Tribulations

by Richard Thomas

  ****

  The note on the kitchen table said to water the flowers out front, and so that’s what I was doing. Dad was off to work, mother to a PTA meeting or a book club, and I stood in front of the house watering the azaleas, the hanging plants, staring outward as if consulting a crystal ball. And then she was standing there, at the end of the sidewalk, Connie, with a clipboard in her hand, smiling.

  “Hey, Connie,” I said, leaning over to turn off the hose. “What are you doing in this neck of the woods?”

  “Hi,” she said. “Are you having a good summer, Jimmy? Still working on Mrs. Johnson’s house?”

  I soaked her up, every inch of exposed flesh, her tan arms, her long legs—the bit of color at her neck, her sun-kissed cheeks. She was like a page out of a Sears catalog, everything crisp and clean, buttoned up, tied back, her eyes like two sparkling jewels.

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s been hot, took a little time off yesterday. You? What’s with the clipboard?”

  “Oh, this,” she said. “Pork and Corn Roast, down at First Methodist? You ever go?”

  “Oh sure, lots of fun,” I said, pushing my hands into my pockets, trying to stop my smile from expanding and eating my entire face.

  “Well, we could use some help, you have any time at night maybe? I’m volunteering, but the men need help with the pigs—they’re just huge, I tell you. I don’t know how they do it. They sent me out to find some extra muscle to help out. What do you think, you qualify?”

  “That sounds swell, Connie. I should ask my parents, but I think it’d be just fine. If Mrs. Johnson doesn’t kill me first,” I laughed.

  She took a few steps forward with the clipboard in her hand.

  “Here are the dates, maybe just put your name down for a few of the slots? I’m doing Friday and Saturday for sure,” she grinned.

  I took the board from her, the pencil too, looking down, working hard to keep my eyes off of her for a moment, as she stood next to me now, and I tried to remember my name, and how to spell it, a lawnmower starting up down the street, and she pressed in closer, our shoulders touching, baby powder and vanilla, my head starting to swim, as she pointed to a few lines, here and there. I wrote my name down, and looked up.

  “Thanks, Connie. I guess I’ll see you there, then.”

  She took the board from me and turned to walk away.

  “It’s a date!”

  And then she eased on down the sidewalk, my eyes glued to her every movement, my throat dry—a swallow and I’m breathing again, and then she turns the corner on down the street, smiling and waving, and I wave right back.

  ****

  It’s another hour before I finally get over to Mrs. Johnson’s house, and it’s quiet, not a person in sight, too early for the burger joint, the front door closed, but no answer to my knock. I head around back and the cellar door is wide open, and scattered around the back yard are holes—one, two, three of them, more even, maybe ten. The smell is even worse than the day before, and I lean over the nearest hole and see nothing but pairs of black patent leather shoes. In the next one there are belts and watches, the metal flashing up at me, the leather like a nest of snakes.

  “What the hell?” I ask. “Mrs. Johnson? Grace?” I say and head towards the cellar. On the ground is a clipboard—a pencil snapped in two, and a trail of slimy liquid leading down into the basement.

  “No, no, no…” I mutter.

  The stench gets worse as I ease down the steps, something pungent and fishy, the slime stretching out across the concrete all the way to the open steamer chest, Mrs. Johnson with her back to me, her housecoat wide open, doing something with her hands, her arms moving, a smacking sound like chewing gum, or eating a plate of ribs. On the floor around her is water, everywhere, up to her ankles pushing towards me, flowing out of the trunk. Her hands come down to her sides, blood up to her elbows, her back still to me, the saw on the workbench wet with crimson, a hammer glistening in red, and there is motion in the trunk, something stirring in the shadows, the skin of a snake, a tentacle perhaps, a slick surface of some kind curling and expanding, and then she turns, her face full of eyes, dozens of them, blinking, staring, her hair floating wide and electric, bare breasts hanging down, her legs parting as she births onto the floor one tiny creature after another, slimy little heads, translucent skin, slipping down her legs and onto the floor, her mouth a beak now, clicking open and shut.

  “Jimmy, I’m glad you’re here.”

