Man of the Year

by Caroline Louise Walker

  It is August, but

  I have winterized our nest

  for two larks, one Finch.

  A haiku. Good Lord. That’s so Stuart.

  I turn the page to a handwritten sonnet. Another page, another sonnet. Shameless, this guy. Is he for real? Flipping from one dumb handwritten poem to the next, I’m starting to wonder if they’re all odes to Elizabeth, every last one of them, when a pressed flower falls on the floor. Is a thistle even a flower?

  I know better than to do this to myself—than to degrade Lizzie like this—but I’m already in too deep, so I find another sonnet and read—

  North of Blue Eye, due south of Marvel Cave,

  You came to be, a being forced to leave

  —but, Jesus Christ, this fucking guy. Of course he would—of course he’d call it her “marvel cave.” I shove the thistle back in the book and snap it shut, nauseated by the image of a vegan dweeb spelunking in my wife, disgusted with her for ever having found this shit appealing, furious with myself for knowing things I can’t unknow. How bad Elizabeth’s taste used to be. The extent of the secrets she still keeps.

  I wrap everything in the ratty T-shirt and stuff the bundle back under her boots. What would she have done if I hadn’t come along? Who the hell would she have become? I’d been so ready to write Raymond off when he made that crack about Elizabeth’s past—about what she’s capable of, her history of deception, but now—well, now this. Now I have to face reality. This is who I married. This is what she’s capable of.

  I return to the bathroom, splash cold water on my face, and soak my collar, but it doesn’t matter. I should’ve changed into casual clothes by now, anyway. I turn off the tap and dry my neck, face, and hands, watching my reflection unbutton my shirt, watching my hands and head lose their grip. I stare into my own eyes and lift one arm, raise it overhead, poised to slap my face with my own open hand, but something stops me. My heartbeat pounds, dull but deafening: the rhythm of pulsatile tinnitus like a marching band in the distance, marching closer, closer still. Signs of trauma. Signs of shock. My gaze falls on a fixed point in the mirror.

  Something felt wrong earlier. I couldn’t name it, but my instinct was right. It was here all along. Elizabeth was still sleeping when I left for work, but she would have used it when she woke up, perhaps many times throughout the day, and at some point—before or after her shower, possibly before or after another barefoot visit to Nick, probably before their ride into town and their visit with friends, their cozy day, but definitely after I left this morning—someone visited my bathroom, so also my bedroom, and he left the seat up, that son of a bitch.

  11.

  Elizabeth and Nick are having an affair.

  A complete thought at last. An internal explosion: mushroom cloud of fury.

  I’ll mold it into a mantra—Elizabeth and Nick are having an affair—repeated until the words are nothing but sounds, until their fallout settles in my system and goes dormant, inoculating me against emotional catastrophe. Elizabeth and Nick are having an affair. If I can undo it, I will. If it’s too late, at least I’ll be prepared.

  I smooth my hair, regain composure, change into casual clothes. Leave the toilet seat up. Descend to my den, fix myself a drink, settle into my oversized leather chair. Count backward. Count breaths. Try to imagine my heart slowing to a peaceful pace.

  I envision Elizabeth sitting here with me in this room with this late afternoon light, me asking if anyone else used our bathroom today, her playing dumb, her acting like everything is normal. Me questioning every measure of normal I’ve ever taken for granted.

  Or: us sitting in this late afternoon light, me voicing my suspicions, me being right, her confessing, her confession ruining our lives.

  Or: us sitting in our favorite chairs, knowing what we know, knowing each other well enough to spare the other details, loving each other well enough to wordlessly and mutually agree upon eliminating the problem, getting on with our lives, reclaiming our lives.

  Everyone has trauma, everyone has loss, but sob stories don’t grant impunity, and Nick messed with the wrong family man. I know all about how some men cure grief by attaching to the first woman who happens to smile or walk like the dead one did. Maybe the new woman laughs similarly, maybe her breath smells the same. One detail anchors a fantasy. The fantasy seals an open wound: infatuation fashioned as butterfly tape.

