Fum

by Adam Rapp

  Brill Bledsoe knows nothing of his wife’s Tuesday-evening trips into Kentucky to attend these support group meetings. Marlene takes the second car, a 2009 Chianti-colored Hyundai, which she drives a few miles per hour slower than the speed limit, bracing for the oncoming bridge-crossing kidney tingle, clutching the steering wheel so tightly, her wrists are often fatigued by the time she arrives in Louisville.

  Brill thinks she’s eating Mexican food over in Kaskaskia with her former coworkers from the nail salon.

  During the early part of the week, Brill Bledsoe has to stay late at the administrative office of Bazoo Meatpacking, where he’s worked for the past twenty-one years, to process weekend back orders and other shipping and slaughtering particulars. His quiet dedication to the meat business is like that of a great small-town high-school football coach who gracefully deflects all praise and glory onto his players.

  But it’s Thursday now, not Tuesday at all, and unfortunately Marlene will have to wait five more days before she can be with her fellow PGDCers and wolf down Sturm Fullilove’s doughnuts and look at photos of Grotesquely Disfigured Children and abscond with Lemon Tidwell’s beloved taffy.

  Five days is 120 hours from now, and that seemingly unassailable length of time makes Marlene’s hands tremble so much, they might just burst. The first forty or so hours are doable, but after that, the time just seems like miles of interminable high-noon desert that she must cross in big clunky shoes.

  Thus the need to busy herself with extreme potato scrubbing.

  And lately Marlene absolutely hates falling asleep, because that’s when The Beast comes. The Beast meaning daughter Corinthia, starring in an endlessly turning rotisserie of those unbearable nightmares. In the past few years, Marlene has taken on such pastimes as reading legal thrillers and surfing the Internet for home-improvement updates and finishing the local paper’s daily word jumble. All this to distract herself from that tempting, dastardly, always-changing FirmaMall collection!

  Brill Bledsoe knows all too well his wife’s tendency to make purchases from the storied miles-high catalog. The Black Forest Welcoming Gnome and the Cat Memorial Angel Stone (memorializing the cat they’ve never had) and the Plantar Fasciitis Night Splint (anticipating the imminent foot condition; someone’s bound to get it, after all). The Hideaway Elliptical Trainer and Vivitar Digital Camera/Binoculars combo and the Shiatsu Leg Massager that looks like a urinal for Ewoks. The Tetris Lamp and the Northwest Stars Projector and Clock with Accompanying Soothing Lullabies. Brill understands that his wife might be bored since the onset of her early retirement from the nail salon. He has no idea that Marlene’s constant need to make purchases is one great distraction from the impending nightmares about their daughter.

  But in recent months, Marlene has exhausted herself trying to stay awake. It’s just gotten to be so god-awful tiring, fretting about everything! She often wakes contorted into herself, as though she’s been thrown from the back of a landscaping truck by surly gardeners, her shoulders and wrists aching, her eyes so puffy she looks as if she’s been bitten all over by yellow jackets.

  But for the past week, Marlene has adopted a new outlook, which is this: she’s come to genuinely embrace the idea of insomnia! And it’s actually been amazing! It’s all about sneaking downstairs and making use of her Genio Single Serve Coffee Maker, which brews up a cup so quietly, one might think it was manufactured by and for ninjas! She will stay awake for the rest of her natural born life if it means never having to experience those horrible dreams about her daughter!

  It’s actually been three nights in a row now that she’s managed to stay awake. If only she can make it all the way to Tuesday, when she will get to spend a few hours with Lemon Tidwell and her culturally diverse friends at Group!

  You can make it till Tuesday, Marlene, she self-coaches, scrubbing her potatoes, clutching and unclutching her butt cheeks, an exercise she’s recently learned that helps to keep her awake and connected to her pelvis and tailbone. Keep that core engaged, she tells herself, scrubbing, scrubbing, clutching, and unclutching. She engages these muscles with such fine, hardly discernible movements, it’s almost impossible for anyone else to see. The “glute thrusts” have become her little fitness secret. They can be done at the dinner table, or while folding laundry, or even while seated in coach on a plane.

