Short People (Vintage Contemporaries)

by Joshua Furst

  We walked down Ninth, dodged cars across the FDR and climbed the concrete barricade into East River Park. I wrapped my arm around his waist. He rested his on my shoulder, and every few minutes he played with my short jagged hair. He told me how sometimes he forgets he’s on an island surrounded by water, and feels trapped and isolated from everything he really cares about— solitude, space, the shapes of the natural world—by the bustle of so many people striving to keep up with their own ambitions. Sometimes he just needs to get near the water, to let his thoughts dissolve into something bigger and more meaningful than a roomful of career-obsessed hipsters. If he were to kill himself, he said, this is how he’d do it: he’d step out into the river, open his mouth and let his lungs fill to overflowing. We watched the tugboats pull barges out toward Staten Island. We watched the traffic speed back and forth across the Williamsburg Bridge. We talked in brief snippets that swirled skyward almost as soon as they entered the air, spun over the retaining wall and fell into the river, mixing with debris and oil as they followed the current downstream. Mom didn’t come up once, she wasn’t important enough for us to waste our breath on. I felt slightly clichéd, but that was just my cynical resistance to the idea that maybe the reason people have gone down to the river with their sweethearts for so long that it’s become cheesy is because watching the river really is romantic, maybe the river really does renew and humble you, maybe love still exists and standing by the river with someone you care about allows you to float out toward the deep seas where it gathers. I let myself give in and be unironically happy. We kissed for half an hour, ears and nose and eyes and chin and tongue—the best kiss I’ve ever had. My stomach hurts when I think about it.

  See, unlike with Mom, when I think about Yegal, it’s all happy memories. I’d be in better shape if I could dislike him. Two months ago, when he took off, I was getting close to finishing a new painting called Flight. I told him about it during our goodbye. He said if I ever wanted an outside eye, he’d love to take a look at it for me. So a week and a half later, I mailed it to him in Vermont. We hadn’t spoken since he left, but I assumed that this was because he was settling in, setting up shop, figuring out how to adjust his habits to this new place. I thought it would be sweet, that he’d be touched to get the painting itself instead of just a slide. I thought he was probably lonely and this would make him feel loved. I basically thought that, maybe, he’d care. But I never heard from him. For a while, I called and left messages at the colony’s office, but he never got them, or if he did, I wasn’t important enough for him to bother calling back. I imagined taking the bus up to Vermont and demanding he give my painting back. Stupid idea, of course, since he was only there for five weeks and by now he’s gone off somewhere else. Probably sitting in some Starbucks with a new student, drinking ginseng tea and whispering aesthetic theories into her ear. It’s really a compulsion, isn’t it, making up present-tense lives for the people who’ve left you behind? I can just hear him complaining about the conceptual stuff coming out of England, his clothes smelling spicy, like turmeric, because he hasn’t washed them in two months, his head tilting and his brow tightening as he nods and frowns, pretending to listen to the flow of his new student’s childish thoughts.

  His last night here, when we said goodbye at his apartment, I asked if I could sleep over. Not to do anything, just to hold him, because I was going to miss him. He blushed. He couldn’t look at me while he explained what a bad idea he thought this was. “Afraid you won’t be able to control yourself?” I teased him. “Hah, I’m afraid you won’t be able to control yourself.” I crawled over his stomach, kissed him and said, “I can take care of me.” He whispered in my ear, “No. You can’t. But I can’t take care of you either.” I pretended not to hear this. Then he flicked his tongue around the crevices of my ear and we messed around on the floor for a while, slowly, both of us timid and overprotective of each other. It was like we were swimming; we’d press toward each other with great bursts of energy, and then, when we knew we were both in the same state of excitement, we’d tread water and calm down, catch our breaths and make sure we could still see the shore. I can’t believe I actually did this, but I could tell that there was no way he’d break the rule he had for himself, so I grabbed his wrist and placed his hand on my breast. He actually gasped when he touched it. Out loud. I think he was expecting a bra. He got lost there for a few minutes and then he just stopped. “No, I can’t do this,” he said. “Don’t you want to?” “Does it seem like I want to?” “Uh-huh.” I arched my eyebrows, trying awkwardly to be flirtatious. “Of course I do.” “So?” “It’s just . . . I don’t want to hurt you.” “You won’t. I want to, too.” “I’m leaving tomorrow.” “I know.” “And you’re only sixteen.” “So.” He laid his head on the hardwood floor and stared at the ceiling. His whole body was tense. “It’s just, I actually like you,” he said. “I know,” I said, and kissed him and kissed him until he began to respond. For the rest of the night, we pressed further and further across his lines. I tried to make it absolutely clear to him that I understood that we both had big, confusing lives ahead of us and that neither of us was in any position to sacrifice those lives for someone else right now, but I don’t think I made this sufficiently clear to myself. I believed it while I was saying it, but I think I mostly just wanted to get him to let me give myself to him. He was careful and tender and kind as he crossed the last line. I told him I loved him and he said, “Don’t say that. I want you to love yourself.” That’s what made me cry.

