First You Try Everything (7 page)

1. Get rid of crap!!!!!

2. Go running!!!!

3. Buy guinea pig
food!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

4. Call
Mom!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

5. Get rid of more
crap!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

She had stopped making those lists. Everything got
worse after she stopped making those lists.

His new coat, the long black coat, was alive. It
had captured him. She took a gulp of black air and then another and looked up at
the dark clouds sailing across the moon.

“This is just a stage you're going through, Ben.
Some midlife crisis thing. Just don't panic.” She tried to sling her arm around
him, but her arm wouldn't move. Her arm was now made of iron. She managed to
stand up on wobbly legs that were not her own. “Let us go home.”

Let us go home.
It rang
in her head.

The two walked to Ben's car, somehow, in silence.
Evvie watched her black sneakers moving across the cement. She hummed.
Let us go home.
She sat beside him in silence,
watching the darting snow like stitches try to mend the gaping dark.

W
hen
they entered their front hall, Evvie flicked on the light. “Really, Ben, people
go through these
stages
. Whole books are written
about it. Apparently it's human. Obviously.” She swallowed down a thick stone of
terror.

“Please don't say that.”

“Why?”

“It's the hardest thing I've ever done in my life,
and you dismissing me by calling it a stage, Evvie—you need to hear me. You can
stay in the house and I'll keep paying the rent for a while. You won't be
poor—I'll see to that. You can go back to teaching. And you should charge Cedric
more rent.”

“Poor? I won't be poor? Are you insane? Back to
teaching? I was never a teacher!”

“You said you wanted to work with those kids at the
wildlife center again.”

“I did not!”

“You can have whatever you want. And I'll move and
you'll stay in the house.”

“The house,” she said, stupefied so that for a
moment she literally saw stars. “But it's a houseboat. The house turned into a
boat. We're going overboard.” She reached out for his arm. “We're at sea! We're
out at sea, Ben! You and me! Stop it!”

“Evvie.”

“Man overboard!” she cried. Her jaw trembled. She
put her forehead against the wall and talked to the floor. “When did you make
this decision? And why wasn't I
included
? Why did
you not bother to include me, Ben? You're my best friend! You're all I have!”
Her voice was all wrong. She wanted to plug her ears. She couldn't look at
him.

“That's part of the problem. Don't you see? We've
been strangling each other for years.”

“No, Ben, I'm sorry! Ben, I'm sorry! I'm so sorry
for everything! I'll calm down, I'll change, I'll go on meds, I'll go to a
marriage counselor, a therapist, whatever you want, I promise!”

“Evvie, please.”

“I'll take salsa dancing lessons! We both will! Or
go to China! Whatever! Shake things up!”

“Please, Evvie.” He pinched the bridge of his
nose.

“Please what?”

“I grew, Evvie. I grew in unexpected ways. I wasn't
even trying to.”

“Grew? That's what you call this? Grew?”

“Yes!”

“All you have to do is wait, and I'll grow too. I
can grow! I like growing! Whatever you need, whatever you want, just—let me
grow! Maybe I just need some help but I can
definitely
grow!”

“Please don't make this harder.”

How could she possibly make this harder? This was
so hard she could not believe it was happening.

She walked to the closet and searched for his old
parka. She put it on. It still smelled faintly of his body. The smell of her
real home. The only real home she'd ever had! Didn't he understand that?

She ran outside and sat on the front stoop. The
skin of her arms was melting. Melting right off the bones. Her face was melting
too, like in a horror movie. She buried her hot face in the parka and held the
skin of her cheeks tightly to hold it in place. He opened the door and stood
there behind her. “I really didn't want this to be so dramatic,” he said,
coolly, a refined stranger with a well-modulated voice. “I wanted to talk like
two adults facing down a really difficult situation.”

What the?

She was quiet. And then, after a while, she spoke
in a thick southern accent.
“I don't know about you, but I
want my chicken to be cut in the throat, hung upside down and bled to death,
that's just how we do things here in America.”
She was impressed with
how authentic she sounded. She started to laugh.

“Evvie, stop! Come inside. Please.”

“You goddamn animal rights
people are worser terrorists than those goddamn al-Qaeda folks. It's
unbelievable!”
She was shouting. A woman across the street, Peg, an
ex-cop who had once asked Ben, “Is your wife a little different?” offered a
worried wave before slipping into her Chevy.

