The Dictionary of Failed Relationships

by Meredith Broussard

  We both looked up suddenly. The woman at the table next to us had just started crying. “Michael . . . that’s . . . so . . .” she said, her cheeks turning red and wet. “I tell you I have feelings for you and you just laugh at me like that. I can’t believe you made me say that stuff out loud when you don’t care about me. I feel sick; I’m going home.”

  Her chair screeched back and she rushed away, shoving her arms into her jacket sleeves. The man, Michael, stood up, threw money on the table, and said, “Ellen, wait! Ellen!”

  Ellen did not wait. She pushed her way toward the door.

  Then, in a voice probably meant to be just loud enough, but overcompensating at the last minute when he realized that he was losing her forever, Michael boomed, “STOP! ELLEN! I LOVE YOU! TOO!”

  Ellen stopped and turned around. They stared at each other across the room. Nobody moved. The place fell silent. Even the music stopped, stuck between songs.

  Someone called out, “Kiss her!”

  Michael walked over to Ellen. She looked up at him. The music began again, an accordion winding through the melody. A voice sang in another language.

  They kissed.

  People cheered.

  Michael and Ellen kept on kissing, as if they were alone, as if the world were whirling around them in a hurricane, and they were caught right in the middle of its beautiful blue eye. Then they walked toward the doors, holding hands. This, what we were witnessing, was the extraordinary beginning of something ordinary. Or maybe the other way around, I don’t know. Strangers smiled at each other. A little boy started laughing. A woman reached across the table to hold her husband’s hand.

  Jack and I stared at each other, then at the lists fluttering on the table as the double doors opened and closed.

  I had to drive down to Colorado Springs for a meeting. On the drive back, I was hit with a freak spring blizzard, almost a white-out. Peering through the shooting snow, I saw a solid black billboard on the highway with giant words in white: WHO’S THE FATHER? It was sponsored by an adoption agency. I wondered how many pregnant women drove down this highway, suddenly snapped their fingers, and said, “Come to think of it, who is the father, anyway?”

  Waiting for Jack that night, I threw part of a leftover bagel into my new goldfish’s jar. It sank slowly and rested on the bottom. The fish stared at it.

  It was still snowing when Jack drove me to a party at his friend’s house. In the parking lot, he combed his hair with the brush end of the ice scraper before we went inside.

  We took off our coats in the hallway. Jack looked at my outfit and made a cat noise, deep in his throat. I didn’t know men could make cat noises.

  “Nice skirt.”

  It was tight, made out of old neckties sewn together. I said, “Thank you.”

  Jack ushered me inside, saying, “I need a girl exactly like you. Except maybe with lower standards.”

  “How about her?” I asked, pointing with my head at a girl in a silver tank top and a gold miniskirt. I could remember times when I felt that desperate. The girl was smiling at Jack. He said, “She’s sparkly.”

  “She’s pretty.” She had a big, red nose. She looked like she was terrified that nobody would talk to her all evening. She held a glass of wine by the stem with one hand and caressed the rim with the other. She meant to be suggestive, I’m sure, but instead it was just vulgar. I wanted to wrap her in a big fireman’s raincoat. “She seems nice, Jack,” I said.

  Jack moved so close to me, I could smell his soap. I looked at his left shoulder as he whispered above my ear, “I don’t like her, um, breasts.”

  “What?”

  “They look bitchy.”

  I looked immediately at the girl’s breasts. Maybe it was the power of suggestion. They did seem somewhat bitchy in her silver tank top, like they were gossiping together. Even though I was staring directly at her breasts, the girl’s eyes passed right over me and on to Jack. She slowly walked toward us.

  Shouldering me aside, she asked Jack to dance, without even glancing at me. He took her in his arms and maneuvered between laughing and drinking people, guiding her in a pretty two-step. I settled back to watch, next to a random couple by the seltzer water and pretzels. The couple was arguing loudly. It’s hard not to listen, especially when you can.

  Boy: Hey. I’m sorry things didn’t work out between us. I just don’t want the closeness.

  Girl: The closeness? I mean . . . Jesus. People need people.

  Boy: Not me. I am alone. Without warmth. Without need.

