the hinge of the girl doll’s jaw unlocks, such that her mouth appears to open, he is casually dismissive: That is a rumor. Or: I have never observed this phenomenon. Or: Her mouth, it is always closed.
III.
There is a famous book written at the edge of death: it comprises descriptions of the face that the reader will see, looking back at them, if they look out the window to the lit-up window across the street. For every page a different face. The book was anonymously written and hand-printed, in a run of just a hundred copies. No facial description exceeds a paragraph, and while they differ in small details—the gender of the watcher, its age, whether the watcher’s mouth will be open, or closed, or moving in rapid spasms—each description employs phrases like horror-stricken face, dread face, and so on. The book is the size of a telephone directory, with a plain white cover. It is said that for any given reader, the book contains one face whose gaze was meant for them particularly, at one particular moment in their life. Thus it may happen that a reader will sense, upon reading an entry, that yes, undoubtedly, this is the face that was meant for them—yet still never know when to expect to see it. Whether out their bedroom window, or a restaurant’s plate-glass window, or out the window of an office building. Whether if they looked up now, or to the side now, or if they did not look. In this way every window comes to be haunted by the potentiality of a gaze. As for the many blank pages bound in the book, it is said that these are descriptions whose gazes have been met. When a reader sees the face that was meant for them, their entry in the book—the very ink on the page—is erased. As yet, no one has come forth to lay claim to a blank. To report what was written there, or what they saw.
IV.
There is a famous song recorded at the edge of death: a band performs in a nightclub, and midway through the performance the bandleader begins to address the audience. He speaks a few words in a foreign language, which are followed by a bandmember’s solo; he speaks another few words, and another member performs a solo, and so on through all the instruments, the audience applauding after each performance. Listening to the song for the first time, one commonly assumes that the man is introducing each of the bandmembers by name and that they are performing by way of introduction. However, the more one listens, the more clearly one picks out the sounds that the man is making: they are words of no recognizable language, a dark gibberish, more like guttural noise than human speech. Each word is long, and clotted, and it becomes impossible to believe that he is introducing the bandmembers by name. Replaying the song and focusing just on the man’s cadence, a listener might announce, He is describing an apocalypse in a dead tongue, or, He is pronouncing an ancient curse. And it is true that the wash of white noise at the end of the recording—that hiss of static, itself like a final solo—sounds so much like a tide bearing forth a curse.
V.
There is a famous film recorded at the edge of death: the camera frames the back of a chair, which is situated at the end of a semi-darkened room. Draped over the chair is a black shirt, which in the distance and the dark, as well as the graininess of the film stock, looks like the long black hair of a man, sitting in the chair with his back to the viewer. Indeed, for the first few moments viewers tend to mistake the shirt for a man’s hair. What is he doing? they ask one another. He’s just sitting there. The video, a static shot of this chair, lasts more than ten minutes: the shirt does not move, no one enters the frame, the camera is neither repositioned nor adjusted. When it becomes clear that the black length draped over the chair, perfectly still and quiet, is only a shirt, viewers assume for a while that a character, the shirt’s owner, will soon be introduced to claim it. They wait for the moment when a human being will walk into frame and grab the shirt off the chair. Why are we watching this shirt? they ask. Or: Is this all that is going to happen? Of course nothing does happen. Except that in the last seconds, before the video cuts off, the room appears to lighten slightly. It even becomes possible, in this improved lighting, to see why the shirt had been mistaken for hair in the first place—for yes, it is textured somewhat like hair and tapers at the end like hair. Occasionally viewers laugh outright: Just like the long black hair of a man! or If I didn’t already know that that was a shirt… Then, slowly, the long-haired man begins to turn in his chair, revealing a face that is like the nightmare of a face.
Two Guys Watching Cujo on Mute
‘People are actually scared of this movie? I’ll grant that that’s a big dog. Sure. But it’s not like he’s bulletproof. I don’t get what’s so horrific about this.’
‘The horror has more to do with the like existential betrayal of the situation. The way a pet can turn on you. What can and can’t be tamed.’
‘Man’s best… friend?’
‘I mean it either scares you or it doesn’t. Listen. I knew a kid once was afraid of dogs.’
‘How old are we talking about?’
‘Back in grade school. MacDougall Lewis. Spindly kid, pale, Prince Valiant bowl cut. He for one would hate this movie. And it had nothing to do with the size of the dog, either, I can tell you that. His fear. Couldn’t even come to a sleepover without the dog locked up. And I’m talking your typical family dog: black lab, basset hound, Boston terrier. Even a little rat dog like that, the parents knew to keep it in back. “Is MacDougall coming?” That sort of thing.’