He yanked her inside. She resisted for a moment,
then went limp. He steered her upstairs, pulling her by the hand. Upstairs he
laid her down in bed, covered her up. She shook as if with fever, held her eyes
wide open. Besides the shock a strange spirit of inevitability was already
making itself known. He sat with her and held her hand, his profile set in anger
even as his hands had been soft, and his voice the softest she'd ever heard
it.

“I'm really, really sorry, Evvie.”

She looked up at him. She wanted a thermometer. She
wanted to throw up.

“It's because I couldn't have a baby,” she said.
“Admit it.”

“No! That's not it.”

“You're lying!”

“I swear to God the baby isn't it.”

“We should've adopted! A little girl like in my
dream. She'd be in first grade now. Or a boy. Or both! We could still have
both!”

“Stop, Evvie, it's not about that.”

“Then why? What are you doing? Really, Ben, what
are you doing?”

“We just grew apart. It's not that
unusual
.”

“That's the problem! You want to be
usual
? Is that the goal? And what about going to a
marriage counselor?”

“I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I never planned this.”
His eyes
were
sorry. They terrified her.

“Aren't you attracted to me anymore? You just fell
out of love?”

“It's not that simple.”

“Maybe it is. Aren't you? Attracted to me?
Anymore?”

“It has nothing to do with that.”

“Nothing?”

His voice was different. He was a different Ben.
She faced it now. She had imagined his changes belonged to the world of
surfaces—the job demanding a certain attire, a boost to the ego. He had to put
behind him the pushcart guy, the musician, the self that had relished being on
the margins, the perspective this had afforded them, or so she'd imagined. He
had stepped into conventional, manly success, and conventional, manly success
had stepped into him.

But she had trusted the soul could survive the
changes the personality endured. Trusted the soul.

And she was right to trust, she saw, looking up at
him now. His anger had abandoned him. His face had been left naked. He was Ben
and nobody but Ben. In his dark eyes she saw his love, and for a moment she
smiled; it didn't matter that this love was dependent on his sorrow, on his
ensuing freedom from her, his guilty relief that he'd finally said the words he
must have been carrying inside him for months.

Her heart was big and opening, breaking in half
like a drawbridge.

She looked at his face. Now that he had crossed
this radical, irreparable line, he loved her again, the way you love your old
town as the train pulls out of the station.

She sat up and pressed her head against his as hard
as she could, as if she could make their two heads into one. They'd done this
when they'd first gotten together.

“Sleep with me,” she said.

“I can't.”

“You have to say
good-bye
to me as a lover or I won't believe any of this.”

“I can't do that. That would be cruel.”

“It's terrible! The last time we made love I didn't
even know it was the last time! And you did! You said
good-bye
without me knowing it was good-bye?”

She turned on her side, away from him. She curled
into a ball.

“I didn't know, either,” he said. “I didn't know
anything.” His voice was tired, defeated.

“Where will you live?” she said.

“I've rented an apartment.”

“Oh. Did you fall in love with someone else?”

“No.”

“There's nobody else?”

“No.”

“Where's this apartment?”

“Bloomfield.”

“Bloomfield? Why Bloomfield? And why are you
leaving? Tell me again?”

“Because I've changed. I need different things. I
don't want to drag this out and get bitter.”

“Changed. Different things. Drag this out.” She
sounded like a shell-shocked parrot.

“People get bitter when they drag things out.”

“It's a good thing this is all just a dream,
partner,” she said, suddenly deeply exhausted. “And why am I so tired? Did you
slip me a drug of some kind? Have you tried to murder me to make your getaway
easier?” She smiled; her face felt strangely lit from within for a moment, as if
it could serve as a night-light if need be.

“We'll separate for a bit,” she said. “People do
that. But it won't be forever. I can feel it. We'll be finding our way back
together even as we're moving apart. Happens all the time. Remember those people
in Boston? What were their names? Finnolis?”

He narrowed his eyes, looked toward the window, the
moon, and she felt his enormous sadness and how heavy it made him feel.

“That Barb Finnoli went around the bend one year,
then came right back the next. And then they were so happy. And they realized it
was mostly the stress of their life that split them up. It wasn't that they
didn't love each other.”

He kept looking at the moon.

“Can't you just change your mind?” she said. “And
then I'll do whatever you need me to do.”

He sneezed and got up and went into the bathroom
and blew his nose. He almost never got colds.

“The stress is breaking you down. I could make you
something. Soup.”