  My father latched onto the shade of mauve my mother wore on her lips, the very same lipstick favored by Wife Number Two: Bette, who pronounced her name Betty, not Bet; who had expensive taste and cheap style; who smoked Virginia Slims; who laughed louder than anyone in any room; who always ordered dessert and never inquired about the fate of her missing Victoria’s Secret catalogs. She, too, left mauve stains on cigarette butts and kept ashtrays full of ghosts in every corner of our house. She left marks. I wasn’t a fan of my father’s second wife, but she had her moments. She had gall. My mother had hardly been gone a year when Bette came into our house bearing strong opinions and officious advice: morality clauses and gruff instructions that still hold real estate in my head. I’d return home from school bent out of shape over a classmate with sadistic tendencies, or my father would walk through the door oozing vitriol, blaming the cogs at his job, and Bette would say, “Don’t give them the satisfaction of losing your cool. It’s better to kill ’em with kindness.” Her years as a Hart were brief, but her words are like eels in the coves of my mind. Kill ’em with kindness, they whisper. Make them sorry they ever began.

  The garage door motor grinds twice: once to open, again to close. Silence fades into muffled laughter. A key in the lock. Chatter from all three cords in my knot of love and hate.

  “You survived,” I shout from my chair.

  Elizabeth heads straight to the den. “Not only that, we had fun. Luna is a trip.”

  “See?” I grin. “She’s not bad. You just needed to give her a chance.”

  “Oh, no,” Elizabeth counters. “She’s bad.”

  “She’s the worst, Dad.”

  Nick nods. “She’s kind of awful.”

  “But we figured something out.” Elizabeth fixes herself a drink. “Nick did, anyway. Once you stop expecting her to be normal, she becomes wildly entertaining.”

  “The key is to watch her like she’s a cartoon,” Nick explains. He helps himself to two cans of LaCroix from my fridge, tossing one to Jonah, cracking open the other for himself.

  “How insincere,” I say.

  Jonah throws himself over the arm of our couch. “I’d rather be insincere than intolerant.”

  “Nice to see you prioritizing, Son.”

  “Oh, relax,” says Elizabeth. “We had a nice time.” She nestles into her corner of the couch, and Nick returns to where he was sitting earlier, as though it is his place. Remembering something, Elizabeth asks, “Hey, is something wrong with the shower in the guesthouse? Nick said you thought it was broken.”

  “False alarm,” I tell her.

  “What did you think happened?” she asks.

  “Nothing. Just wanted to make sure it wasn’t backed up.”

  She laughs. “Why would it be?”

  “God, Elizabeth. It’s not a big deal.” Jonah snickers now, too, so I say, “The plumbing has given us problems in the past, so I was double-checking to make sure Nick is comfortable.”

  She smiles. “This is the first I’ve heard of our plumbing problems.”

  “That’s because I always get to them first.”

  Jonah laughs. “Touché!”

  “Touché, indeed,” Elizabeth says, and they all raise a glass, or a can, to my wit.

  Jonah heads to the kitchen and returns with four plates and a paper bag, distributing foil-wrapped burritos, plastic cutlery, paper napkins, hot sauce. Everyone’s so chummy, so goddamn playful, that Jonah even suggests Scrabble at one point. Nick declines, saying Scrabble would keep them up all night, and Jonah asks Nick when he became a geriatric, so Nick explains that he doesn’t want to push
it and get sick again. For this, Jonah calls Nick a loser, and Elizabeth smacks Jonah in the face with a pillow, and Nick high-fives Elizabeth for defending his honor, and my head nearly explodes.

  I seethe. Inside, I scream, but my rage is invisible. It’s a talent. I mime boredom, stretching and forcing a yawn. Checking the time. Eventually saying, “Well, I guess we should call it.” Wendy and her Lost Boys don’t follow, though, so I drum my belly with open palms, and say, “Bedtime?” With this, their lively conversation halts, but only so all three of them can stare at me like I said, Bath time? Like what I said was wrong.

  Elizabeth smiles at last, and her judgment vanishes. Another talent. “I’ll be up in a bit.” And she’s Wendy again. So. Whatever. I’ll sit and wait. Wait, watch, and listen.

  They talk of feelings and aesthetics. Colette’s goddamn braid. Flagrant sentimentality. It’s such a shame, what we’ve done to our boys. We’ve taken away their power. These days, kids aren’t allowed to develop strategy, because kids aren’t allowed to be picked on or to pick upon. These days, assholes are called bullies, and sticks and stones are reported promptly to the principal for ignominious review. Children pass the buck without ever discovering how to defend themselves, how to attack, whether by baseball bat or random acts of kindness. I don’t need a baseball bat. I don’t need lawyers or restraining orders or ultimatums, either. I have brains.

