Long Division

by Jane Berentson

  I couldn’t sleep for a while. I kept thinking about how not sad I was about Helen. When I thought about her brutal, violent murder, my stomach turned and my chest tightened, but when I thought about her being dead—being gone forever—I didn’t actually feel too bad. Sure, I loved her. And I know that she helped me tremendously over these last few months. It was like Helen was her own kind of war victim. A veteran who served with honor, loyalty, and pluck. But she was a chicken. I almost feel ridiculous writing this. Maybe it’s glaringly obvious, but my sadness for her loss is nothing like what I feel over the loss of Flores—of Brother Alden. If anything, her death reminds me of the travesty that is theirs. And I didn’t even know Flores and Alden! I have no real excuse to be sad about anything! David, the Flores family, BHH Barbara, Alden’s adoption-balking mother, and anyone else whose loved ones actually die in actual unlucky ticks of the universe, now they have the right to shed buckets of tears. I wonder how David is doing with it. I wonder why I don’t know.128

  I spent the next day over at my parents’ house helping my mother in the garden. We both wore large-brimmed hats, and we chatted during the commercial breaks of This American Life on NPR. Both of my parents were very sweet about Helen’s death. My mother hugged me and said things like Oh, sweetie. And you’ve already been through so much. And! It didn’t bother me. So my mother and I share a similar penchant for melodrama. She says out loud all the same things I kind of think inside.

  “Don’t think for a second, Annie, that this is your fault. Accidents happen. Helen had a good life.” Awww, my sweet mother. If she only knew of my other failures. I should really talk to her more. As if there aren’t enough slimy layers of guilt in my life, spending the day with my dear parents reminded me of how little I’ve used their proffered support over the last year. Not that I don’t value the relationship I’ve fostered with Loretta, but why did I open up to her when I had them? They are also smart. They are so openly loving. I guess my intentions with Violet Meadows were originally rooted in escapism. I thought being with Loretta would take me away from my own life, but then I went and turned it into another wing of the Annie-centric Universe. Jeez Louise.

  My dad offered to come over and help me tear down the coop if I wanted. I told him I wasn’t sure yet and that maybe I’d get a new chicken in due course. My parents didn’t note the absurdity of the whole thing. They thought that Pete and Jenn seemed great and were so glad Gus was there to support me. We grilled a lovely piece of salmon. Ate it at the kitchen table with the windows open, the omega-3 pumping through our bodies, lubing up our innards, and moistening our eyes while we talked for a bit about Alden and what kind of kid he might have been. For once it was nice to be around my parents while emotionally troubled. They somehow made it easy to pretend that I’m actually fine. And they were so good at supporting and loving me in my fineness that I almost believed that the fineness was real. It’s easy to be the old me around them. The one who was a devout wartime girlfriend. The one who believed she loved David Peterson loads and loads and loads and loads.

  When I got home there was a small box on the welcome mat of the front door. From the driveway, I thought it was Helen’s cigar-box coffin, but I soon realized it was cardboard and far too cubelike. I took the box inside and set it on the kitchen table. It was unmarked, and the flaps were taped down with clear tape. I ran a knife across the tape and the flaps popped open. The box was stuffed to the brim with popcorn—white and unbuttered.129 I ate a few pieces and carefully brushed the top layer aside, digging into the box gently with my fingers. My thumb brushed against a thin plastic cord and I grabbed it. Pulled it up.

  It was so magnificent, I gasped. Painted blue with daisies and irises blooming up from the base. On the top of the egg was a golden sun with orange rays swirling down the slopes of the sides. Two of the rays wove together and bonded in an elegant cursive scrawl. Helen, it said. Not too big to distract from the aesthetic of the design, but not small enough to go easily unnoticed. The surface was shiny, smooth, and sturdy: obviously the product of a careful shellac job. There was a tiny hole on the bottom and two others on the top where the cord was attached. I imagined Gus’s gangly hands, smashed together in still concentration, gripping the tiny eye of a needle. I could see his full lips tenderly pressed to the shell, his cheek muscles tense, his lungs lightly blowing the yolk and the white into a small glass bowl. Affixed to the top of the cord was a mini plastic suction cup. It confused me for a moment, but then I understood. I stood up, dangling Helen’s last egg between my thumb and forefinger. I carried it to the window by the sink and cautiously pressed the suction cup to the glass. I felt my cheeks pinch into a wide, healthy smile before dropping abruptly. And then I cried.