“Please don't.”

“I think I'll get plastic surgery.”

“Jesus, Evvie, stop that. It's nothing to do with
how you look. You look great.”

“I think I'll get implants. And a new face. I think
I'll charge it on my new Visa. I could be a real knockout.”

“What the hell. Evvie, come on!”

Ruth walked into the room and jumped on the bed,
stretched out by Evvie's side, and laid her head between her paws, looking at
her. “Ruth, tell him we're mixed like cement. Tell him we're a family and this
can't happen.”

Silence.

“Your words. Mixed like cement,” she said. She was
burning like a child with a high fever and shivering. She looked at the
black-and-white poster of an old carousel in Paris that hung like a portal on
the wall; Ben could slip through. He could go anywhere. Find a young lover and
head for France and ride that carousel forever.

“Did I just get to be too much?” Evvie said.

“It's not you at all. It's me.”

“Don't say that! Feel my head. I'm burning up.”

He put his hand on her forehead and she closed her
eyes. His hand was cool and light, and then it lifted. She opened her eyes.

“Maybe I'm coming down with something,” she
said.

“You don't feel that hot to me.”

“I'm burning up.”

She thought of her mother. Even when her mother was
hungover and wore a terrible back brace, whenever any of the kids had a fever,
she would fold a cool cloth on their foreheads. She took her cell phone out of
her pocket and dialed her mother's number now, but got the answering machine.
Howdy, folks. Why
don't ya go right ahead and leave us a message
, her
mother's voice said, more like someone ready to hop on a horse than a
seventy-four-year-old in a Philadelphia row house. This had been on their
machine for years, but Evvie heard her mother's voice as if for the first time.
She tried, but couldn't speak.

Her mouth was filled, as if with newly settled
ash.

“It'll be OK, Evvie,” Ben said. She looked at
him.

Ben

B
en moved
into the second-floor apartment of a stately old brick house on a tree-lined
street, in walking distance to all the stores and restaurants on Liberty. The
wooden floors and slanted wooden pine ceiling were beautiful, honey colored, and
the windows were broad. But it wasn't well heated, and in the apartment below
him, a couple fought terribly at night. The first night he'd moved in, he'd
opened his window and leaned out, thinking he could touch the branches of a
giant pine. He'd sucked in the cold air while below him a woman's voice
screamed, “You fucking threw a gallon of milk on me? Did that really happen? You
fucking threw a gallon of milk on me?” But the milk had not doused the flames of
that fight. They'd gone on into the night while Ben lay in his bed, near the
window, watching the tree's branches lift in the wind, thinking he'd find
another apartment in the morning, fighting a feeling of despair. He'd wanted
peace and quiet more than anything.

But the next day, the couple had emerged from their
door arm and arm, smiling and wishing him a great day after telling him about
the pancakes they were headed to eat at Pamela's in Squirrel Hill. “You could
totally join us,” the young woman said, and Ben said no, thanks, but marveled at
her wide-open expression, how her eyes were washed clean of the night before,
how neither one of them looked especially tired or broken. He and Evvie had
rarely fought like that, but when they had, the next day they'd barely been able
to function. They'd moved like zombies, wept with pity as they apologized to
each other, lost their appetites, called off work. Finally they'd drink too much
wine to celebrate how the echoes of the fight were fading. Neither one of them
had been built for conflict.

H
e'd
left Evvie almost everything, taking only his clothing, some music, some books,
and the single mattress. It was like being in college again, only you were
haunted—your expectations mostly collapsed and in need of serious, and probably
impossible, restoration—and yet there were moments when part of him took flight,
through a set of heavy doors that opened to a whole new life.

Other times he'd be standing at the sink and find
himself suddenly weeping.

The simplicity of the space was both soothing and
jarring. He missed Evvie, in moments. Missed Ruth too, and in one of his dreams
the dog could talk on the phone and told him to get his ass back home. A few
times he'd driven back to the house, parked a block away, walked toward the old
front door, and almost knocked, but then at the last minute had turned away and
walked across the street to see the river below in the dusk, a view he'd taken
for granted when living there.

He'd played guitar for hours tonight and was happy
not to have Evvie in the other room wondering when he'd stop. Happy not to feel
her need so thick in the air it had been hard to breathe in that house for the
past year or more.

On the answering machine was Evvie's voice, as
always. It had been two months already and she showed no signs of accepting what
had happened. His patience was beginning to wear thin.

