The Fainting Room (20 page)
Authors: Sarah Pemberton Strong
One afternoon between shows she went to check on them. There was no work to be done at the moment, but often she would stand watching them and if no one else was around, she’d talk to them through the bars. During the morning cleaning she had, on her own initiative, given them extra straw. The straw cost more than sawdust, but she had noticed the tigers preferred it, and when Hermann, the owner, wasn’t looking, she’d pitched in extra. Now, she was pleased to see, both tigers lolled on their straw piles. Of course it had worked, she told herself, who wouldn’t rather lie on something more like a grassy plain and less like a metal floor.
“I understand you,” she said under her breath. Glancing behind her to be sure no one was paying attention, Evie went and stood before the cage. “I gave you guys that straw,” she said, a little louder, willing them to look in her direction.
The tigers ignored her. She could see the sides of their bodies rise and fall beneath the radiance of their fur. Suddenly she had an enormous desire to put her hands into that fur, to stroke them. She had touched them a few times when she helped the trainer rotate them into the ring so their cages could be cleaned, but those were fast slaps on the haunches under the trainer’s direction. What she wanted was to caress their enormous heads the way Hermann did during the act, to scratch them under the chins as if they were giant house cats, to feel their heavy skulls butt up against her hand. Evie went around to the meat truck. No one was nearby.
She unlocked the silver door and climbed in, took a chunk of meat from the thawing pieces that were supposed to be for that evening. If she dropped the meat just inside the bars of one of the cages, the tiger would eat it with its flanks pressed up against the iron bars and then she could put her hand against that fur.
But no—the tiger called Bathsheba raised her head from the meat when she felt Evie’s touch and hooked a claw neatly into the back of her forearm, tore down. Evie’s scream brought a dozen people running; the torn tendon, pale and sinewy amidst the blood, got her a trip to the emergency room and forty-seven stitches.
What happened, Hermann wanted to know when she came back from St. Mary’s. The meat had disappeared into Bathsheba’s stomach immediately, so there was no evidence.
“I was just standing next to the cage and Bathsheba swatted me,” Evie said.
“And why were you standing there in the first place?”
Evie shrugged. The painkillers were making her feel dopey.
“Well?”
She looked up at Hermann. “I wanted to touch her,” she said, knowing even through the fog of Percocet that it was the wrong thing to say.
Hermann exploded. “What are you, a townie? These are wild animals, not pets. They’re trained, not tame.” He began yelling at her in German, and then, switching back to English, he fired her.
When her hand healed, an angry pink scar was part of it. When she looked down at it, Evie felt a sense of kinship with the tigers, as if something of their strength and frustration had been imparted to her through the tearing of her hand. Part of their essential tigerness: their color, their danger, their heat.
Evelyn was brought out of this memory by the sound of Melvin scuttling up over the edge of the terra cotta pot that held the ficus tree. Where was Ingrid? Surely not still in the bathroom? She stood up and went to the door of the sun room. There was the sound of the typewriter coming from upstairs. Evelyn felt a rush of disappointment and then anger. Why hadn’t Ingrid come back? Just when they were having fun, having a real conversation?
Sucker
, the ghost of Joe Cullen said.
, the ghost of Joe Cullen said.
Well, maybe it was stupid to think Ingrid wanted to be friends. And maybe it was stupid to want to be friends with her in the first place; she was so weird. Evelyn looked back at the iguana, who was lying in the flowerpot. It didn’t seem like Ingrid to just leave Melvin there. Evelyn dragged the chaise closer to the window so she could stroke him under the chin. Animals were a comfort. They did what they did because it was dictated by their nature, and if you understood their nature, you understood them. It was
possible
to understand them. Whereas looking at Ingrid she felt she understood nothing. The same with Ray; he was her husband, but what did she really know of him? She could predict his opinion about, say, a building, or his taste in shirts, but she didn’t know what it was like to be who he was. Was he happy? Was he actually happy being married to her, or was he just pretending? And what did she understand about herself, even, when it was clear that
her
answer to that question was much closer to “pretending” than to “actually.” Because there was no reason for such dissatisfaction. Ray was a good man, and this was what she’d always wanted.
possible
to understand them. Whereas looking at Ingrid she felt she understood nothing. The same with Ray; he was her husband, but what did she really know of him? She could predict his opinion about, say, a building, or his taste in shirts, but she didn’t know what it was like to be who he was. Was he happy? Was he actually happy being married to her, or was he just pretending? And what did she understand about herself, even, when it was clear that
her
answer to that question was much closer to “pretending” than to “actually.” Because there was no reason for such dissatisfaction. Ray was a good man, and this was what she’d always wanted.
