Madhouse Fog

by Sean Carswell

  9

  A week and a day later, my wife appeared.

  I returned from work on Friday night, unlocked the door, and dropped my keys on the newspaper rack/table. Clint Dempsey greeted me. I squatted in the foyer, in front of the surveillance camera, and tried to pet him. Clint Dempsey jumped up and down, twisting, wagging his tail, trying to lick my face but missing, looking for affection but unable to settle himself long enough for me to give it to him. I did my best. I said, “Wanna go for a walk?”

  “Sure.”

  I knew that voice. It wasn’t Clint Dempsey’s. It was my wife’s. I looked up and there she was. She sat on the thrift store couch, legs crossed. She wore black tights, a plaid skirt, and her white cashmere sweater. I knew the sweater well. She’d found a cashmere sweater very similar to this one in a thrift store several years ago and purchased it for three dollars. She made a big deal about it when she got home, about what a great find it had been and a bargain and all, and that, new, the sweater would cost three hundred dollars, not three hundred cents. That particular thrift store cashmere sweater was already wearing through. If she wore a dark bra, shadows would drift through more threadbare parts of the sweater. So she replaced the thrift store bargain sweater with a nearly identical new one. She didn’t tell me about her new purchase. I wasn’t sure why not. I wouldn’t have been angry. She wanted to keep it a secret, though, so I respected that. She pretended that she’d bought her $300 sweater for three hundred cents and I pretended I didn’t know the difference. Anyway, it looked good on her. Stunning, really.

  “You look nice,” I said. “A little dressed up for a long drive.”

  “I came straight from work.”

  “Hungry?”

  “Yeah.”

  Clint Dempsey jumped up against my leg. The surveillance camera caught it all. I said, “Come on. We’ll take a walk, get this guy some exercise, pick up some food. The works.”

  My wife stood, smoothed her skirt, and walked toward me. We briefly hugged and exchanged a kiss in the foyer. The camera picked up the shot of her stockinged legs and my slacks and fake suede loafers. She knelt to put on her shoes, clunky leather oxfords with flames sewn on to the toes. I leashed Clint Dempsey. We headed out the door.

  We strolled downhill toward the little independent grocery store. My wife filled me in on what our friends were up to in Fresno, who was leaving town, who was having kids, who went back to graduate school, who got fired, who was being an asshole at work, that kind of thing. I knew most of it. She’d told me most of this stuff the last few times we’d talked on the telephone. And, like most of our telephone calls, she avoided discussing anything deeper in our lives. She stayed on the surface.

  About halfway down the hill, Clint Dempsey had to poop. We stopped at a tree in front of a lawyer’s office. All of the lights were on inside. Next to the heavy wooden door at the front of the adobe-style office was a sign that read “Notary Public.” My wife and I looked at each other to avoid looking at Clint Dempsey. I noticed for the first time that she’d lost a little bit of weight in the month or so since I’d seen her. Even her face looked thinner, skin wrapped tightly around the line of her jaw. I tested the waters below the surface a little. I said, “How are things at the community space?”

  “They’re closing up this month.”

  I winced. I had a feeling the center would close after I stopped writing the grants to fund it. I just didn’t think it would happen this quickly. “That stinks.”

  “Yeah, well…” My wife turned her gaze away. She focused on something vaguely in the direction of the law offices behind me. “If you had cared about making it work, you would’ve stayed in Fresno.”

  I tried to meet her gaze because the tone of her voice wasn’t much of a clue. I couldn’t tell if she was talking about the community space or implying something bigger. I said, “Oh?”

  She pointed at Clint Dempsey. He’d done his business in the little square of sand surrounding the tree. “Are you gonna scoop that up?”

  I reached into my pocket. In the rush of leaving the apartment, I’d forgotten to grab a plastic poop bag. “I don’t have anything to scoop it up with,” I said. “We’ll get it on the way home.”

  “Don’t forget,” she said.

