by Ray Garton
I moved toward her, saying, “I just spilled some—” then gasped at the blade of pain in my side.
“You’re hurt!” Mardee put her arm around my shoulders and started to lead me into the living room, then stopped, looking down at the floor. “What’s all this?”
I looked down, saw all the junkfood wrappers clinging to the viscous substance and thought, Oh, shit.
“Slim Jims? Twinkies? Potato chips?” She looked at me, puzzled. “You shouldn’t be eating this stuff, should you?”
I tried to think fast, but I wasn’t fast enough because that thing rammed against the laundry room door again.
Mardee’s eyes grew and she whispered, “What was that?”
It thumped again.
“Oh… that?”
She nodded, looking toward the sewing room. Pulling away from me, she started to cross the kitchen slowly.
I stammered, “It’s-its a-a-a-a… a dog.”
She smiled at me over her shoulder. “You got a dog?”
“Yeah. That’s it. Except, it’s not my dog. It belongs to a neighbor.” Yeah, I thought, that’s good. “I’m taking care of it for a couple days. Great big thing. A dane. A great dane. A great big dane.” I laughed and thought I sounded a little like that stoned lunatic who cackles as he pounds on the piano in Reefer Madness.
“And you’ve been feeding it junkfood?”
“Had to. He-he got out. Of the house. I nearly—” Another laugh, “—nearly killed myself trying to get him back inside, then… then I sort of, you know… lured him into the laundry room with… Twinkies. Yeah. With Twinkies, and stuff.” I panicked, because Mardee was beginning to look less and less convinced.
“Are you sure you’re all right, Benji?”
“No, I’m not. Sort of. I mean, you know, I kind of… hurt myself outside.” I winced, limped toward the living room, and she followed. That was all I wanted: to get her away from that thing in the back. “C’mon out here and just… well, just try to step over that… stuff.”
“What is it?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Oh. ‘Kay.”
In some ways, Mardee was so easy.
In the living room, I eased onto the sofa with a groan and Mardee dropped beside me, smiling, lifted her hand to slap my thigh as usual, then froze.
“I don’t want to touch any sore spots,” she said, leaning back and sighing, “Well, now.” She folded her arms, commenting on how good I looked considering the shape I was in, then began talking, in that familiar melancholy voice, about her lawyer.
I listened to most of it, but my attention kept wandering back to that thumping sound in the back of the house. I nodded and made the usual sympathetic responses as she went on about how her lawyer was paying more attention to his secretary and clients than to her, but I was imagining that thing sloshing itself against the door, rippling liquidly like a huge mound of mucous. Although I tried to relax and follow Mardee’s breathy narrative, her voice seemed to fade and I felt as if I were sinking slowly into the sofa as the thumping grew louder and louder…
“—so he says, I mean, after all this time, he finally comes right out and says—”
—kuh-flump… slosh—
“—’I don’t think I’m prepared to have just one woman in my life on a steady basis, Mardee’—”
—kuh-flump… slosh… kuh-flump—
“—’I don’t think I have the necessary stability.’ Can you believe it? So, I’m thinking to myself—”
—slosh… kuh-flump… slosh…
Mardee’s voice was a distant whine, nearly buried by the thoughts trumpeting in my head as it all finally began to sink in. I guess things had just been moving too fast since I’d first discovered the thing in the woodpile, so fast that I’d made a hysterical joke of it rather than giving it serious thought. But those serious thoughts were sinking their teeth into my mind now… teeth as fine and sharp as needles…
The one thought that kept repeating itself over and over was, It can’t he… it’s impossible… it just can’t be, punctuated by the sneering, smartass voice of my conscience: Of course it’s possible… it’s always come back before… it’s just a little upset this time, that’s all…
… kuh-flump… slosh… kuh-flump… slosh… “—and after all the energy I’d put into that relationship, after all I’d put up with from him, he pops up one day and says he’s not pre—”
“Would you like a Diet Pepsi?” I interrupted with a voice full of tremors. My mouth was dry and my hands were trembling and my heart was lodged so high in my throat, I was afraid my tongue was sticking out.