Hiya, Ben, just wanted to say
hi. You all right? Call me. Cedric says hi, he misses you. Not to mention
Ruth. I guess she can come stay with you next week. If you want. She seems a
little down. The vet was thinking she should go on some kind of Prozac, and
I was like, no way.

He always called her back—the first forty times
he'd been kind—and now with reluctance that bordered on anger. “I'm fine,” he
said, emphatically.

“How is that possible?”

Her voice was childlike. She had been stripped
right down to the bone. She was not angry, but bereft and confused. It was not
easy to hear. It hurt him. He braced himself against it and, like Cedric,
reminded himself that there was far worse agony in the world; plenty of things
were worse than a broken heart.

Soon cultivated anger would shift in his gut like
tectonic plates.

“Did you read about Saviour?” she said, barely
audible. Was she holding the receiver away from her mouth or just pretending to
be catatonic?

“No. Can you speak up?” Night in the window was
filled with wind and rain. He didn't want to picture her in the old house or ask
if the roof was leaking. He knew it was leaking.

“In Nairobi this stray dog, Saviour, found a
newborn baby girl in the woods. She was in a bag, and the dog dragged her across
a busy road through a barbed-wire fence and into a shed where her puppies slept.
The dog laid the baby girl down next to the puppies. The baby's picture is on
the front page of the paper, and so is the dog's.”

“That's a nice story.”

“The baby's just fine. It's a
great
story. So come back home! I'm
dying
here without you. So is Ruth. I'm
hallucinating
. Please. Just come over and watch a movie with us.
I'll make popcorn. You can still be my
friend
,
right?”

“I
can't
, Ev, at this
point. Not yet.”

“I don't get it!
Why
not?
”

She needed to have him repeat things a hundred
times. It was as if she had no brain anymore, no comprehension.

“It's not good for you to talk to me like this. It
just keeps you attached.” He walked with the phone into the kitchen, and opened
the door. The night was wild and cold, and wind washed over his face as he
closed his eyes. “It keeps you thinking like we're still married.”

“We are still married!”

“We're separated.”

“Maybe you are!”

“That's my point.”

A silence fell.

“Remember that other story about that crazy kid in
the Bronx who started hearing voices coming out of his meat?”

“Yeah.” He opened his eyes to the low moon, the
torn purple clouds.

“Well, I'm going to the Bronx to find that kid and
I'm bringing him home. That kid should be mine.”

“OK.”

“OK? Just like that?”

He stepped back, and closed the door. “You're an
adult, and a free citizen. If you want to go abscond with a psychiatric patient
in the Bronx and get arrested and go to jail, you should. By all means you
should do what you want.”

“Are you trying to be funny?”

“Maybe.”

“You don't even care that I'm going crazy?”

“I care deeply. I think you know that. But I'm not
the one to help you. The more I try to help, the worse it gets. You end up
passed out in a bar, remember?”

“You're the
only
one
who can help. I'm coming over.”

She hung up.

Then called back. “I wouldn't come over there if we
were getting nuked and you had the last fucking bomb shelter on Earth.”

“OK.”

“Oh. Isn't it sweet to have all the power in the
world, Ben? Especially on a night like this, when we're getting a tornado?”

“
Sweet
wouldn't be the
first word that came to mind. And we're not getting a tornado.”

“I really don't like how calm you sound. I really
don't. You can sit there and think how
crazy
I am,
Ben, how glad you are that you put me in the Dumpster, and then you'll hang the
phone up and forget about me within five minutes! You haven't even bothered to
check in and say hi to Cedric at Giant Eagle! And what about Ruth? We're the
discarded, I guess. On with your new life. Trading us all in like a good
American. It's become the national sport, so why not join in?”

She slammed the phone down.

For the first time, she was really angry, and he
was grateful. It meant she might be halfway normal after all.

L
ate the next night she managed to climb into his
window. Using all her strength, she'd hoisted a ladder (their landlord's ladder,
which he'd used to paint their top shutters last year) against the side of the
house, climbed up to the second-story apartment, whistling no less, and pushed
the slightly open window up as high as it would go. He watched from his mattress
as she did this. “This is not happening,” he chanted. He watched as she climbed
in through the window dressed in his old coat, his old high school football
helmet!, and flannel pajamas. No doubt she wore the helmet to protect her head
in case she fell from the ladder, but she looked insane, and now she was singing
Lou Reed's “Coney Island Baby,” a song they'd both loved.