“Why do you love me?” she asked him once, in the early weeks after they were married. The question caught Ray off guard and he’d only kissed her and said, “Because you’re wonderful.” That was no real answer and he must have known it, for after they’d gone to bed he got up again without waking her; in the morning she found a single red tulip in a bud vase on her nightstand. When she put her nose to the blossom she saw the words—tiny perfect letters Ray had inked, one line on each of the tulip’s velvety petals:
Why do I love you?
Because without you I was dying inside
Because the color of your hair has dyed my blood
Because my blood could never have dreamed you
Because you are brave and haven’t yet dreamed it
Because you taught my heart to open—
Petals stamen pollen
from closed bud
12.
“Hello,” said Ray, looking up from sorting mail as Ingrid came into the kitchen. “You’ve got a card.”
Ingrid looked at the picture. It was a photo of the Sahara hotel in Las Vegas, one of the free postcards that hotels put on the bureau in every room along with the notepad and the ballpoint pen.
She turned it over.
Hi, Sweetie,
Greetings from the city that’s the civil engineering feat of the century. Got a 3 day weekend & Linda met me here. Wish you could have come too—we took an amazing tour of Hoover Dam you would have loved. Linda won $300 at the slots! Plan on coming back to Melvin for August—I ’ll be home the 3rd, will call you beforehand to arrange your flight.
Love,
Your Dad
This message annoyed Ingrid in so many ways that for a moment she could not formulate a coherent thought about any of them. She tore the Sahara in half, an 8.9 earthquake, in half again, the shifting of the tectonic plates sending the nuclear reactor in Diablo Canyon into meltdown, and threw the pieces of the Sahara’s cheesy dome and imported palm trees into the kitchen wastebasket.
Ignoring Ray’s “Is anything wrong?” she banged out the back door onto the porch, lit a cigarette, and inhaled several times as fast and deep as she could until she felt light-headed. Only then could she begin her catalogue of grievances.
First, Linda and her father on a long weekend in Vegas was a repulsive thought to begin with. Then, there was the matter of Linda winning $300 at slots: her father thought people who gambled were idiots, he’d always said so. “The house always wins in the end,” he’d told Ingrid. “It’s a mathematical fact.” Third, it was absolutely true she would have loved the Hoover Dam, and her dad knew this, since he wrote it in the postcard, so how could he have gone without her? And worst of all was the last part of the postcard, his assumption that she would fly back to Melvin in August. She would not—she could not end up back on Cactus Flower Drive for a month, or worse, in Linda’s condo complex. Either way she’d have to listen to Melanie prattle about horses and boys, and watch her father turn into an idiot because of Linda, and deal with Linda bugging her about her clothes and her hair and her bad attitude. She’d be trapped under the constant soul-sucking gaze of people who would like her better if she were someone else. No way.
Ray came out onto the deck and sat down on the step beside her.
“Letter from home?” he asked.
“You saw yourself it was a postcard.”
“True. And accuracy is important: postcard, then.” He paused. “Want to talk about it?”
“What is this, an episode of
After School Special
?”
After School Special
?”
“All right—” Ray stood up. “I’ll take that as a ‘no.’”
He went back inside. Evelyn was just coming in, a paper bag of groceries in each arm. He took the bags from her and set them on the counter, kissed his wife.
“You’re home early,” she said. “Dinner won’t be ready for an hour at least.”
“I snuck out of the office,” said Ray. “I’m hoping no one will notice how much work I have left to do on the Goldstein job if they don’t actually see me sitting at my desk doing it. It’ll just look like a desk; not
my
desk.” He opened the freezer, got out the ice tray and shook a few ice cubes into a glass, added gin. “Dunlap’s in a wretched mood. He already called me in for one bawling-out yesterday, and I had the feeling if I stayed in the office today, I’d get another. Or bear the brunt of some idiosyncratic change he’s agreed to make on a project that should have been finalized a month ago.”
my
desk.” He opened the freezer, got out the ice tray and shook a few ice cubes into a glass, added gin. “Dunlap’s in a wretched mood. He already called me in for one bawling-out yesterday, and I had the feeling if I stayed in the office today, I’d get another. Or bear the brunt of some idiosyncratic change he’s agreed to make on a project that should have been finalized a month ago.”