  [I spilled my drink.]

  Girl, voice wobbly: Well, you have some of my things. My book.

  Boy: Should I mail it to you?

  Girl: Mail it to me.

  Boy: I don’t want to mail it to you. That’s so impersonal.

  Girl: Mail it to me.

  Boy: Maybe instead you could come over—

  Girl, voice of steel: Mail it to me, you cocksucker.

  I laughed. Then immediately I felt lonely. I looked for Jack. The sparkly woman was leading him away by the hand. In passing, he grabbed me with his other hand and rumbled in my ear, “She’s taking me home to show me her—” then was yanked away. He waved on the way out. He was my ride.

  In a few seconds, he was back again, thrusting a twenty in my hand. “Can you get a cab?” he asked, holding my shoulders and bending down to catch my eyes. “Is that okay?”

  “Of course,” I said, suddenly furious.

  Jack landed a giant kiss on my forehead and left again. His absence seemed as absolute as his presence. I stewed, looking around. Men played air hockey in the corner, while women watched. Someone spilled a bottle of vodka and just left it there, leaking onto the carpet. A little terrier scrambled under the couch, then lit out of the room.

  A blond guy now sidled up to me and slurred, “So, what’s your story?” He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt with hula girls all over it.

  “My story?”

  “Have a boyfriend? You married?”

  “No.”

  “Wanna be?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Want kids?”

  “Yes.”

  His eyes finally managed to focus on my left eyebrow. “Can you speak a foreign language?” he asked.

  I excused myself and crossed the room. I leaned against the wall and nodded at the girl next to me, who was rolling a joint. She lit up and we silently smoked it together. Then she wandered away. In a few minutes, I realized that it’s not rude to ditch a party if nobody notices you’re there, so I called a cab and went home.

  That same night, still stoned, I took off my clothes and stood in front of my full-length mirror. Did I have bitchy tits? How about the rest of me? It was a cold early spring, and my limbs huddled together. Desperate legs? Was my crotch . . .

  No. No. I covered my face with my hands.

  Images of my breakup with Richard flared up. Mardi Gras beads swaying from the rearview mirror as he said, Don’t love you, the rim of dust on the speedometer, Not anymore, a dog crossing in front of the car and looking back at me for a long moment, Maybe I never did, then turning its head, following its leash, its sweeping tail the only happy thing in the world.

  Nothing was worth that. I pulled the covers over my head and stayed that way until I fell asleep.

  Since I’ve thrown away all my lone socks, their mates have returned from the sea. I hold them in my hand, thinking, Where have you been all this time? Why can only one of you exist in a single space?

  Back in the saddle, I told myself, and went on a date with a beautiful consultant at my office named Andrew. He picked me up and took me around town, holding my hand. It was a warm spring night, and he stopped me in the street to touch my face and pull me closer. As he was kissing me, I was already wondering if he would call, his lips on my lips, our eyes closed.

  Later, Jack said, “What a loser.”

  “What do you mean? I haven’t said anything bad about him.”

  “I can just tell.”
He picked a leaf off my shoulder and rolled onto his back on the grass. His shirt poked up an inch, his pierced belly button showing. The park was empty except for the two of us. “This is a new one, right?”

  “Jack!” I pulled up some dead grass and threw it in his face. He blocked it with his arm and squinted at me.

  “Frankly, I can’t keep track of all the men you’re not sleeping with,” he said.

  “What about sparkly girl?”

  “I drove her home but didn’t go inside. I kissed her on the cheek. Went back to the party, but you were gone.” I stared at him. He waved a fly away and said, “She’d never pass my test, anyway. I had a feeling.” I was still staring. “I didn’t fucking feel like it, Eleanor, okay?”

  I had the goldfish test; Jack had the buyer’s remorse test. It’s very complicated—I don’t understand it. It’s a Pavlovian-response-voodoo kind of thing, involving the girl’s phone number, whether or not you feel like buying new underwear, what you do when you drive past her house, and a hair sample. I don’t know what you do with the hair.

