Long Division

by Jane Berentson

  “Don’t say nice, Ivy. Everyone is nice. That’s such a lousy descriptor. How’s the sex?”

  “Christ, Carly. The sex is fine. He’s very considerate. Eager to please. No back hair.”

  “Well, that’s good.” Carly opens and closes another lipstick tube and tosses it back in the pit.

  “Yeah, I guess so. And he smells nice.” Ivy means it. He smells fabulous.

  “Shut up with the nice already.”

  “Fine. He smells fabulous.”

  THREE

  The male European nursery web spider provides before he penetrates. In order to approach a female for mating, he must present her with a gift. This reverse dowry comes in the form of a meal. Something large, something tasty, something the omni-hungry female will not be able to refuse.

  A larger gift shows the female that this male’s got skills. Skills she’d want her spiderlings to inherit. Skills that bring home the bacon. Or housefly. Or aphid. After a successful hunt, the male wraps the fresh insect in layers of his own silk. These layers of gossamer ribbons make the gift seem larger. Harder to unwrap. Longer to eat. Buying him time. And as the female unpacks and devours her nuptial gift—he goes for it. She masticates. They copulate. All at the same time.

  FOUR

  “Oh sweet, Adam. This is the most fantastic sofa ever.” Ivy collapses on the brushed leather, sprawling out every limb. Just because she can.

  “Well, the most fantastic deal ever was signed this week, so I figured it was time to splurge.” He lifts one of Ivy’s legs and slides under it.

  “And I got something else too.” Ivy’s head unburrows from between folds of taupe as Adam digs a package out from behind one of the sofa’s eight or nine pillows. It’s a shiny white box. Wrapped in layers of gossamer ribbons. At the sight of the box, Ivy tenses her glute muscles and the sofa gives beneath her. Not jewelry. Not jewelry, she thinks. He places the gift in her hands, and it takes a minute for Ivy to unravel its wrappings. She stares for a moment at the gift in her palms, letting the weight of its light contents sink in.

  “The Royal Ballet of London.”

  “Yep.”

  “These are, like, the best seats ever.”

  “Yep.”

  “Oh my God, Adam. Thank you.”

  “You didn’t even know they were coming to Boston, did you?” Ivy’s eyes snag on the block-letter date printed on the two snuggling tickets.

  “This is three months from now.”

  Adam tells Ivy that now she has plenty of time to buy a new dress or something. She hugs him then wiggles her head back into the crack in the sofa. She sighs. They snuggle. All at the same time.

  FIVE

  Successful mating of the funnel-web spider relies on old-fashioned anesthetics. The female’s typically reluctant, often feisty, maybe even relentlessly chaste demeanor makes getting laid a tricky matter. The male uses a pheromone, a chemical he releases within close proximity of his chosen mate to sedate her. This fast-acting drug renders her totally out of it. Just as it renders him totally safe for uninterrupted, unobjected intercourse. But he must be speedy, for this comatose state can last minutes. Can last hours. Can last indefinitely.

  SIX

  “Here’s your drink, babe. This place is fucking packed.”

  “Thanks. Well, at least we have a table.” Ivy stirs the rum and Coke with its straw before taking a sip. Her lips curl and her nose twists. “Ish, this tastes kind of gross, what did you get me?”

  “Bacardi and Diet.”

  “Oh. Well, okay.”

  “Do you want to order food?”

  “Whatever, I don’t really care. You can order for me, Adam.” And he does.

  Sometimes she lets him do that. Often she lets him pick the movie. “I don’t care, Adam. Just not too many guns and cars blowing up.” In bed one night, Adam strokes Ivy’s hair so nicely. So tenderly. In a way that makes her head tingle and her eyes narrow so much that she doesn’t even mind that he’s simultaneously watching an hour-long special edition of COPS. Her “Books to Read” list doesn’t shorten. And it doesn’t grow, either. Ivy spends so much time with Adam that she drops out of yoga and calls her parents less. They drink lots of wine. And sometimes, Ivy doesn’t even bother to read the label.

  Carly asks Ivy one day why she stopped looking for a new job.

  “Dude, Ivy, what happened to getting a new job?”

