The Melting Season

by Jami Attenberg

  He thought I was really turned on. He said my name over and over. I looked at the curtains, my beautiful curtains. The stripes were raised. They were not just white. There was a difference. The neighbor’s dog was barking. They let him loose again, I thought. Why don’t they care about that dog like I do? And it was not even mine to love. I started to cry. I could not stop. My cheeks were getting wet. Finally Thomas came. He laid his face next to mine. He felt the wetness, I knew he did. He sighed.

  “It’s bigger now,” he said.

  “I know it is,” I said.

  He put his hand on my cheek. He brushed away a tear with a finger, then held it up to the light and looked at it. Evidence against me. Evidence I could not feel a goddamn thing.

  “Why can’t you feel it, then?”

  “I do not know, Thomas.”

  He put his hand back down on my face and slowly slid it down around my neck.

  “It drives me crazy,” he said.

  “I know. It drives me crazy, too,” I said.

  “I thought you said you didn’t care,” he said. He was trying to catch me. His hand tensed around my neck. I was stuck now. Outside a car sped by, and the sound of the thick motor choked the air.

  “No, I just meant that you being sad, it drives me crazy to see you that way.” I was saying the words, but they were coming out all mangled. The pressure of his hand on my throat was starting to hurt bad. I was even tighter inside.

  “Maybe you want me to be crazy,” he said. Now both hands were around my neck. My eyes were popping, I could feel them reaching out of my head toward him. I could feel everything in that moment. Everything except for his penis, now shrunken down. My eyes were wide open but I could not see.

  “How can you not feel me, Moonie?” He was yelling at me, but it sounded quiet, too.

  “I do not know,” I said. “I just can’t.” I choked out the words.

  “Four and a half inches,” he said. “That’s what he told me.” Thomas started to cry. He loosened his grip. I gasped for air for a minute and then I pushed him off me. I rolled off the bed and onto the floor. I pulled away into the corner of the room. My eyes still felt like they were coming out of my head, like they would never settle back into place. I closed my lids and prayed for everything to go back to normal. My eyes still hurt.

  “Just sit there, that’s right, like you always do,” said Thomas. I opened my eyes. He crawled across the bed toward me and then stayed at the end and stared at me. “It’s either you or it’s me,” he said.

  I shook my head, I raised my hands. I did not want it to be me, even if it was. “It is not me.”

  He reached out and slapped my face. “It is you.”

  I put one hand to my cheek. I ran my tongue against the inside of it. I did not taste blood.

  “It is not me,” I said.

  He slapped my other cheek, harder.

  That was it. That was enough. There are things a wife does for her husband, and there are things a husband does for his wife, and this was not one of them, on either end. Outside the neighbor’s dog barked as if he were in pain.

  I stood. I walked to the closet. I pulled out a sun-dress and slipped it on over my head. As it fell down my body, Thomas grabbed the back of my head with his hand and pulled. It hurt. I tried to stay calm but inside everything that had been tight suddenly gave way, as if I were a balloon full of water and he had popped me with a needle. But it was not a joyful release. I felt it, I felt it all open up and flood me. Whatever control I had of myself was gone.

  I reached behind me and grabbed at his crotch and squeezed. His flesh felt funny in my palm. In the past I had always touched it so tenderly, and it was something special, that it was so delicate. Now it became his weak spot. Finally he let go of my hair. I elbowed him in the gut and he bent over. Then I shoved him. He was easy to take, my husband. He had never been in a fight in his life.

  I ran into the living room and grabbed my car keys. Thomas came out after me and bent me over the couch and tried to hold me there. I squirmed against him. I pretended I was a slippery snake, I could feel myself turning, turning, and his hands were useless, they could not hold me. Then I reached out and grabbed the remote control. I turned and started whacking him on the head with it. He looked so surprised that I was doing it, I almost stopped—I loved him, didn’t I? Where had the love gone?—but then I kept going. He put his hands up and backed off against the wall.

  “Enough, Moonie!” he said.

  I threw the remote control across the room at his head and he ducked but it still bounced off him. I left the house, and he yelled things after me—nasty things—but I could not hear him. I did not care anyway. What he had to say.

  I got in the truck and I drove. First I drove around the fields for a while. They were beautiful. Stalks reaching toward the sky, dry to the touch yet full of wetness and life. Every year, the farmers were so full of hope. I had known that hope, even if I did not understand it.

  I could turn around, I thought. But I thought about the hitting, the way it was so easy for us to slip into hate. Even if we worked our way out of that hate, now we knew how to get there, where to go. We thought love was easy, but it turned out to be hard. But maybe that was the way it worked sometimes. Maybe we were just normal. That was all Thomas had ever wanted, to be normal.

  Next I headed toward the house I had grown up in. The streets were empty. Everything felt empty, this whole town was empty. I wished I were full. I wished I knew how to be that way. I was crying. I heard a gurgle in my throat. I did not know where it had come from. Where would I go? Who would have me? My mother would have me, but it would be hard there. There would be so much noise. There would be battles, the never-ending war of mothers and daughters.

