“It’s not like that.”
“Any new neighbors?”
“That wasn’t what I meant. I meant if I got sick, or was in a car accident.” She glanced over at Natalie. The apple slice was nubby and brown, and both it and her fingers were glazed with saliva.
Claudia said, “I couldn’t just walk in, take your child. Good Lord.”
Her voice rippled, a blast of heat. Sam said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“A dozen agencies would be involved, imagine the questions.” She rose from her chair, straightened her skirt, shot a toxic glance at Natalie that said: Your mother can’t protect you. “Now what quantity are you here for? I have things to do.”
Sergeant Becker called Jimmy in, told him to close the door. He was a big man, the kind who could lord over you even sitting down. “This Pitney thing, I’ve gone over the reports.” He picked up a pencil, drummed it against his blotter. “Your buys are light.”
He stared into Jimmy’s whirling eyes. Jimmy did his best to stare right back.
“I’m a gentleman. I always offer the lady a taste.”
“She needs to sample her own coke?”
“Not sampling, indulging. And there’s always some lost in the field test.”
“Think a jury will buy that? Think I buy that?”
“You want me to piss in a cup?”
Becker pretended to think about that, then leaned forward, lowering his voice. “No. That’s what I most definitely do not want you to do. Look, I’ll stand up for you, but it’s time you cleaned house. You need some time, we’ll work it out. There’s a program, six weeks, over in Bullhead City, you can use an assumed name. It’s the best deal you’re gonna get. In the meantime, wrap this up. You’ve got your case, close it out.”
Jimmy felt a surge of bile boiling in his stomach—at the thought of rehab, sure, the shame of it, the tedium, but not just that. “Like when?”
“Like now.” Becker’s whole face said: Look at yourself. “Why wait?”
Jimmy pictured Sam in her sundress, face raised to the light, hand in her hair. Moisture pooling in the hollow of her throat. Lipstick glistening in the heat.
He said, “There’s a kid involved.”
Becker stood up behind his desk. They were done. “Get CPS involved, that’s what they’re there for. Make the calls, do the paperwork, get it over with.”
“For chrissake, don’t over-think it. Sounds like the last nice guy in Vegas.”
It was Mandy talking, Sam’s old best friend at the Roundup. She’d stopped by on her way to work, a gram for the shift, and now was lingering, shoes off, stocking feet on the coffee table, toes jigging in their sheer cocoon. They were watching Natalie play, noticing how her focus lasered from her ball to her bear, back to the ball, moving on to her always mysterious foot, then a housefly buzzing at the sliding glass door.
“Dating the clientele,” Sam said, “is such a chump move.”
“Rules have exceptions. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be rules.”
Natalie hefted herself onto her feet, staggered to the sliding glass door, reached for the fly—awestruck, gentle.
“He’s got a bit of a problem.” Sam tapped the side of her nose.
“You can clean him up. Woman’s work.”
“I don’t need that kind of project.”
“If you don’t mind my asking, how long’s it been since you got laid?”
Admittedly, sometimes when Jimmy was there, Sam felt the old urge uncoiling inside her, slithering around. “To be honest, I do mind you asking.”
They weren’t close anymore, just one of those things. To hide her disappointment, Mandy softly clapped her hands at Natalie. “Hey sweetheart, come on over. Sit with Auntie Man a little while.” The little girl ignored her, still enchanted by the fly. It careened about the room—ceiling, lamp shade, end table—then whirled back to the sliding glass door, a glossy green spec in a flaring pool of sunlight.
“She doesn’t like me.”
“She can be persnickety.” Sam glanced at the clock. “Don’t take it personally.”
“You think if you let this guy know you were interested, he’d respond?”
Sam felt another headache coming on. Each one seemed worse than the last now. “It’s not an issue.”
“You’re the one playing hard to get, not him.”
Jimmy’s last visit, Sam had almost thrown herself across his lap, wanting to feel his arms around her. Just that. But that was everything, could be everything. “I’ve given him a few openings. Nothing obvious, but since when do you need to be obvious with men?”