  “I don’t know, I just kind of forgot. Work goes so much faster now that I can IM Adam all day.”

  “That’s sick.”

  “You’re sick.” They’re at a nail salon and Carly is examining a bright orange bottle of polish. “I can’t believe you’re looking at that color.”

  “Orange is really big right now, Ivy. You’re so totally out of it.”

  “Shit. Maybe I am.” Ivy thinks that maybe she is. Maybe Adam has sucked the life out of her with his nice car and his brazen good looks. And as the tiny woman trims the cuticles of Ivy’s small feet, she contemplates trimming Adam out of her life. The pedicurist applies a muted pink paint to her nails, and Ivy thinks about napping in Adam’s plush sofa. With her toes under the drier, she decides to keep her mate for the time being. She’s not super happy. But she’s fine. This relationship can last. For now, indefinitely.

  SEVEN

  The female St. Andrew’s Cross spider takes fornication to a whole new level. Into the next world even. Once the male’s pedipalps have slid back and forth and back and forth enough times into her reproductive openings for her to assume a sufficient amount of sperm has been deposited—she fucking kills him. Right then. Right in the middle of it all. Fertilization as a prelude to homicide. In some cases, the female will even begin to eat the male while his sex organs are still in motion. Going in for the kill. With a whole new meaning.

  EIGHT

  “So you’re going to do it?”

  “Yep.”

  “You’re going in for the kill?”

  “Don’t be sick, Carly. You act like it’s something fun. I hate breaking up with people.”

  “But you have to. Before you melt into watching the WB on Saturdays while the two of you flip through linen catalogs.” Ivy can picture Carly nodding while she speaks on the other side of the phone.

  “Yeah. You’re right. It’s just that he’s so nice. He’s so damn nice. He just so nicely made me dull. Nicely dragged me into his sticky web of banality.”

  “Whoa now, ‘sticky web of banality.’ That is my girl. Ivy, you’re almost back. Go get him.”

  This wasn’t supposed to happen, she thinks. Eight limbs tangled in silky sheets. His penis sliding back and forth and back and forth enough times for Ivy to nearly get there. She’s having such a good time, really. On her back, left leg hooked on his right shoulder, with each pulse she entertains different phrasing in her head, and it feels awesome. Adam, it’s just that I. We’re so diff erent and you. You know, it’s only because. She contemplates actually doing it. Right then. Right in the middle of it all.

  The bed smells fabulous. Vibrations. Abdomens twisting. She gives him the gift of a wet tongue to a dry ear. He rolls her on top to buy them both some time. His midmorning, hint-of-toothpaste breath almost lulls her into forgetting her visit’s initial intentions. And as it all reaches the top, Ivy remembers that it’s not a climax, it’s a prelude. She must stop. She has to. Going in for the kill, she relaxes her upper body on his chest and stretches her arms to the headboard.

  “David?” she says. And before he can answer, Annie is pulling herself up to her elbows. Her right hand, that had just momentarily reached the crack between the headboard and the mattress, catches something on its way up. The thin-threaded white of a delicate female weapon. Annie rubs the fabric between her fingers; the first time it’s touched her skin.

  “Annie, I can explain.” She sits up. Looks closer at the intricate pattern of the garment’s silky weave. “It’s not what you think, babe.” She dismounts the bed deftly. Pulls on her sweatpants, her sweatshirt, letting her head
pause inside the cotton for long enough to almost make her dizzy.

  “It was only this one time, I promise.”

  Emerging from the worn gray fabric, Annie’s eyes are blank. Her posture calm. Her lips sealed. And as she tosses the panties back onto the bed, she actually hears David say he’s sorry.

  “I’m sorry.”

  And inside her mouth, her tongue moves slowly, thoughtfully, left to right across the sharp ridge of her upper teeth, tracing the weapons she didn’t use.

  THE END149

  Ctrl S150

  26

  Today I’m calling my book Red, White, and Brutally Honest.

  “David, it’s just that I don’t feel as close to you any more. Becausewealways talk about the same things and you never see mexcited to talk to meand I never see mexcited to talk to you and what’s the point of doing any thing if itdoesn’tmakeyoufeelgood.” I say this so fast that I’m certain that half the words were eaten by the lag time between our phones.

