All Back Full

by Robert Lopez

  She says, My friend doesn’t need time.

  He says, What does she need?

  She says, Don’t.

  He says, Perhaps she would like to join us next time?

  The woman looks at the man.

  She says, I don’t think so. She doesn’t like Italian food.

  He says, I thought she recommended it.

  She says, She did.

  He says, I understand.

  She says, You understand nothing.

  He says, You are probably right. I have never been good at understanding. All my life I’ve wanted to understand things. Something. Anything. I don’t know.

  She says, What don’t you know?

  He says, The simplest things—how a….

  The man is trying to think of something to say.

  He says, I can’t even think of something simple. He says, It’s always been a mystery.

  This Algerian chef might be Italian.

  He is swarthy.

  He speaks French, but no one knows if he speaks Italian.

  The man doesn’t know this about the chef. This is one example of what the man doesn’t know about the world.

  The man doesn’t understand so much about the world it is difficult to keep up with all he doesn’t understand.

  The man doesn’t understand women, men, children, animals. He doesn’t understand how anyone could be a vegetarian or a vegan. He doesn’t understand how anyone can hold a nine-to-five job for more than six months at a time, how anyone can choose a career in politics, in business, in finance, in education, in farming, in industry of any kind.

  He doesn’t understand anything technical, anything having to do with math or geometry or electronics. He doesn’t understand simple directions, be they directions on how to assemble a piece of furniture, say a television stand, or directions to an address.

  He doesn’t understand how the local baseball team cannot recognize that the first basemen has no future in major league baseball. He doesn’t understand how the local football team continues to play the same quarterback.

  He doesn’t understand why hockey isn’t more popular.

  He doesn’t understand the appeal of soccer or racing of any kind. Not car racing, horse racing, dog racing, or people racing on the street or on a track. He doesn’t understand long-distance racing especially, doesn’t understand how anyone can ever go jogging.

  This is only a partial list of what the man doesn’t understand.

  What the man doesn’t know would fill an even longer list.

  She says, I think I’m hungry.

  It seems as if she’s changing the subject. This is something she feels comfortable doing. She always has another subject at the ready for such occasions.

  It’s not clear if she’s actually hungry, though. She has eaten at least one pastry since coming downstairs, since sitting down at the breakfast table.

  The woman has a peculiar metabolism.

  She is often hungry. She is an advocate of eating several small meals throughout the day rather than eating the traditional breakfast, lunch, and dinner. She is also an advocate of snacking in between these several meals. She calls it grazing.

  One would think the woman would be portly, if not rotund, but she is not.

  She is stout, solid, average.

  She has dimensions, measurements.

  She is a woman, like millions of others.

  He says, Well. If I did understand and your friend was an old Italian widow, I would like to eat her food. That’s what I’m saying here.

  She says, I don’t believe that’s what you’re saying.

  He says, I speak plain and to the purpose. I’m not clever enough for double meanings.

  She says, Well, I will tell her that the next time we speak.

  He says, Will you ask if she is naked?

  She says, If I remember.

  He says, I don’t think you will.

  She says, Perhaps not.

  He says, Where does your friend live now?

  She says, Why is this important?

  He says, I didn’t say it was important.

  The woman’s friend is a nudist. Obviously the man is fascinated by this.

  If he’s not exactly fascinated by the woman’s nudism, then he sees it as an opportunity to needle his wife. His wife has strange, freewheeling, eccentric friends. Friends who go on about saving the whales and the rainforests and the seals, any and all endangered species, and the drinking water.

  The man knows that the friend has recently moved. He remembers his wife telling him about this move over dinner one night.

  Otherwise, he overheard this one Sunday morning when his wife was on the telephone.

  Sometimes he eavesdrops on her Sunday morning conversations with this friend.

  There is probably nothing to read into this behavior beyond curiosity.

  They named the poodle Jasper, after the man’s father. Jasper is his father’s middle name. Apparently, the man was almost named Jasper himself but his parents changed their minds when filling out the birth certificate.

  The man and woman didn’t think of this as an homage, but that’s how his father took it.

  They saw it more as a joke.

  The man found the early rearing of the poodle difficult, from simple behavior modification to housebreaking.

  The dog spent a lot of time and slept in what is called a crate but is effectively a cage. The dog looked like a prisoner inside of the crate and was always reluctant to go back inside after being allowed to roam free.

  On occasion the man and woman had to lure the dog back into the crate with food.

  They fed the dog a raw diet, which was recommended by their holistic veterinarian.

  This raw diet consisted of organic chicken backs and beef tripe. The man would go to the natural food store once a week to stock up on chicken backs and beef tripe.

  The man couldn’t understand how anyone could eat this food, including dogs.

  The man couldn’t understand why they couldn’t feed their dog what everyone else in the world feeds their dog.