  Nick and Elizabeth are having an affair. The less I resist, the less power it wields. People have affairs. They’re just another troublesome thing people have from time to time. People have heartburn and debt. They have nightmares and gallstones and doubts and regrets. I should know. I’ve built a career addressing ailments—which, come to think of it, uniquely qualifies me to inspect a person’s body and mind just to point out flaws; or to provoke vulnerability, in a general way; or to grip a neck—and so it would seem I have access as well as brains.

  Having finished his dinner, Nick cleans his share of the mess, says good night and takes his leave. Jonah and Elizabeth begin tidying the rest, but I say, “Shit. Forgot to test the pool water.”

  Elizabeth tells me not to bother, that she tested it this morning, but Nick is already halfway across the yard, so I mumble something about algaecide and slip outside to run after him. By the time I call his name, he is almost to the door of his borrowed bungalow. He turns and waits, and only when I’m close enough to speak barely above a whisper do I ask, “What are you doing in the morning?”

  He frowns, shakes his head.

  “Given how well you responded to that tea, a supplement system is going to change your life. We’ll swing by the office, do an intake—”

  “No, you really—”

  “I insist. Obviously, you aren’t expected to buy anything, but you’ll have a metabolic profile for when you’re ready. I’ll hook you up with a free consultation before Jonah wakes up. Just don’t tell those two.” I nod toward the house, roll my eyes, shake my head. “They’re always giving me shit about being too generous, you know? Good for the community, bad for the books.” I laugh. He doesn’t.

  Nick says, “That’s thoughtful, but seriously, I’m feeling better.”

  “You aren’t going to believe how you feel when I’m through with you.” I slap his shoulder. “Why don’t you meet me downstairs at, say, seven. It’s a plan.”

  Nick gives in, says, “Okay.” Then he goes and surprises both of us by saying, “Thanks, Dr. Hart.”

  “Not another word.”

  12.

  Saturday morning. Elizabeth is at yoga, Jonah is sleeping like the dead, and Nick is dressed and waiting for me in the kitchen when I meet him there at seven o’clock. He looks tired. I tell him this. He says he didn’t get much sleep, but when pressed, insists that the problem is internal, not environmental. My house is incredibly comfortable, he assures me, and he apologizes for dragging me to work on a weekend, complains about how bad he feels. I tell him it’s no trouble at all and that if he wants to feel guilty, he should pick another sin, to which he says nothing at all. The drive takes nine minutes. No radio, almost no small talk. Nine minutes of silence to accompany Nick’s window-framed view of my beautiful world.

  I park in my otherwise empty lot and enter through the back door, flip on fluorescent lights and lead Nick to Exam Room Four, where I line the table with sanitary paper and tell him to change into a cotton gown—atypical, but peak vulnerable—while I scavenge for a blank intake questionnaire, clipboard, and ballpoint pen. Mimicking my nurses’ daily spiel, I say, “Answer as much as possible, but don’t overthink it,” and close the door, leaving him alone. In the staff lounge, I make and drink an espresso from a regularly descaled Keurig, take a seat, take a load off, debate whether a lab coat would heighten my authority or make me look like I’m trying too hard. Authority wins.

  Five minutes. Ten. Enough time for Nick to grow antsy, but not so much that he’ll come looking for me. To pass the time, I visit my in-office lab, where I load a stainless-steel tray with instruments from my nurses’ wheelhouse—test tubes, syringes, swabs, quick tests: objects I rarely, if ever, handle, but Nick doesn’t need to know how rusty I am with a needle.

  In the exam room, Nick hands me his questionnaire, sparsely answered. His brevity is disappointing, but the cotton gown is delightful. Boxers would’ve been inappropriate for Jonah’s friend, but street clothes are security blankets. The cotton smock with yellow dots democratizes.

  Nick takes a seat on the table while I wash my hands with antibacterial soap, stepping on a hot water pedal, scalding my knuckles, suddenly aware that neither of us really knows why we’re here. My good ideas flicker too rapidly these days. Logic fades, but not the urges, so these I can trace, at least, and I do—following my urge back to the desire to assess Nick on my terms, my turf. Following my desire to choke the daylights out of him.

  Towering over a seated Nick, I check his glands: digital palpation of the submandibular, submental, and superficial cervical nodes. Nick averts his eyes, looking at my widow’s peak rather than my left ear like most patients tend to do. I step behind him and wrap my hands around his neck—right above the bow where Nick secured his yellow smock—and press my finger pads along his thyroid, just inferior to the laryngotracheal framework. “Swallow,” I command, and Nick does, allowing for elevation. He’s uncomplicated from this angle. The back of a head is anonymous, apolitical. Choking a disembodied hairball would be emotionally uncomplicated.