Mardee jerked her head toward me, a little startled, I think, that she’d been interrupted.
“Well… yeah, okay, sure. I could use a break.” She took a deep breath and sighed.
Relieved, I said, “Be right back,” got up and headed toward the kitchen, but ducked into the bathroom. I locked the door, splashed cold water on my face and slurped some from the faucet. Even in the bathroom with the water running, I could hear its sloshing and pounding and found myself glancing down at the sliver of space beneath the bathroom door. I was reaching out to turn the water off when there was a knock at the door and my bones turned to rubber; I threw myself aside, knocked the hamper over and spilled dirty clothes on the floor and ended up sitting on the edge of the tub.
“Benji?” Mardee said on the other side of the door. “I’m gonna get my cigarettes from the car, ‘kay?”
“Yuh-yeah, shuh-sure.” I stood and tried to calm myself but the knock came again and I pressed my back against the wall, looking at the bottom of the door with wide, horrified eyes.
“You sure that’s just a dog in there?” she laughed. “Sounds like he’s throwing water balloons against the door.” Her laughter faded as she went through the living room.
I laughed, too; it was the kind of nervous giggle you’d expect from a fifteen year old boy in a whorehouse.
Dirty clothes were pooled around my bare feet. I stared at them for a while, marveling at their size. They seemed enormous, far too big for the Husky Department. JC Penney will never have a department that carries clothes as big as the ones that lay on the bathroom floor then. My undershorts looked like large sacks; the pair of pants at my feet seemed to have been made from the better part of a parachute; there was even a pea green shirt that looked like it had been cut from a tent. I’d hoped never to wear those clothes again as long as I lived, but as I stood there listening to the thing in the back room, I realized that perhaps I’d been wrong.
So it likes you, that nasty voice inside me sneered. Is that so bad? At least it’s loyal. That’s more than you can say for that bimbo outside. Has she ever done anything to make you believe she’s loyal? Or that she even likes you? If you weren’t always there ... if you weren’t such a good—and, I might add, tree—therapist… if you did so much as one thing that she didn’t like… do you think you’d ever see or hear from her again?
“No,” I whispered to my massive undershorts, surprised by the sound of my own voice.
And what did you do to it? You had somebody stab a tube into it and suck it out of its home like a milkshake through a straw. And yet, after all that, it still comes home. Is that loyal? Is that a friend? Of course it is. It’s more than she would ever do for you. So… what’s the problem?
I clenched my eyes shut, pressed my fingertips to my forehead and released a breathy groan. When I opened my eyes again, there they were: all those clothes, so big and bulky and… fat. I felt my face screw up. I couldn’t bear the thought of wearing them again. I’d throw them away, all of them. I’d burn them, toss out the ashes and dip into what was left of my money to buy new ones.
Better not, that voice sing-songed. Just in case it gets back in. You’ll need your fat clothes then…
… kuh-flump… slosh… kuh-flump… slosh…
“Oh, God,” I groaned, burying my face in a towel as the front door opened and closed.
; She’s back. Better get out there. Wouldn’t want to make her wait to talk about her lawyer, would we?
I was beginning to perspire as I went into the kitchen for her Pepsi and I held the cold can to my face a moment as the thing continued to move against the laundry room door. I tried to clean some of the slime from the floor with a damp towel, but it didn’t help much. I think I was really just trying to stall because I wasn’t in the mood to listen to Mardee anymore. My fear and confusion suddenly seemed far more important than Mardee’s lawyer. But I went back into the living room anyway, closing the kitchen door behind me.
“I haven’t seen this show in… well, since I was in grammar school,” Mardee said, smoking her cigarette and smiling at the television, where Egghead was making Batman, Robin and Batgirl cry with exploding onion eggs. She popped her Pepsi open, sipped and said, “I remember you used to talk about this show all the time back then. You and, um… that kid you hung around with. What was his name? He stuttered.”