Mandy crossed her arms across her midriff, as though suddenly chilled. “Maybe he’s queer.”
Once Mandy was one, Sam tucked Natalie in for the midday nap with her blue plush piglet, brushing the hair from the little girl’s face to plant a kiss on her brow. Leaving the bedroom door slightly ajar—Natalie would never drop off otherwise—Sam fled to her own room and took a Demerol. The pain was flashing through her sinuses now, even pulsing into her spine. Noticing the time, she changed into a cinched sleeveless dress, freshened her lipstick, her eyeliner. Jimmy had said he’d stop by, and she still couldn’t quite decide whether to push the ball into his end of the court or abide by her own better instincts and let it go. Running a mental inventory of his pros and cons, she admitted he was a joy to look at, had a soldier’s good manners, adored Natalie. He was also a flaming cokehead, with the predictable sidekick, a blind thirst. Those things trended downward in her experience, not a ride she wanted to share. Loneliness is the price you pay for keeping things uncomplicated, she thought, pressing a tissue between her lips.
She heard a shuffle of steps on the walkway out front, but instead of ringing the bell, whoever it was pounded at the door. A voice she didn’t recognize called out her name, then: “Police! Open the door.” To her shame, she froze. Out of the corner of her eye she saw three men cluster on the patio—shirtsleeves, sunglasses, protective vests—and her mouth turned to dust. The front door crashed in, brutal shouts of “On the floor!” and shortly she was facedown, being handcuffed, feeling guilty and terrified and stupid and numb while cops thrashed everywhere, asserting claim to every room.
When they pulled her to her feet, it was Jimmy standing there, wearing a vest like the others, his police card hanging by a thong around his neck. The Demerol not having yet kicked in, her head crackled and throbbed with a new burst of pain, and she feared she might hurl right there on the floor.
“Tell us where everything is, and we won’t take the place apart,” he said, regarding her with a look of such contemptuous loathing she actually thought he might spit in her face. And I deserve it, she told herself, how stupid I’ve been, at the same time thinking: Now who’s the creature? She could smell the scotch on his breath, masked with spearmint. So that’s what it was, she thought, all that time, the drink, the coke. Mr. Sensitive drowning his guilt. Or was even his guilt phony?
She said, “What about Natalie?” In her room, the little girl was mewling, confused, scared.
Jimmy glanced off toward the sound, eyes dull as lead. “She’s a ward of the court now. They’ll farm her out, foster home—”
Sam felt the room close in, a sickly shade of white. “Why are you doing this?”
Almost imperceptibly, he stiffened. A weak smile. “I’m doing this?”
“Why are you being such a prick about it?”
He leaned in. His eyes were electric. “You’re a mother.”
You miserable hypocrite, she thought, trying to muster some disgust of her own, but instead her knees turned liquid. He caught her before she fell, duck-walked her toward the sofa, let her drop—at which point a woman with short sandy hair came out of Natalie’s bedroom, carrying the little girl. Her eyes were puffy with sleep but she was squirming, head swiveling this way and that. She began to cry. Sam shook off her daze, turned to hide the handcuffs, calling out, “Just do what the lady says, baby. I’ll come get you as soon as I
can,” but the girl started shrieking, kicking—and then was gone.
“Get a good look?” Jimmy said. “Because that’s the last you’ll see of her.”
He was performing for the other cops, the coward. “You can’t do that.”
“No? Consider it done.”