  “But not doing it would make me feel worse. I know it sucks, babe. And I know I haven’t been myself, but we’ve almost made it. I’ll be back so soon, and things will be just how they were.”

  And I want to ask him if he really thinks that. But instead I just say that he’s probably right. I tell him that we should e-mail more. I think that would help, I say. He tells me to e-mail him that night, but whoa now, horsies, here I am typing about him and not e-mailing him. And I’m probably going to continue not e-mailing him for the rest of the evening. I am probably going to sit on my patio and drink my first delivery from the Chesalon Wine and Cheese of the Month Club151 and try to throw rocks between the holes of my fence.152 Yes, I think I will do just that, thank you. Yes, please uncork the wine for me. No, I don’t mind if I have no crackers and have to pair the fancy cheese with stale tortilla chips and lick it off my fingers. Who do you think I am?

  Before I go, I must include something from an e-mail Max Schaffer just sent me:

  Okay. I already knew that art and graphic design were not Max’s stronger skills, but this is just weird. Perhaps hootenanny is a play on my first name? It makes a little more sense in his e-mail, where he explains he’s working on his mouse skills so his parents will buy him this computer program about cartography. Ha!

  I’m back at the computer. I am high-drama back.

  Scene: Eleven P.M. the next day. The sun is long gone, but its brutal heat has lingered—affixed itself to doorknobs, the creases of shower curtains, the spaces in the tops of potato chip bags. The heat is fogging up the protective plastic that covers photos in albums. It has snuck into the crisper drawer of Annie Harper’s fridge and is working its way up a stalk of celery, wilting, changing, ruining, and astounding everything with its ability to permeate.

  Enter Annie Harper, sweaty as a chili dog. She pulls one, two, three paper towels off a roll in the kitchen even though she knows it’s a ridiculous waste of precious wood pulp. She’s that hot. She wipes her brow, her neck, each of her hands, and settles down to her laptop at the table. She writes:

  So this morning I wake up and make coffee with my French press. I cook an omelet with icky, hormoney, supermarket eggs. The day starts out hott. I put on a bikini to lay out in the yard on my plastic recliner lounger thing and finally read Annie Harper’s Motherfucking Journal. I make it through page thirty, where Old Annie is discussing how and when the slaves left after emancipation. And though she’s all elegant with her writing style and her lack of sentence fragments and dangling prepositions, she actually complains about the slaves taking off. She says that the more favored slaves with the best lives were the first to vamoose. She then rails on them for it. Like you wouldn’t leave too, fat, ugly Annie Harper? She even uses the word “urchins.” And I know it’s tough to wrap my mind around and I’m supposed to be thinking Annie Harper the First was educated to think slavery was okay; that doesn’t mean she’s an entirely horrible person, but I can’t help it. She pisses me off. I hate her fucking guts. Why was Gus so anxious for me to read this dumb book? So yeah, maybe I have fallen out of love with my boyfriend and into love with another dude while said boyfriend is stuck fighting a war because he got free college. But Annie Harper the First had slaves. You tell me who’s more evil. And with this frustration, I toss the book onto the grass and close my eyes for a few minutes. I think about her cooks and stable hands heading up a jubilant trail northward. Fuck you, Annie Harper, I think. Which is probably not what her newly freed slaves thought. It was probably something stronger, bigger, and more emotionally sophisticated than I could ever imagine. And then I fall asleep.

  When I wake up, my skin is all moist and stuck to the plastic bands of the lounger. I peel myself off to turn over, I take a sip of my water, and I notice a slip of paper that fell out of the book when I tossed it on the lawn. I bend down to pick it up. It’s one of those pink “While You Were Out” slips that has spots to write the time and date, the caller, and the message. It’s blank on the front. I turn it over.

  Dear Annie,

  We need to talk about Brother Alden.

  Please call me when you find this.

  Yours,

  Gus

  Wha wha what? What does Gus know about Brother Alden? Why is he planting notes and patiently waiting for me to find them when he obviously has things to tell me? We need to talk. But not urgently? I’m utterly perplexed. I leave the book, the lounger, the water glass all exactly as they are, and I march inside to my cell phone.