“Tommy Fischer. His stutter was gone by our freshman year.” I turned the volume up a little before sitting down, hoping to drown out that dreadful sound…
“Yeah, I remember. He changed so much that summer.”
“How would you know?” I was surprised by the bitterness that flared in my voice and turned to her with a casual lift of my brows to cover it.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you didn’t know him, did you?”
“Not very well. No one did, I guess, but—”
“I did.”
“Yeah, okay, you did, but it was obvious he’d changed. I mean, he didn’t stutter anymore, he dressed differently and… well, before he at least seemed like a nice enough guy, but when he came back, he was an asshole.”
That startled me. “An asshole?”
“Yeah. He didn’t even hang around with you anymore and you were his only friend. You think that was nice?”
I sunk into myself for a moment, digesting that. I’d never thought of it that way before. I’d just figured—
“He was busy with girls, is all,” I said suddenly, finishing my thought.
“Yeah,” she chuckled, “girls. Ol’ fuck ‘em and duck ‘em Tommy.”
Again, I was startled. “What? Really? Tommy Fischer?”
“You didn’t know that?”
“No. I figured he just dated a lot, that’s all.”
“Oh, yeah, he dated a lot. But never the same girl twice. He’d tell them anything, and I mean anything. YTmow, to get into their pants. And it always seemed to work. He was smooth. But he was an asshole. A prick.” She was staring at her cigarette and frowning and her voice was cold and brittle. “One day he was a stuttering geek, the next he was smooth as silk. An operator. Like he took a class or read some books, or something. Every girl in school wanted to date him. They were practically fighting over him. But that wasn’t enough for Tommy. He had to divide and conquer. He got greedy, I guess.” She looked at me for a moment. “It was almost like he was on some kind of mission. Like he had a quota, or something.”
I’m sh-shuh-showin’ ‘em, B-Benj, he’d said. I’m g-guh-gettin’ ‘em buh… buh-back. F-f-for buh-both of us.
I found myself smirking. “Did you date him?”
She squirmed, shrugged and stared at the television a moment. “I only went out with him once.”
“Well, apparently, so did everyone else,” I laughed.
“Oh, you think it’s funny.”
“Well… maybe a little.”
“Then I suppose you think everything else is funny, like the way my lawyer has been treating me. Or like the way every other man I’ve ever been involved with has treated me.”
“No, I don’t think that’s funny, but—”
“Well, that’s what happened with Tommy. It was just… different. On a smaller scale, I mean. He came, he saw, he fucked, he left. That’s funny?”
“No, no, it’s not funny. But when you think about Tommy’s background, it’s a little ironic. I mean, he was—”
“I know what he was,” she snapped angrily, “and that just makes it worse. You’d think he’d be a little more compassionate, a little more considerate. But no. He was just like all the other guys.”
“Did it ever occur to you that he had to become like all the other guys before any of the girls would pay attention to him?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you think he would’ve gotten a single date if he’d remained what he was? A stuttering misfit?”
“Well… “
“No, he wouldn’t have,” I snapped, realizing that I was beginning to sound angry, too. “He had to become one of the guys the girls were always complaining about before they’d notice him. If he’d remained what he was, they would’ve kept laughing at him. But because he became what they seemed to want, they complained about him. So who’s to blame?”
I could tell by the way she looked at me that she was surprised by the direction the conversation had taken. “You didn’t do it,” she said. “You were always a nice guy. You never became an asshole. You were always friendly and compassionate and understanding and nobody ever complained about you.”
