Talk to Me

by John Kenney

  And here Foot chuckled. “Christ, if that isn’t a great opening line for a novel then I don’t know what is. Do you read fiction, Ted?”

  “Not as a rule, no.”

  “Me neither. No one does. A bit of biography here and there. Mostly I watch TV shows. The golden age of television, isn’t it?”

  “That’s what they say.”

  “I’d like to have someone take a close look at that ball of yours.”

  “Said the bishop.”

  “Humor,” Foot said, smiling. “Very good. How’s Franny.”

  Ted stood and reached for the pack of Dunhills. “May I?” he asked the doctor.

  “Help yourself.”

  Ted took one, lit it from the old Zippo Foot had on his desk, and sat back down.

  “They say they’re bad for you, cigarettes,” Ted said.

  “You’ve got to live a little, Ted.”

  They smoked.

  “She calls herself Frances now,” Ted said.

  “Kids. My daughter lives in Beijing. I have no idea what she does. She FaceTime’s me once a month.” Foot took a deep drag. “What’s Franny now, twenty-five?”

  “Twenty-eight,” Ted said, inhaling. The smoke felt good. Powerful. A light buzz in his brain. He enjoyed the smell of the tobacco, the hot taste in his mouth. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a cigarette.

  “Imagine that.” Foot was smiling, a benevolent grin, the long ash on his cigarette looking like it would fall any moment. “Married? Kids?”

  Ted shook his head.

  “She’s young. You close?”

  Ted smiled. “Well. She kind of hates me.”

  Foot smiled and nodded. “That’s hard.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Lot on your plate,” Foot said, opening the window more, and waved the smoke out. “I was sorry to hear about all of this . . . stuff on the news with you.”

  “It’s fine.”

  Foot nodded. “Is it?”

  “It’ll be fine. When it’s over.”

  “Seems a pardonable crime to me,” Foot said with a kind smile.

  “You’d think.”

  “So you’re feeling okay, though? Because I can see where this whole thing could take a toll. And, of course, this business with Claire.”

  “I’m fine. For the most part.”

  “Interesting. But how are you feeling?” Foot chose to enunciate a different word this time. A kindly smile, a man you could confide in.

  Ted found himself smiling back, though he was in no mood to smile. He was enjoying the smell of the tobacco. “I’m okay. I think, considering, you know.”

  “Sure, sure. But on a scale of . . . I don’t know . . . one to ten . . .”

  Foot paused and took a deep drag, threw the butt out the window. He exhaled an impressive plume of smoke out of the side of his mouth. “Ten being euphoria. One being . . . one being a weekend with my mother-in-law. God rest her soul.”

  “Five. I’d say a five.”

  “Wow. Five. That’s pretty good. True, though?”

  “Maybe not a five,” Ted said.

  Foot smiled. “Fair enough. But I guess what I’m wondering is how you’re feeling.” Foot pointed at Ted and laughed, as if they were both high.

  Ted was laughing now, in a way that felt a bit out of control.

  “Well . . . I’d say, if I’m honest . . .”

  “Why not?” Foot joined in, still laughing.

  “I’d say a one,” Ted said. “Maybe less than one. Can I go with less than one? I’m joking.”

  “Are you?” Foot was still smiling. So was Ted.

  “Not really.”

  “Would you say you’re having suicidal thoughts or tendencies?”

  “Thoughts? How do you mean?”

  “Mmm. Great question.” Foot lit another cigarette. “I guess I’m wondering if you think about dying.”

  “Maybe a bit.”

  “Who doesn’t? Especially when I hear this rap music. I’m joking, of course. Do you ever think about dying, say, by your own hand?”

  “Suicide?” Ted asked.

  “Sure, let’s call it what it is.”

  “Well, yeah. Yes. But doesn’t everyone from time to time?”

  “Interesting. They don’t but that’s okay. No judgments. Do you have a plan?”

  “Not really,” Ted said, taking a final drag of the cigarette, stubbing it out in a small ashtray on the desk. “I mean, it’s a loose thought more than a plan, a fleeting fantasy. Loose, though.”

  “I make plans all the time. I planned on getting a haircut yesterday. Did I? Nope.” Foot laughed. “May I ask what the plan is?”

  “Well, hypothetically . . .”

  “Sure, sure,” Foot said, still smiling.

  The idea seemed to come to Ted as if a forgotten memory, suddenly there, so clear. “I’m going to jump off the roof of my building. In my underwear.”

  “Okay.”

  “But first I’m going to defecate in the elevator.”

  “Of the building?”

  “Yes.”

  “Interesting. And why is that?”

  “Co-op board.” Ted shrugged, as if these two words spoke volumes.

  “Good for you. Co-op boards . . . forget it.”

  Foot tossed the second cigarette out the window and sniffled loudly.

  “Okay. So, a little concerned here. There are all these . . . rules and regulations if someone tells you what you just told me. It’s a lot of paperwork, frankly, and a headache for both of us. Do you think you’re really going to do it?”

  “Depends how much I have to drink tonight.”

  “Ha! I’m right there.”

  Ted laughed but it came out too loud.

  “Bit of a curveball here, Ted, but would you say you’re sexually active?”

