You Have the Wrong Man

by Maria Flook

  “It’s worse to eat with them. They slobber,” he told her. “It’s like living with monkeys.”

  “That’s probably not for us, even with my experience.”

  He looked at her and smiled at her joke.

  Before anything better came up, Venice had to quit her job at the bank. She couldn’t sit at her desk after she had had some reconstructive surgery. She tried using a rubber donut, but the pillow didn’t help much. She couldn’t sit because of the stitches. Worse than the stitches were the spasms. The doctor told her the sphincter would take a little longer to heal. As it healed, the stitches would trigger spasms. He told Venice that her body was having a spastic response to trauma. “It’s trying to tell you something,” the doctor said. “The natural contractions of the colon are solely for expulsion, it won’t tolerate invasive friction.”

  The urology intern wanted to consult with her and Stephen. He said, maybe it was time to take another step towards their lifetime investment. The previous year, when Stephen had worked as a dealer at Merv Griffin’s Resorts Casino, he was able to put Venice on his insurance. Venice had some initial procedures done, implants and hormone therapy, but insurance complications postponed the final operation. Venice didn’t qualify as a spouse. It was a catch-22. Venice needed further surgery before she was card-carrying.

  Having had some more time to think about it, she wasn’t a hundred percent certain she wanted it done.

  The doctor who repaired her rectum told Venice, “In every law of engineering there’s the female and the male, the outlet and the prong. Until you have the right connection, you’re in harm’s way. How long are you going to be a banged-up decepticon, getting it in your sore ass?”

  “That’s nice language,” she said.

  “My apologies. But, with more surgery,” he told her, “you could have the correct ‘receptacle.’ ”

  “I can wait for that,” Venice told the doctor.

  “You’re halfway there already,” the doctor said.

  “Just tell the boy not to jump me so much.”

  “I’ll tell him to go easy for a while,” the doctor said, but when Stephen came to visit her in the hospital, the urologist was missing. His shift was over.

  Venice stayed home for several weeks enjoying the apartment, letting her hair air dry, playing solitaire on the carpet while the TV hummed at her shoulder. Now and then, she experienced an overwhelming, narrow edge of pain slashing the same few central inches. She fell, twisted on the rug, and tried to breathe, then it would pass. It happened less and less and she began to feel better.

  Being out of work, she had time to cellophane her hair and she did a full body wax. She rubbed estrogen cream on her upper lip and applied it to her nipples, massaging in a circular motion. Being at home so much made her see the flaws, the grime and stains of the place. She started to think she should fix up the apartment the way other women might try to do. The wallpaper in the kitchen depressed her. The pattern had dark vines upon which small tobacco-colored leaves seemed to wither. It was an ordinary ivy design over uniform bricks, and it might have been meant to reflect autumn, but it suggested a wasted landscape. The wallpaper reminded her of an O. Henry story she read in high school in which a sick girl stares out her window at an ivy-covered wall. This girl is dying and as the ivy disintegrates and the leaves drift past her window, her days dwindle down.

  “How many days do we have left?” she asked Stephen, but he didn’t go along with it. Alone, she counted the ivy leaves on the wallpaper. She jotted the figure on a note pad so that on the following day, when she counted the leaves again, the figures could be contrasted and verified. Each time, Venice had a decreasing number. “It’s spooky,” she said.

  “You’re crazy,” Stephen said.

  While she wasn’t working, she borrowed a heavy book of wall-covering samples from a hardware store, but she didn’t find a pattern she liked. There were outlandish daisies, harsh plaids, cannons and militia, historic emblems, and baseball-team insignia. Painting over the ivy design might be the thing, but when she asked Stephen, he told her she was crazy to think he was going to pay for fixing up the apartment. “We can’t afford any face-lifts on our pad. Shit. We don’t own this property. Come back and talk to me when you can tell me we own something.”

