An Elegant Theory

by Noah Milligan

  Of course, I did remember some things. I remembered that day at the museum, the last we had ever spent together. I remembered her taking me to school in the mornings. As a game she’d sometimes not stop but instead coast along the parking lot of the elementary school and allow me to jump from my seat to the amazement of my peers, and the trepidation of my schoolteachers. She smoked cigars sometimes, after a party, or to celebrate something I didn’t understand from work. She’d loved risk, going spelunking and skydiving and bungee jumping. She was also prone to terrible sadness and locking herself up in her room for days. When she would emerge, her nose and lips would be raw and the color of dried, burnt salmon.

  But were these memories even true? Were they fantasies I’d imagined to fill the void she had caused? Not knowing for sure made it even worse, like my mind had been damaged somehow, or I was deluded, insane even. Like some of our estrangement was actually my fault. I could ask her, of course, an admitted liar who from one second to the next changed moods and stories like an adjunct changed universities. It maddened me more and more, and it seemed I wouldn’t get any details out of my father. He’d kept them hidden for this long; he wouldn’t start admitting anything honestly now.

  “Either get in or find another cab,” yelled the cabbie. “I ain’t fucking around here.”

  “I better go,” Dad said.

  “Sure. Sure.”

  We hugged farewell. “Give her a chance,” Dad said. “I know it’s not right or fair. Just try. Okay?”

  “Okay, Dad.”

  “Promise?”

  I nodded. “Of course.”

  SARA ASKED ME TO GO WITH HER TO THE INterview just in case she had another one of her attacks and had to go back to the hospital. I thought she was just scared, though. Scared to put herself out there. Scared to be rejected. Scared she might actually get the position. The job was at Blue Hills Bank in its credit risk department. We waited in the foyer, furnished with rich, deep brown club chairs, intricate Persian rugs, and faux-golden plated coffee tables. On the walls hung generic paintings: landscapes, a British hunting party, a ship lost in a stormy sea. It was one of those places that made me feel uncomfortable—I knew I didn’t belong, and so did everyone else, casting judgment behind stony gazes.

  Sara sat next to me, chewing her hair. Her leg bounced like a woman needing to pee, which she’d already done, twice since we’d arrived thirty minutes earlier. The peeing, of course, had more to do with her pregnancy than nerves. She’d gotten much larger since my mother had arrived a couple weeks before. The amount she showed seemed to follow an exponential function, growing at an accelerating rate with each passing week. At first, her belly had protruded like a low hanging summer squash, but then it rose like baking bread, turning rounder and taut. She now couldn’t walk without waddling, having to cradle her belly in her arms. For the interview, she wore a silk, grey blouse and a pantsuit, both of which were much too small for her now, so that they resembled a tarp pulled over too large of an area.

  “I wonder what’s taking so long,” she said. “This can’t be a good sign.”

  I didn’t respond because she didn’t want an answer, only to vent her anxieties.

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” she said as she rocked back and forth. She did look paler than normal, ghostly even.

  “Really?”

  She nodded.

  I looked around for some sort of container for her to vomit in, a trashcan, even a potted plant, but could find nothing. There was a receptionist’s desk, empty for the past half hour, but I questioned the appropriateness of getting behind there. Would they mistake me for a bank robber?

  Sara gagged.

  I didn’t have a choice—the vomit was coming. Behind the desk there was a trashcan, already full with Starbucks cups and a sandwich wrapper and mounds of tissue. There would be no room. Without thinking, I dumped the trash onto the floor and rushed the container over to Sara. She grabbed it, hovered her head over the opening, and puked. She breathed deeply and erratically, one curt, staccato inhale followed by a breeze of an exhale. A bit of drool clung to her bottom lip, drooping down to the trashcan liner.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  She put up a finger, indicating I needed to stop talking, and then wiped her lip with her sleeve. “I think I’m okay,” she said.

  “You sure?”

  “It’s been getting worse lately, the morning sickness. I thought it was supposed to get better as time went on.”

  “Can I get you anything? Water?”