  And she takes a gliding step towards me, the water rising, green-scaled feelers pushing out of the trunk, her eyes swirling as the birthing continues, darkness pushing in from every corner of the room, and I am stone, I have lost my voice, a buzzing in my ears.

  “It turns out I really do need your help,” she says.

  And the tentacles wrap around me, the babies scuttling up my legs, nipping as they go, her hands on my shoulders pushing the clacking beak to my neck and it is not the kiss I had thought about—her plump red lips on mine, wet tongue in my mouth—her beak instead tearing into my flesh, too weak and giving. I think of Connie, and what happened this morning, how clean and pure she smelled, the gleam in her eye—I focus on that instead, thinking of how that night might have gone, holding her hand as we strolled around the church grounds, knowing now there is no God, but pushing that away for a moment, smiling as I pretend that maybe something else could have happened instead of this.

  Chasing Ghosts

  This wind outside our apartment isn’t a woman screaming, but there are nights I wake up in a panic, struggling to catch my breath. The garbage disposal becomes a rabid dog, its teeth nipping at my fingertips. The slam of the front door turns our apartment into a tomb sealed shut as my wife disappears out into the night, leaving me for dead. I can’t trust myself to recognize the truth. Her lips on mine taste bitter, so I build a fortress around myself out of the evidence that is gathering. I wait to confront her, anxious for it to spill out into the daylight for everyone to see. I need to prove I am right.

  My mind is telescoping away from me, all the way to my office, but Candace is naked under the warm blankets and my stomach twists in knots. The drapes are drawn, the room still dim, the white down comforter piled like drifts of snow. She’s not trying very hard, with those doe-eyes of hers, not saying a word to convince me, and that’s all it would take, one word: Stay. But I’m late for work.

  “David, could you get me some lotion?”

  “Sure.” I grab the bottle off the dresser and hold it out to her.

  “My back,” she says. “Would you rub some on my back?”

  She sits up on the edge of the wrought-iron bed, facing away from me, the sheet slipping down. The curve of her hips is hypnotizing. I kneel on the bed and squirt lotion onto my hands and rub it into her shoulders, down her spine, each tiny bump like a step up a staircase to some higher state of enlightenment. It isn’t that I don’t want to stay—I never want to leave. That’s her power, her way of making me weak. It’s like this every day. But if I exhaust her, maybe she won’t stray.

  When she turns around, her green eyes come up to meet mine, and her hands run up the front of my pants, squeezing. I close my eyes. Her mouth is at my neck, her tongue sliding between my lips. It looks like I’m going to be late. She pulls at my shirt, buttons popping, grabbing at my zipper, and she blankets me, pushing me down, climbing on top as she pushes me inside her. Hands on my shoulders, her eyes closed, her long black hair sways back and forth. As the tempo increases and my body glistens under a sheen of sweat, she cups her breasts, tugging at her nipples. That’s something new—and I shudder.

  ****

  Keeping her happy isn’t cheap and it costs me something every day. There is a long ride ahead of me—a bus to a subway into the city, and a METRA train out to a forlorn office at the edge of an industrial park. Down in the kitchen I suck down a tall glass of water, the white cabinets a snowstorm around me. I pull on a long, black wool coat over a cable-knit sweater and a turtleneck while the win
d beats against the frozen panes of glass. I lace up my boots, her perfume still on my hands. Sliding on the black leather gloves, my eyes glance up to the ceiling, everything quiet above me. I have to go while the siren sleeps.

  It’s two blocks to the end of the street, the corner of Milwaukee and Wolcott, and Candace floats along with me. Her body, her pale skin, it’s as if she’s right here with me—a ghost. My breath drifts out in transparent clouds and when I inhale my lungs turn to ice. My paycheck, the overtime—this is what propels me out into the cold. I turn away from her so we can get ahead, save for a house in the suburbs, children and a life together—the American dream. These are lies I tell myself; they hold no weight; it’s a façade and we both know it. I do it to keep her on a long leash. Candace is beyond my control. She has nothing but time and she likes to play with me, tease me, pull my strings and watch me dance. She is a Cheshire grin leaking out of the darkness.