Had to play football
for the coach . . .

“What the fuck are you—”

He sat up. It was true. This was happening. Inside
his room, she stood in the middle of the floor, hands on hips, singing. Then
stopped herself. In an almost eerily odd voice, a voice that recalled
The Wizard of Oz
, like a mix between the good and bad
witches, she said, “What have we here?”

“Evvie! What the fuck are you doing!”

For a moment he believed she really
was
crazy and had come to kill him. She breathed
heavily, stood looking at him. Did she have a gun in the coat? Was he really
asking himself this?

“This is not a dream, my friend,” she said,
whispering, as if someone might be overhearing all this. “This is not just the
glory of love.” Then she took off her coat, dropped it to the floor. “This is,
how you say? Real life.” She spoke in a Russian accent of sorts. She took off
her pajama top and stood topless, hands back on hips. A laugh escaped her.

“I have not come to collect money,” she said, and
now the accent changed. “Because you do not have it
een
you to care for the neeglected ones standing at the door of
death. Indeed, they remain numbers to you. Perhaps the universe can forgeev us
all thees how you say? Thees lack of under-stand-ing.”

She paused, breathing. She crossed her arms over
her breasts.

“This is called breaking and entering,” he said. “I
think you should climb back out now.”

“Ha! In fact it's
pitiable
that you've turned your heart into a piece of black ice.”
Now the accent was as Australian as that crocodile guy's on TV she didn't like,
but some of the words were slurred.

“Black ice being the most dangerous sort, the kind
a person can't see on the road. The killer ice, it's been called.”

Was she drunk? He thought he could smell alcohol on
her. She could never handle drinking. But always it had unleashed the performer
in her. She took off the flannel pajama pants, kicking them high in the air,
laughing a little. “Introducing. My first striptease.” She had lost so much
weight she looked ill. Ribs. The endless limbs. Finally she removed his football
helmet. Then stood naked, stepping into a streak of light from a streetlamp. She
made a microphone with her fist and spoke into it in yet another accent.

“Iss so good to be here wiz you! I know you're
awake, Meester Benjameen. And I know you want to laugh, so laugh, laugh!”

For one moment his heart ached for her.

“Jesus, Ev. I wish you could see—”

She was walking toward him, and kneeling down by
his mattress, her cold, trembling hand stroking his head. He didn't move. “Ben,
I can't
do
this,” she said, a penitent with a
desperate prayer. “You don't understand. I can't
do
this anymore. You can't just
disappear
like this.
You're not a monster, Ben. Move over—I'll sleep beside you.”

He sat up. She sat down next to him, and he held
her. “Ev, this is beyond crazy now. You need to get ahold of yourself. I keep
telling you! I sound like a broken record but you're not listening. I really
want you to reach out to people who can help.”

He was shocked at how unfamiliar her body felt, how
Lauren's body had rendered Evvie's the strange one. She kissed his cheek, and
thanked him.

“Don't thank me. Evvie. I'd be glad to—”

“I love you.”

“But if you love me, you shouldn't have broken into
my place!” he said, anger obliterating pity for a moment.

“Shhh, you're too loud. Let's just be quiet,” she
said, nuzzling into his chest.

“Please get dressed, Evvie. And please, get out.
Immediately.” He let go of her and stood up.

“What?”

“Get dressed and get out,” he said. “I really need
you to do that. This is called breaking and entering. I'm trying here to
establish—”

“So who is it, Ben? Your new secretary?” She stood
up. “When can I meet her? Is she good in bed? A real acrobat?”

Watching her get dressed, he said nothing. He
didn't even have a secretary, but to say so was futile.

“Are you on
drugs
?” she
said. “Is that what happened?”

“Could you just leave without saying another
word?”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Really?”

“Leave, or I'll call the police.”

She laughed. “You just said that, didn't you? You
actually just said you'd
call the police
. I'm gonna
quote you on that when we get back together. And please. Call the cops in right
now, because I can curl up here on the floor like the, like a dog. Like the
queen of the dog-wives, and when they come to get me I'll run to the window and
howl at the moon and then turn around so I can bite the shit out of their
ankles.”

But when he turned on the overhead light, she
looked at him with terror in her eyes, and shame. He had to look away. “Ben!”
she said. “Stop this!” He couldn't look at her. “Did you ever love me, Ben? Was
I living life in a state of delusion or what?”