The Folded World

by Amity Gaige

  Alice turned away.

  “Listen,” he said. “I miss you, Alice. When I passed by that store, I have to tell you the truth, I didn’t recognize you at first. I thought, Who is she? Damn she’s pretty. And then I realized you were my wife. And I felt so—” he shrugged. “Outrageously lucky.”

  She looked down at her hands.

  “And then I felt sad. Because I missed you. Be with me.”

  “I am with you.”

  Charlie grabbed her hands and pulled her toward him. “Listen, I love you. I want to be like you. I want to be worthy of you. You make me want to be good.”

  “You already are good, Charlie,” said Alice, her eyes wet. “You don’t have to try so hard.”

  “I just want to tell you. I never forget you. All day, you’re with me.” He smacked his thigh. “Marry me.”

  “We’re already married.”

  “All right, then how about a date?”

  “What?”

  “This Friday. Ask Joanne to sit for us.”

  “We can’t afford to have her but once a week, Charlie.”

  “Yes we can. Just this once. Alice, I’m begging you,” Charlie made exaggerated bowing motions.

  She pushed him away, laughing. “And what are we going to do on our date, poor as we are? Go lick salt off rocks?”

  “Let’s not be poor for one night. Get a new dress and everything. Will you please? Get a new dress?”

  “I don’t know,” said Alice.

  “Please? Go up and ask Joanne.”

  He leaned over to kiss her, but she leaned back, scrutinizing his face.

  “Is this for sure? I mean, you’re sure we should make a plan? Something could come up at work.”

  “Alice—”

  “We could keep it flexible. Sometimes you can’t predict—”

  “Alice,” Charlie took her hand. “I promise you.”

  It was hard to imagine telling things to people. What if he were to tell her, or someone like her, about the voice in the bedroom? About the smell of hospitals? About the absence of color and Myself and oranges and verandas and nosebleeds and geraniums glimpsed from a corpse’s point of view? About the folded world. For you could not reveal it. It was you. It was all that you could not say. It was why you chose to arrive yourself instead of sending a letter. They could not know you, but whenever you came, when you were there, they could be happy enough because your riddle was nearby. Hal was sitting straight up in the chair with a book open on his lap. Soon he realized he was trying to mimic the posture of a person reading. He shut the book and waited.

  Or could you reveal it, yourself-as-world? Sometimes, he was not sure. For in its unfolding, it was no longer a world. The revelation was the disappearing. He always got to the same point in the riddle in which love was death. The death of the world of oneself. The hanging-by-a-threadness of oneself.

  He contemplated getting up to shelve, but he felt excessively delicate, in the sort of way that used to be fine, but now always had some fear in it. A red car drove down the street. Hal winced. It was so red. He checked the front pocket of his overalls for his relapse list. He was supposed to keep his list with him at all times. Working at bookstores, admiring women, was he growing too confident for who he was?

  Hal had done very well in the hospital. Everyone said so. Two weeks in and out, made it seem like a bad flu. Maybe because he was an athlete, and maybe because he had been a pretty normal person before it all went to hell, Hal had instinctively followed the rules. He’d met variously with doctors, psychiatric and otherwise, and he went into a room with a young woman who instructed him to make things out of multicolored pasta shells, and he recognized in this woman’s eyes the same transfixed expression of women who had looked at him all his life, and she would blush when he walked in wearing his overalls and carrying his clipboard on which he was supposed to check off his various daily successes, and his mother and father came every single day to visit him. His mother would look at his clipboard and make impressed noises. A couple times, the social worker—Charlie Shade—had visited, and they sat together in the TV lounge, and Hal was more forthcoming than he’d been for a long time, and even told the heretofore-untold story of Miranda R____ and what really happened at the lookout.

