The Lemon Jell-O Syndrome

by Man Martin

  Another “Yes, sir,” equally meek.

  “It’s especially important when it comes to writing.”

  A third “Yes, sir,” even meeker.

  “I’ll tell you what.” Now he did put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “You redo this. Correct every error I marked and proofread carefully, and I’ll regrade it, but you have to get it back soon, because it’s almost finals. That doesn’t give me much time.”

  A fourth, final “Yes, sir,” now with a hopeful note.

  “Excellent. We have a plan now.” He smiled at her and did up the snaps on his briefcase. Oddly, talking to an annoying undergrad about the richly deserved grade on her mediocre paper and undertaking additional work on her behalf was the happiest he’d been all day.

  They found Loundsberry waiting outside class. A soft palm on Bone’s shoulder, he asking a delighted Belinda how she liked Fulsome. The department chair had heard of her! She was an up-and-comer! In fine Belinda form, she described her training on the new billing system, complaining and bragging at once—Look at all the responsibility I have! She didn’t detect the claim-staking hand on Bone’s shoulder. He had come not for her but for Bone. When Belinda finished, Loundsberry, not having listened, could say only, “So, well!” No matter; Belinda’s studious, gratified-serious face said she took this as an endorsement, or at least as You’ve given me a lot to think about, young lady, and I’ll be discussing this with my colleague here.

  Loundsberry and Bone walked to Gordon’s office, where the dean half-sat on his desk, dressed as if he’d come from or was on his way to somebody’s soccer match. His head bobbed up as they came in, directing a frowning smile now at Bone instead of the manila folder he’d been studying: expecting but not pleased to see him.

  “Bone, Chuck, come in.” Gordon didn’t offer a chair, but after a few seconds Bone sat anyway. The awareness of Loundsberry standing behind him sharpened Bone’s anxiety. He was looking up awkwardly at Gordon, but it would look strange for Bone to stand now. Bone took in his surroundings. A framed art-deco The Fountainhead poster, a facetious “Who is John Galt?” coffee mug—to Gordon, Ayn Rand represented the pinnacle of intellectual achievement—a photo of Gordon white-water rafting, spray crashing into his grinning face. No Mrs. Gordon photos. “Chuck told me about the other day.” Bone made a soft whiffing noise, giving permission to Gordon to continue. “I wish you’d come to us about that, Bone. I wish you’d been up-front from the start.” Loundsberry moved from behind Bone to the bookcase. “The first you knew about it, Chuck, was the other night—Monday, right?—you saw him, you know, you said—” Loundsberry nodded, stretching into a smile and falling back into a gape. “That’s not the way we do things, Bone. You have to tell us things.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Don’t worry about it now,” Gordon said, hand out like a traffic cop. “Water under the bridge. The important thing is,” finger making a radar sweep from Bone to Loundsberry, “no one knew about your thing until Monday. I want it on the record that Fulsome has never fired anyone because of a medical condition.” He leaned in as if to hug Bone or punch him in the chest. “So what I want to know is—” He didn’t finish the sentence.

  “It’s not life-threatening,” Bone said.

  “What I want to know is—we already have wheelchair ramps and automatic doors, at least one set, for each building.” Gordon ticked off accommodations on his fingers, hovering at his ring finger when he realized there were only two. “And I don’t know what they’re charging you for medication.”

  “I’m not on medication. The doctor says I don’t need it, and I don’t need wheelchair ramps and automatic doors. I can walk fine. And I don’t have any trouble opening doors. It’s going through them.”

  The smile portion of Gordon’s frowning smile melted into pure frown. “So what exactly do you need?”

  “I don’t need anything. Sometimes,” Bone added, “not very often, when I come to a door, I just can’t go through. That’s all. Then I just have to square dance.”

  “That’s it?” Guarded, but hopeful, too, like someone foreseeing spring around the corner. Gone was the frown. “Why don’t you get us all a soda?” Gordon asked Loundsberry. “Professor King, you want a Diet Coke?” Strange, when calling him on the carpet, Gordon called Bone by his first name, but when the bonhomie was so thick you could scrape it with a putty knife, it was “Professor King.” Loundsberry shifted uncomfortably, not keeping pace with the sudden warm front that had moved in, and Gordon gave Bone a sympathetic look: Loundsberry’s not as good at these things as you and I. “I’d like a Diet Coke. Get us all a Diet Coke.