  It was disheartening to stay in the apartment all day. She got up with Stephen and poured cereal in a bowl, or she boiled an egg. Then he was gone and she had the whole day. She looked out the window, pressing her forehead against the cold glass. On the street, a neighbor was scraping frost from a car windshield. A cold daylight was ascending, a neutral illumination or off-whiteness Venice associated with views from inside institutions. Her neighbor finished clearing off his car and she watched him get behind the wheel, she followed the small hesitations the car made as he drove it away. Sometimes, her friend Jeannie would come by. Jeannie worked for a realtor and often dropped in if she was in the neighborhood. Venice made her tea and they talked about finding a decent job. They listed the pros and cons of working behind a desk or having to stand up all day like they did when they attended Top o’ the Morning Beauty College.

  “I can’t wear more than a two-inch heel or my back starts to hurt,” Jeannie said.

  “That’s right,” Venice said, “beauty college ruined us for life—standing over those sinks.”

  “I only do Bobby’s hair anymore,” Jeannie said.

  They looked out the window at the snow beginning to come down.

  “Shit,” Jeannie told Venice. “I have two signs to put up and it’s murder when the ground is frozen. The posts have to be pounded into the ground or kids pull them out. In cold like this I can’t drive them in.”

  Venice asked her if she wanted any help. She imagined hammering “For Sale” signs around the city. She believed that the brutal percussions of banging posts into the frozen ground might reverberate into her colon stitches. Her friend didn’t think it would look right if Venice came with her. “Face it, Venice, you attract attention.”

  “I do not. I pass anywhere. Did I tell you I went to mass? Nothing. Not one double take.”

  “Maybe. But I remember the old days, I guess. When you were you.”

  Venice was feeling better and she took a part-time job transporting a carload of pets—cats, lap dogs, and several rabbits—to local nursing homes. Residents were encouraged to hold the animals for an hour, and after the hour was up, Venice collected the pets and put them back in their travel cages before driving to the next place. Venice accompanied a social worker who explained to her the purpose of the petting routine. “Stroking furred animals increases circulation, stimulates conversation, and generates a feeling of well-being. Holding a cat for just an hour every week can enhance short-term memory and cognitive function.”

  “No kidding?” Venice said. Before distributing each of the shaggy guests, she ruffled their coats. She figured she could use a boost herself.

  Several residents in the nursing homes had had mini-strokes and TIAs which left them confused and shaken. The petting routine worked directly on their neurological pathways, healing the damaged synapses. Venice realized that she, herself, often stroked her fluffy slippers absent-mindedly as she watched TV. She wondered if this provided the same benefits as the live animals.

  Residents had specific names for the pets, but these names always changed. Fluffy, Whiskers, Snowball, Inky—residents named the animals for pets they had once owned. The MSW told Venice she should try to remember the correct names if she could. One rabbit had acquired more than twenty names; it was one of the original subjects. One favorite pet was losing its fur, probably from a skin disorder, but the residents blamed each other. “Don’t scratch its withers like that,” one woman scolded another. A resident told Venice that she didn’t wish to hold the rabbit with “the sad ears.”

  “Which one is that?” Venice asked.

  She had a nickname for her job. She told Stephen as she left for work, “I’m doing a shift at the Final Frontier
.” Yet there were one or two individuals at the nursing homes whom Venice enjoyed seeing. An eighty-year-old named Abby amused Venice with her stories. She talked about her children with curdled disdain. If questioned about her offspring, she responded by saying, “They’re inhuman. One-celled organisms. Termites, at best.” It’s remarkable, Venice thought, how Abby had come to accept the truth of her situation. Other residents made excuses for their children.

  Her own father was in Florida. The last time Venice saw him, he was dressed like an ice cream vendor. White stretch-belt slacks, creamy socks, and white imitation gator-skin loafers. She didn’t recognize him. She wondered if he would end up in a place like the homes she visited. She couldn’t imagine her father holding a rabbit in his lap. He had success with cats because he ignored them and they couldn’t stand his indifference. They perched on him like parrots. Yet, Venice couldn’t imagine her father forced into a structured routine, petting cats because a doctor prescribed it.

  Abby complained to Venice that there weren’t any real cottontails amongst the pets.

