Their yard is littered with trash, their front door kicked in. Robert and Viola explore the house, half expecting to find someone sleeping in one of the rooms. There’s damage, some missing items, but the house seems livable.
Robert sets to work repairing the door. Viola finds a broom, a dustpan. They work in silence, as if afraid that any unnecessary sound might break the truce, however brief, that has been called forth between them.
They sleep in different rooms, pass each other in the hallway like memories.
~ ~ ~
“When my mother died,” Viola tells Robert, “I didn’t really even notice. Really, I didn’t. For such a long time she hadn’t been my mother, she’d been this woman who appeared every couple of months to tell me that she was getting better and that soon we’d be together again. By the time I was six, I was terrified of her. I was terrified that I would have to go live with her someday. But she never got better.”
They are in Viola’s old room in North Carolina and Viola is putting on her black dress. Robert sits on the end of her bed wearing his socks and his underwear and a white shirt and black tie. His suit pants and jacket are draped across his legs. “We were supposed to be there for each other,” Robert says. “I could forgive you anything, except that.”
Viola breathes in and out, carefully, and does not respond.
In the next room some distant cousins are trying to help Viola’s uncle get dressed. Viola’s uncle keeps calling out his wife’s name, over and over, while the distant cousins grunt with the effort of trying to get his arms in his jacket.
“Her heart just gave out,” Viola’s uncle says, on the way to the funeral. “She was just a little thing, always had a fast heart. I used to say she was my hummingbird. She thought it was funny, me calling her that. The way she was always flitting from one place to another.”
“How are you, Robert?” one of the distant cousins asks.
“Okay,” Robert says. “I may be asked to resign from my firm. Not bad.”
The funeral is in the chapel of the Hillsborough Street Baptist Church. “I didn’t know Melissa that well,” the minister admits. “But I have several trustworthy accounts of her character. She was loving and generous, more tidy than not, a woman of excellent mores and standards even if not a regular church-going woman per se… ”
When it comes to be Viola’s uncle’s turn to speak, he says, “Missy and I never had any children. But I never knew a better mother than her in my life. Missy, damn you, what’s Viola supposed to do for a mother now? You’re just leaving her? You’re just leaving me?”
~ ~ ~
Robert stays quiet during a dinner with several of Viola’s old friends. After dinner, as they’re walking back to their rental car, Viola says, “You didn’t have to come.” When Robert doesn’t answer, she says, “Look, I can find my own way back.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Robert says.
“I don’t want to be in a car with you right now,” Viola says. “I don’t want to share so little space.”
“I came down here because that’s what we do,” Robert says. “We support each other. That is how this is supposed to work.”
“This doesn’t work,” Viola says. “Jesus, Robert. None of this works.”
They are standing near the edge of Moore Square Park, near the City Market. Just as Viola’s starting to walk off, a man in a bomber jacket with a raw red face comes up to the two of them, waving like they were all old friends. “Hey. Hey I need to talk to you guys for a minute.”
“Jesus,” Viola says. “Not right now.”
“You’re the one who gave up,” Robert says. “I never fucking gave up. You have no idea.”
“No, listen: I need to talk to you,” the man
says, and shows them the pistol underneath his
jacket.
“Jesus,” Viola says.
“This all you’ve got on you?” the man says, looking through Robert’s wallet. “What about her earrings? Give me her earrings.” His eyes dart continuously from Robert to Viola, as if expecting one of them to tackle him. Cars drive by from time to time without stopping. Robert is trembling. He’s ashamed and angry. He’s thinking, Why isn’t anyone stopping this? Can’t they see what’s going on? Viola hands over her earrings with a strange smile, as if she found the whole episode more awkward than terrifying.
The man tucks the earrings into his pocket, pushes the gun into the waistband of his pants, then takes off running through the park. Robert screams and runs after him.
“Robert,” Viola yells. “What are you doing?” She’s trying to follow after him, but not doing much of a job in it in her heels. She kicks the heels off, but that’s even worse, because now she has to watch where she’s putting her feet.
Robert keeps screaming. He doesn’t think about what he will do if he catches the man. He doesn’t think about the fact that the man he is chasing has a gun and he, Robert, does not. He doesn’t think about what he would do were the man to turn and pull his gun. There’s something furious and red in Robert’s brain that blocks out the possibility of all other thought, so that all that is left in the world is a single thing made of running and screaming.