  Nick clears his throat.

  “Your glands are slightly swollen,” I say—and am immediately seized by regret. Well, damn. That’s a first. Never before have I fibbed to a patient. There’s still time to take it back, to say, My bad. Placing my fingertips behind his ears, I press my thumbs against his cheekbones. “Just checking your sinuses,” I say, pressing harder. “Any pain here?” Although, to be fair, everyone’s lymph nodes are different, so maybe his are slightly swollen, so maybe it isn’t a lie. Pressing harder still: “What about here?” So maybe it’s fine.

  I tell Nick to say ahhhh. He obeys, and when I find his gag reflex with the tongue blade, causing him to wretch, I say, “Sorry about that,” and turn quickly so he won’t see me smile.

  Pitch the stick. Dispose my gloves. Get a grip.

  My job is remarkable. In what other work dynamic must one submit to inspection like this? No banker gets to squeeze another man’s neck without resistance. Architects can’t shove objects down throats without arrest. Doctors, however, are expected to do as much and more. Women let me record their weight. Men turn their heads and cough.

  I hold my stethoscope to Nick’s back for chest auscultation and tell him to breathe deeply. His exhale smells like coffee and Wintermint gum. I pause to ask about his appetite (fine) and his insomnia (chronic). “Nighttime gets the better of me,” he says.

  I nod and move the chestpiece from one side of his back to the other. Lungs clear. Heart pumping from valve to valve, right in time. I ask, “And are you sexually active?” Through amplifying ear
tips, I listen for the acceleration of Nick’s heartbeat while bracing for the reverberation of his voice.

  “No.”

  “You don’t have to be modest.”

  “It’s true,” he says. “I’m not at the moment.”

  I swap my stethoscope for an otoscope and stare into one ear canal, then the other, giving Nick time to wonder if and how my questions relate to his predation. With two fingers below his chin, I tilt his head back for anterior rhinoscopy. “I treat too many boys your age, I guess. So often, they’re on the prowl.”

  He grunts—a laugh distorted by rigid posture, his posture rigid on account of the instrument up his nose. “Well. There’s sort of someone, but it’s complicated.”

  I step back to avoid ramming this otoscope through his skull. “Complicated how?”

  Nick dares to look at me. “She’s very unavailable.” He looks at the floor—and is he blushing? “Timing is a bitch.”

  I rush to sterilize objects that will need to be sterilized again later, just for the excuse to busy my hands, just to protect them from doing harm. “We’ll run a standard STI panel, then.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “Nothing to be embarrassed about.”

  “I’m not embarrassed.”

  My back still turned to Nick, I fiddle with the HIV quick-test in my hands, fairly certain (but not certain) that it’s a run-of-the-mill cheek swab, nothing tricky, so I turn and say, “Open up,” and hold Nick’s jaw with one hand. With the other, I collect cells from the inside of Nick’s mouth. “That’s all there is to it,” I say. “You wait here.”

  Grabbing my clipboard with Nick’s questionnaire, I take my leave. On the other side of the door, heat blooms from my gut to my chest, from my chest to my neck to the top of my head, and so I return to my lab to seek a hit of busy work, opiate of the agnostics.

  Small as it may be, to me, my lab is a labyrinth—organized by Simone, navigated by Nurses Lindsay and Clem. Such a gruesome investment, way back when. Such a risk: my own in-office lab, a burden beholden to ever-shifting regulations, ever-expanding responsibilities, paperwork, fees, problems. My competition swore I’d regret it. Their doubts worked like double dares, and I doubled down. Big fat loan: approved. Construction. Applications. Drug rep courtships: fancy dinners, cross promotion. Nurses with business brains, cutting-edge training. Television spots, magazine features, branded products, patents, profits. Vanessa believed the lab would either ruin me or be the beanstalk to my jackpot—and to my seat among giants, I joked, and she said sure—so she filled a prescription bottle with dried pinto beans and wrote Magic Beans on the lid, and we put it on top of my bookshelf by the door, directly in my line of sight from my desk chair, virtually invisible from elsewhere. Day in, day out, busting my ass, then one day: jackpot and giants. I astonished myself and outraged the competition. Curmudgeons fought to stay in business. And here I am.