Sam struggled to her feet. “You can’t … No … “
He nudged her back down. She tried to kick him but he pushed her legs aside. Crouching down, he locked them against his body with one arm, his free hand gripping her chin. Voice lowered, eyes fixed on hers—and, finally, she thought she saw something hovering behind the savage bloodshot blue, something other than the arrogance and hate, something haunted, like pity, even love—he whispered, “Listen to me, Sam. I want to help you. But you’ve gotta help me. Understand? Give me a name. It’s that simple. A name and we work this out. I’ll do everything I can, that’s a promise, for you, for Natalie—everything. But you’ve gotta hold up your end. Otherwise …”
He let his voice trail away into the nothingness he was offering. For Sam knew where this led, she remembered the words exactly: I have men who take care of certain matters … The time will have passed for you to say or do anything to help yourself …
And there it was: her daughter or her life, she couldn’t save both. Maybe not today or tomorrow but someday soon, Claudia’s threat would materialize, assuming a face and form but no name—the police would promise protection, but the desert was littered with their failures—and Sam would realize this is it, that pitiless point in time when she would finally know: Which was she? One of those who tried to kick and claw and scream her way out, even though it was hopeless. Or one of those who, seeing there was no escape, calmly said, I’m ready. I’ve been ready for a long, long while.
The Axiom of Choice
AS I SAT HERE waiting, wondering how to explain things, I caught myself remembering something often said about set theory. I teach mathematics at the college, I’m sure you know that already. It’s sometimes described—set theory, I mean, excuse me—it’s oftentimes described as a field in which nothing is self-evident: True statements are often paradoxical and plausible ones are false. I can imagine you describing your own line of work much the same way. If not, by the time I’m finished here, I suspect you will.
I see by your ring you’re married. Perhaps you’ll agree with me that marriage, like life itself, is never quite what one expects. I’ve even heard it said that, sooner or later, one’s wife becomes a sister or an enemy. I’m sure for a great many men that’s true. I’d put it differently. Again, if I can borrow a phrase from my area of expertise, I suppose I might say of Veronica’s essential nature—her soul for lack of a better term—what Descartes said of infinity: It’s something I could recognize but not comprehend.
Now, I can imagine you thinking, given what you saw in our bedroom, that such a statement reveals a profound bitterness, even hatred. I assure you that’s not the case. But there’s no getting inside another person, no rummaging around inside a wife’s or a lover’s psyche the way you might dig through a drawer. The gulf between me and my wife, her and Aydin—that’s the name of the young man whose body you found beside my wife’s: Aydin Donnelly, he was my student—the gulf between any two people may feel negligible at times, intimacy being the intoxicant it is, but the chasm remains unbridgeable. It has nothing to do with facts—my God, who has a greater accumulation of facts than a married couple? No, I’m not speaking out of bitterness. On the contrary, I feel humbled by this observation. What I mean to say is this: If you simply bother to reflect on the matter seriously, or just open your eyes, absolutely everything, even oneself—and especially one’s wife—remains mysterious.
Veronica and I met at university—which school isn’t important, one of those giant Midwestern diploma mills attended by middle-class untermenschen on the cusp of discovering their utter ordinariness. I was finishing my doctoral studies in math, she was pursuing music.
Veronica’s instrument was the viola. There’s a joke about violists, perhaps you know it. What is the difference between a coffin and a viola? With a coffin, the corpse is on the inside. Tasteless, I know, considering the circumstances. What I mean is that Veronica, for most of her life, lacked the expressiveness, the passion, to be anything but merely functional as a performer. She had an excellent memory and commendable dexterity, she fooled a great many people. But there was a wooden, colorless quality to her playing that no amount of practice could transform. She realized early on that she would be a teacher, like me—and yes, when I spoke of utter ordinariness, you didn’t think I was excluding myself, did you?
We met the way most graduate students do—in the library. I wonder how many campus marriages find their beginnings in the stacks. Such a strangely erotic locale—the order, the stillness, it cries out for something heated and spontaneous, something messy. But we did not desecrate the library. Not Veronica’s style.
By that point she was already recognizing her limitations. The company of other music majors only hammered that home, so she steered clear of the music building, holidayed over to the main library to study and one day by chance took up position across the table from me. Luck is the heart of romance, they say, not fate. I cannot dispute that.
I was torturing myself in preparation for my orals. Almost every great mind in mathematics did his most creative work by the age of eighteen. I was twenty-five at that point—a confirmed mediocrity, struggling with all my might not to become a joke. Veronica plopped herself down not three feet away, spread out her sheet music for compositional analysis—it was Bach, of course. Musicians uncertain of their talent always gravitate toward the Baroque: so dense, so artificial. Music to hide behind.