  Picking up the pace, I start to jog, because I can’t miss this bus. From around the corner gears shift, the wide load of metal easing down Milwaukee towards me, the brakes squealing out in resistance. It’s twelve blocks south to my el train, further and further away from my wife. This is one of many connections I’ll have to make. My train is on its way into the city, coming all the way from Elgin, a huddled mass of rotting buildings at the edge of the Chicago River. It isn’t into the station just yet, but it will be soon. It won’t wait for me, and neither will my wife of six months. Candace used to get itchy—her eyes would wander, but I think she only strayed the one time. I see it in her face when she won’t hold my gaze. It wasn’t there today, not yet anyway, but maybe tomorrow or the next day. I’m helpless to do anything about it. There’s a credit card sitting on the kitchen table, our tiny duplex of an apartment filled with cinnamon and musk. Half a pot of coffee waits for her and I hope she takes the money. I pray that she only spends my money today.

  ****

  Another day has slipped away, and my gut says she’s still being faithful. Part of my morning ritual is searching for clues as I’m getting ready for work. Sucking down coffee and trying not to sweat I keep one eye on her shadow as I dart from room to room, the other wide open for anything suspicious. I’m searching for receipts, for cash, for clothing sitting in the washing machine—I sniff her blouse, her jeans, her panties. In the shower drain there is a wad of hair stuck inside the trap. Pulling it out, I hold the knot up to a row of light bulbs over the sink—and scrutinize it. The only option for hair color here is brown, and my reflection in the mirror is of a pale man lost and frantic. I count the condoms in my dresser drawer buried under faded white tube socks and outdated argyle patterns. These are condoms she doesn’t even know about but I check them anyway. I make sure they are the exact same ones, staring at the expiration dates, wondering who will last longer—them or us. I scour the phone bill for unknown numbers and some of them I call. They turn out to be Macy’s, the library, a firing range out in Lake Zurich that’s closed at the moment, the Walgreens pharmacy and her gynecologist. They’re all suspicious, all part of some master plan, some complicated puzzle and I can’t see the whole picture. We don’t own a gun; she doesn’t like Macy’s; and I’ve never seen her read a book. The accusations have to wait until that night, another long day of stomach cramps, gobbling down aspirin, waiting for her to reappear.

  “Where have you been, Candace? It’s almost midnight.”

  She stands at the bottom of the steps, staring up at me. In the dark I can’t see if she’s smiling. Her face is still in the shadows.

  “Just running errands, David. My cell phone battery died. Stupid stuff—returning a pair of jeans that were too expensive, I know how much you worry about money. I took your book to the library. It was almost due, so I extended it—you have three more weeks.”

  “Oh.”

  “You’re not going to ask me about the gun?” Candace asks.

  “What gun?” I say.

  “The Firing Range. What about that?” She stays in the shadows.

  “You planning on killing me?” I ask.

  “It’s a bar and grill, baby—The Firing Range? Organic, free range chicken…you know, I told you about dinner with my friend Melissa.”

  “Melissa, the brunette, works at Macy’s—right.”

  “You know I don’t like guns,” she says.

  “Well, I’m just glad you’re okay.”

  Candace talks in her sleep. Sometimes it’s simple words, a chain of nononono in a hushed breath. This isn’t as bad as the yesyesyes uttered in the same husky moan. I hear names sometimes but they’re safe names, those of her brother, her father, a friend of ours, my own name, but said in ways that don’t seem familiar. I’ll meet you at the Bongo Room. I’ll meet you at Feast, she says. Is she speaking to me?

  Those were our haunts, places we used to sit and eat in silence. We spooned up the chilled gazpacho with minced cucumber and chives in the relentless summers filled with heat and bare flesh. We chewed grilled skirt steak with garlic roasted mashed potatoes in the crippling winters, oblivious to the world under our layers of blankets. We stared at each other and I told her she was stunning, I told her she was my world. She nodded, swallowed the arugula, and ordered more red wine.

  ****

  Candace is making me a lunch. She hasn’t done that in months. The cutting board is littered with breadcrumbs, thin slices of cucumber peel, and a large bag of whole grain chips. I slip into my boots and pull on my long wool coat.

  “I wanted you to have a healthy lunch, for once,” she says, her back to me as she chops away, fuzzy pink robe pulled tightly around her figure, her calf muscles and bare feet a distraction. “And it saves us a bit of money too.”