  “Cottontails are too wild for a petting zoo,” the MSW said.

  “Peter? Wild?” Abby said. “Peter Cottontail is a pansy. Ask my daughter, she married him.” Abby cupped one side of her mouth with a papery, translucent hand. She leaned close to Venice. “My daughter says Peter can’t perform. Well, I told her Brer Rabbit was the better one, but did she listen? God’s gift to women, I told her. He had one longer than his ears—”

  A neighboring oldster searched through the fur of her pet. “I can’t find it,” she said.

  “You never could find it,” Abby stung the wrinkled deb. Everyone laughed with an edge.

  Abby told Venice, “I know about you—I won’t tell anyone.”

  Venice described her job to Stephen. He smiled, but he told her she should resign. “It doesn’t pay shit,” he said, emphasizing that last consonant to warn her that he meant what he said. “It’s for volunteers,” he said.

  Venice quit the job after receiving only two small pay checks. “It’s not worth the glimpse into the future,” she told Stephen.

  Stephen kept on at Sears, and at first he didn’t seem to mind being the only one holding a job. Maybe it was just her imagination, but Venice started to think he resented her time at the apartment. He came home from work and brushed by her, saying, “Kind of a mess. You could’ve done something.”

  “What’s wrong with it?” She didn’t see a crumb or a milky tumbler left out.

  “It’s a dump,” he said. “I guess you’re used to it.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He ran his finger down the full-length mirror in the bedroom. “You’re smoking too much. There’s tar on everything.”

  “There’s tar? Where?”

  “Nobody should have to live like this,” he said. He picked up her hairbrush and fooled with his short, blond hair. Venice looked at Stephen. Sometimes he seemed to mirror, quite perfectly, the overall costume of a white supremacist. His cornflower eyes, his fine profile looked chilling. He had a perfect crease in his trousers, which he pinched between his thumb and forefinger to keep fresh. This mannerism disturbed her more than any other.

  He fell back on the bed. He arranged both pillows behind his head and he looked at his fingernails. She didn’t know whether she should lie down beside him, since he had taken both pillows and perhaps this was significant. She sat on the edge of the mattress and looked at him.

  “Why don’t you clean the bugs out of that lamp?” he said. “It’s disgusting.”

  She looked up at the dark plate of insects on the ceiling fixture. She was embarrassed by the sight of it, but it was just another thing for him to mention. The frosted glass revealed small bodies and exaggerated wings. Venice found these winged corpses repulsive. “Those bugs were there when we moved in. I’m not touching it.”

  “I’m saying, clean it out.”

  “You think when I get rid of my gear I’m the housewife? You wash it yourself.”

  He was reading the job opportunities out loud to her. There were several openings in local jewelry factories. “That’s all assembly-line stuff,” he warned her. “You might have to insert itsy-bitsy earrings onto little squares of cardboard all day long, or maybe they’ll make you sort links of chain. Millions of links. Also, there’s some chemical hazards. Epoxy. Epoxy is wicked shit.”

  “Okay, okay,” she said.

  “You’re not desperate. Not yet,” he said.

  She didn’t like it when he said you’re not desperate. Shouldn’t he have said, we’re not desperate?

  When they didn’t have the capital to invest in a Payless shoe-store franchise, Venice suggested the Del’s Lemonade truck idea. She thought it would be pleasant to drive around the beaches and sell frozen lemonade; the citrus SnoCones reminded her of the Papaya Softees she had learned about at the bank job. She had always liked the Del’s vendors she had met. They stood at the window, tanned and friendly, with a little white swatch of zinc oxide across the bridge of their noses.

  “It’s the middle of winter,” Stephen said. “Wake up to reality.” He didn’t often use such clichéd speech—wake up to reality. He was shooting her a signal, implying that she was dipping to a low level in his eyes, she was bottoming out. She deserved these phrases.