  How far is the furthest you’ve ever gotten? After long hours of staring at the box, have you ever opened it up and tapped out a blade? Were you worried that you might actually cut yourself? I bet you were. They’re not easy to pick up. The impulse is to pinch the two long sharp sides, but you can’t, you have to brace your thumb against the lower blades and flick your forefinger across the top of the stack until you’ve dragged the top blade far enough out to get a grip on the short side—unless you’re like me and don’t care if you slice your fingertips, physical pain being part of the whole thing. Once you have the blade in your hand, do you admire the compact utilitarian genius of its design? Do you pivot it over a candle so you can study the movement of the gleaming squiggle of light on the steel, wondering at the laws of physics that allow this light to bounce? When I hold a blade like that, I always imagine it’s a small but trustworthy shield, that the light’s trying to burst past it, trying to sear me, and the blade’s my only defense. The blade is cold. It protects me from getting sappy and willing myself to believe things will get better when obviously they won’t.

  Is your once-acclaimed, ultra-realist eye that clear? It should be, it might toughen you up. Maybe then you could lower the blade to your wrist without trembling and hold it so close to the skin that it feels like it’s touching even though it’s not, so close that when you breathe deep and your arm slightly lifts, the blade pricks you. That’s when you realize what it is you’re doing, but you don’t draw blood—not yet. What I do is, I apply a fraction of pressure, pressing just a corner into my flesh until a minuscule bead of blood creeps out. I peer at it closely. Sometimes I taste it. Then I imagine what it will look like after I pull the blade down the length of my forearm. The vein will open like a zip-lock bag, the blood tumbling out to the beat of my pulse. To be effective, you can’t imitate what you see in the movies. You need to cut lengthwise, not crosswise, and carefully follow the line of the largest vein, five or six inches down each arm. It’s called double blue veining. If you cut crosswise, the hole will be small and the blood will clot too quickly, stopping the flow. I imagine watching my blood stream and eddy, my self swim away from myself.

  Could you take the next step, Dad, and actually slice? Or would you do what I do: hover with the blade, swiping slowly, scratching deep enough only to tap the extreme surface capillaries and draw dotted lines across the surface of your ambition. What are you afraid of—dying? Not me. I’m afraid of pain. There’s a degree of inadvertent
pain that I’ve mastered—cutting my fingertips while my mind’s occupied with some mechanical task—maybe removing a razor blade from a box or biting my knuckle until it bleeds while I’m trying to figure out what to do next on a painting—but the sting and throb of opening a vein, the meticulously prolonged act of creating the wound requires more nerve and courage than I’ve so far been able to muster. I can’t imagine it’s any worse than how I feel generally, every day. Each time I take a razor blade into my hand, I’m more confident than I was the last time that this will be the day I find out, but I still haven’t psyched myself up to the adrenaline peak from which, holding my breath, I can leap and soar away. Not yet. I’m still at the stage where I psyche myself out instead.

  You’re back in your darkroom. Why is that, Dad? You’re thriving. You’re working. I saw you today in the park with a girl. You had your old Nikon out. She was laughing. She wasn’t much older than me. And you were flashing that sharp, playful look you get when you’re lost in your work, when you’re captivated and outside yourself. Are you doing heart-work? Have you told her about Mom? Or me? Your red light is on, but I’m stuck out here.

  Dad, I wish you’d come out. My sense of purpose is fragmenting now. I’m starting to wallow in the nowhere feeling that always comes over me after I’ve lost my nerve.

  FAILURE TO THRIVE

  I like babies. That’s why I do what I do. I’m a nurse. I work in the maternity ward. Protect the kids from the goblins and ghouls of the night. I do my job well. I take it seriously. I worry over the little lives in my charge as if they were my own children. I fret for their futures. Some nights while Kim or Cheryl—whichever I’m paired with—is on break, I lean over the babies and listen to their shallow breaths.

  Before I get to my job, though, I need to tell you a different story.

  While I was in nursing school, I knew a couple who had a baby girl. Her name was Sabrina and I adored her.