  And cried.

  And cried.

  And cried.

  23

  Today I’m calling my book What I Did on My Boyfriend Vacation, and it’s a five-paragraph essay handwritten on wide rule. There are three spelling mistakes and one unfortunate incident of subject-verb disagreement. Go ahead. Fail me. See if I care.130

  David calls two days after Helen dies, and I tell him the whole story. When I’m done, this is the first question he asks/thing he says: What kind of dog was it? I don’t know! I shout this at him.

  “Aren’t you supposed to say you’re sorry for my loss first? Aren’t you supposed to be comforting me? My pet was just murdered, David.” I’m genuinely annoyed.

  “Sorry, babe. I was just curious. You didn’t seem too upset when you told me. I mean, it’s just a chicken. It’s not like some animal with high brain power and the capacity to love.” And I want to say What do you know about chickens? or Don’t tell me about the capacity to love. I want to say Gus understands Helen or Gus feels bad; he made me a magical, beautiful commemorative fucking ornament about how bad he feels bad. But I don’t say any of those things.

  “David. I didn’t mean to pick a fight. It just doesn’t seem like you’re sad about it.”

  “Annie. I’m not sad about it. You think with everything I’m going through and everything I’m seeing here, that I’d be sad about one slaughtered chicken? Thousands of chickens are killed every day. It’s a chicken! I’m sorry. I’m just not sad.” Oh, how he has a very good point! But I can’t help it; it bothers me.

  “But Helen was my chicken,” I say in my small, whiny child voice. I almost add and so you should be sad for me. But I don’t say that either. I tell David I know I’m being ridiculous. It’s just that it was stressful for me, and that just because my stress is drastically different from his stress, it doesn’t mean I’m not entitled to have it. However trivial it may be. And then I say something about how I don’t really know what he’s going through and therefore, I don’t know how absurd my whining is by contrast. He acknowledges the validity of my points and starts telling me how one of his buddies just got the first season of Da Ali G Show on DVD and that they’ve been watching it every night and that it’s sooo funny. Yawn.

  I’m holding Loretta’s hand when I tell her about Helen. I don’t tell her about the feathers being everywhere because I don’t want her to think Helen died after a miserable struggle. It’s not the kind of thing you emphasize when discussing death with the ancient.

  “Oh, Annie. I’m so sorry, dear.”

  “It’s okay. I’m fine. Helen was a great chicken. She brought me a lot of joy and taught me so much about being the best me.131 And I definitely owe you for it. She was your idea.” Loretta lets go of my hand, flips both of her wrists at me, and settles them in her lap.

  “Stuff-a-nonsense,” she says. “I owe you for putting you both132 through this.”

  “Loretta, you’re crazy. It’s nobody’s fault but that silly dog’s. And maybe mine for not having a more secure yard.”

  “Why is everyone always calling me crazy?” Loretta squacks, and we both laugh a bit. Later when she’s sitting in her rocker and I’m on the bed—both of us playing video poker on mute133—we talk about Flores for a while and how it’s
such a different type of loss.

  “It’s like how jars of salsa come in different levels of spiciness, but essentially it’s just varied degrees of the same flavor,” I say. “Once I tasted the zing and the sharp punch of Flores’s death,134 the loss of Helen was rather mild. Sad, but gently so.” And then I stare out the window for several long moments and think about how much I sound like Gus. The unmistakable fl avor of grief. The pasty hands of boredom. “Hey Loretta,” I say when I snap out of it. “There’s something I want to show you.” I tell her the story about how after Pete and Jenn left, Gus found Loretta’s final egg. And then I reach into my purse for the small Tupperware container and carefully lift out the ornament for Loretta’s inspection. And approval. She smiles, obviously, because it’s so damn pretty. Her eyes narrow and she hands it back to me gingerly.135 Our fingertips touch for a moment in the exchange. Loretta looks at me: two parts seriousness, three parts knowing, two parts happy.