  We walked the rest of the way down the hill trying to avoid sensitive topics of conversation, though they did creep up. I talked about the town, how pretty it was, how close the ocean was, the nice weather, the beautiful sunsets, Southern California, etc. I bragged about how central everything was, how I could walk everywhere except work, but a bus ran up to the psych hospital. I even pointed out the bike paths that lined the streets. “You’re going to love it here,” I said.

  She gave me back a noncommittal shrug. I would say it was a taste of my own medicine but I’d picked up that gesture from her. When we got to the store, she stayed outside with Clint Dempsey. One of us had to. Since I knew where everything was inside the store, and since I knew what I’d be cooking that night, I did the shopping. True to my word, I asked the cashier for an extra plastic bag. I scooped up Clint Dempsey’s poop on the way back.

  If I had known that my wife would be coming, I would’ve prepared more. Not that the place was dirty or that we hadn’t lived together for the better part of fifteen years. Not that she didn’t know me and how I lived. I just wanted to do something special. So I’d picked up a few extra items at the grocery store, and I got to work in the kitchen.

  First, I made a syrup by boiling water, adding sugar, honey, a bit of lemon peel and a stick of cinnamon. While the syrup boiled, I chopped about a pound of walnuts and almonds into tiny chunks. I mixed the chopped nuts with more sugar and cinnamon. I turned off the flame under the syrup and left it to cool. I melted a stick of butter. One at a time, I laid sheets of phyllo in a shallow baking dish and brushed melted butter on them. All the while, my wife sat at the kitchen table, rolling a ball for Clint Dempsey, waiting for Clint Dempsey to fetch and return, rolling the ball again.

  I layered the phyllo and the mixed nuts, sugar, and cinnamon. The ceremony of it was somewhat comforting: the slow, methodical act of building one of my favorite things. I had to admit there was an aspect of showing off here, too. For a long time, I didn’t have money to make this kind of treat. Bags of walnuts and almonds cost too much for my humble budget. A twenty-dollar dessert was too decadent.

  My wife looked at me for the first time since returning from the store just as I layered the last sheets of phyllo. She said, “Lucky me. I get baklava tonight.”

  Once the baklava was in the oven, I cleaned the kitchen and started dinner—another ritual of boiling water, peeling shrimp, chopping garlic, dicing tomatoes, cooking angel hair pasta, sautéing and mixing it all together. All the while, my wife rolled the ball into the living room. Clint Dempsey retrieved it.

  I drained the pasta and mixed it together with the olive oil, garlic, tomatoes, and shrimp. My wife and I ate at the table. She fed Clint Dempsey shrimp from her plate. She said, “I love this dog.”

  “I’m glad,” I said. There had been a few uncomfortable phone calls right after she’d put Nietzsche down, right after Dr. Bishop had given me Clint Dempsey. First, my wife expressed her anger about me not being there on Nietzsche’s last day. I accidentally fueled the fire of her anger by telling her about the laundromat girl. I guess there were more than a few uncomfortable phone calls. Once the Nietzsche argument died down, my wife expressed her fear about my quick transfer of emotions. One dog down, a new dog in his place. I tried to explain that my love for Nietzsche and my love for Clint Dempsey were two different kinds of love. All she would say is, “I hope you wouldn’t replace me so quickly.”

  What I didn’t say and she didn’t acknowledge, was that she had replaced me so quickly. At least that’s what one particular friend in Fresno kept telling me. I chose to ignore the rumors.

  After dinner, I pulled the baklava out of the oven and dripped the syrup onto it. My wife pulled my new bicycle off its hooks
it and set it on #the carpet. She said, “When did you get this thing?”

  “Yesterday.”

  She rolled it around the carpet, leaving little tire tracks, little traces of dirt. “It’s nice. Top of the line, huh?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “But it’s a hell of a bike.” She examined it more closely, mentioned the brand name, the model. “I remember looking at these at the Bike Doctor. This was what you called your dream bike, right? It’s what you said you’d buy if you suddenly came into a lot of money.” She had a good memory for all those things we said we’d buy if we had the money. She held the bike at arm’s length and marveled. “Did you suddenly come into a lot of money?”