  I didn’t see Jack all the rest of that week. Then, early Sunday morning, he showed up unannounced. He banged on my door until I let him in. I was in pajamas, my hair bunched up. He didn’t say a word, just walked over to my goldfish jar and picked it up.

  “What’s his name,” he demanded. The goldfish lurched around inside, bug-eyed. Stringy fish shit whirled up from the bottom.

  I rubbed my eye.

  “His name,” Jack barked.

  “Andrew,” I said. I felt like a caught sadist.

  Jack looked at the fish. “Andrew,” he said firmly. He walked out with my jar, my fish, my date. The door stuck open behind him.

  The next day, Jack called me at work. He was mumbling. I leaned back out of my cubicle and looked at the window, open a slit. I caught my own dark eyes in the pale reflection on the glass. It was beginning to rain, quietly.

  “Andrew died, didn’t he,” I said.

  No sound but the start of rain on dead grass. Then, “Yes.”

  “He didn’t call,” I said.

  The weather was doing its crazy spring thing. Snow, then sun and seventy-degree weather, then many days of incredible wind. Then power outages and the sudden peace that they bring. I tried to fly a kite, but it was too gusty and the kite lodged itself in a tree. Downtown, the wind kicked up and people’s white shirts simultaneously billowed out, making them look like pirates stranded far from their ships. People did strange things. As a homeless man passed by, he pointed his finger at me and said, “You just try speaking your mind in Tehran, missy.” A woman in a pink suit stood at an intersection and sang loudly into the traffic, “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart.”

  Jack was also beginning to act different. He stopped telling me about his women, and he grew quiet when I told him about my latest nonadventures. He now sometimes became angry at me very suddenly, for nothing. For dropping a chopstick. For pointing at a painting in a museum. Once he grabbed my arm and hissed, “Eleanor. You are making me lose my mind.” All I had done was show him a bruise on my elbow. Then he released my arm and wandered over to the pay phones and back.

  One time, he put his head in his arms and shook it, as if my mere presence were torturing him. I burst into tears, right there in the delicatessen.

  Jack was immediately contrite, stroking my face, pulling tissues out of his pockets. Only Jack would come prepared with tissues.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again and again.

  “I don’t understand. You suddenly hate me. You pick on me.”

  “I don’t hate you. I’m just going through something.”

  “What?” I asked, blowing my nose.

  Jack didn’t say anything.

  “Why?” I pushed, sniffling.

  “Eleanor. Cool it,” Jack said.

  “What? What? Whywhywhywhywhy?”

  That night, I went to dinner with my Turkish friend Deste, who had “erased” her last boyfriend and now had another. Things were going well with them, she said, because she treats him badly. “He has all these extra weights on his belly. I call him Fatty.”

  “Deste! He’ll be traumatized.”

  “It’s better this way,” she said. “Walking in the street or out with friends, he’s going to say bad things and I shut up. But at home I say, ‘I don’t like the lunch you packed for me. Make it again. I don’t like ham today.’ ” Her eyes wandered to the window. “Tonight, you will make a list of what you want . . .”

  “Another list,” I said. Apparently this was cross-cultural.

  “. . . and think about it, all those little things. Like, I want a man who will shave his armpits. American men won’t, so I want a Turkish man. So you make a list, and you look at the list every day, and fuck us on it. Fuck us hard. If you don’t fuck us, you will never find that guy.”

  I stared at her. Then, “Oh,” I said quickly. Focus. “But I want someone who makes me forget about that stuff,” I said.

  “That’s dangerous,” Deste said. “Never forget anything. Only forgive.”

  I looked out the window, and there was Jack outside in the street, waving a cell phone at someone or something. This often happened—he was everywhere, all the time. I was beginning to think that he was actually a yogi, inhabiting more than one body at once. The lights from the buildings tinted his skin orange. I pounded on the window to catch his attention. He turned our way, but didn’t see me and walked away again.

  “How about that man?” Deste asked.