  “No. No. I’m good.” She spit into the trashcan. “It’ll pass in a bit.”

  “You’ve been getting sick lately?”

  She nodded. “Every morning. Comes out like fluid and phlegm. Then I have heartburn the rest of the day.”

  “I had no idea.”

  She shrugged, stuck out her bottom lip, as if unsurprised I had no idea about her morning sickness, and placed the trashcan on the ground. Her spit clung to the trash liner in a coagulated, white pool.

  “Are you sure you’re able to do this?”

  “I’m pregnant. I feel sick sometimes. It’s not a big deal.”

  “I just don’t want you to overdo it. You heard what Dr. Remington said. You need to take it easy.”

  “We’ve talked about this.”

  “I know,” I said. “You need this, and I understand. I do. It’s just—”

  “Not another word, Coulter. Back me up. Support me. I support you in your work. I don’t complain when you don’t come home until 11:00. I don’t complain when you’re out the door by 4:00. I don’t complain that when I do see you, you won’t talk to me. You’re in your own little world. I need my world. Don’t you understand that?”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry,” I said, although I didn’t mean it. It wasn’t my fault that she didn’t have a world. She was a banker in a time not well positioned for bankers, the greatest economic recession since the Great Depression. How could I possibly control world economic shifts? How could I affect the hiring situation in greater Boston? How could I grant her professional fulfillment when she obviously couldn’t do it herself?

  “Don’t be sorry, Coulter.” She pulled out a pocket mirror and checked her hair, her lips, making sure no bits of puke remained at the corner of her mouth. “I don’t need you to be sorry. I need you to just get out of my way.”

  Just then, the receptionist returned. She smiled a superficial smile, a thin grin without revealing any teeth, and headed back to her desk. Once behind, she stopped and looked down, spotting the trash I’d left on the floor. There was a moment there that lasted only a few seconds, a wave of rage, where she wanted to scream and kick and bite. I could tell by the way her shoulders hunched up around her ears, the way her nostrils flared, and the way every muscle appeared to tense to the point of tearing. But then she tempered her anger. It came as quickly as the anger did, released in one hushed respire.

  “Mrs. Musso will see you now,” she said to Sara, who left without even a look to me for support.

  As soon as Sara went back for her interview, the receptionist shot me dirty looks. She glared at me, then down at the floor, over to the trashcan, then back to me.

  “I’m really sorry about the mess,” I said. “My wife is pregnant.”

  She glared at me, the trash on the floor, the trashcan, then me.

  “She suffers from morning sickness,” I said.

  Me, the trashcan, the floor, me.

  “Would you like for me to clean that up for you?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “No. I got it.”

  When she picked up the trashcan, she snatched it, hyperbolically slinging her arm up and to the side, the entire time staring at me, before returning to her desk to clean up the mess I had made. Once finished, she opened the door to the men’s restroom and left the trashcan inside. The smell of vomit, however, lingered.

  She was a young girl, the receptionist, with her hair pulled into a tight bun. When she typed, she struck the ke
ys with such force that it sounded like popcorn popping. When she answered the phone, she spoke quickly and curtly, the words firing out of her mouth in rapid succession: Thank-you-for-calling-blue-hills-bank-my-name-is-amy-how-may-i-help-you. She shuffled papers and repeatedly clacked the button on her pen. She drank Mountain Dew between practiced movements, keyboard to inbox to soda to filing cabinet. She was in constant motion, frictionless and in a vacuum.

  “Do you like working here?” I asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Here. Do you like working here?”

  She shrugged as if I had just asked a stupid question. “Of course.”

  “What about it?”

  She shrugged again, stopped what she was doing and faced me. She puckered her lips and cast her gaze up and to the right, as if in deep thought. “I don’t know. I haven’t given it much thought to be honest.”

  “You work a lot?”

  She sputtered in derision. “Sixty hours a week sometimes. Fifty at least.”

  “And what do you do?”

  “Administrative assistant to Mrs. Musso.”

  “I see.”