  I didn’t mention the envelope from Frank Walters. I still wasn’t sure what I was going to do about that, but I wanted to keep it to myself until I figured it out. I said, “The hospital pays me three times what the community space did. You know that.”

  “Still.” My wife whistled. “This is nice. It must have set you back six hundred dollars.”

  “It was on sale.”

  “So what, then? Five-fifty?”

  “Something like that,” I said. To the woman wearing the $300 cashmere sweater.

  “Plus tax?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Which does bring it up to right around six hundred, right?”

  I shrugged. Never marry an accountant. I said, “Baklava’s ready.”

  She said, “I brought the divorce papers. You know that, don’t you?”

  Of course I knew that. I’d known it for months. I had hoped that maybe we could work things out when she got that job down here. We could move to a new place, start fresh, all that business. After I had gotten hired at the psych hospital and her job fell through the cracks, I knew. And even though I knew, even though we’d had all the roundabout conversations and fights and resolutions that it couldn’t be resolved, even though I’d noticed that she didn’t have enough love left to even hate me over any of this, when she told me she’d brought the divorce papers, I said, “What? Because I bought the bike?”

  “Don’t be an asshole,” she said.

  She leaned my bicycle against the two-tiered cart that held my television and record player and returned to the kitchen table. She opened her purse. I sat at the table across from her. She pulled out an envelope and handed it to me. I opened the envelope. “This is it, huh?”

  “There’s nothing to split up,” she said. “No need to bring lawyers into this.”

  I nodded.

  “You’ve already moved out.”

  “It’s not like that. You wanted to move down here. I was just doing what you wanted.”

  “We’ve been through this a million times.” She handed me the pen. “Just sign the papers.”

  I looked through them. Everything came at me in a blur of legal jargon. I took several deep breaths. I focused on the dark ink, the swirls on the paper. I cleared my mind enough to read. Everything seemed fair. Nothing looked underhanded. I thought about what I’d left in Fresno, and it was a lot, of course, but I narrowed my thoughts down to what material possessions I had left there. The only thing I still cared about was my record collection. I asked my wife to box it up and mail it to me.

  “I can’t,” she said. “I sold it on eBay. You had some valuable stuff there.”

  “Christ, I know that.”

  She tucked her hair behind her ear. I watched the flow of the hair all the way down to her white, cashmere sweater. “Well, anyway,” she said, “the money’s already spent. No use crying over it.”

  I held her glance for a minute, looking not so much at her eyes as at the thick eyeliner painted above her lashes. Images of album covers flickered in my mind, fighting images of Fresno and fifteen years of marriage. They whipped up a tornado and spun through the alleys of my brain. I signed the papers. I said, “There’s a notary back by where Clint Dempsey pooped. I’ll get this taken care of right now. Have some baklava.”

  She nodded.

  I rolled my new bike out the front door and raced down the hill. Wet ocean air cut through my long-sleeved t-shirt. Red lights of passing cars mingled with the white lines of the bike path. The bike shifted effortlessly into the highest gear. I reached the notary just as he was closing up for the night. For one green picture of Alexander Hamilton printed on US mint paper, he ended my part in the marriage.

  I raced the bike back up the hill to my apartment. When I got there, the apartment was empty. The only traces of her were the dirty dishes in the sink and the stamped envelope for the clerk of courts back in Fresno. She took the baklava with her.

  She took my dog, too.

  10

  I wanted to get in touch with Eric from Roads and Grounds, but I didn’t know how. He had no direct extension. I could only contact him through Roads and Grounds, and what I wanted to talk to him about had nothing to do with Roads and Grounds. Hunting him down on the roads and grounds of the psych hospital was a futile pursuit. Eric was a veteran from the Winfield University days. He knew every hiding space on the hundred-acre campus. If you wanted to talk to Eric, you had to wait until he wanted to talk to you.

