Everyone but You

by Sandra Novack

  Was I? I thought I was praying. Her mother often prayed, though this is something she does not tell Paul. There is so much, in fact, that she won’t say.

  Have you forgotten you’re an atheist? he asks. He lies down next to her. He lifts her hand, kisses each of her fingers. He says, Whether you realize it or not, I do love you, despite …

  She breathes deeply, smells the coffee on his breath, notices a small mole just at the base of his neck, chafed from his shirt collar. In all their years of marriage, how did she never notice this mole? She is in love with it, with the small, humble shape of it, its dark color that seems to pull her toward it. I love you, too, she says.

  Probably, she tells herself, she still does love Paul. He is a good man. He has taken care of her since the nurses went away. He has simplified her as he would a building, removed her onyx ring, her gold necklace and watch. He has cleaned her hands, palm up, twisting her wedding ring around in his careful fingers. He has tended to her closings and openings. Cleaned her messes. He has laid her back on pressed sheets, stiff with starch, and tucked the covers around her. But when she is gone, Paul will remarry. Perhaps Laura Mulhaney, that tall imposing blonde, such a serious, studious woman, so right for him if she weren’t already married. Paul needs the stability of marriage, she knows, just as he needs the frenzy of affairs.

  You’re tired, he says now.

  No, she tells him.

  The thing about sleep, he says, is that you have to let it in.

  But I’m not tired, she says, or thinks she says. You’re the one who’s tired. Darley, you’re the one who needs a rest.

  HER MOTHER, lying on the bathroom floor like that. She was only ten then, and at first she thought her mother had slipped on the floor, hit her head. But the tub and floor were dry, the air cool, and her mother, she noticed, was frothing at the mouth like an animal. The slow, choking gurgle of fluid. Black and white tiles. Her mother’s pale, uncovered arms. Then that terrible gagging. If only she’d thought to move toward her mother instead of stepping back. If only she’d placed her own hands inside her mother’s mouth, cleared the obstruction. But of course there was no obstruction, only pills. Those white pills, their perfect round shape.

  She ran outside instead and waited for her father to come home from work. She wore a pale-green dress that day, one which her mother had picked out for her, and as she sat on the concrete steps she counted the goose bumps that formed on her exposed legs. After a while, she got up and walked to the window box that was filled with pansies. From the box, she retrieved a nest. A secret, her mother had told her when they’d first found the nest in the weeks prior. Such a secret under the flowers. She sat Indian-style on the macadam, letting the ruffles of her dress fold between her thighs, and with a mason jar, she cracked open the blue eggs, crushed the featherless bodies, touched the closed eyes, the thin mucus that covered the birds’ beaks. Then, ashamed, she buried the birds under the window box, dug the dirt up with her hands, ruined the border of hostas. When the sky grew dark, her father’s car pulled into the driveway and she said nothing.

  Perhaps, in the end, her mother was too light for everything. Perhaps she, too, floated through the parties, a slender-faced woman with pale eyes. Her mother’s smile, her airy laughter, her high heels and flared dresses, what did all those things matter when she stood in the kitchen at night, choking back tears as she prepared dinner, as she pounded a slab of meat until it became paper thin? When her mother would call her to dinner, she would pause at the door, wait just a moment before speaking. What was under those pauses, those brief hesitations?

  She never told Paul the truth about her mother, of course. She never would dare tell him about the birds, her own murderous ways. As she got older, she stopped thinking of what to say about any of it. She set out the candles on the dining room table instead, arranged the trays of fruit, and laughed when the Mulhaneys, the Forbeses, the Walkers stopped by to visit on Fridays. She sometimes drank too much. She said things like Delightful. She told Paul everything made her so, so happy.

  WEEKS, DAYS, MONTHS, HOURS. She no longer knows how time passes, or cares. She feels far, very far away from everything, as if a part of her—whatever that part may be—is floating high above everything, separate from her body, her flesh. Paul comes and goes. Mostly, he stays on the other side of the wall. If she listens hard enough, she can almost hear him breathe.

  Rebecca calls to talk about her engagements, and her lawyer friend and life in the city. She does not mention the brain, nor does she question whether her mother has, after all these years, found God. She doesn’t dare say, How are things, really? She sends her love, as always, before hanging up.