  “So tell me what’s up with this door thing of yours,” Gordon said when Loundsberry left. Bone told him what was up with this door thing of his, withholding the disturbing diagnosis that his self was dislodging from his reticular formation. “You know what I like about you, Professor King?” Gordon asked, then, as was his modus operandi after posing a question, answered himself. “Some people go, ‘Oh, I’m disabled! I’m so helpless! Take care of me!’” Gordon said, imitating the way some people went, people who evidently spoke in high-pitched voices, wiggling their fingers pointlessly in the air. “But not you. No, sir. Why, you don’t even have a disability, do you? Here’s Loundsberry with the Cokes.”

  Loundsberry distributed wet cans from the pyramid stack in his hands. “You see, Dr. Loundsberry, I told you he was one of us! Now, here’s the other thing.” Serious again, manly and matter-of-fact, one fingertip sealing his upper lip, Gordon leaned so far forward, he left the desk, and for a moment, Bone feared he would climb into his lap. Instead, he stood, hand on Bone’s shoulder. “Fulsome will never fire you,” Gordon’s index finger pointed just above Bone’s eyebrow, “on account of illness.” Gordon waited for Bone to speak, so Bone muttered that this was good news, which it was. But if it was good news, why the pinprick of chilly dread at its core, like the tiny black dot of Yin in the fattest, thickest part of Yang? Gordon straightened. “Look at us, all serious! Who died is what I’d like to know. In fact, while you’re here, let’s put this in writing.” Gordon sat in his black leather chair and tapped his keyboard with the pleased frown of somebody doing something serious and significant. “Something to say your condition isn’t a factor in your employment, and what else did we agree to? That we weren’t aware of it until Monday’s date. Does that sound right? By the way, how’s that book of yours coming? Aren’t you working on another book?” Bone explained sheepishly that he was way past due getting it to his publisher, and Gordon nodded sympathetically. “Yes, I’ve been working on a book myself.” Two papers whispered from the printer. Gordon signed them and pushed them across the desk, fingertips twisting them around like an ice-skating spider so they were right side up for Bone. Gordon extended the pen to Bone. “You can sign below me.” The pen wiggled invitingly.

  Bone skimmed the paper. “It’s not right,” he said.

  Gordon’s pen halted midwiggle. “What?”

  “You wrote my condition doesn’t impact my job.” Gordon stared, pen frozen. “It should be ‘affect.’” Bone coughed. “And ‘referenced my condition to Dr. Loundsberry’ should be ‘disclosed.’” Gordon and Loundsberry exchanged looks, as if Bone had claimed to have been raised by lobsters. “‘Impact’ and ‘reference’ are nouns,” Bone clarified. After two seconds of clammy silence, Gordon laughed and took back the papers. “I’m sorry,” Bone said.

  “No, no,” Gordon chuckled. “Right is right. We need to fix it. Or should I say ‘amend’?” Gordon was tapping keys again. “Now, let’s see, it was ‘disclose’ and ‘affect.’”

  “I know ‘to impact’ and ‘to reference’ are used as verbs in business-speak,” Bone said, “but we’re educators.” Thank goodness Gordon was taking it so well. Two fresh copies came out of the printer. “If you’d used ‘to incent,’ you’d have hit the trifecta.”

  “Good old Professor King,” Gordon said. “You never change.” He passed the papers across th
e desk to Bone. “By the way, how’s Mary?” he asked. “I sure do miss seeing her around here.” Good Lord, did Gordon wink? And there it was again, that ugly word, “seeing.” Bone’s chin quivered and he looked down, signing in a writhing scribble, the Coke clamped between his thighs.

  As Bone left Gordon’s office, his mood lifted as if he’d narrowly escaped from a booby-trapped dungeon, a hair’s breadth beneath a massive stone lowering from the ceiling to crush him. He drove home in a bubble of inexplicable elation. How good even the most ordinary life was! Belinda was grateful for his help. Grisamore thought his book was fine. Limongello was looking into his condition. And soon he’d be home with Mary! And as for Dr. Gordon, screw Dr. Gordon! And Cash Hudson. Screw Cash Hudson! Mary was his! He’d won her fair and square, and she’d chosen him. Screw you both, Dr. Gordon and Cash Hudson!

  “I’m home!” Bone hallooed as he came in the kitchen door and set his books and briefcase on the counter, but there came no answer, so he said again, louder, over the TV in the next room, “Hello, sweetheart!” His sweetheart replied that his dinner was in the microwave. He punched the button and watched pasta and sauce rotate in the lighted window.