  She went for an interview at a fish-processing plant down in Newport. It was a half-time position, dependent on when the huge offshore boats came into port to offload, but the salary was above average and they said she could work day or evening shifts, however she wanted. The plant was right on Narragansett Bay, where there was a nice view of both the Newport and the Mount Hope bridges, and she thought that working by the water might be invigorating after being in the apartment. A woman gave her a tour of the plant, which was built right against the shore where they could suction seawater into the operation and spew it out at the other end. Fish kept moving up and down fast-moving belts. The job didn’t appear difficult. She would arrange fish fillets in plastic trays and prepare them for freezing. Venice was ready to accept the position. The interviewer told Venice that, of course, all her initial medical costs would be reimbursed.

  “You mean I get back on insurance?”

  “We pay your medical appointments the first six months.”

  “Just six months?”

  “Most people don’t have too much trouble after the first few weeks. We pay for any prescriptions you might get.”

  “What kind of trouble are we talking about?”

  “It’s normal until you become desensitized.”

  “Shit, what are you trying to say—”

  The woman sighed, she saw she was losing her candidate. “Just a rash. A rash from the brine. Even with rubber gloves, you’ll get some kind of reaction. But after you get used to the brine, it’s clear sailing.”

  Venice had jumped at the news there might be insurance, but it wasn’t to be. The processing plant would pay for office visits and cortisone cream, nothing more. She didn’t want to arrange fish in plastic trays if it meant her skin was going to erupt. When she told Stephen about this, he looked at her as if she had made up the story about the brine.

  “I’m not lying,” she said. “You think I don’t want to get a job? I want to work. I want to bring in money, but not if it gives me a rash—”

  “Maybe you have an allergic reaction to anything that’s nine-to-five.” He might have been teasing her, but he walked away. With his back to her, she couldn’t tell if he was finding fault with her or not. He came back into the room and took her hand. He led her to the bedroom, where they lay down together. He wanted to enter her where her stitches tugged her sphincter together like a sausage casing. Venice told him, “I’m probably going to faint, you understand?”

  “You’re not going to faint.” It wasn’t a reassurance, it was more in the nature of an order. He rested the heel of one hand on her tailbone as he fitted himself inside her, then he gripped her hips. She felt the first slicing motion,
then the full progression of his disregard. He weighted her upon her own pain and placed her worth in it. She permitted it to happen and believed in its judgment.

  The lounge at the Marriott had solid brass doors. Venice had to polish the tarnished metal with industrial-strength paste. The lounge had a slimy fountain. Two cherubs squirted a few gallons of stale water to which Venice had added a half-cup of bleach to cut down on the algae. It wasn’t a great place to work, but she was making tips along with the free stuff she crammed into her oversized shoulder bag. She was waiting tables in the lounge and pushing the carpet sweeper over the floors. A vacuum would have done a better job, but the carpet sweeper was more discreet.

  The hotel was always busy with conventioneers since it was located only a couple of blocks from the Providence Civic Center. Washington Street whores had duplicate keys to the rooms, which caused the chambermaids trouble because the cleaning personnel were the first to be accused of any thefts. This was bad enough, but it was also the hotel where the New England Patriots stayed on the nights before home games. They showed up in their limousines and sports cars at the last minute before the curfew. They had to follow a pregame diet of some kind, but they often took racks of ribs into their rooms from House of Bar-B-Que and left a big mess. They came into the lounge for fruit juices and Cokes; they weren’t allowed to spike their drinks when it was a pregame countdown. The lounge filled up with Pat fans and groupies leaving their fingerprints on the brass doors she had just finished buffing. These trashy women ordered drinks but tipped cheap in their search to glimpse a quarterback.

  Venice had been doing well there for over a month. The hotel had a big carve-up of the city’s local ass peddling, and once or twice she was mistaken for a business girl. She sympathetically declined, pleased to see she was passing. Once or twice someone had her number. A man said to his pal, “Look at the grand duchess behind the bar.” Venice was peeling the rind from limes and lemons to make twists. Her fingers were long and delicate, but her hands were just too large, and despite her pretty face and all her toil and grooming, it was usually her hands that told the tale.