  I spent a week figuring that out. One week of keeping my head down, writing grants, making follow-up calls, preparing budgets, meeting with administrators, dotting i’s, crossing t’s, dodging the dual diagnosis dorm, not calling the waitress and in fact putting her phone number through the paper shredder because I knew enough to know that the last thing I needed wrapped above the heels of a divorce was a barbed wire tattoo. One week not catching the bus to Fresno to make things work, to get back my wife or my dog, to give up the pursuit of reclaiming my middle class status and return to the halcyon days of trying to save a small part of the world that didn’t want to be saved, at least not in the way I wanted to save it. One week of looking at an envelope full of hundred dollar bills—a hundred of them—and drumming my fingers.

  I wanted to talk to Eric because the next step was figuring out what Dr. Bishop was up to and whether or not I wanted to go against all better instincts and sell that information. Since I seemed to have no other recourse, I squeezed my eyes tight and thought as hard as I could. I envisioned a corkboard floating in the ether above the psych hospital covered with flyers and notes and notices advertising the futile endeavors and unanswered claims of the patients and staff. I pinned my own note on that corkboard. It read, “Eric, contact me.” Within an hour of pinning that unconscious note, there was a knock on my office door. Eric poked his head in the doorway. “Routine smoke alarm check,” he said.

  I waved him in.

  Eric opened the metal door, strolled across the concrete, though carpeted, floor of my office, and went over to the smoke alarm that was bolted to one of the four concrete walls in my office. Concrete walls that supported the concrete floor above me. I drummed my fingers on my metal office desk and added up all the flammable things in front of me: one stack of grant paperwork, files of other working grants in a metal file cabinet, three pieces of crumpled paper in the metal trash basket, the wooden office chair I sat on, and perhaps the acoustic ceiling tile. I even doubted that you could draw a flame out of the flat, synthetic fiber carpet glued to the floor. It would probably just melt.

  Eric said, “Cover your ears.” I did. He pushed the test button on the smoke alarm. A loud, shrill, continuous beep bounced off the four concrete walls. I hadn’t hung up so much as a picture in my office so there was nothing to absorb the alarm sound except the books on my bookshelf, which, on second thought, could’ve been used for a little fire. An auto-de-fé all their own. The alarm vibrated throughout the room for a few seconds until Eric took his finger off the button. “Everything looks good here,” he said.

  “Safety first.”

  Eric shook his finger. “Safety never takes a back seat.”

  I smiled.

  Eric took a seat in the chair in front of my desk. He crossed his legs. His fingers stroked the heel of his brown work boots. “Sorry to hear abou
t your dog,” he said.

  “How did you know?”

  “The surveillance camera. I saw him walk out your front door with a pair of stockinged legs and clunky shoes.”

  “That he did.”

  “Too bad. Good dog. He’d wag his tail like a motherfucker when he knew you were coming home.”

  “The camera showed you all of that?”

  “That’s what it’s for.”

  “And what does it show you now?”

  “Nothing. An empty floor. Your legs walking in the door. You don’t even go outside like you used to.”

  “I don’t have a dog to walk anymore.”

  “You still have an outside to go to.” Eric had a week’s worth of stubble on his cheeks sticking out like sagebrush on a hard-packed desert floor. He scratched his new beard. His fingers grazed the barbs of hair. “I stopped watching. You’re so depressed, you’re depressing me.”

  I nodded. “You can come back to get your camera anytime you want.”

  “Nah.” Eric shook his head. “Hang on to it. Maybe you’ll get your dog back.”

  I picked up my stack of papers, tapped them against the desk even though they were already in order and formed a perfectly rectangular pile, and set them back down. I picked up a spare pencil and dropped it into the pencil cup. With nothing else left to straighten up on my desk, I grabbed a toy. It was a tiny plastic wind-up bird. When its spring was wound, the bird slowly dipped his beak down to the desk, came within a breath of actually touching the desk, and did a back flip. My wife had bought it for me at some long forgotten toy store. She’d said, “It was so cute, I just had to have it.” But she gave it to me instead even though I didn’t have to have it. Now the bird was a nervous habit of mine. I wound it up. I let it forever peck at a non-existent worm. I condemned it to the Sisyphean task of doing a back flip at the exact moment when it came closest to reaching that phantom worm.

  I wound the toy and let it flip. I said, “Can I see that surveillance tape?”