  Her father had once been a heroin addict. Sick and scared and full of self-loathing, he’d tried to hide this from Sabrina’s mother. She knew the signs, though, from the aimless crowd she ran with, ambitionless dreamers, singer-songwriters, poets, bookstore clerks, coffee jerks. He never ate. The dirty, long-sleeved t-shirts he liked to wear were speckled with cigarette holes. When she looked in his eyes, sometimes she couldn’t find him inside. His mouth was dry when they kissed and he wasn’t interested in having sex. He was often edgy, hands drumming jeans, and late at night he’d suddenly bolt with no explanation. One night when she was feeling especially lonely and weak, she asked him, Please, stay the night, stay an hour, just fifteen more minutes. When he said no, she cried and he leapt up from the futon and paced the room, saying I have to go, don’t you get it, I just have to go. He was sweating. Fine, go, go shoot up, she said, and she cringed. In a rush of fury and profanity, he told her that though it was none of her business, yeah, if she cared so much, he did shit sometimes. So sue me; so kill me; you’re the one who’s crying. She didn’t spin off into outrage or berate him for hiding and lying, for his sloppy cruelty. She didn’t smother his pain in her own. Nor did she threaten to leave him, force a reaction, grab the upper hand. Instead, she waited for him to exhaust himself, then rose from the futon, walked slowly to him and held him. He cried at her touch. They cried together and it was more intimate than anything they could have said right then, even more intimate than sex. They cried for a long time, and once the tears slowed and started to dry, they clung to each other, listening to themselves breathe, deeply, in counterpoint, almost as if they were harmonizing, and that’s when she knew he was the man with whom she’d have a child.

  From then on, he stayed most nights. She let him fix in the bathroom at first, then right in front of her on the futon, on her bed, behind the locked door of the guest room at her mother’s house. Watching him thrilled her. She would’ve tried it herself, if not for the sad look that fell over his face when she pressed him to describe the feeling—Tell me in detail, is it as incredible as people say, is it heavenly? She learned from this look that he wanted her to disapprove, to give him a reason to transcend himself.

  Eventually, trailing the phantom of their shared future, he kicked. She didn’t pressure him. He went cold turkey and she fed him wonton soup from the corner Chinese while he shivered. Her only demand was that, when the frenzy inside him became too unbearable, he pound bruises onto her chest, hitting her as hard as he could, so she could experience some of his pain.

  She reminded him of all this one night years later at a claustrophobic, poorly lit bar. He’d joined NA and done the twelve steps and then stopped going. He didn’t need to. He’d lost his passion for everything but her. And in the three years that had passed, though they’d never married, Sabrina was born. Despite this fact—if a child can be called a fact—or maybe because of it, she’d grown bored and resentful toward him.

  She told him she hated him. Well, maybe she didn’t hate him, but she hated the grind of her life with him. She didn’t know how things had gotten to this point—no, she did know, but she couldn’t understand why she’d allowed it to happen. This stupid love was more pity than empathy, and cohabitation was merely another addiction, one they now shared without any incentive of satisfaction. He’d been a mystery that, once revealed, turned out to be another sham. It was as if he’d flinched in the midst of drying out and, caught in the shame of self-recognition, seized up. She was annoyed by the care he took in listening to her, the way he slunk off to perform the inane tasks she thought up to get him out of the house and away from her. When they’d met, he’d had strong opinions and passions, zest, verve. He’d been self-centered in all the best ways. But for him the nights of mosh pits and after-hours parties, of body shots with strangers, were gone; that life was gluttonous, dangerous, too likely to be perfumed with temptation. Now he was pinched and terrified, constantly sorry for constantly trying to please her, for handcuffing her to his doting heart. This life was as stupid as the love it had been constructed around. She’d stayed home fretting back when he was running wild and now that he was clean, she still stayed home fretting, over his baby now instead of him. But he’d had his reckless fun, why shouldn’t she?

  She told him she’d made some decisions. She said, and I paraphrase only slightly, “Look, I’m bored, okay. You go to classes and study and whatever, and I’m stuck in the house like some fucking housewife. I’m twenty-five and I’ve already got a baby! I shouldn’t have a baby yet! I feel like I have to do what my heart says, and my heart says screw it. Explore. Don’t be afraid. This ex of mine called me the other day and I met him for coffee. We sort of talked and whatever, and it was nice. It was all still there, you know?”

  “Did you sleep with him?” he asked.

  “Not yet, but I want to.”

  “What about me?”

  “We’re not married.”

  “But we’re committed, aren’t we?”

  “I think we should have an open relationship.”

  “What about what I think?”

  “You know what? I’m done caring what you think.” The muscles along the edge of her mouth flexed and pulsed. “I’m telling you how I feel. If you really love me, you’ll try to understand and not stop me. And if you don’t really love me, then . . .” She shrugged, sighed, and he saw a touch of dread flit through her eyes. “You know what? If I can’t explore what’s out there, we’re doomed.

  I know. I can feel it. You’re not going to try to stop me anyway. You’re just going to guilt me. That’s how you do things. But you know what? It won’t work this time.”