  The man has always been delicate and doesn’t like to see the dog eat his meals, particularly the beef tripe. He does listen to the bones breaking when the dog devours the chicken backs. There is something about this he enjoys, the primal carnality of it. But he never watches the dog eat the beef tripe. The first and only time he watched, he saw the dog gnawing on the beef tripe in a futile attempt of slicing it, which seems impossible with beef tripe. At some point the dog choked down a large chunk of it and the man sat there, astonished. He was certain the dog would die on the spot and he’d be called upon to resurrect him.

  It’s probably no surprise that the man could never bring himself to clean up after the poodle’s many accidents. He’d call out to his wife and say something like, There is a problem in the living room or The vestibule has been contaminated.

  Eventually the poodle became housebroken. It took five weeks or years.

  She says, I’ve thought about what it would be like if she lived closer. If she were more accessible. I can’t say I’d be comfortable.

  He says, Why is that?

  She makes a face that indicates she doesn’t know.

  He says, I understand.

  She says, I am supposed to see her tomorrow for lunch.

  He says, Ask if she knows any old Italian widows. Any woman whose husband died years ago from cancer or liver disease.

  She says, There is something wrong here.

  He says, I like to sit at a table reading a newspaper while the widow staggers around the kitchen. I like to watch her retrieve oregano from the spice rack and mozzarella from the icebox. That’s what she calls it, the icebox. One of the six best words of the English language.

  She says, It’s a good one, yes.

  He says, A woman that can bury her husband in the morning and fry eggplant for supper that evening is from another time and place. I like to watch her talk to herself as she browns the garli
c in olive oil and washes the basil leaves. She’s wearing this blue housecoat, this frayed and tattered housecoat, and her pockets are stuffed full of novenas and soiled tissues, and this stinking housecoat doesn’t fully cover the network of varicose veins up and down her old spider legs, legs that can barely keep her upright, legs that no one in the world wants to catch sight of, but you can bet your ass the housecoat matches the blue slippers, that’s her outfit, she wears it every day, and these slippers, Jesus, these grimy slippers that fail to cover bony toes, toes that turn in absurd impossible directions, toes that arthritis or some other disease has made a shambles of. Jesus Christ, those goddamned toes. There’s no way you can eat rigatoni after seeing something like that. But goddammit, you do it anyway. You eat the rigatoni.

  She says, This widow—who is she?

  He says, I don’t know.

  He says, I’m not sure. I think she was the friend of a friend’s mother growing up. She cooked for me every weekend. I loved her.

  This woman wasn’t the friend of a friend’s mother, but rather the friend’s mother herself. She wasn’t an old woman, either, but she seemed like it to the man, with the understanding that the man was a boy then.

  This woman was indeed a widow, but her husband died in a car accident and not from cancer or liver disease. The man was in perfect health at the time of his death except for the occasional bout with diverticulitis.

  The boy never sat at a table reading a newspaper while this woman staggered around the kitchen retrieving oregano and mozzarella from the icebox. This woman never staggered at all; in fact, she was graceful, almost like a dancer. As a younger woman, she studied ballet, and years later could still pirouette and plié.

  This woman never referred to the appliance as an icebox, but rather a refrigerator. It’s possible she called it a Frigidaire.

  This woman did wear a blue housecoat, but her pockets were never stuffed with novenas and soiled tissues. She was agnostic and carried handkerchiefs.

  Her legs were smooth and unsullied and never featured a network of varicose veins, nor were her toes misshapen, despite her training as a ballerina.

  The man is confusing this woman with a great-aunt, who is almost exactly as he describes.

  She says, You will eat anything—it’s all par for the course, as per usual.

  He says, Yes, indeed.

  She says, Anything hot, anything partially cooked. Something that was once alive, breathing. You are usual again. You are being usual.

  He says, Usual. Usual is funny to me. U JEW AL. It sounds ridiculous, phonetically, the phonetics of it. All words do in the end, sound ridiculous. Language is ridiculous, arbitrary and ridiculous. We are talking noises here. How do we distinguish these noises, this language of ours, from gibberish? What’s the difference? You listen to other languages, for example. You listen to German, Chinese, Swahili, Greek. Goddammit if that doesn’t sound like gibberish to me. I look at those people and I wonder how the hell do they know what they’re saying to each other. Can you distinguish one word from the next in those languages? Can you distinguish one word from a grunt or a groan?

  She says, I can’t, no.

  He says, That’s what I mean.

  She says, They understand each other. If you spoke German or Chinese or Swahili, you would understand, too.

  He says, I doubt it.

  She says, I doubt it, too, now that I think of it.

  He says, English is the only language I’m capable of speaking.

  She says, If that.

  The man will not eat anything, as there are certain foods he has no interest in. Beef tripe, first and foremost. Of course, he enjoys meat—beef, fowl, pork. He is a man, American. He does eat vegetables, particularly as he’s reached middle age. He doesn’t want to contract colorectal cancer or any related catastrophe. He always indulges in grains, breads, cereals, pastas, as he believes them to be a staple.

  The man does most of the cooking.

  The woman is content with grazing, and as such has never prepared the kinds of meals the man enjoys.

  She will contribute a salad and her version of coleslaw.