  Within days, the medication began to take effect, and two weeks later Hal had been sent home with his mother and father, and treated as an outpatient. On Tuesdays and Fridays, his father drove him to a clinic where he got his pills and there were new doctors and new therapists and social workers, and all of them were very nice, and as he got better he also became more lucid of mind, and he tried to accept what they told him, that they’d have to wait and see, but until then he just needed to relax and follow his progress for a little longer, and that he might not be able to do some of the things he wanted to do, and that they would have to wait and see about college, but a deferment was probably in order, and that wrestling was really out of the question, and anything particularly stressful was just out of the question—so much lost so quickly! But coming from where he’d come from, Hal didn’t mind that much. The Spring of Miranda had exhausted him, drained him. He himself now found it quite ridiculous to be so preoccupied with turning an opponent over on his back and forcing him against a rubber mat, and he looked back at his old sketches and drawings, made of dark, disturbed graphite clouds, and wondered rather impartially what in hell they were supposed to represent. He held a dead pencil in his hand. The books on the shelves were dead too. He finally joined his parents in the den and watched television with them. Sometimes he laughed at the right parts, but it was still really a vast moving aggregate of pixilation and cultural reference. He would have to be rebuilt, down to the smallest screw.

  Still, over time, he had begun to sense, in the far distance and approaching, a reasonable solution, a reasonable moment, coming along, calling out for him without yet knowing where he was. He felt—if you could believe it—lucky. He was told that he was. But also, he knew it. He had not been too much destroyed. He did not want to be any further destroyed. He understood: the threat had him pinned. He understood he was pinned by something that could kill him with just one more tight clutch to the throat. And so he liked watching her hair and the arrival of color but he needed to step slowly, carefully, leaving breadcrumbs.

  Beside him, Uncle Bob’s cat mewled, flashing her delicate fangs. The cat leapt righteously to his lap, compacted herself against his legs, and shut her eyes.

  Uncle Bob was not Hal’s uncle. Uncle Bob was his fan. An acquaintance of Hal’s father, the old man had played football for Yale years ago, and was a great fan of wrestling and all the sports that they played at places like Yale. The man now was half-crippled, and could be seen hobbling up the bleachers at all of Cross High’s wrestling matches, pressing familiarly on the shoulders of all the people he passed.

  And down below, on his blue foam moonscape, Hal had reigned in every match. When it was his turn, he stood up from the bench, fastened his headgear, and just this action prompted the bleachers to erupt in scattered applause. It was as if they were clapping for his existence. To exist, to exist so perfectly. To stand at five-eleven but appear seven feet tall, to stand in the complete candor of a blue jumpsuit, which articulated the very disks of the spine. The other boys on the benches crossed their legs when he stood. Everyone became a girl. Everyone became a girl when Hal walked out onto the mat. Even his opponent momentarily fell in love with him, then had to shake it off, shake it off and try to think of smashing his head, try to think of destroying him. But Hal was always the protagonist. He didn’t even have to win. Hal was the winner even when he lost. And he had only lost three times—once when he wasn’t thinking, and twice to the state champion, a square-headed boy strong as an ox who had been killed in a motorcycle accident during the Spring of Miranda. The death of the square-headed champion and the psychotic break of Hal had removed the two top wrestlers in their weight class in one season, and it was just too much for everybody, for all the fan
s, especially for Uncle Bob.

  By the end of the summer, many of Hal’s classmates and teammates had gone off to college, but Hal had not. He was still helping his mother with the garden and doing what they told him at the day hospital and otherwise trying not to think too much. One evening, an evening of a particularly rosy summer sunset, a sunset that Hal noticed but tried to be careful with, Uncle Bob showed up. This was when he was still Mr. Green. He knocked on the door and Hal’s mother let him in. He sat with his elbows on his knees, and spoke at great length about his days at Yale and how when you get old it doesn’t matter what really happened, just how you remember it. After some more of this rather one-side discussion, Bob Green turned to Hal and said he’d been thinking, he was wondering if Hal could help him out at the bookstore.

  Hal’s parents looked at him hopefully.

  I can only pay you six dollars an hour, said Bob Green, but on the other hand, you don’t have to do much but put books in the right place and sweep up, and reach the high places. Have you seen the store? People just come in to yak about books and old times, buy a dollar paperback. You know much about books?