‘What exactly was he afraid of? Did they ever bite him?’
‘They never had time to bite him. MacDougall burst into tears at the very sight of them. Big blubbering tears. The kid just had a lifelong deathly fear of domesticated dogs.’
‘“Domesticated.”’
‘I’m coming back to that. But note that that’s what’s so crucial about Cujo. What Dougall would hate and find horrific about the movie. Cujo’s not just some wild hound—he’s someone’s pet. Look, he’s about to get himself bitten. Nosing around in the rabbit’s burrow like that.’
‘The bat’s rabid, obviously.’
‘Yeah. Oof.’
‘So Dougall thought the dogs were rabid?’
‘No one knew what MacDougall thought. We just learned to keep the dogs locked up. Because if we didn’t—say someone left the door open, oops, or the parents forgot MacDougall was coming over—there’d be that dreadful moment when we first entered the house. I remember once it actually was a Boston terrier. A little handbag of a dog. Mark Carlin’s place. We were all coming in through the front door, and the terrier rushed from out back to greet us. Scrabbling across the floor our way. Yipping excitedly. MacDougall froze. Everyone saw it coming.’
‘It jumps him.’
‘Thing zeroes right in. Who knows what’s going through his head, what it is he thinks he sees, when he sees it rushing at him: a werewolf, you’d guess, judging from the waterworks. And of course it leaps up on his thighs to try to lick his face, which just gets him weeping harder.’
‘Christ.’
‘The worst part about the weeping, of course, for MacDougall, was that it only confused the dog. And the little dog—sensing his distress and fear—tried you know to ingratiate itself and prove its friendliness by leaping up higher on his thighs and taking heartier, hungrier licks at his face. Completely humiliating. MacDougall begging us to get it off him, get it off him.’
‘And? What do you do?’
‘What can you do? Carlin there’s calling the dog’s name, but the dog just ignores him. Finally someone has to rush in and yank its collar, still shouting its name. This, by the way, was the very thing that horrified MacDougall above all, I was to find out later.’
‘The name?’
‘How it could ignore its own name. Anyway, that’s more or less the way it would always play out. Before kids eventually learned to keep their dogs locked.’
‘You
rs too, I take it.’
‘Didn’t have a dog, growing up. But one time MacDougall did come over to spend the night, and my dad scarred him for life, inadvertently.’
‘Hard to imagine you having a scary dad.’
‘Yeah, well. He was a big guy. Burly. A construction worker, you know, a plumber. But built like a barbican and with these fat strong fingers that could unscrew screws and his sheer physical presence had impressed upon us all terribly, as children, my friends and me. MacDougall most of all. He was the kind of big that he got an ironical nickname: Cookie. “Mister Cookie,” to MacDougall. We can watch something else, you know.’
‘No, come on. It took us half an hour to settle on this. We go back to Netflix, we’ll browse, bicker, it’ll be another half hour before we’ve agreed on anything. This is fine. Just let it play.’
‘All right, you’re right.’
‘So your dad and Dougall.’
‘The thing about my dad was that he loved jokes and knew a lot of jokes and got a kick out of goofing my friends whenever they came over. But there was one joke in particular he loved to play. Practical joke. It starts out as just a story he’s telling you, a memory he’s remembering, this long and rambling anecdote concerning a road trip he supposedly took to New Orleans in his twenties. While there, he tells you, a group of his friends talked him into having his palm read by one of those Jackson Square chiromancers, a wizened old woman decked out in geodic jewelry and a flowing gown and a purple turban and heavy eyeliner, who my dad says he’s immediately skeptical of but decides to humor anyway, for his friends.’
‘This is a real memory?’
‘Hold on. So he says that he sat on a folding chair at this woman’s picnic table and paid her and let her take his hand in hers—and here, while telling the story, he likes to take your hand in his, and begin idly tracing your palm with one of his big fingers, a hypnotic massage such as he is supposedly receiving in the diegesis of the joke—but when the woman took his hand, he says, she squinted down at his palm and gasped, telling him that his was a soul rich in reincarnations. That his past lives were many and vivid and preserved with uncommon clarity in his lines. The whole spiel. He says he was expecting her to flatter his pride, tell him he’d been a Napoleon or an Alexander. And indeed, when she started to trace a curve—and his own finger is imitating hers by circling your palm like—she told him that this was a mark made on his soul in ancient Rome. He perked up here, he says: Was he a Caesar? No, she told him—he’d worked with a crew on the aqueducts. Now my dad looks you in the eye and shakes his head and sighs: a plumber. Quips that he just can’t win. You know, he was a plumber even in his past lives, his soul will be sweating and toiling for all eternity.’