  I skipped the turnoff and headed toward the diner. I was gasping. The tears on my face were so hot and salty I wondered for a moment if I were bleeding instead. I cannot describe what I was feeling as anything other than tragic. He was the man I loved for so long, and suddenly he was something else. I did not think of my love as a light switch, but there it was, right in front of me. Up or down. Up to me.

  18.

  And just like that, things between me and Thomas had changed forever. I moved back in the apartment above the diner. Timber’s dad let me move in quietly. No one in town knew I was there at first, except for my family and Thomas. I did not go anywhere much at all. Sometimes I sat downstairs at the diner and listened to the farmers talk about harvest. I tried not to stay too long. I wanted to go back upstairs and think. I got angrier every day. I thought about leaving town, but where would I go? And it was not in me anyway. To leave.

  “WELL, IT’S IN YOU NOW, isn’t it, sister,” said Valka.

  “I guess,” I said. “I just did not know what else to do.”

  “You better start owning it,” she said. “Real quick.”

  THINGS STARTED TO GET worse for Jenny at home. My mom put down her beer can and cigarette long enough to slap her a few times. Once she pulled Jenny’s hair and Jenny shoved her off. I felt sorry for her, but I was too numb myself to help, I guess. I knew she was acting up. Jenny had four different varsity jackets hanging in her closet. Boys fell for her right and left, even if she was the town slut.

  I was the opposite. I had had all those dreamy ideas about what it was like to love someone and be their wife. Those ideas were impossible, a fantasy life that began and ended with that toy couple on the top of my wedding cake. Jenny had no room for fantasy in her life. She was all about the present. Instant satisfaction. The immediate touch.

  But that did not work for me. And neither did the loving embrace of my husband. I was a lonely woman. I made myself lonelier. I stayed home all day watching TV. I read my celebrity magazines. There was Rio DeCarlo again, same shit, different day. Like I was surprised Rio was at some film festival walking down the street in a fur coat, clutching bags filled with expensive skin creams and sunglasses. Like I was surprised Rio was volunteering to help save the baby seals the n
ext week. Like I was surprised she was single but looking. We were alike in that way, except for the looking part. I swore I would never love again.

  I could have used my daddy around then, a man to walk in the door and tell me I was going to be just fine. It had been years since he had made things better though. Years since he had kissed a scraped knee, or pressed his hand up against a broken heart.

  Memory blurs, like the sky through early morning mist. Squint and you can see something, a watery swipe of reality. It was real moist around the edges when it came to my dad, but I recalled it, me coming home late for the first time one Friday night right after I had met Thomas. “I hope you had fun,” sneered my mother with the beer can. And there was Jenny with her sassy mouth already, even as a kid, both of us up past midnight, and my father sitting on the steps that led up to our bedrooms. He was wearing boxers and an undershirt, and there was a tear in the side of the shirt and the fabric hung down in a flap. My mother was talking about Thomas’s father and mother. She did not like them. It was rumored they were second cousins, for one, which did not sit well in my mother’s mind. But also there was the matter of his collections.

  “I hear he keeps a bunch of dead animals in his basement,” said my mother. “He’s a cheap, crazy old bastard.” This part was mainly true. He was an amateur taxidermist, it was just something he did for fun. There were a lot of these stuffed animals all over the rotting farmhouse. When he died, Thomas had a yard sale and invited some of his father’s taxidermy buddies over to pick through what they wanted. They all had tremendous bellies and one of them drove up in an authentic WWII jeep, which Thomas had liked a lot.

  “They’re just like toys,” I said. “Some of them are soft.”

  “Oh good Lord,” said my mother. “Are you hearing this, Rich?”

  We all looked at my dad. He had his elbows on his knees, and his face rested right up against his hands. He was staring at the floor. There was trouble all over his face. Jenny went over and sat next to him and put her head and arms in the same position.

  “Daddy, he’s nice,” I said. “He looks after me. He loves me.”

  “You’re too young to love,” said my mother. “You don’t even know what it means yet. Do you even know how much work it is? How much you have to give up? Love is about sacrifice. Do you know how much I’ve given—”

  My dad groaned. “You’re all crazy,” he said.

  “You’re all crazy, you’re all crazy, you’re all crazy,” sang Jenny. She giggled.

  My mother stiffened. She pulled the cigarette to her mouth. Through the cloud of smoke I could see that her eyes had narrowed. She stood perfectly still. She was wearing a white nightgown and her hair was up, and she looked like she could have been a statue in a museum.

  “I could make a list for you, Richard,” she said. “If you like.”

  My father snorted.

  “I’m going to go get a pen and paper. Hold on.” My mom walked off toward the kitchen. Jenny followed her.

  “Let’s go out back,” said my dad. “Let’s make a run for it.” We snuck out the front door and squished our way through the cool, damp grass to the back of the house. There were mosquitoes everywhere and we slapped them off us. Dad put his arm around me and we looked up at the sky. It was a clear fall night. There were a million stars, the same stars as always, and it made me feel safe for a second. I shivered under his arm and he squeezed me tighter. I could smell smoke in the air, a farmer burning trash in a field somewhere.

  “Get her sick. That’s just great, Rich,” yelled my mother from inside the house.

  “You’re all right, right?” he said.