  Life was good. Bone was fine. Mary was his. But the exclamation marks had fallen from his joy. Bone drummed “William Tell” on the countertop. The microwave beeped, and he opened the door. “Don’t get any of that on the couch,” Mary warned as he brought his supper into the living room. She was folding laundry.

  Reaching for the remote, Bone asked if she minded if he turned down the TV. She didn’t. She said when he put his socks in the hamper to ball them together, and Bone said okay. He kept saying he’d do that, she pointed out, but then forgot. Bone promised to remember. It was just that she always ended up with a sock in his drawer she couldn’t find one to go with, and when she did another load, there was a sock missing, and she spent all this time looking for it and didn’t realize his other sock was already in the drawer because it had been in the last load. Bone admitted the truth of this and said he’d do better.

  While Bone took his dish into the kitchen and rinsed it, Mary said she was thinking of gelatin dessert. What made her think of that? For Betty’s cookout Saturday, she was thinking of gelatin dessert. What did Bone think? Bone thought it would be great.

  Bone didn’t ask Mary about Miranda Richter’s employment of the verb phrase “was seeing,” as in “Gordon was seeing Mary up until the wedding.” “Was seeing.” The past imperfect tense, the perfect tense for an imperfect past, a tense referring to an action “habitual or continuous” or “left uncompleted.” Had Gordon “seen” Mary habitually, continuously? Had Mary completed “seeing” Dr. Gordon?

  The Norton Anthology lay on the counter where he’d left it, Limongello’s questionnaire sticking out of it. Bone looked at it for the first time since yesterday.

  What was wrong with Bone that he was never satisfied doing what he was doing but always looking forward to doing something else? And when he was doing that, he was looking forward to doing something else. He wanted to work on his book, except when he had time to do it. He dreaded teaching class, yet it was the one part of the day he’d enjoyed. He looked forward to being with Mary, but when he was, he felt disappointed. She insisted on being so stubbornly, obstinately herself. And life kept insisting on being life, with people to deal with and socks to ball up. Did this have to do with Bone’s self becoming dislodged?

  Mary said it was a purple Jell-O with fresh fruit and a cream-cheese icing that looked beautiful in Southern Living, and Bone said it sounded fabulous, reading Limongello’s questionnaire.

  Jesus, what was Limongello after?

  H, h

  From the Semitic khet (h), “fence,” H’s status has always been borderline. The Greeks knocked off the top and bottom rails, calling it eta (H), changing its pronunciation to our equivalent of long /a/. In 500 CE, Priscian claimed that H was not a true letter, a position seconded a thousand years later by Geoffroy Tory, who nevertheless included it in the alphabet. In 1712, Michael Maittaire attempted once more to strike H from the alphabet; however, by that time the letter had received the imprimatur from Ben Jonson’s influential English Grammar (1640), so it was here to stay. The name “aitch” is from the French hache, “hatchet,” the lowercase H resembling an upside-down ax: h.

  Hobson-Jobson, Law of: The tendency to corrupt exotic words to conform to familiar patterns, e.g., “oxycotton” for “oxycontin,” “Old-timer’s” for “Alzheimer’s,” and “very close veins” for “varicose veins.” (See hocus-pocus.) British soldiers in India corrupted as “Hobson-Jobson” the Arabic cry Ya Hasan! Ya Husayn! “Oh, Hassan! Oh, Husain!”

  hocus-pocus: A jocular incantation, too foolish-sounding even for Vegas magicians. A corruption by disdainful Protestants, following the law of Hobson-Jobson, of the Latin hoc est corpus meum, “This is my body,” spoken by the priest at the moment the sacramental bread and wine is believed to be transformed into the body and blood of Christ.

  Bone didn’t need Limongello’s questionnaire to know his condition was driving him insane. In addition to his syndrome, there was the ongoing uncertainty about Mary. He tried persuading her to skip the neighborhood cookout—wouldn’t it be nicer to just stay home and enjoy each other’s company?—but her mind was already made up, and his attempt to unmake it only occasioned one of their little quarrels.

  Mary: “We’ve been looking forward to this all week. I told her we would be there.”

  Bone: Sulks silently.

  Mary: “You can stay here and pout if you want to, but I’m going.”

  It wasn’t as if they wouldn’t be just as happy to see her arrive without Bone. He could have played the trump card of his condition, said he couldn’t get through the door and blackmailed her into staying—“blackmail” was too strong a word; at worst it would be navy-bluemail—then he could work on Words and have Mary to fetch sandwiches, but his illness infantilized him enough without faking it, so he said nothing. Besides, he had before him the chilling example of Y, who one day had refused to get out of bed.