  Others come and go, too. The nurse visits, bringing more flowers. Sylvia Walker stops by, her coiffed hair smelling of hair spray and vanilla, her nails perfectly manicured and painted pink. Martha Forbes brings oranges and green, bitter apples, swollen pears, which, left uneaten, will turn brown and rot. Laura Mulhaney shakes the globe and watches as the iridescent snow falls. Then, when others have gathered around the bed, Laura stands at the window and complains of infestation. Doesn’t Paul know they have spray to kill these things? she asks. She goes next door to see him. She is gone.

  Her neighbor, Gladys, tells her to look for signs. Angels, she whispers. And sometimes parents, or an aunt or uncle, too. But there aren’t any angels, or deceased relatives, only ants. They crawl up Gladys’s arm and sit on her shoulder. Angels, she hears herself say, lying. She is certain she hears the small sound of laughter.

  Sometime later, after everyone has left, Paul comes in to see her. Those silver lights about him. She has come to think of him as a giant fish.

  You’re quite right, he says. You always seem to be right, so I shouldn’t find it surprising. Yes, he says, more to himself than to her. Of course I’m tired.

  PERHAPS, ALL IN ALL, she’s lived a fraudulent life. Maybe only time and not love held her and Paul together. Perhaps she floated through—through marriage, through Rebecca’s tender gums, through the parties. Perhaps the Mulhaneys, the Forbeses, the Walkers despised her, after all. The wives certainly did. Didn’t the women always flock to Paul, gravitate toward his sweet, supposedly innocent flirtations? Who knows what happened when people disappeared into bathrooms and empty hallways. Who knows what happened in this very room, atop fur-collared coats. Perhaps Friday cocktails, like Paul’s uproarious laughter and affairs, only served to choke out the slow, crawling silence at the edge of their lives. But there it is, anyway and finally: They are all older. They are all, frankly, old. And Darley and his betrayals are, finally, the least of her problems. It’s not one person who has forsaken her but something infinitely more frightening—her own body, time, the world itself.

  And these details betray her, too, her own thoughts. They assault her, they overwhelm her and fit no pattern or meaning. One quick breath. One slow smile. Her mother’s folded hands. A cracked egg, a bloody shell. Paul’s silver-rimmed glasses. Iridescent snow, and the turning of a ring over and over. How is it possible that none of these things seems greater than the others? Perhaps in the end, there is too much commonality, after all. Perhaps in the end, the ants, the angels, are all the same, weighted evenly. She wants to translate and uncover everything—the gestures, the complicated looks and layers of irony, the words, the spaces and silences in them. Such negative spaces.

  She’s been tardy in telling Paul all these things she’s kept to herself, all these things she’s wondered.

  All these ants. It happens every spring. Every spring. At least, she thinks, there aren’t roaches. The ants crawl from the window, attach themselves to the blankets, climb over her. There are hundreds, thousands, millions of ants.

  She says, So soon?

  Deo volente, they say. Vocatus atque non vocatus deus aderit.

  Bidden or unbidden, God is present. She hears the sound of laughter, which rises in the air. She presses down on the dispenser. More and more ants cover her body. She opens her mout
h for them, she closes her eyes. On her tongue, the ants feel so light.

  Darley, she whispers from under everything, come quickly.

  He is in the other room. She is certain she hears him breathing. She is certain she hears the slow working of air in and out of his lungs. She presses and presses again. Darley, she says. Come quickly. I have so much to confess.

  SAVE MY SOUL

  The story goes like this: Wednesday afternoon my neighbor, Mr. Gun-Metal, stops by my house. I should already have a premonition, like this will be the beginning of the end, but I don’t yet, of course, because I am stupidly optimistic in my own way, which, according to my husband, is not optimistic at all.

  With Gun-Metal, there is first a breach of boundaries that I try to ignore: I didn’t even invite him over—I am a stickler for calling ahead, advanced planning, that sort of thing; I would never be the type of person to just stop by. But here he is in my kitchen, sitting across from me at the table, staring at me with those gun-metal eyes. He rakes his hand over his crew cut, then down to the sharp line of his jaw. It’s midafternoon, my husband is working and will be late, and my neighbor has already dipped into a bottle of wine that cost me twenty-three dollars and that he says he doesn’t even like. This is the setup, the basic scenario.