  “I see now, Annie.” She folds her hands in her lap. “What the dickens are you going to do?”

  A few days later Gus calls me and asks if I want to come over and watch a movie at his apartment. It’s the kind of thing we did all the time in high school, summers and spring breaks during college. But it’s been a while—years since circumstance has allowed our friendship to pick up its old ways and habits. We have our own homes now, and so it feels different. It’s a weeknight, and I have no plans other than to maybe tweeze my eyebrows and read something, so I agree to come. Casual old Gus. Dorky old Annie. I ask if he wants me to bring anything. He says no.

  On the way over I wonder what he wants to watch. I hope it’s not a Godfather marathon or some documentary about an obscure musician I don’t know. Gus lets me into his tiny apartment, and I immediately plop on a beanbag chair.136 I have already thanked him on the phone for the spectacular transformation he performed on Helen’s egg, but something is urging me to do so again in person. But with a hug. Just as I’m thinking about it, Gus says “So have you decided about getting a new chicken yet?” He’s in the kitchen behind me, and I can hear him riffling through a drawer of utensils.

  “Oh, no. As much as I’d love to pay Edward Harrington another visit, I don’t think I’m ready yet. And since I’m going to Boston soon anyway, I don’t want to burden someone with feeding her—Helen II, you know, the new chicken.”

  “I guess that makes sense. I’m making guacamole. Do you mind peeling some garlic while I chop?” I spring up from the chair and I notice that it’s a more difficult leap to make with seven more years on my body.

  “Oh, yeah. No problem. Sorry I didn’t offer to help. I just saw the beanbag and got sucked into it. It reminded me of your dad’s basement and all the stupid time we spent in there doing stupid things. All the time I spent sprawled on it whining to you about Brother Alden.” Gus looks up from the jalapeño he’s chopping. He’s very serious.

  “That’s not stupid, Annie. I’m sure I can think of seventeen stupider things you talked about from that chair,” he teases me. His smile threatens to recount fourteen stupid Annie Harper teen ideas.

  “Let’s not go into it.” I grab the head of garlic from a basket on the counter, rip off two cloves, and start to peel. My nails are short, so it’s rather difficult to make the first little tear. It reminds me of the membrane around one of Helen’s hard-boiled eggs.

  “There’s lemonade if you want some.” Gus tilts his head toward the fridge and catches me staring into the bowl of mashed avocado, tomato, and onion. I hand him the two shiny, clean cloves and grab two glasses down from the cabinet. “I made it just before you got here, so it won’t be chilled. You’ll need ice.”

  “Hmm. Lemonade. So, what? Did you break down and buy the Juiceman juicer one night?”

  “No. I used this.” Gus pulls an old-fashioned crystal juicer from the sink. Pulp and seeds still stick to its angular edges, rendering it imperfect, but still beautiful. “It was my mother’s.”137

  “Wow. Never seen that one. It’s lovely.” I take the lemonade out of the fridge and swirl the pitcher a few times to mix the pulp and sugar that has settled on the bottom. In the freezer I find a single ice cube tray amongst several frozen lake trout from our fishing trip. There are four remaining cubes, and I divide them between our glasses. I reach for the faucet, pull the lever to the far right, and start to refi ll the tray.

  “Wait,” Gus says, and he sets down the salt he was shaking over the guac and swings the sink fi xture over to the left side. “Hot water freezes faster.” And he doesn’t say it this condescending, stupid-Annie way. He says it like it’s this astonishing, beautiful secret. And the look in his face (the lift in his eyebrows and the slowly curling smile) confirms that it is. And that he’s going to tell me about it. It’s the look I know I should make with every lesson I teach my students. It’s the look Max Schaffer gave when he handed me his gorgeous essay about spider sex. It’s the look that says: Here is the universe. Isn’t it wonderful?