  He felt better after seeing Mary model her new white blouse in the bedroom mirror—profile, full front, profile—she’d bought it the other week especially for the cookout, she explained, a short-sleeved top that showed off her golden arms and with a delightful tendency of peeking open to the sternum whenever she turned. Mary’s lacy white bra lay unused at the foot of the bed. Bone began looking forward to an afternoon standing next to his wife in that succulent blouse.

  “What is Betty’s husband’s name?” Bone asked, bearing Mary’s purple Jell-O with cream-cheese icing as he followed her to Betty’s house. “I forget.”

  “Jesus, Bone. Steve.”

  They walked across their yard and passed the boundary of Betty’s, entering the smell of cooking meat and phatic warbling: a man’s “Yeah!” behind Betty’s privacy fence and hand-clapping, apropos of nothing; other “yeah”s and claps responded. Mary’s breast in profile played peekaboo through her blouse.

  “What’s Laurel doing here?” Bone asked, hearing a familiar sardonic laugh above the ambient party sounds. “She’s not one of the neighbors.”

  “I invited her. She’s a friend of mine.”

  Bone was far from happy. He’d always suspected Laurel liked him as little as he liked her.

  Betty welcomed them with a command—“You must try Charlotte’s pasta salad”—and Bone dipped generous lumps for himself and Mary, looking forward to Charlotte’s pleasure at a compliment. Excellent, he assured her. Mary said it was wonderful even before she swallowed, and that she must get the recipe. Charlotte, Bone’s landlord, the only neighbor he had much use for, slowly being transformed into a question mark by osteoporosis, looked up and smiled.

  Out back, Bone pumped beer for them, balancing his plate on the Solo cups, before joining Mary and Laurel at the grill. Cash was also there. What the hell? What kind of neighborhood party was this? Cash lived a whole street away. Was just any
old body allowed to come, or did you have to be someone Bone didn’t like?

  Working clockwise around his Weber, Steve flipped six burgers gray side up, a story in medias res: “Mickey Mouse goes to court, and the judge says, ‘I don’t understand, Mr.—uh—Mouse. You want to divorce Minnie because she’s silly?’ ‘No,’ says Mickey,” Steve imitated Mickey’s high-pitched voice, “‘she’s fucking Goofy!’”

  Everyone laughed, and Bone said, “That’s a very interesting joke. It’s a grammatical joke.” Cash and Steve looked at Bone quizzically, and Laurel cocked an eyebrow. Mary looked down at her beer. In the silence, Bone felt called on to explain. “The judge thinks ‘goofy’’s an adjective and ‘fucking’’s an adverb, but Mickey meant ‘fucking’ as a verb and ‘Goofy’ as a proper noun.” Everyone avoided Bone’s eye except Laurel, who seemed to enjoy a private joke of her own. Steve raised his spatula, saluting a clap and “yeah!” from across the patio. “Of course, part of the joke is we don’t expect a Disney character to use the F-word. And imagining Minnie having sex with Goofy,” Bone elaborated, his face growing hot. “Goofy is the name of another Disney character.”

  “Well, somebody’s fucking goofy, that’s for sure,” Laurel said. At that, everyone laughed but Bone. Mary snorted beer through her nose and required Cash to rub her back to stop coughing. Laurel’s non sequitur amused them, whereas at Bone, they’d merely stared, when Bone had gotten the joke. What Laurel said hadn’t even made sense.

  Bone muttered, “I just thought it interesting is all, that it’s a grammatical joke.”

  Sipping her beer, Mary watched Bone over the rim of her cup, trying to choose what reaction to have. Cash looked in the other direction as if searching for a clock.

  “We’re out of pasta salad,” Laurel said. “Why don’t you get us some, Bone?”

  Bone hesitated. “Would you, Bone?” Mary asked.

  Whatever Betty was drinking when Bone came in wasn’t beer; ginger ale mixed with something, he guessed. Talking about the party—going well was their mutual judgment—he dipped pasta salad and left. A man by the keg greeted him; he knew Bone, but Bone didn’t know him. Who was he? Mike? Mitch? Bone concealed his confusion with a blustery, “Hey! You must think I really love pasta salad.” Bone held up the two plates. Mike or Mitch took a drink and said nothing. “Say, have you seen Mary?”