  I was kind of daydreaming. I said, “Jack. That’s Jack.” Jack passed by once more, and I banged again on the glass, louder and louder, until people started twisting around in their seats to look at me. Jack turned his head in all directions. Deste pulled at my fist, but I used the other one until Jack finally walked away, stopping and looking back once as if he suddenly remembered something. I had to go to a Saturday wedding. A coworker was getting married, and my pseudo-friend Marcy was going to be there. Marcy had married a lawyer, and I could no longer stand to talk to her on the phone. All she talked about was what her husband had fixed that week—the toilet, the patio door. She said she had a friend whom she wanted me to meet, named Paul. She had never been nice to me. I asked Jack to be my date.

  Throughout the ceremony, Jack kept pretending to weep. The priest forgot the vows and instead made some up on the spot, insisting that Kathleen “obey” and telling Fred to say, “with this wing, I thee wed.” Fred said it verbatim, teeth clenched. Jack kept trying to hold my hand, and I slapped it away discreetly, biting the inside of my cheek.

  While Jack scouted hors d’oeuvres at the reception, Marcy grabbed me and pushed me over to a short, chubby man who had a kind face. He breathed hard as he gripped my hand.

  Marcy said, “Paul’s a doctor.”

  Paul said, “I do medical research.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I asked. “That’s wonderful. Because everyone needs . . . medicine.”

  “I enjoy my specialty,” Paul said, hands in his pockets so that his stomach pooched out and his hips looked a yard wide.

  “What do you specialize in?”

  “Mucus.”

  “Oh, mucus,” I said.

  Paul nodded quickly. A cracker crumb fell out of the corner of his mouth and onto the floor.

  Marcy said, “Paul’s the leader in his field.”

  “There aren’t too many of us,” Paul said, waving his hand.

  “Still,” Marcy said.

  I said, “Where’s the bathroom? Do they have a bathroom here?”

  I didn’t get more than a few steps away before Marcy pulled me aside, her fingers pinching my upper arm. She hissed, “I was kind of thinking you and Paul would get along. But you brought that guy.” She was holding me in place.

  “Jack,” I said, glancing at him. He waved a cracker at me and mouthed, The good times are killing me. I turned to Marcy. “I wanted to bring a date. Everyone else has a date.”

  “But I thought I had made it cle
ar on the phone.”

  “What?”

  “That I wanted you to meet Paul.”

  “Yeah. I met him.”

  Jack sat down next to Paul and said loudly, “Soooo . . . you’re a mucus man.”

  “Ha-ha,” Paul said sourly.

  Marcy whispered, “I don’t know, I’m disappointed. Paul’s been so lonely.”

  “So get him a goldfish,” I said. “I have a goldfish.”

  Jack boomed (for my benefit), “How do you get your samples? Do they use special tissues?”

  Marcy said, “Give him a chance.”

  “I don’t want to,” I said.

  Paul said, “I don’t work with the actual mucus. I have assistants for that. I do the more theoretical stuff.”

  Marcy said, “You think you can be so picky, Eleanor?”

  Jack said, “Theoretical mucus?”

  Marcy and I finally sat down, me next to Jack, Paul on my other side. Marcy and her nondescript husband sat facing us across the round table. We dug into our scratchy, filmy salmon and waterlogged yellow squash. Jack and I drank a boatload of wine, toasting everything. The waiter spilled a glass of water. We toasted him, too. Halfway through the wedding torte (Kathleen and Fred’s attempt at noncontroversial originality), Marcy smiled and said, “I’m so proud of you, Eleanor. I mean, you don’t have it easy. Your life’s not what I’d call great.”

  Oh, no, I thought.

  “Look at you,” she said. “You’re unmarried, alone, struggling financially, you’re unmarried . . .”

  “I’m twice unmarried,” I explained to everyone at the table. “Some people just do it once, but I’m an over-underachiever.” Smiles shot from everyone’s faces at different intervals, like bullets at a firing range. Jack glared at Marcy.

  She said, “You don’t have a house, you don’t have any of the things we talked about wanting when we were in college. Remember? And here you are, still so . . . hopeful.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I can’t believe this shit,” Jack said.

  “She’s a trooper,” Marcy told Paul.

  “I’d like to make a toast,” I said, glass raised. The others raised theirs, too—it’s a reflex, the way applause breeds applause. I paused. “Here’s to suicide,” I said. I drained my glass and turned to Jack. “Wanna dance?”