  When Brill Bledsoe enters the kitchen, he kisses his wife of twenty years on the cheek. He kisses her and squeezes the fullness of her arm affectionately.

  Marlene smiles and continues scrubbing, though she now abandons the glute thrusts.

  Brill then pivots to his daughter, lifts the bag of ice, and kisses the crown of her cold, damp head.

  “Hey, kiddo,” he says.

  “Hey,” she replies, meeting his eyes, which are gray and loving.

  After doubling back to the front door to hang his white BAZOO MEATPACKING jacket on the coatrack, to Corinthia, Brill says, “I understand you had a strange day.”

  She nods, adjusting the bag of ice.

  “You left your desk there.”

  “And she broke a door,” Marlene adds.

  “The folks at Memorial probably have another door hidden away somewhere,” Brill says lightheartedly, winking at his daughter. Despite her aching head, Corinthia musters a half smile, just enough to let her dad know she appreciates his going easy on her.

  From her post at the sink, Marlene says, “All I know is when one starts destroying school property, it has a funny way of making its way onto one’s permanent record.”

  Corinthia can suddenly feel how tender and sore her left shoulder is, the one she heaved into Bob Sluba’s classroom door.

  Marlene stops washing potatoes, awaiting a response from her daughter to what she said about permanent records. She even turns the water off and looks directly at Corinthia, her tweezed eyebrows forming perfect little arches.

  Corinthia simply adjusts the bag of ice on her head.

  “Do you feel no regret about what you did to that door?”

  “I regret it, okay?” Corinthia finally says.

  Marlene cranks the water back on and then to Brill adds, “According to Mr. Smock, she claimed to be having visions.”

  Scratching the back of his ankle, Brill says, “What kind of visions, Cori?”

  “Tornadoes,” Marlene offers before Corinthia can answer. “Of all things.”

  “Was there a warning?” Brill asks. “I don’t recall hearing the horn.”

  Marlene scrubs a little and says, “They were visions, Brill. Visions. The kind of tornadoes that exist in one’s imagination.”

  “I need to go take my medicine,” Corinthia says, and heaves herself to her feet, which is usually a three- or four-part move, depending on the day — today she does it in two — and bounds up the stairs to her room.

  Six months ago, the Bledsoes added four-inch extensions to the lip of each step because the standard step proved to be too shallow for Corinthia’s foot. She was starting to have to negotiate the stairs pigeon-toed, knock-kneed, and even sideways, which, all told, caused more knee pain.

  One Saturday, Brill’s carpenter friend, Ron Ricadonna, showed up with a bundle of precut wood and completed the job in four hours. He used graphite L brackets and topped off the extensions with a skin of grooved traction rubber.

  Corinthia’s brother, Channing, has been using the extended steps as a more challenging workout for his calf muscles. With the added few inches, he can really go deep on the heel raises and work those Achilles tendons. He’ll sometimes do fifty on each foot, breathing sharply through his nose.

  Brill seems to have no new relationship to the augmented stairs. Like most things in life, he’s figured out a way to invisibly assimilate. He’s always been a bastion of poise and graceful adaptability. His blood pressure rarely skyrockets. A former cross-country runner, he has a pulse that is often under sixty. If he hadn’t gotten onto a career path in the meatpacking industry, he would probably have made a heck of an EMT.


  Marlene, on the other hand, ascends the stairs as if she is walking barefoot on broken glass. Like everything else related to her daughter, the new stairs have only come to remind her of the various grotesqueries she must suffer. The level of difficulty seems to increase with each of the twelve steps. By step five, it’s as if she’s carrying loads of laundry. By step ten, she’ll sometimes cry out as if she’s come face-to-face with a coiled rattlesnake.

  “You okay, honey?” Brill will call up to her from the living room.

  “These dang stairs,” she’ll say, sighing. “Are you sure they’re all the same size?”

  “Sure as stones in a quarry,” he’ll reply, or something to that effect.

  One night when the family had been encamped in front of the TV, Marlene announced that she was going to bed, and Corinthia offered to carry her up the stairs.