  “I know. Unimpressive title, right?”

  “You like your boss?”

  “She’s demanding, but she’s good. She’s appreciative. Makes you feel important, even if you’re not.”

  I nodded.

  “You the husband?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “When are you guys due?”

  “Two months.”

  “And she’s looking for a job now?” she asked. “Now?”

  I nodded.

  “Huh,” she said. “Seems a bit crazy to me.” She popped a piece of gum into her mouth. “No offense.” She held out the pack of gum toward me. “Want one?”

  I approached her and took the piece of gum, spearmint. It tasted cool, and the familiar tinge provided a semblance of comfort.

  “I think it’s a bit crazy, too,” I said. “Who’s going to hire her, then give her maternity leave?”

  “But you’re here.”

  “Somebody has to hold the puke can.”

  She laughed a high-pitched cackle then covered her mouth. “Touché. What’s your name?”

  She held out her hand, and I took it. “Coulter,” I said. “Yours?”

  “Amy.”

  “Nice to meet you, Amy.”

  “And you, Coulter.”

  She smacked her gum and smiled. She had the whitest teeth I had ever seen. “How long have you been married?”

  “Four years,” I said. “It’ll be five next spring.”

  “That’s sweet,” she said. “First kid?”

  “Yes.”

  “Excited?”

  I hesitated, unsure really how to answer. “Anxious,” I said. “Excited, nervous, happy, worried, terrified.”

  She laughed, and so did I even though I wasn’t joking. At the beginning of the pregnancy, it didn’t much bother me, the prospect of being a father, but ever since my mother had returned, I didn’t feel one emotion, but many, swirling together to concoct an ulcer-producing cocktail. Sometimes, I burst with joy. I would be helping Sara decorate the nursery with stuffed baby blue elephants and a mobile dangling the periodic table of the elements, and I couldn’t help but smile until my cheeks ached. Other times, though, I would feel nauseated from the pressure, the doubt that I could ever be a good father to my son, like my father had been with me. I felt inadequate and incapable, that I would, once he was here, count down the moment until I could flee like my mother had.

  “Oh, I bet,” she said. “I’d be freaking out!”

  “Sometimes it’s hard to breathe. I feel like I have asthma, like somebody has grabbed me and put me in a bear hug, and I have to breathe into a paper bag to catch my breath.”

  “But I bet it’s great, too,” she said. “You get to play with all those toys again, Legos and racecars and water guns, and watch him mold into a little you.”

  “Panic attacks, my doctor said. They come out of nowhere. I’ll be at work lecturing, and all of a sudden, my vision will narrow like I’m looking through a pinhole.”

  “You get to watch him play tee-ball and cheer the first time he hits a home run. Get it on video and then embarrass him when he gets older, showing it to his girlfriends.”

  “There’s just this little bit of light, and it’s so bright, like getting your eyes dilated at the optometrist’s office. It’s so bright I actually hear ringing in my ears. A high-pitched whine.”

  “You get to teach him how to drive and give him advice about girls. It’s the greatest thing in the world.”

  “After a while, I think I’m going to die. My throat constricts, and it feels like my chest is caving in. It’s been so bad that I’m brought to my knees.”

  Just then, the door leading to Mrs. Musso’s office burst open. Out came Sara, fuming. Her fists were balled up, her mouth locked in a straight line. She walked with purpose, her plastic soles clacking against the tiled floor.

  Behind her, the door clicked shut.

  “She didn’t even give me a chance,” she said. We were riding the bus, bumping along Memorial Drive on our way back to the Dot. It was crowded. Sara sat on a chair facing the middle aisle, two large men on either side of her. I stood holding a pole to keep my balance. The place smelled like all public transportation in Boston, a mixture of cleaning agents and motor oil faintly masking the aroma of urine and various other human secretions. “As soon as she saw my stomach, the interview was over.”

  “I’m really sorry,” I said. “Maybe the next one will go better.”

  “You should have seen the look on her face. She was appalled. Appalled! Like I was some gross monster.”