“Mmm,” Evelyn said, gazing into the open kitchen cabinets at the rows of canned food, an abstracted expression on her face.
Ray felt rebuked. Why did he bother explaining what was going on at work if she didn’t bother to really listen? He watched her a moment, then asked, “What are you doing?”
“Just figuring out what to do with my chicken.”
“Want some help? We could do a Julia Child
poulet a l’estragon
.”
poulet a l’estragon
.”
“Actually I’m going to try something I saw in a magazine.”
“What magazine?”
“I forget, I cut the recipe out a while ago. Why?”
“Just asking.” He was wondering which he should steel himself for:
Woman’s Day
favored canned, heavily sugared fruit whenever possible, adding cling peaches or maraschino cherries in the most incongruous places, whereas
Redbook
preferred to ruin a meal by dumping canned soup over it. Ray wanted a nice roast chicken with tarragon—an easy dish; there was fresh tarragon right out there in the herb garden, practically crying out to be sautéed in butter. It was perfectly reasonable to ask for something specific for dinner once in a while.
Woman’s Day
favored canned, heavily sugared fruit whenever possible, adding cling peaches or maraschino cherries in the most incongruous places, whereas
Redbook
preferred to ruin a meal by dumping canned soup over it. Ray wanted a nice roast chicken with tarragon—an easy dish; there was fresh tarragon right out there in the herb garden, practically crying out to be sautéed in butter. It was perfectly reasonable to ask for something specific for dinner once in a while.
He mixed himself a gin and tonic, took a long sip and tried to swallow his irritation along with it. There was no point in pressing the dinner suggestion. Every time he offered any help of a culinary nature, the evening seemed to end in tears. And he didn’t have the energy for it, not tonight. He wanted to enjoy his drink, have a quiet dinner, and finish writing chapter three of
Victorian Architecture: A Treatise
.
Victorian Architecture: A Treatise
.
“If anyone wants me,” he said, “I’ll be up in the fainting room.”
“What are you doing in there?”
“Working on my book.” He tried to ignore the can of Campbell’s in her hand.
“But why in that tiny room? I thought that was just Ingrid’s thing.”
“I can’t concentrate in the study with that garbage bag staring me in the face. Remind me tomorrow morning, would you, to call about getting that window repaired?”
“Yes,” Evelyn said, and she went toward him suddenly and kissed him on the cheek.
He recognized the gesture as an act of contrition but he was not sure for what. She kissed him again.
“I’ll call you when dinner’s ready,” she said. “Where’s Ingrid?”
“Outside being Garbo.”
“What?”
“She vants to be alone.”
Ray took his gin and tonic and went up to the fainting room. In the typewriter carriage was a piece of paper. He put on his glasses and read:
Emily Roseine looked at me. She didn’t get it, but with looks like hers she didn’t have to.
“I’ll get down to business, Detective Slade,” she said. “My husband is the president of an important company. Axtex. You may have heard of it.”
“They make bombs,” I said.
Emily Roseine wrinkled her nose. “An ugly word. The term Axtex prefers is ‘payload delivery systems.’ In any case, my husband is missing. I can’t go to the police.”
She used some more of her drink. She bit her lip. It was a full round lip that looked good being bitten.
“Knock, knock,” Ingrid said from the doorway.
Ray jumped. “I didn’t hear you come upstairs.”
“I’m quiet,” said Ingrid. She leaned against the doorframe and pushed the toe of her sneaker against the jamb. “Whatcha doing?”
He reached for the pile of paper that was chapter three of
Victorian Architecture: A Treatise
and pulled it toward him. “I was just about to look over the section on the vernacular builders’ influence on Queen Anne style. Which reminds me, I owe you some typing wages.”
Victorian Architecture: A Treatise
and pulled it toward him. “I was just about to look over the section on the vernacular builders’ influence on Queen Anne style. Which reminds me, I owe you some typing wages.”
“I haven’t been keeping track.”
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