  Somebody has stolen my tainted bride and replaced her with Martha Stewart.

  “I’m almost done, just a bit of the Dijon mustard you like. Here’s your coffee—cream and three sugars.”

  She turns around for a second to hand me the coffee, her hair in a ponytail, looking young and fit. I take a sip while she finishes up the lunch. It’s perfect.

  “There’s a treat in the bottom of the bag. You might want to eat alone,” she says, standing on her toes to give me a kiss. “Just so you don’t forget me.”

  “How could I ever do that?” I say.

  “You better go, you’ll be late,” she says, pushing me towards the front door.

  On any given day I take a bus to a train to a job. Sitting in a room above a storefront, my eyes constantly wander to the windows, trying to see the Chicago skyline, working at a computer, designing graphics all day long. I edit advertisements, create logos, and Candace is in every pixel of my work. My color palettes are pulled from her body: Pantone 201, her pouting red lips; Pantone 348, her jealous eyes; Pantone 607, her vanilla skin. Searching through stock photo sites for images of women, they all turn out looking like her. Every ad for Red Lobster, every newspaper insert for Libertyville Toyota, every billboard for Tylenol has a semblance of my wife. Her doppelganger is holding up shrimp; she is sitting behind the wheel, winking; she is faking a headache.

  Lunch has lost its appeal so I toss the bag in the garbage can under my desk. Then I remember my treat. I fish the bag back out and look inside, a photo lurking at the bottom of the brown paper sack, bent but unmistakably capturing her naked body reclined on our bed. I want to believe that she took it herself. My anxiety leads me to wander down the streets of Elgin searching for answers in every brick wall and rusted pipe. It wasn’t always like this.

  She phones me several times a day, my caller ID a Pavlovian response, my forehead immediately moist. I miss you, she says. How is your day going? I chew on my tongue and stare at the display.

  “Who is M Dempsey?” I ask.

  “What? Melissa, remember? My friend from college, the brunette?”

  “Oh.”

  “I have to go, honey, I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  She hangs up but not before she giggles into the phone. The last word she mumbles is
idiot, I think. Or maybe I’m hearing things—so far away from her. I’m in China chewing on bamboo shoots as I wander through the rice paddies. Or walking on the red, cratered surface of Mars, dust and rocks on a horizon I can never reach. I call the number back. It rings and rings, no voice mail picking up, no answering machine—nothing. Who does that? Who has no way of leaving a message in this day and age? Nobody. A cover does, a false identity. The rest of my day is spent hitting redial. I import an image for the ad I’m working on, trying to put the pieces together, and it’s larger than the sum of its parts—a handful of tea leaves in the bottom of a china cup, trying to tell me something. As I work on a logo for the new Ford Fusion, her image appears—long legs wrapped around some shadow of a man, the opposite of whatever I am. At three fifteen I walk slowly into the bathroom and vomit into the toilet in stall number two. There is nothing but coffee and regret.

  The ride home is in reverse. Taking the Elgin METRA train into the city, brick apartment buildings flying by, every dirty window is filled with her silhouette. I stand numb drifting up the escalator and out into the masses, short skirts and wide shoulders littering the sidewalks. I walk past the Sears Tower, its shadow a blanket of cold. In one hundred steps the entrance appears, jutting out of the fractured concrete, the Blue Line el back to Wicker Park where my bus never appears—another part of the conspiracy. My legs keep moving, faster and faster, a mist in the air, piles of snow pushed to the side, the sidewalk grounding my fears. I chew on Rolaids, my stomach clenched like a fist, inhaling exhaust and rotten milk. Coins jingle in a white Styrofoam cup and no I can’t spare any change. I open the door to our apartment as slowly and quietly as possible, hoping for a laugh, a gasp, or a moan—anything to show me I am right.

  “Hey honey, I’m making meatloaf. Take off your wet boots and come give me a kiss.”

  She’s happy, her cheeks flushed, and it makes me nervous. When she hugs me at the top of the steps, I hold her tight, and sniff at her head, her hair still damp from a shower. There is no concrete proof, and yet I’m certain she lies to me every day. That or I’ve lost my mind. She’s strayed before, this on again off again thing that we do. But the ring on her finger is a promise—things are supposed to be different now.