I know I sound callous but that’s not at all my intent. The state in which you found Veronica is hideous. Perhaps you took the time to look at some of the pictures around the house. If so, you saw that she was quite lovely in her way, bigger than is considered fashionable, I suppose, but when has fashion ever understood women? I found her softness beguiling. I’m hardly svelte, obviously, but it’s different with men.
Such a shy, defenseless smile—that’s what I noticed when I glanced up that first time and saw her across the table. Of course, like everyone else in that library she was frightened, overwhelmed, miserable with doubt, but she looked at me so sweetly. I wasn’t one to believe love could solve my life but I was overdue for a little kindness.
We popped out for coffee, the ritual chat, feeling each other out, where we came from, where we hoped to go. The kindness, I learned, was genuine. Soon enough, we were inseparable. It’s hard to describe to people who’ve never known it, the pressure, the grinding isolation of graduate school. A great many campus marriages are formed from the simple need for companionship and commiseration. Ours was. We were lonely, we tended not to get on each other’s nerves, we respected each other’s privacy. The next thing we knew, five years had gone by. I received my position here at the college, she found herself a chair in the local chamber orchestra.
Eventually, as all couples do, we had our problems. Veronica was too self-conscious to genuinely enjoy sex—that may seem overly personal, what my students refer to as Too Much Information, but I’d be surprised if you hadn’t been waiting for me to bring it up. What I mean is, abandon was not a quality she possessed or aspired to possess—that too showed in her playing. I won’t psychoanalyze her for you, drag out all the family trash, but shame factored heavily in her upbringing. She could pet and kiss and cuddle, I never felt a lack of affection, but—excuse me, again, if this sounds coarse—good old-fashioned fucking was simply too intrusive.
To her credit she didn’t find my appetites perverse or unwholesome. She did not love me less because of what I wanted. So—a sister or an enemy. I suppose one could say Veronica became my sister, though that’s both too cynical and too superficial a way to put it. It was decided I would have my affairs, as long as they remained dalliances and not devotions. She would keep her home, which s
he suffered over as only a woman can. The marriage would remain intact.
You may think me a monster at this point. But reflect on what I just said: We reached an understanding—how many couples fail or refuse to do that? Part of that understanding was that I would stay. I did. Right up until the end.
You’re probably asking yourself: How did this man ever get anyone but his wife to so much as look at him? Trust me, I’m not unaware of my homeliness. I used to wear a beard as a sort of disguise, it gave me a bearish, rakehell appeal, or so I liked to think. But I’m not blind to what an unlikely Lothario I make.
I’ve even talked about it with some of the woman I’ve been with, a few of whom were by any objective standard completely out of my league. And I’ve heard this response often enough now to consider it more than likely to be true: A great many men simply don’t like sex. They either find it a messy obligation involving smells and feelings they abhor, or a kind of athletic event at which their prowess must never be questioned. Well, I don’t share such inhibitions, and I’m not shy about my pleasures. It’s amazing how appealing that can be to a woman. Especially a woman who, like me, is cheating on her spouse.
Now, I can imagine what you’re thinking. Anyone who walks away from the scene you discovered in my house, then talks about his sex life, his lack of inhibition, his pleasures—not to mention set theory and Descartes, for God’s sake—you have to wonder: Is he demented? Is he a sociopath? Or, on a far more rudimentary level: Is he lying?
I assure you, I am not deranged, nor do I lack a conscience. As for lying—well, that’s always an interesting question, isn’t it? I’m sure you’re aware of the Liar’s Paradox. Consider the statement, “I am lying.” If the statement is true, it means I’m not lying when I say I’m lying, which is nonsense. Contrarily, if the statement is false, it means I’m lying when I say I’m lying and thus I’m telling the truth. Again, ridiculous. I can only imagine every cop in the world knows that one, not to mention the average nine-year-old.
Killing Yourself to Survive: Stories Page 3