  “Well . . . the divorce . . . and the incident . . . I’m not the most popular catch these days.”

  “Still. You’re Ted Grayson.”

  “True.”

  “So . . .”

  “I’m not . . .”

  “It’s called a little blue pill.”

  “It’s . . . I’m not . . . I’m not interested.”

  “Not sure I understand.”

  “I have no interest. It doesn’t cross my mind.”

  “Like, for a whole day?”

  “Days. Many days. Months. Longer.”

  “This happens.”

  “Does it?”

  “Not often. But I’ve heard about it.”

  “You have?”

  “Not really. I want you to see someone.”

  “Are they going to put their finger up my ass?”

  “You mean my uncle Morty?”

  “Ha.” Ted faked a laugh.

  “I’m joking. I don’t have an uncle Morty. What good times we have, Ted.” Foot laughed. “How long has this been going on?”

  “What?”

  “The lack of drive, shall we say?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Since the incident?”

  “Yes. Maybe a little before as well.”

  “Could this divorce business have precipitated it?”

  “Yes. Definitely.”

  “My God, she’s an attractive woman, Claire.”

  Foot stared off at his wall of diplomas and Ted had the sense that Foot was thinking about Claire.

  “But also before the divorce?” Foot said after a few seconds.

  “I think that’s right.”

  “But maybe before that, too.”

  “Possibly, yes. Maybe a bit.”

  “A few months before, would you say?”

  “Yes, I think that’s fair, a few months. Or maybe years.”

>   “Hmm. Ted, do you think you’ve been depressed your entire adult life?”

  “I think that’s also fair to say.”

  “Do you like pound cake, Ted?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Pound cake. It’s nice.”

  “What, like, as a cure for depression?”

  “There are worse things,” Foot said.

  “Okay. I’d like you to see someone.”

  “So I’m depressed? That’s it?”

  “I think that’s part of it. But I want to do a complete workup. The headaches worry me, though the stress in your life is enough to grow a tumor the size of a grapefruit.”

  “You think I could have a tumor?”

  “No one said anything about a tumor.”

  “Didn’t you just . . .”

  “I’m sure everything is fine.”

  “Really?”

  “No. It rarely is.”

  Foot began coughing and couldn’t stop.

  * * *

  • • •

  Ted walked across Central Park.

  He made his way to the 1 train and got on a northbound train by mistake, only realizing at 110th Street and Cathedral Parkway. It had been a while since he’d taken the subway. He wore a baseball cap and had a three-day growth. Baggy clothes. To the casual observer on the 1 train southbound, he looked a bit like that guy on TV, only older and dirtier.

  Ted came up out of the subway at Houston Street. He stood at Varick Street and had no idea where to go. He’d eaten half a banana at breakfast. He walked east. He saw a church at the corner of Houston and Sullivan and decided to enter on the Sullivan Street side. The doors were open and a priest was finishing Mass. Ted removed his hat and sat in the last pew.

  The smell of incense, the place cold, a dozen, maybe fifteen parishioners. Mostly very old women and a few men, scattered about, heads bowed. He envied their good lives, their reverent lives, their giving lives, their spotless home lives, their Pine-Sol–smelling lives. Their Irish-soda-bread-made-each-Saturday-morning lives. Their chicken-and-potatoes-and-carrots-for-dinner lives and Jeopardy! at 7:30 and a crossword and to bed, up with the first light, the early Mass. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.

  Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us . . .

  Ted listened, the words coming back from high school. Something about them, the rhythm and cadence, felt grounding. He folded his hands, and let his head fall forward. “Forgive me,” he whispered. “Please.” He sat for a time, after the Mass had ended. Go in peace to love and serve the Lord. What if you didn’t know how?

  * * *

  • • •

  He walked outside, needing a bathroom. He walked down the stairs and entered a basement room in the church. Folding metal chairs were arranged in a circle, men and women of varying ages sitting and sipping from paper cups of coffee. The person who was talking stopped when Ted entered and everyone turned to the latecomer.

  “Are you a friend of Bill’s?” one of them asked.

  “Who?” Ted asked.

  “Are you here for the meeting?” the man asked kindly.

  “Oh,” Ted said, embarrassed. “No. I . . . I just needed a . . . a bathroom.”

  The man smiled and pointed. Ted hustled away. He could tell some of them recognized him.

  In the bathroom, which smelled heavily of disinfectant, Ted had a hard time starting a stream of urine, even though there was pain in his overfull bladder. He felt foolish for being here. Like some alcoholic homeless man. Don’t judge them, Ted, Ted’s other voice said. For God’s sake, these are good people just trying to make their way. They didn’t choose to scream at a sweet young woman, to call her a vile name, you selfish prick.

  The shame washed over him again, as it did more and more. He winced and moaned audibly. His head hurt. His right testicle throbbed in pain. He’d leaned his head against the cold tile and had inadvertently changed his aim so that now he was peeing on the tiled floor, the splash hitting his five-hundred-dollar suede chukka boots. He was urinating on himself. This struck him as a new low. “I’m peeing on myself!” he said aloud.