“No. They laughed at me. And I never got a date. Not until I was in college. And even then—since then—each woman I took out looked at everybody around us as if she were apologizing for being with me. And the couple of women I’ve actually gotten involved with? Hah! The first one, every time we made love, she said—” My nose curled and my voice whimpered two octaves higher. “—’I’ve never done it with a guy, um… your size.’ After a while, I got tired of it and said, ‘Sure you have. Last night.’ But it never made any difference. It wasn’t long before she realized she didn’t want to do it with a guy, um… my size, and she left. And then the next one, oh, she was great.” I stood, amazed by the energy I was getting from the anger I suddenly felt. “We got together, everything was great, I thought we were happy, and then one day she says, ‘I thought if I loved you, I’d give you the confidence you needed to lose weight and become a whole person, but I guess I was wrong’, and she was gone so fast I couldn’t see her fucking dust. And the last one—she was my favorite—she left me a note that said, ‘I know I said I loved you, but I only said it because I thought you needed to hear it. I thought it would help you become a better person, because you’re fat.’ Can you believe it? Nice of her, huh? Because I was fat So don’t tell me about what an asshole Tommy was, because he was just doing what had always been done to him. I know, because we were the same. We were both misfits. I just never learned to follow the rules like he did. And if the rules upset you, I’m sorry. You made ‘em.”
Mardee slammed her Pepsi down so hard the endtable wobbled, then punched her cigarette into the ashtray with a clatter. She looked at me a moment, her jaw working, then stood. “Well, I’m disappointed in you, Benji. I thought you were different. I didn’t think you were one of those guys who goes around thinking that women are just out to make men feel like shit. I thought—”
“I don’t think that at all! I just think they make men like me feel like shit. And maybe it’s unintentional. Maybe it’s got something to do with upbringing or just plain simple ignorance, I don’t know. But they do it. Again and again.”
Her lower lip quivered and her eyes glistened. “I never did. Did… did I?”
I thought about it a moment, weighed what I wanted to say against what I thought I should say. Then I said quietly, “Every day since the first time we spoke.”
She sat on the sofa again, let the tears flow and lit another cigarette with clumsy fingers. After a long silence, she said tremulously, “That’s not true. I’ve never done that. I’m not that kind of person. I’m… just not.”
I sat beside her and sighed, “You’ve done it in a million ways, Mardee. The way you speak to me, the way you touch me, or avoid touching me. The way you treat me when certain people are around.”
“It’s… because of what I said. Isn’t it?”
&
nbsp; “Huh?”
“At the park that day. When you told me, you know, how you felt about me. I always knew you’d hold that against me. I always knew it would come up again.”
“Hold that again—I don’t hold tha—this has nothing to do with that! I didn’t bring that up, you did!”
“Well, it seems logical to me. You tell me you love me—years ago—and now you’re holding it against me because I didn’t feel the same way.”
I rubbed my eyes with my thumb and fingers for a moment, then sighed, “Go ahead. Believe whatever you want. But that’s not the case. Not at all.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter. I didn’t come here for this. I don’t need this. I came here to talk about my lawyer. I needed to talk, that’s all. I thought you wanted to hear what I was gonna do about—”
“See? You didn’t come here to see me. You didn’t come here to talk with me. You came here to talk so I could listen. And that’s all. That’s what I’m talking about.”
Her lip quivered again. “But we’ve always talked to each other about our problems. We’ve always—”
“No, Mardee. You’ve always talked to me about your problems. Haven’t you ever noticed? Your little ongoing soap operas always eclipse anything I need to talk about. They’re your only reason for ever seeing me. Sometimes, even though we’ve known each other all these years, I don’t think you know me at all. You’ve never stopped talking long enough. And back in highschool? I don’t know why you talked to me about your boyfriend problems. I was a fat outcast. What did I know about relationships? I still don’t know shit about relationships and I suspect they’ll always be a mystery to me. Because I’m not one of the beautiful people. I’m not one of you. And I never will be, no matter how much fat I have sucked out of my body.” I was disturbed by my own words and I think it showed on my face. But she didn’t notice.
She clenched her eyes and the tears gushed as she swung her arm over to put out her cigarette. Her wrist hit the Pepsi can and it spilled all over her lap. The sight of her covered with Pepsi and sobbing was more than my pushover heart could bear and I scooted toward her, put my arm on her shoulders, wincing at a bite of pain in my side, and held her close. “Don’t cry,” I whispered.