The man trips himself up on something or another and Robert’s on top of him, catches him by the collar of his jacket and jerks him into the dirt. There’s a wrenching sensation as Robert collapses on top of him. Then, hugely, the pistol goes off. Robert and the man look at each other, surprised, for a moment, as if neither had ever expected to hear such a sound, so close, in his life. The man studies Robert’s face. Robert studies the man’s face. Both Robert and the man are thinking: Which one of us was it? Robert feels himself for a wound. The man does the same. “The fuck,” says the man. “The fuck.” Both are unhurt.
Robert pushes the man’s face to one side and scrambles on his belly for the gun, where it’s fallen, a little over an arm’s length away. Robert pushes himself to his feet and aims the gun. The man sits cross-legged in the dirt, looking up at him.
“I wasn’t going to use it,” he says. “Don’t you see? What we’ve just been through is a miracle. You and me. You see what I mean? I’ve always wanted that, my whole life. I’ve always wanted to experience a miracle.”
“Get on the ground,” Robert says. “Face down. Into the dirt. Good. Now: my wallet. My wife’s earrings.”
“Here,” the man says, flinging away the earrings and wallet. “Take it. Take your stuff. Don’t you see what we’ve just been through?”
“Robert, what are you doing?” Viola says.
“Face into the dirt,” Robert says to the man on the ground. “Give me your fucking wallet. Give it to me.”
“Robert wait a minute, the police will be here—”
“I’ve got like three dollars on me,” the man says.
“Give me your fucking three dollars then.” Robert presses the barrel of the gun against the man’s jaw. His entire body is trembling. The barrel of the gun, where it presses against the man’s skin, moves as though trying to burrow itself inside.
“I’m reaching for my money,” the man says. “Don’t shoot me. Please for the love of God don’t shoot me.”
I want him to cry, Robert thinks. How do I make him cry.
The police show up and say “You two were very lucky. Normally we don’t recommend that citizens attempt to apprehend an armed perpetrator. However, we cannot conceal our glowing respect when they do.”
“The local news is coming by,” one of the officers says. “Would you two like to be on television?”
“I think we ought to be on our way,” Robert says.
“There are normally forms to fill out,” the officer says. “But you know what? We’ll take care of that.”
“We recognize a kindred spirit,” says his partner, clasping Robert by the shoulder.
~ ~ ~
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Viola’s uncle says. Viola is packing. Her flight is in a couple of hours.
“Are you goin
g to keep the house?”
“Vivi, don’t leave me here. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
The distant cousins promise that they have space for Viola’s uncle at their house in Zebulon, if need be. Viola’s uncle and the distant cousins see her and Robert off at the airport. At the security check, her uncle hugs her close and says, just loud enough that she knows Robert can hear, “Vivi, when are you coming back home for good?”
The distant cousins try to comfort him. They assure Viola that he’ll be alright. Viola keeps playing with the tag on her suitcase, nearly twisting it off. Her uncle doesn’t smile or tell her anything’s okay. Robert puts out his hand to shake and her uncle doesn’t appear to notice. The distant cousins both give Robert hugs that go on a little too long.
The security personnel spend several minutes sorting through Viola’s badly packed suitcases. “Ma’am, if you folded your clothes in an orderly fashion, and put all electronic devices near the top of your luggage, you wouldn’t be holding up this line right now.” Viola’s uncle stands just outside the security checkpoint, longing after her like a ghost.
~ ~ ~
Robert drives to the west side. Where the self-storage facility once was, is a pit, and a sign advertising new developments. Robert gets out of his car and hoists himself over the fencing into the pit. He looks out over a long stroke of nothing that has been cut into the earth.
Viola keeps expecting the FBI agent to reappear at the library, to call her, to materialize out of the shadows as she goes to unlock her car some night. It is like a long pause after a note, when you can’t be certain another note will follow. Finally, she stops waiting.
~ ~ ~
Robert wants Viola more than he can remember wanting Viola. And yet he’s so angry at her that he can hardly imagine having sex with her. When he sleeps next to her, he keeps turning towards her and grasping her tightly around the stomach, then turning away from her so that they’re no longer touching. Eventually one of them gets up to sleep in the guest room. If it’s Robert who’s left alone in their bed, he masturbates, still smelling his wife on the sheets.