  “Gus?” I say with a tone that encompasses both stress and inquiry.

  “Hey, Annie,” he sounds as normal and casual and happy as always. I hear a spraying, splashing sound in the background.

  “I found the note in Annie Harper’s Journal.” The water noise stops.

  “What are you doing right now?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Can you meet me at Hansen’s Furniture on Pacific Avenue in ten minutes?”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  I throw a ratty sundress over my swimsuit and put a headband over my greasy hair. I beat him there. I sit on a curb outside the store and wait. I’m so busy puzzling what in tarnation Gus has to tell me about Brother Alden that I don’t puzzle why he has asked to meet me here. At a furniture store. His van pulls up and I notice that one side is clean and shiny. The other has drying suds slumping down to the tires. A swirled layer of dirt that was deprived of a rinse job because of my call.

  “Hi,” I say.

  “Hi,” Gus says. “Let’s go inside.” He opens the door for me. He’s wearing a tight gray T-shirt that he’s had since high school. The sleeves are frayed, and the fabric on the shoulders has thinned to the point where it’s almost translucent. It clings to his ribs in a way that makes me want to brush my fingers down their ridges and order him an entire pepperoni pizza. I follow him to the far side of the store, where a pretend living room is set up. There’s a leather sofa and two upholstered chairs circling an oak coffee table. He tells me to take a seat and not to put my feet up. We both choose the sofa, and the leather is cool and firm.

  “So,” I say.

  “So,” Gus says. He leans forward, puts his hands on his knees, and twists his shoulders to face me. Then he leans back again. He bends one knee up to rest on the couch and turns to face me more squarely. I can see him being mindful not to touch the leather with his dirty sneaker. I swallow.

  “Annie. What I’m going to tell you is really, really weird. It’s part of the universe’s twists and turns that we will never ever understand.” And while he’s blabbing, I’m still trying to imagine what it could be. Did he find out that Alden knew about the Harpers all along and was planning a trip to visit us when he returned from Iraq? Did he discover that Alden was a secret member of al Qaeda? But then it’s hard to keep imagining because I’ve never seen Gus look this intense before. I watch a drop of sweat slide from behind his ear and soak into the collar of his shirt. He can’t keep his hands still. If it’s about my nonbrother, then why is he freaking out?<
br />
  “What is it?” I finally say.

  “Annie,” he looks me straight in the eye and places both of his hands on my bare thigh. He grips. He loosens it. “Brother Alden.” Pause. Pause. Pause. “He’s my brother too.” I don’t say anything because I don’t know enough at this point to comment. My only thought is that Gus is making one of his metaphors and he’s going to say that he feels like he lost a brother also because we both talked about Alden so much back in high school. I’m silent and so he continues. “After you found out that Alden died, I started searching around on the Internet. Because I’ve always been curious about him. And it was easy because he was a young soldier from California and his name was Alden and he died in Iraq. So I found him. And there were pictures of his family at the service crying and one of his mother tossing this bouquet of flowers on his casket. And there was something about her that looked really familiar. The caption said her name is Julia Crandall. And of course I don’t remember my mom since she disappeared when I was so young, but there’s these few pictures that my dad has that he didn’t know I knew about.

  “So I printed out the picture from the newspaper, took it to my dad’s place, and found the old photos he keeps in this tackle box in his closet. And Annie, it’s her. I didn’t believe it at first because fuck, what are the odds? And the photos my dad has are over twenty-five years old. But I was so overwhelmed that I had to tell him and show him. I had to know. He said my mother’s name is Juliette Crandall, which of course, I knew the Juliette part, but he never told me her last name. Probably because he was scared I’d go looking for her and because he knew she was too much of a flake to bother changing it. And it isn’t much of a name change if you ask me. If you’re going to ditch your kid and his father and run away and never come back, at least you’d change your last name. Right?” Gus is leaning so close to me that I could lean in and kiss him. But I can’t move. I can only watch the sweat drip and his lips move fast faster fastest. I’m scared that if I change my position at all, if I adjust the halter of my bikini, which is kind of pulling my hair, I’ll render myself completely incapable of listening and comprehending any of the craziness he’s spewing onto me.