  Before they were married, she would make her version of coleslaw on a Monday and have it for the rest of the week.

  Her coleslaw includes both red and green cabbage, carrot, a light dressing consisting of olive oil and honey, salt and pepper. There is no mayonnaise in her coleslaw.

  The man took Spanish in both junior high school and high school, but he couldn’t retain much of it. Subsequently, he received poor grades.

  He received poor grades throughout his scholastic career. He graduated 78th in a class of 118.

  In Spanish he knows how to say hello, how are you, and perhaps a few other phrases.

  He also knows how to say hello, how are you in Polish, though he never studied Polish in high school. Polish wasn’t a part of the curriculum. He assumes Polish isn’t part of the curriculum anywhere in America.

  He learned how to say hello, how are you in Polish from the woman that went away.

  This is all she taught him how to say.

  The woman was leaving in the morning and she wanted to teach him how to say something in Polish before she left. For some reason she thought this was important.

  They went back to her apartment after the going away party and this is where she conducted the lesson. The man had a hard time pronouncing the how are you part of the phrase, but soon mastered it. The woman told him his accent was funny.

  The man was pleased to learn how to say something in Polish and he wondered why she never taught him this before. He wanted to ask her this question, but decided against it.

  He was hoping they’d have intercourse one last time and he thought questions and answers wasn’t any kind of foreplay.

  There were some initial attempts at intercourse, pushing and pulling, arms and legs, awkwardness and frustration. Finally they gave up when she said she couldn’t, when she said stop it.

  She was going overseas, back to where she’d come from, where she was raised. It’s not clear if she was raised in Poland, though. She had at times indicated she was Romanian and at other times had said something about Slovakia.

  She would probably return in a year or two, hoping to maybe pick her life back up where she was leaving it off, leaving it behind. This is what she told everyone she knew, including the man and including her husband back home.

  The man knew about the husband back home.

  She told him theirs was an open marriage, that it’d always been complicated, that she didn’t see it lasting forever but he was her husband and she needed to try.

  She told him that he shouldn’t wait for her, but left open whatever might be possible.

  She said all of it was regrettable and unfair.

  She did imagine reuniting with the man upon her return and him greeting her in Polish.

  This never happened.

  The man is impressed by anyone who is bilingual or multilingual. He cannot fathom how anyone can be proficient at more than one language.

  The man, too, has never traveled abroad, and his inability to speak another language is part of the reason. He hasn’t told anyone this, including his wife.

  The woman has suggested they travel to Europe any number of times over the years but the man has always maintained that they can’t afford it. He is leery of overextending themselves. He’s said traveling for its own sake is frivolous.

  But he says they’ll do it someday.

  He says, What came first?

  She says, What first?

  He says, Language. We’re talking about language now.

  She says, I thought we were talking about my friend.

  He says, We’re talking about her, too.

  She says, I forgot you are versatile.

  He says, So, what came first?

  She says, It depends.

  He says, On one hand we have sounds, we have physiology. The tongue, lungs, larynx, and whatever else is involved in maki
ng sounds.

  She says, Language is what gets us in trouble.

  He says, Did one person come up with the word for spear, for meat, for fire? Did the clan monkey-see-monkey-do after this one person?

  She says, Language and liquor.

  He says, Then we have the written symbols. Drawings—such and such indicates a letter, a string of letters indicates a word, and so on.

  She says, Indeed.

  He says, I know. There are no answers.

  She says, Only the conversation.

  He says, The repartee.

  She says, The back and forth.

  It wasn’t long after the dog became housebroken that he developed health problems.

  There was always something wrong with his eyes and ears. Pus would ooze out of these areas and the woman would do her best to keep these areas free and clear and clean.

  The holistic veterinarian prescribed drops for both the eyes and ears. The man would hold the dog in place while the woman applied the drops.

  The dog would periodically go off his feed, develop other infections, and sustain injuries that resulted in limping, that resulted in the man carrying him up and down the stairs.

  During this time, the man thought of the dog as a lemon. He mentioned this to his friend.

  He said he’d be stuck with the lemon for fifteen years.

  The friend is right now at home, in his basement, hiding from his own wife, Janice.

  He is also looking for a bottle of whiskey to bring over later. He keeps bottles of whiskey in the basement so his wife won’t find them.

  He is chewing on a toothpick and fumbling with a tarp, as he cannot recall where he’s hidden any of the bottles.

  The friend doesn’t have a dog, as his wife, Janice, doesn’t like animals.

  The friend’s wife, Janice, is a practicing vegetarian and occasionally dabbles in veganism.

  The irony of this mystifies everyone.

  Eventually, though, the man grew to feel genuine affection for the poodle.

  The dog was sleeping in the crate, which was now placed in their bedroom upstairs.

  They initially had the crate downstairs but moved it upstairs after the dog whimpered ceaselessly several nights in a row. The man said he couldn’t take this anymore and the woman said I know.

  It was in the middle of the night when the dog started vomiting. The man had never heard a dog vomit before and the noise startled him. They rushed over to the dog, who seemed perfectly at ease.