  A voice from inside a stall said, “Yeah, well, I’m trying to take a dump here so maybe shut the fuck up, okay, pal?”

  The voice startled Ted and he managed to finish urinating, at least in part, in the actual urinal. He washed his hands aggressively and exited.

  Now he hustled toward the door, steering clear of the meeting. He walked with his head down, a boy without a date at prom making his way to the punch table.

  “Excuse me.” A woman’s voice. Loud. Strong.

  Ted knew it was directed at him but pretended it wasn’t. He quickened his step.

  “Excuse me.” Louder. It startled Ted. Fuck. He knew what was coming.

  “You’re Ted Grayson,” she said.

  Ted stopped, turned. They were staring at him now. He was a man so used to people staring at him, most everywhere he went. That’s wrong. You never really got used to it, Ted thought. It was unnatural for people to stare at you. You thought sometimes you knew them, the way they smiled at you, the way they wanted so much to make a connection with you. They felt they knew you. They’d spent so much time with you, in their home, alone, sick, naked, at dinner in a restaurant. You had told them things. But they didn’t know you, of course. And yet they thought it was okay to stare. To talk with you. Interrupt your dinner in a restaurant. Stop you on the street. In the airport. Now he stood facing the AA meeting. He wanted to flee. He wanted to scream. When she judged him he would explode. He would begin throwing folding chairs, upend the coffee table, hurl the donuts.

  DO YOU TAKE CREAM WITH YOUR CRAZY? the Post headline would surely read.

  ANCHORS ANONYMOUS!

  “Yes!” Ted said, though it came out too loud, too angry. “What of it?”

  Here it comes, Ted thought.

  “I just wanted to say,” the woman said, “hang in there.”

  Ted waited for the punch line. The mean line. It never came.

  She smiled. “It gets better.”

  They were all smiling. Kind smiles from strangers who knew real pain. Ted felt his throat constrict, felt the tingle in his eyes. He tried to say something but nothing came out. He nodded, turned, and left.

  Hey.

  It had turned cooler and Franny had a chill after she left Ted’s building. She bought a coffee from a cart on the corner. Her mother had texted and wanted to know how it had gone.

  Fine. TTYL.

  She stood by the cart, holding the coffee, taking small sips, trying to warm up. Crowds moved around her. The traffic down Broadway, up Central Park West, along Fifty-Ninth Street. Everyone in a hurry. Meetings to attend, children to pick up, job interviews, auditions, an affair to keep, classes to attend. There goes a woman writing a memoir. There goes someone who’s thinking about suicide. There go four tourists speaking Dutch.

  She needed to write the story. Henke had emailed the night before to check on her.

  A woman who looked to be about Franny’s age walked by, holding a four-year-old’s hand. In the other hand, she held a pair of ice skates. They must have been heading to Wollman Rink. Franny wanted to follow them. She wanted to go skating. And then go home. Not to her apartment. Not to the sparse one-bedroom that cost $3,400 a month. But home.

  She wanted to call someone. She didn’t know who, though. She tossed the coffee in a trash can and took the C train downtown, back to the office, where she helped out on a story about the fifty times celebrities had worn underwear as clothing.

  * * *

  • • •

  She had her Bose wireless headphones on, staring out the window, listening to a Tycho song called “Coastal Brake.” Henke came up behind her, tapped her shoulder too hard, startled her, and ruined her moment
of bliss.

  “Where’s the story?”

  His grating German accent and shiny face, too round and plump, hair too short on the sides and too long on top, the style now, too much pomade, too much cologne and expensive clothes that didn’t fit him quite right. The way he looked at her. The thing a man could do with his eyes, his expression. Franny stared back, dead cold.

  * * *

  • • •

  The scheisse holiday party. Four months ago. The Bowery Hotel. Henke was drunk. He bragged he’d taken Ecstasy and he was touching everyone and he was making a beeline for Franny, who was talking with friends, and he pulled her by the arm, smiling, and said, “I need to confer with the great Frances Ford.” And he walked her to the end of the bar and smiled and said, “Let me fuck you.” At first, Franny wasn’t sure what was happening because of the shock of it, the did-he-just-say-that surprise, and also he was smiling so maybe he was joking. But he wasn’t joking. He was grinning and so confident, the confidence of the very rich, and she was disgusted by him and also by herself for working at this place, tired at being disgusted with herself because that was what men like Henke did to women, made them feel bad for his behavior, made them question how they dressed, as if the problem involved cleavage and not personal responsibility. Have I egged him on? Have I given him the wrong message? Why was he staring so openly at my breasts? Why did he wink at me? Who winks? Why do men think they can do this?

  She needed to leave. To be clean again. She was going to Vermont for Christmas break. To Stowe. She had to change everything. She had to get out of here. Except in the moment, as she stood there, Henke leaning in, she was afraid. The panic-fear from as long as she could remember. She blamed herself, hated herself, didn’t trust herself. She wanted to scream but she also didn’t want to make a scene. She was frozen. It was like a dream where she couldn’t run. In her dreams, she couldn’t run. She had to crawl. Over bridges made of rotting wood, high above black water. She was afraid and felt weak and bad but she had to climb out of it. But she knew how. She’d been doing it her whole life.