  Today he tells me a story about a cow, which starts off innocently enough. I am happy to hear about cows, because I am weird that way; I like the occasional odd topic of conversation. And I grew up on a farm and have all sorts of cow stories that aren’t really stories so much as vignettes—milking cows, chasing cows, birthing cows, that sort of thing.

  She was an old cow, he tells me, setting the tone. She must have been hungry, he says; her ribs showed through, and the flies buzzed around her. She probably escaped from pasture to search for food. Came walking down the highway and into our neighborhood, he says. The nearest farm is, what, about three miles south? Can you believe she didn’t get hit by a semi? That would have been a bloody mess.

  I can believe it, I say, taking the cow’s side. After all, cows aren’t nearly as stupid as people think. Well, maybe they are stupid—you’ve probably heard all the bovine jokes—but they’re hypersensitive, which makes them cautious. What color was she? I ask next.

  You and cows, he says. What gives? And anyway, what does it matter?

  Details, I say. It’s about details.

  That’s not the point, he explains, as if he has this down.

  Okay, I tell him. I’m beginning to feel a little tipsy, which generally makes me gregarious and better with people, but today it’s hard to conceal my disappointment. I wanted to know the cow’s color, and possibly also its breed. There are all sorts of cows, I want to say: red Angus and Butlers, Herefords and shorthorns, Texas longhorns, et cetera.

  I let this all slide. So what is the point, then? I ask.

  The point is, within seconds everyone in our neighborhood had out their guns, he says. Except you, you probably don’t own a weapon; you probably don’t have a single weapon in this house. I could kill you now if I wanted, he adds.

  I have a butcher knife, I say, even though I’ve only ever used it to cut watermelon.

  You know what you are? he asks. He doesn’t wait for an answer. Says, You’re a passive Yankee tree-hugger.

  But why? I ask. Not about me being a tree-hugger and passive—both are mostly true—but about the guns, as in, Why pull a gun on a cow? What would be the point, I might ask. It’s not as if the cow is going to rob your house or car. And why, because this is always my first question, and it’s never a good question with which to start anything.

  Why? he asks. What do you mean, why?

  Why get out a gun as a first response? Why get out a gun at all? Was it like a cow militia, or something?

  Maybe, he says. Regardless, you don’t want to know the outcome.

  Oh, I say. I think I really don’t like where this is going.

  Want to know who pulled the trigger?

  No, I tell him. I don’t.

  I did, he tells me.

  That’s a surprise. So, I ask, what did the cow ever do to you, to warrant murder? The whole thing pains me, but I listen anyway. This is semi-true: It’s a semi-true story.

  He leans back in the chair, crosses his arms, and stretches his legs. Wouldn’t get off my lawn, he says, as if the point were obvious. That cow was on my private property and eating my zoysia. He asks: Do you know how much I pay for zoysia? Do you know how much I pay for privacy these days?

  I do, actually, because I am an insanely private person. Still, to kill a cow because it’s eating grass? And what were my other gun-ready neighbors thinking, as they watched this massacre take place?

  I look at Gun-Metal sternly. This is all very unsettling, I say.

  He grins, rubs his hand over his jaw. You’re easy to unsettle, he tells me.

  I say nothing.

  For the record, Mr. Gun-Metal and I aren’t friends. I don’t know why he stops by my house unannounced. I actually don’t know much about my neighbor, either, short of the one story he likes to tell: He was a combat soldier and won a Purple Heart for pulling an injured man out of a Humvee after an explosion ripped the vehicle apart. He and his injured buddy hid in the upland region for several days, waiting to be rescued. His friend suffered from shell shock, so my neighbor held a gun to him the entire time, saying, You make a sound, I swear I’ll put a bullet in your head, fucker.

  He’s looking at me. He pours another glass of wine.

  So then? I say, though I don’t want to know, not really.