Viola thinks of what it means, that she wants someone to hurt her during sex. Does it mean that she’s a bad person? Does the fact that Robert is unwilling to hurt her during sex mean that he is a fundamentally good person? Will he stay always by her side? Is he true? Is he chivalrous? Is he well-mannered? Well-heeled? Will he defend her against the evils that arrive time and time again in life? Or is he lacking in backbone? She thinks about when they were in North Carolina, when he chased and tackled the mugger. Was that backbone? Or was that an attempt to redirect other, overwhelming frustrations in his life, and hence (perhaps) a lack of backbone? Does she want backbone? Does it take any backbone to hit her during sex, when she so vocally wants to be hit? And what does any of this have to do with her upbringing?
It doesn’t have a damn thing to do with her upbringing, she decides.
Robert holds Viola down on their bed. He slaps her. He doesn’t feel anything. He slaps her again. She is breathing hard. He can feel how she pushes against him, he can tell — the word that occurs to him is “observe,” he is observing — how much she is enjoying it. He thinks, I could continue to do this. He thinks, There’s nothing actually difficult about this, about not caring. There’s no particular reason I need to care. I could live my entire life in this space, empty, performing the actions that I need to perform at any given moment. Viola makes sounds like she is about to come and then she comes.
Viola sits on their back porch drinking a nonalcoholic drink she concocted from peach syrup and soymilk. She’s wondering if such a drink already exists. If not, she’ll have to give it a name.
Robert looks down on her from their bedroom window. What he wants, more than anything else in this moment, is for Viola to look up at him and smile. What is wrong with me, he thinks, that I can have, from moment to moment, such disparate wants?
Viola works in their garden in the back yard, pulling up weeds from between what she hopes will one day be fresh herbs. She has a book on fresh herbs that she’s been following, hoping that this year her garden will come to something. How can she even be thinking about herbs, given everything that’s been happening in her life over the past several months? And yet she still manages to pay some attention to her herb garden, from time to time. She sits back on her haunches and passes a moment, amazed at the fact that she can think about herbs.
Robert considers his future. Does he want to search for an associate position in some other law firm? Does he want to set up a sole proprietorship? Does he even want to stay in law? He thinks about other things he could do. He could manage a coffee shop. He could become a whitewater rafting instructor. He could teach classes on how to effectively prepare for the LSAT or the Bar exam. What is holding me in Indianapolis anyway, he thinks.
Robert goes to a bar on the west side by himself. He is sure that someone has followed him.
Viola lies in bed, eyes towards the darkened ceiling, asking herself, Is this the time he won’t come back? Is this?
Driving home, Robert thinks, Can I even say the word love without swallowing my own tongue? I love, Robert thinks. That is a true statement. But what the hell does it mean? Can love exist without an object? Can love be a state of being, unfocused?
Viola thinks. Robert thinks. Viola thinks.
After a time, Robert crawls back into bed beside his wife.
He doesn’t want to think that this is all love comes down to, that every night that he’s able, he crawls back into bed beside his wife.
Viola thinks, Okay. Robert thinks, Is that all? Is it as cheap as that? I come back, she comes back, I come back? Viola thinks, Okay. That’s something.
~ ~ ~
And then there is a moment. Perhaps a week. Robert and Viola are happy. They go out to eat with friends. Viola works in the garden. Robert makes extravagant plans for their future. When they are together, they kiss. They have sex in the kitchen. Viola braces herself against the kitchen island and thinks that things are not so bad and, objectively, cannot get so bad. It is as if they are singing. Perhaps they are singing. Later, Robert makes lemonade from lemon juice and water and sugar substitute. They sit out on the porch and drink it and talk about how warm it’s gotten.
Acknowledgments
Selections from this novel, some in altered form, have previously appeared in The Collagist, Atticus Review, and Red Lightbulbs.
About the Author
James Tadd Adcox’s work has appeared in TriQuarterly, The Literary Review, PANK, Barrelhouse, Mid-American Review, and Another Chicago Magazine, among other places. His first book, The Map of the System of Human Knowledge, a collection of linked stories, appeared in 2012 from Tiny Hardcore Press. He lives in Chicago.
Table of Contents
James Tadd Adcox Does Not Love
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Does Not Love Page 13