  Marlene turned and cocked her head, her once supple, now slightly jowly face beset by a brief, lip-loosening look of wonder.

  “Now, sweetheart, why would you say that?” she asked her daughter, who was sitting on the floor, reading The Great Gatsby for her American literature class, the paperback like a small wallet in her hand.

  “I just had this urge to bundle you up and carry you like a baby,” Corinthia replied, staring down at her book.

  From his leather recliner, Brill chuckled.

  Channing, however, who was at the threshold of the kitchen, completing a set of super-wide reps with his circular push-up mounts, was oblivious, as his ears were plugged with sweat-resistant, workout-friendly iPhone buds.

  “Let her carry you,” Brill offered brightly, dipping his glasses off the bridge of his nose.

  “I’ll carry you, Captain,” Marlene retorted, though Brill Octavius Bledsoe has never been a military man, no, not even remotely, and then she headed up the stairs precariously, clutching the banister as if the extra-big steps might sprout monstrous spired teeth, start masticating, and swallow her whole.

  After she takes her medication (all seventeen pills), Corinthia calls Cloris Honniotis, her best and only friend. Cloris is four feet nine. She is nineteen and works part-time at Lugo’s small public library while attending night school at Lugo Community College (LCC), where she is taking core requirement classes toward a degree in library science. She also practices Brazilian jujitsu twice a week at the local community center. She is currently a purple belt but will be trying for her brown belt sometime next spring.

  “What’s up, Jabbar?” Cloris says.

  She’s nicknamed her best friend after the former NBA star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the legendary seven-foot-two-inch Los Angeles Laker.

  “You reading?” Corinthia asks.

  “The reading machine is indeed reading.”

  “Bivouacking in the bathroom?”

  “My little sanctuary. Can you smell the Lysol? What about you?”

  “I’m talking to you, Ewok.”

  “You sound depressed.”

  “Just exhausted.”

  “Were you crying? I detect a great loss of tears and the ensuing ophthalmic dehydration.”

  “I had sort of a weird day,” Corinthia says.

  “Bull Run?”

  “Bull Run” is the pet name that Cloris Honniotis has assigned to Corinthia’s period. Which makes sense, as the volume of blood that manifests during Cloris’s best friend’s menses is nothing less than extraordinary, and Cloris likes to assign pet names to extraordinary things. There were a few months when Corinthia had to resort to using an adult diaper. Even now she keeps a spare one in her school locker in case of an emergency. She’s become adept at fashioning a Depends into a makeshift maxi pad, folding it into a triangle and using her father’s silver duct tape to reinforce the corners. Twice Corinthia has bought a package of Depends at the local Target.

  “They’re for my grandpa,” she told the extremely thin, petite checkout girl with the candy-red hair and violet eyeliner, who said absolutely nothing in response.

  Corinthia’s grandpa Earl has been dead for five years, and as far as she knows, he never suffered from incontinence. His resurrection delivered as a lie to the Target checkout girl made Corinthia feel like her very normal, non-dyed cinnamon-colored hair was falling out. After she swallowed this mouse of shame and brought the matter to her mother, the Internet was surfed and websites were visited, and following Marlene Bledsoe’s extensive search, a not-for-profit company was discovered that features special hygienic and toiletry needs for “Enormous Individuals”:

  savethegiants.org

  With fewer than twenty strokes and force-clicks of Marlene Bledsoe’s touch pad, a year’s supply of various Large Person’s Sanitary Napkins was purchased and arrived via FedEx two days later. They’re currently stored in a custom-made cupboard that Ron Ricadonna created with Home Depot plywood. The cupboard, complete with old-school leather suitcase handles to accommodate the largest hands possible, hangs over Corinthia’s extra-wide bariatric commode in the basement.

  Cloris Honniotis says, “So word on the crusty old Lugo dirt road is that you had a vision, and I know you don’t want to discuss this matter with yours truly, but you know in that oversize heart of yours that I’m the only one, aside from God, the Devil, and the ghost of Elvis, who might actually believe you, so lay it on me. What’d you see?”