  Hal knows a lot about books, answered his mother. Go look at his bedroom. They’re all over the place. He writes poetry sometimes, even.

  I won’t lie to you, I already knew that, said the old man. Son, I—And here the man stopped and tried to resist some affliction, some great painful affliction, that had overcome him. Hal knew then that Bob Green was having a harder time letting go of Hal than Hal was. What would he do this winter, with only a group of children in bunchy jumpsuits? Bob Green wanted to be near Hal. Hal knew it. Although Hal could never figure out why anyone wanted to be near him, he was quite used to allowing it, to rolling over to it like a bitch to her pups, and he didn’t begrudge it anyone. Besides, he was pleasantly overcome with what seemed like a whim—refreshing, slight: Why not work in a bookstore?

  Hal put up his hand, as if to protect Mr. Green from what he was about to say.

  I’d like that, he said. I accept your offer.

  Hal glanced over at his mother. She wrinkled up her nose at him and pressed her hands against her skirt.

  What are you doing Monday? said Mr. Green.

  Is that a trick question? said Hal.

  Mr. Green squinted.

  Working for you, said Hal.

  Everybody laughed. No one harder than Uncle Bob.

  And now here the old man was, hobbling into the bookstore with a candy bar stuck out of his mouth. He hitched his thumb over his shoulder.

  “Dinya see your mom out there, Champ?” He pasted his white hair down against his head. “She’s waiting for you.”

  Uncle Bob came over and pulled the black cat off Hal’s lap.

  “Poor girl,” he said to the cat. “You in love with the kid? Well get in line.”

  Hal walked outside and got into the car. His mother was sitting with her hands on the wheel. Her hair was aglow with sunlight, and she was wearing a plaid skirt with a large gold safety pin on the side. She smiled at him and they drove along in silence for a while. He flipped on the radio, and the dashboard lit up green. Listening to the soft music, the queer frightened feeling receded. The threat of color receded. He smiled and bent his head. All those girls … he missed them. It had hit right when he was ready for them. He missed having the chances. He missed the time before love was death or anything else but love. Maybe this was it for him now. Maybe the rest was over, and maybe he could have some of it back.

  “How are you feeling?” his mother asked.

  “Good,” he said.

  “Good,” she said. “I’m glad.”

  Hal looked over at his mother. He remembered how, those first days in the hospital, she had tried to adopt the RIGHT Attitude: Reasonable expectations, accurate Information, et cetera et cetera, how she had poured over their catchphrases, when if you asked him she was born with the right attitude—her own. She was his mother. The colors blurred past outside the window. Closing his eyes, Hal smoothed his hand over the seat of the car, feeling the dimples in the fabric. Soon he was thinking of her again. Her face appeared in a pear-shaped drop of water in his head. Oil on water. Oil on silk. He smoothed his hand over the door handle. Then he opened his eyes, ashamed. He did not know what he was ashamed of. It was not good for him to fantasize. Take it easy, he cautioned himself. But this shame felt pleasant. He was ashamed of his wrist where she had touched it. He was ashamed of the cat where she had scratched it.

  “What color was your hair when you were young?” Hal asked his mother.

  Her hand went up to her head. “Well, it was dark brown. Like it is now, but without all the gray.”

  “There’s not so much gray,” said Hal, peering over.

  His mother touched the side of her hair. She glanced at him, tears in her eyes. She looked very happy and almost beautiful. He knew what she was thinking, that he was getting better and that he was going to love her again and become Hal again, and for once he let her think this and did not yank it away.

  “Hey,” said Charlie. “You wanted to see me?”

  Harriet looked up from her papers. Squinting, she patted the top of her desk. He took her glasses off the bookshelf and handed them to her. When she put them on, her broad face relaxed.

  “Cupcake,” she said, leaning back hugely in her chair. “We got a problem.”

  Charlie sat down quickly in the chair facing, where the clients sit. “What is it?”

  “Miss Ludlow. Seems she got an unexpected visitor the other day. Some guy tried to deliver a mattress—”

  “A box spring,” said Charlie. “And?”

  “—and she came at him with a hammer.”