  “I’m sure that wasn’t her intention.”

  “You weren’t there, Coulter. You didn’t see her face. Her scrunched, little, smug face. I’ve never been so humiliated in my life.”

  “It’s tough out there. You haven’t worked in a while. It’ll get easier once you get some more practice.”

  “She wouldn’t even look me in the eyes. If she wasn’t staring at my fat stomach, she was checking her email or her watch or her phone. I don’t think she even heard a word I said.”

  “Probably for the best. Would you want to work for someone like that?”

  “Maybe this was a stupid idea.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  Sara peered up at me, her gaze cold, and then back down. “You are supposed to say it’s not.”

  The two large men began to take notice of our conversation. One had a shaved head while the other had a ponytail. Both were well over six feet tall. The bald man resembled a cue ball, shiny and rock solid—a speeding dump truck couldn’t have knocked him over. The man with the ponytail was rounder, shaped like a light bulb, and sweaty, his perspiration soaking his shirt. They stared at me as if I was a threat to Sara, their chivalrous sides instinctually kicking in.

  “You’re not going to say anything, are you?” Sara asked.

  “You know how I feel,” I said. “I don’t believe I need to explain myself anymore.”

  “I’m unhappy, Coulter.”

  “I know. You feel lonely. You feel unfulfilled. You need something to do. But the health of our son is at stake.”

  “No,” she said. “You don’t know.” She covered her swollen belly with her arms, as if protecting herself. “I’m unhappy with you, Coulter. I’m unhappy with us.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I want to go back to Oklahoma. I am going back to Oklahoma.”

  “You’re leaving me?”

  “Yes,” she said. “No. I don’t know. It’s not that easy.”

  “But you’re going to Oklahoma?”

  “To stay with my parents.”

  I felt as though the floor had dropped out from underneath me.

  The bald man and the one with the ponytail became ardently intrigued now. They leaned forward in their seats. The bald man had his hands balled up in fists,
planted on his thighs, and ponytail-guy held his together as if in prayer.

  “You can’t,” I said.

  “I know this is hard,” she said.

  “I’m almost finished with school,” I said. “We had a plan. We discussed it together. We formulated it. We executed. And now that we’re nearly done, you’re going to leave me?”

  “We’ve been unhappy for a long time, Coulter. You can’t deny that.”

  “We knew it was going to be tough. You knew what you were getting into.”

  Baldy fidgeted in his seat, sat straight up.

  “Things change, Coulter. I didn’t mean for them to.”

  “Stay. Think about it for a little while. Don’t do anything rash.”

  “Please, Coulter. Stop.”

  “Listen to me. We can—”

  Ponytail perked up. “The lady wants to stop discussing it, bub.”

  “This doesn’t concern you,” I said.

  “Coulter, please. Let’s just stop the bus and get out,” Sara said.

  “When you fight in public,” Ponytail said, “it becomes the public’s problem.” He stood up, followed by Baldy.

  “I don’t want any problems,” I said.

  “Why don’t you leave this nice lady alone, then?” Baldy said. He poked me in my chest. Fight-or-flight instincts have been hardwired into the human genetic code by millions of years of evolution, and at that moment, mine jumpstarted. The bus, however, offered no room to escape, no room to fight, only room to stand still and wait what was coming to me: an inevitable Southie jab to my jaw. I inched as far backward as I could, until an elderly gentleman’s knees poked into the back of my thighs. Turning around, he looked afraid, as if it was him who was about to be pummeled.

  Before Baldy could lay a finger on me, however, his knees buckled, and he fell on top of me. “Ow! Fuck! Motherfucker!” he said.

  Slipping out from underneath him, I saw Sara, leg outstretched from having kicked Baldy in the back of his legs. Stunned, Ponytail stared at his buddy who struggled to regain his footing. As he watched, Sara punched him in the groin, crumpling the much larger man into a ball. Before the men could retaliate, Sara leapt to her feet and pulled the emergency stop cord. The bus screeched to a halt, and she held out her hand toward me.