  “Three tornadoes,” Corinthia replies.

  The four syllables settle in her stomach with the certainty of iron. She goes on to describe the tornadoes in great detail: their scale against the yellow-gray sickly Illinois sky; their violent, tendril-like spirals; the torn rooftops and divulsed cornfields; the displaced cow at center court in the field house.

  Cloris says, “Holy apocalypse, Showtime.”

  Cloris occasionally calls Corinthia “Showtime” because that was the media nickname assigned to the storied eighties Lakers team that featured Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, James Worthy, Byron Scott, and Kurt Rambis. Cloris can speak to the statistics, dynamics, and personalities of this team with great passion and accuracy. How Cloris Honniotis, at four feet nine, is not only a professional basketball enthusiast but also a downright encyclopedic roundball junkie is anyone’s guess.

  Though the two friends were never at Lugo Memorial together (Cloris graduated the year before Corinthia arrived), they became acquainted at the local public library, where Cloris curates a robust and provocative young adult section. Cloris happened upon Corinthia perusing her shelves, and they struck up a conversation about Lorcan Nutt, a reclusive young adult author whom they both admire. The library is the one place where Corinthia has always felt at ease. After all, the bookcases are eight feet tall, and it’s one of the few settings in her life where her head isn’t the closest thing to the ceiling.

  Cloris says, “Have all those meds finally turned you into some kind of soothsayer?”

  Corinthia grunts in a semi-agreeable, exasperated manner.

  Cloris says, “Don’t tell me . . . you’re in your basement, chillin’ on your gigantic toilet.”

  “You should be in your basement, too,” Corinthia warns.

  “Because of your dreaded twisters.”

  “They’re really coming.”

  During the ensuing silence, Corinthia stares at the many pits and pockmarks in the gypsum tiles. Why her parents outfitted the basement with such a ceiling is anyone’s guess. It makes her feel like she’s going to the bathroom in the waiting area of the dentist’s.

  Cloris says, “My basement smells like old photo albums and kitty litter.”

  “So spray some Febreze.”

  “I’ll take my chances hanging out on the first floor.”

  “Have fun turning into scrambled eggs like the rest of Lugo.”

  “Easy there, Chewy.”

  “Chewy” is the third nickname Cloris calls Corinthia — a direct response to “Ewok.”

  From the perch on her own standard-size, lowered toilet seat, Cloris says, “So, I hear you took it upon yourself to do the work of the tornado horn.”
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  “Who told you?”

  “Doris Dabaduda,” Cloris says. “We librarians are a tight-knit bunch. She has a micro-tear in her hamstring, by the way. And you broke a door.”

  “I did, indeed,” Corinthia corroborates.

  “The Thin Door of Human Reason?”

  “The life sciences classroom door, actually.”

  “‘Hoppin’ Bob Sluba,” Cloris says, “I can just see his ageless bald face absolutely racked with wonder. You really went Beef Burgundy.”

  Going “Beef Burgundy” means losing your shit.

  Corinthia then asks Cloris if she has any weed.

  “Does the White House got a president in it?”

  Cloris Honniotis has a tenacious weed habit. Her dealer, former Lugo Memorial classmate Terence “Baby Arm” McAvery, has a weekly delivery arrangement whereby he and Cloris exchange little manila envelopes at the library’s book returns bin. It’s as simple as rice, really. Terence texts her as he’s parking his car, and then she meets him at the bin, where they slide manila envelopes to each other across the Formica counter.

  Corinthia asks her if she can come by her house, but Cloris says that she’s booked for the next few hours.

  “Doing what?”

  “I may be having a phone conversation with Lorcan Nutt.”

  “Lorcan Nutt!” Corinthia blurts out. “What the —? How?”

  Their aforementioned favorite author lives in an unincorporated town somewhere in the middle of Arkansas. He’s written more than sixty young adult novels, most of which are out of print. Few titles are known, but his ability to articulate the hearts and minds of characters to whom Corinthia and Cloris relate is uncanny, if not borderline miraculous.