  “What?”

  “The guy’s all right. Lucky for us he has a strange sense of humor. And good reflexes. You got a comment about this?”

  “What?” said Charlie. “Jesus.”

  “You’re surprised? You shouldn’t be surprised. It’s your job not to be surprised. Why weren’t you there for the delivery if there was this potential? You were what, trying out for the Red Sox?” Harriet raised her eyebrows and looked at him over her glasses. “Is this unprecedented behavior?”

  “Yes. This is definitely not baseline. Jesus. The guy’s all right, you said?”

  “The guy thought it was funny.”

  “It’s not funny. Where is she?”

  “Miss Ludlow is at the hospital. The policeman took her in. She was pretty acute at the time, but he took a report.”

  “What’d it say? What’d he think, the cop? I mean, maybe the mattress guy provoked her. Maybe the mattress guy should be evaluated.”

  “Maybe, Charles. But that’s not how we approach things here. It’s not us versus them.”

  “But last time I saw her she was perfectly—I can’t—It doesn’t—”

  “Oh, stop,” said Harriet. “I know you’re concerned. I’ve already spoken to Miss Ludlow. Dr. Hsu and I met over there right away with the police. He’s got her on new medication and she’s already feeling better. I asked her—”

  “When did this happen? I mean, I could have gone with you, right?”

  “It was over the weekend, Charles. I was on call. I’m the team leader?” Harriet narrowed her eyes, pausing a moment. “I asked her if she liked living alone in Norris Park or if she’d prefer to live with other people, in a more supervised situation. If that would make her feel safer.”

  Charlie cocked his head back, as if struck. “What’d she say?”

  “She was very upset. She said I could take her dead body to a group home.”

  Charlie rubbed his jaw and looked out the window.

  “But it’s all right now. I told her nobody’s sending her to a group home. I was just asking for her preference. She was very upset. But you know, Charlie, if this is something that comes up again—well, it’s untenable. For her.”

  “Well,” said Charlie, laughing a little, fingering the shrinking space between collar and neck. “She’s going to
feel threatened with that now, the group home idea. Don’t you think?”

  “You got an objection to my handling of this?”

  Charlie licked his lips. He shook his head. Then, suddenly he said, “I feel she’s improving rapidly. She just started to come here for the employment workshop. She meets Carter religiously. Her physical appearance is improving. She takes her meds.”

  “All this, and she still beat on a guy with a hammer.” Harriet sat back and folded her hands under her breasts. The phone rang, and she let it ring, sitting there until it stopped. “She’s got a lot of negative symptoms, Charlie, you know that. She’s very withdrawn. Antisocial. And she’s not med-compliant, obviously. I mean, do you watch her take her meds? Are you trying to be singularly responsible for this girl? You have the time for that with all the other clients who need you?” Harriet shrugged, and took a candy out of the dish on her desk and unwrapped it slowly. She put it in her mouth, and leaned back. “Charles. How do you think you’re doing with this case? You feel like you’re able to maintain your objectivity?”

  “Yes. Absolutely. I think I’m doing well.”

  Harriet narrowed her eyes. “You 100 percent sure? You’re not being too influenced by your own—hopes for her? They’re your hopes, remember.” She leaned forward. “Be honest with me now.”

  Charlie wagged his head, swallowing. “I’m sure,” he said. “I’m sure.”

  But suddenly he was not sure. He looked up into Harriet’s strangely solicitous face. He tilted his head, as if listening for the Midwestern sincerity, which had not, until then, ever truly forsaken him. He felt something drain from his fingers. Blood? Confidence? He remembered a time the week previous when Opal had complained of the Radio, how it was louder than usual. And then, passing an old man in the grocery store, the withering, murderous look she had given him for no reason. This was not her usual mickey-mouser look. This look was something else. He gave her her meds. He observed. Didn’t he? But he could not remember one exact memory of her placing the pills in her mouth. He only remembered being gratified by her smile behind the screen door whenever he came for a visit, by her neat braid, by the squeaking of her new sneakers on the linoleum of the mattress store.