  “Yeah, it’s called the Mpemba effect, and people have been trying to prove it for centuries. It’s hard to wrap your mind around, right? Water needs to chill before it can freeze—won’t that take more time? But, no. Experiments have shown that hot water, not all the time, but most of the time, freezes faster than cold water under certain conditions.” Gus dips the tip of his pinkie finger into the guacamole and tastes it. “Needs more lime. Anyway, even Aristotle pointed this out at one point. But people kept on not believing it until this schoolkid in Tanzania—I forget his first name, but his last name was Mpemba—just wouldn’t back down. He was a part-time ice cream vendor, and he made the observations about freezing while making ice cream. No one believed him. A teacher told him he must have confused the results. Eventually, he did a study with another teacher and they got it published in the sixties. So he’s not really the discoverer, but the rediscoverer. I wish I knew more about thermodynamics and exactly why it works, but I know that it’s one of many—something like sixty-eight—anomalies of water. The layperson always thinks that water is this simple, predictable substance because it’s so abundant. But it’s not. It’s much more complicated. Surface tension. Boiling point. Water breaks a ton of rules. I mean, you know how they’re always saying that if a planet has water, then there’s a chance for life? I think it has something to do with all the anomalies. Like life itself is an anomaly of the physical world. That’s the problem with being a philosophy major. Everything real I know is a mile wide and an inch deep. I need to read more. I think this is done. Taste.” Gus dips his pinkie into the bowl again, holds it out to me like a challenging, stern, tough-love teacher. I lean in slowly without moving my feet, close my eyes, and remove the sample in a single, firm swipe.

  “It’s perfect,” I say. “And that was very nice.”

  “What?”

  “The story. About Mpemba. And the ice cream.”

  “Oh, right. Thank you.”

  “Thank you for sharing.”

  I have a hard time concentrating throughout the first several scenes of the movie138 because I’m remembering a time when David told me the same thing about making ice. We were at my apartment and I was filling the tray and he was standing behind me, big and strong and shadowy. He said, “Use warm water, hon,” and then bent down to peer into the fridge. And that’s all he said. And then I didn’t say anything. I just did it. Both of us, unquestioning, uncurious, unable to stop thinking about the bland burgers we were grilling and the status of our cheddar cheese supply.

  Comfortable.

  Accepting.

  Tepid.

  But then I get into the movie more. It’s alternately disturbing and beautiful. Marco, the boyfriend of the bullfighter, is lodged in this weird place between grieving and hoping. How do you act both sad and optimistic? Though a war is by no means a coma, I can kind of relate to Marco. My heart sinks for him. And when he befriends the bizarre nurse, Benigno, as both a distraction and out of genuine human interest, it makes perfect sense to me.

&n
bsp; You’re hurt, lonely, and confused?

  Okay. Do something else.

  There’s this scene where the nurse tells the motionless ballerina about this silent film he’s just seen. The viewer sees the film under Benigno’s narration. It’s about a scientist whose experiments have run amok and his entire body is physically shrinking at an alarming pace. His wife is mega distraught and the final scenes—before he dissolves into nothing—show him as wee little inch-long man, climbing into his inevitable death. Into her vagina! And it’s hard to think of the man as small and the rubber vagina as normal-sized. Even with the frame flashing to the woman’s normal face and back to the tiny scientist, sobbing before her rubber labia, he just doesn’t seem small. The plastic vagina just seems big. And that’s about where I fall asleep. It’s not that I’m disliking the movie; I’m simply tired. Blame it on the guacamole resting slack and cozy in my gut. Or the lack of afternoon coffee. Or maybe on the fact that I’m just comfortable dozing between Gus and rubber vaginas.

  I wake up to Gus squeezing my calf over my jeans, and I notice that I’ve nuzzled my feet under his thigh. “Annie,” he whispers. “I’m sorry you fell asleep. It was a really powerful ending.”

  “Yeah, me too. I didn’t mean to. What happened? Did either of the women wake up from their comas?” Gus takes his hand off my leg and I shiver a bit, realizing I’m cold. He reaches to grab a blanket draped along the back of the couch and then clutches it to his chest.

  “I can give you this blanket and we can play the ending again. Or, I can give you this blanket and we can not play the ending again. Or, I can not give you the blanket and we can play the ending. Or, we can do none of the above.” I rub my eyes to moisten my contact lenses, and when I’m done I look straight at Gus’s eyes, which are not crusty or sleepy or annoyed by my narcolepsy.