  So, nothing, he says, shrugging, and this is why I realize things are truly going to hell. There is no sense of consequence, no sense of an arc, no enlightened moment of change.

  Nothing, he says again. End of story.

  AUGUST HERE is a lot like July, which is a lot like June: balmy, ridiculously hot. I hate monotony. Everything is mostly brown or a blanched, brittle green, and a brush fire ignited today, several counties over from where we live, set on purpose by someone with a love of fire or with a gripe against trees, or both. The fire has been burning uncontrollably, sweeping across the hills and valleys, which are plentiful here. From the Home Depot, I can see the irritable smoke billowing in the distance like a fallout cloud. Brush fires aren’t typically common where I live, but we’ve been in a drought for what seems like thirty years. Everything is blanched and brittle, easy to ignite.

  Most of the people at Home Depot are pleasantly benign enough, like those visitors to Disney World: They are dressed in colorful, tacky shorts and tank tops that make their tanned arms look flabby, and really the only thing they are missing is frozen, chocolate-covered bananas in their hands. Even though it’s ninety-five degrees, even though it’s more than sticky-humid, I wear jeans and long sleeves and sweat in brute defiance. I hold out my desperate hopefulness for cooler weather. Today, people mill about, picking out pampas grass and dahlias and primrose—primrose, such a fussy name and milky smell. People emerge from exits with mulch and fertilizer, and most of them smile. I always think: Everyone looks good at a distance, everyone.

  My husband, aka Post-it Man, aka Harry, is a tall, wiry person. He’s thirty-nine—three years older than I—and he has short blond hair, square glasses, and a sloped nose. At Home Depot we take on a divide-and-conquer mentality with tasks: He will seek out hostas, while I get cleaning supplies. I am wary about the hostas, and I say so. These days our garden isn’t much of a garden at all. I tell him the ground won’t keep anything past a week, but Harry tells me to think happy thoughts, like Tinkerbell. Then he kisses me before parting and I feel slightly condescended to, because even though my husband is smart, he’s not smart enough to cover up the fact that he’s having an affair. He works at an office—an office that sells staples and other office supplies. Harry practically lives in one of those tiny cubicles, one laden with sticky notes that have pithy sayings on them like, Go to heaven for the climate, hell for the company. I’ve often wondered if this statement is
an indictment against corporate America, but most likely he put it up there to impress Boop. She likes to think of heaven and hell a lot; she’s a heaven-and-hell sort of girl.

  Tinkerbell, I say, absently now. I make a fluttering motion with my arms and then pull down the rim of my Life Is Good cap because de-Nile is not just a river in Egypt. Then I walk to aisle six, which is near to God and filled with cleaning fluids that we buy in bulk. I admit to my fondness for Clorox cleanup wipes. My husband has told me this—that I am Clorox Clean Compulsive.

  I suppose this is his way of being cruel.

  1. Passive tree-hugging people do not do well with confrontation.

  2. I am a passive tree-hugging person.

  3. I do not do well with confrontation.

  Can I live with an affair, I wonder, toss it up to something that will pass? And after it passes, will it create in me renewal, a feeling of love’s costly though resilient worth? I do not know the answer to this, but I do know the following: Right now I’d like to scream at Harry and pop him a good one, right in the nose, and I’d like to take a butter knife to Boop’s heart and extract it slowly. Very slowly.

  I GET SIDETRACKED at the Home Depot so easily, which is obvious and nothing new. I bypass the cleaning aisle when I see all the lumber. As with my bleach fascination, I also hold a strange devotion toward wood, all kinds—cypress and white pine and ash and birch and cherry and poplar. If I come back in another life, I’d like to be the sort of person who builds things. Or maybe I’ll just say Screw it and come back as a lumberjack, increase my carbon debt, and go with the flow.

  Usually people in this aisle are so into planning some major home renovation they barely bother to talk. Today, though, a husband and wife argue over stupid choices. The woman, a short-statured blonde in L.L. Bean, says, God, I hate you, Clyde. I can’t be-lieve you’d prefer cherry over mahogany for the kitchen. Are you dim? she asks. She purses her lips. Her eyebrows furrowed, and her husband, well, he’s standing there with a Fuck you, chickie-babe look.