  I was still stuck on thinking about Thomas. I would do anything to be with him. I knew that the love I would have with him would be far better than what my parents had. Anything was better than them.

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  My father pointed at the sky and started to say something but the sound of my mother’s voice interrupted him.

  “Number one,” she said. “Lack of support for career.”

  I could hear Jenny’s tiny voice repeating her words in the background.

  “Number two,” said my mother. “Not enough money spent on fixing this house up.”

  My father released his arm from me.

  “Number three. What happened to at least two vacations a year? A pharmaceutical conference in Iowa City does not count. Does not count.”

  He dropped to his knees. He prayed to the stars. I stood there with my mouth open, my tongue tickling the roof of it nervously.

  “What are you doing, Daddy?” I said.

  “I’m praying you won’t end up like your mother and me.” He sighed. “I shouldn’t have said that out loud.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I already knew.”

  “No, I just meant if you say it out loud, doesn’t that mean it won’t come true?”

  “Number four,” said my mother, and paused.

  “Number four,” screamed Jenny.

  “The suspense is killing me,” said my father. “I am being killed.”

  I threw my arms around his neck, and he squeezed my arms with his hands. Part of me wanted him to stop me. Because I knew I was already stuck in something. But I could not say the words.

  “Do what you want,” he said. “Just be safe and careful.”

  Given the choice between fighting with my mom and fighting with me, my dad picked peace with his children. That is how Thomas and I snuck in with our love under the radar. I do not think my dad knew then that Thomas would be the beginning and end of love for me. He just wanted a little hope in his life; that someone would be on his side. Suddenly I wondered if he should have stopped me from giving myself over to Thomas so completely. He probably couldn’t have. Or could he?

  “OH, YOU CAN’T STOP a love like that,” said Valka softly.

  “No, I guess you can’t,” I said.

  ONE NIGHT, a few weeks after I had moved out of the house I had shared with my husband, I came out on the balcony over the diner to look at the moon. It was late, and I was lonely, thinking of my husband all the way across town, past my parents’ house, past the school where we met and fell in love and became like one, past the cornfields that fed and clothed us, in his home that used to be ours. I wondered what he was thinking about, if he was missing me, or if he was hating me. I wondered if he regretted anything he had done.

  And then I heard a mess of noises: metal on the ground, shoes dragging, muffled words. I looked down below and there was Timber, bent over the garbage can. There was a hand over his mouth. His pants were down around his ankles. Papi was standing behind him; his pants were down, too. He was biting his lip and his eyes were closed. My heart skipped a beat. And then Papi moved his hand and Timber laughed and Papi laughed, too, and then they made little moaning noises like they were tasting something delicious.

  Even though I had never seen two men together before, not even on TV, not like that anyway, it did not seem that strange to me. It actually made me jealous. I could not have been more jealous if it had been my own husband with another woman. They both could feel the one they loved. I watched the two of them together under the moonlight, moving and grunting and loving, until they were done and it was time for all of us, at last, to sleep. I do not know if they knew I was there but would it have mattered? Their love was unstoppable, too. I went back into my apartment and wept. I cried through the night. I squeezed the ends of my hair in my hands and I cried like a little girl. I could not hide from the world. I could not hide from love. But I could not embrace it either. I was brokenhearted. I was stuck. I was sick.

  The next day I started taking Thomas’s money from the bank.

  19.

  Five hundred dollars a week extra, that was all I was taking. I would withdraw it from the bank and then put it in my oven at home because I thought no one would look in the oven and it was not like I was using it anyway. Five hundred dollars, enough so that he would notice, not enough so that he
would say anything about it. It was a lot of money in my hometown. My rent was not even that much. He had to know I was messing with him. What was I going to spend it on anyway?

  “SHOES,” said Valka.

  PIECES OF PAPER started to stack up in the apartment. The word was out that I was there. Junk mail. Flyers about local events. Every church in town must have heard I was on my own, so I started getting invitations to singles events. The weekly sales items at the grocery store. The electricity bill. Timber came by after work some nights and brought me leftovers that I lived on for days. I stopped talking to my mom so much. She was asking too many questions about why Thomas and I had split. Nothing I told her satisfied her, because all of it was lies. Sometimes I saw my sister. I watched her belly. I waited for suspicious movement. My hair grew thicker, and dustier. In the afternoon sunlight I could see the dust hovering in the air in my apartment and I imagined it falling all around my head and clinging to what had once been my prize, my golden head of hair. I had nothing of value left.

  And then it was almost winter and the harvest was over. The night air pierced, and people began to tuck into their homes. Timber convinced his dad to put up a sign on the highway advertising the diner. Thick milkshakes, crispy golden fries. And Timber had hired the new art teacher at the high school to make a logo, a 1950s-style waiter with a high forehead. Big Daddy’s Diner, it said on the billboard. Less of the local folks came to the diner and there were more strangers and that was fine by me. These people did not know my problems. They did not care what went wrong with me and my husband. There had been so many whispers around town. If you added them all together you could hear it like one person was yelling. My mother told me Thomas was seeing a girl from a few towns over. She was almost finished with nursing school. I did not believe it. He could not love another.