The Voices in Our Heads (22 page)

“I’ll look into it, Tim,” she managed. “Maybe I will reevaluate.”

“Don’t take too long, Bucky. My old man keeps harping on me to let him know how it’s going, ya hear?”

She looked over behind her shoulder but he was already gone.

Whatever. The message on her computer was just awful, an assault from Laure, a ranting about her writing, and her tendency to lose focus, and her alleged generalizations, and her failure to include certain unnamed yet crucial details regarding specifics in the archetype in all its Edenic, Pentecostal, Rosicrucian, shamanic, alchemical, and Newtonian reverberations. In other words, start the chapter over again. Oh, no problem! It was only fifty or so pages to begin with!

Ring tone: the Chipmunks singing “God Bless America.” She had to search a moment to locate her handbag and a bit longer to find her cell, buried deep in the crammed monster that was really an oversized artist’s portfolio rucksack.

“Hiyah.”

“Mommy?”

Becky leaned back in her chair, closed her wet eyes, and smiled.

“Bean sprout.”

“I wanna be girly and Daddy won’t play tea party with me.”

“Daddy isn’t the tea party type.”

“Why not? He makes me mad.”

“He makes everyone mad, honey. That’s his appeal.”

“Like a banana peel?”

“Exactly. Go to the fridge and bring him something.” Becky found a tissue, dabbed her eyes, got up, and moved over to the window. There was mist at the edges and sleet tapping across it intermittently. Below, students huddled and hunched inside their jackets shuffled along the crosswalks over toward McGill and Henderson. On some level beneath her surface thoughts, she realized she was looking to see if anyone else besides Richardson had the brazen audacity to wear gym shorts out there in the heart of a winter storm.

“Ma!”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“He doesn’t like food. He doesn’t like anything when he’s working.” Her voice went down to a whisper. “I hate him, you know.”

“No, you don’t. Is he up in the office?”

“Yes.”

“Is he reading the big thick book that looks like it was made for a giant?”

“Uh-huh.”

Becky moved hair off her face.

“You’ll have to tea party by yourself for about an hour, and then Daddy will be human again.” It was one of the many times a patient of Bruce’s requested more aggressive treatment, probably one of these lovely bargains where he’d gain six months and lose an eye and a testicle. Research time. Best not to go near him at the moment. Bruce was a dedicated oncologist and capable provider, certainly responsible enough to manage Julie’s school trip schedules and inoculations and clothing needs and dental appointments. He was just a shitty father in all the other ways that counted. He’d been a shitty husband too, and the split had been amicable, always contingent upon the completion of Becky’s doctorate when she would take Julie back for herself, tea parties and all, at least in Becky’s mind. The fact that she hadn’t quite gotten around to squaring this with Bruce wasn’t finally the point. She’d get to it, oh yes, someday she would nip it in the bud and right the course of this family ship, you bet. Outside, something moved from behind the massive oak at the far corner of the walkway.

“Julie!”

“What? Don’t yell!”

“Get your father and bring him to the phone. Now!”

“But you said when he’s working—”

“Now, goddamn it!”

Her daughter dropped the phone on the other end, muttering something, possibly in tears, but Becky didn’t bother deciphering it.

The thing was outside. The thing from the overpass. From behind, it had reached a big gloved paw around the tree and then leaned out a bit. The fur of its hood whipped in the wind, and the darkened face area seemed to angle up, engaging Becky in a direct stare. A wave of sleet spattered the window, making her jump. It dripped down, leaving blurry streaks. Becky rubbed at the inside of it uselessly, and when it had run off to channels, she saw that the area around the oak tree had been vacated.

“Becky!”

“What!” she nearly screamed into the phone.

“It’s me. There’s no need to raise your voice. What is it?”

She told him.

“That’s ridiculous,” he said. “Come over at nine. I am in need.”

“OK,” she said softly.

They still slept together. No, actually to hell with the euphemisms, they still fucked. Sleeping had nothing to do with it, and an outsider would think the whole thing humorous, especially considering Bruce’s shortcomings. Right off, he was dorky as all hell to look at with his thick lips, slumped shoulders, pot belly, and duck feet. And on top of that, he was a chronic whiner, always with nosebleeds, or a knee brace issue, or the jaw that was clicking and driving him nuts, or the joint in his big toe that was sore. Every month or so he would agonize over his throat hurting on one side or the other, and he was convinced there was some imbalance in his inner ear caused by planes flying too close overhead. It had taken years for them to find a place of employment he could stomach. His complaint was that he had some kind of eye allergy that made him extra sensitive to mold in the walls. Dating him had been an absolute carnival in terms of oddball freakery, and Becky had always seen it as some fantastic artistic endeavor. He farted in public, analyzed incessantly, dragged you down the long road of his neurotic little life journey, and actually had the balls once to show up at his brother Steven’s apartment for a Super Bowl game with his laundry. He asked Steven’s wife to throw it in for him, for God’s sake. “What?” she’d said with a bright little grin. He’d shoved the basket in her arms then and muttered something about her knowing her own washer better than he ever could. It wasn’t that Bruce was impolite. He was just direct, without filters. The family wanted him to watch TV with them? Well, he had laundry. Solve the problem with the quickest efficiency.

She had disconnected the call and was rocking a bit, the phone still resting against her cheek. She actually ached inside; GOD, he was a good lover. She frowned, hated herself for the needs she couldn’t control. It was absolutely oxymoronic, and there had to be a better term for it, like socio-sexual dichotomy or something. He was the greatest nerd on the face of the planet, ugly as a troll, and the most masculine person she’d ever known. With all his little physical traumas, he was insistent on keeping his membership at the Jewish Y current, spending most of his time in the pool (for stamina) and in the weight room for his little finger and wrist strengthening exercises (for her, not him). He knew what she wanted and went about maintaining it with such robotic efficiency, such mechanical ferocity, that it made her knees weaken. He’d asked what she needed through the early years, and probed and researched and studied until he’d developed a routine that was an absolute symphony.

Two years ago, he’d been working late at the hospital and Becky had been considering writing an article on pornography, relating it to Swift’s fascination with urine and nipples. She’d turned on HBO, cued up some late-night special on sex toys, and, after skipping over the introduction, observed a women being screwed by a mechanical dildo machine called “The Bunny Fucker,” a simple piston device on a four-legged tripod, penetrating the woman from behind as she stood, legs spread a bit, bent at the waist over a barrel, elbows propped on it. She was coming and sweating and moaning as if possessed by aliens, and when it was done, the machine just slowed to a dead stop. Function over, time to clean and store.

“My God,” Becky had managed, arms folded across her stomach. “That’s just like Bruce.”

She’d gone downstairs, opened the cabinet above the sink, and pawed through the cans of Campbell tomato no emergency was ever dire enough for, and the sleeves of saltines that must have been from the seventies. She’d reached into the back and gotten down the half-gallon jug of Zinfandel. When Bruce had finally gotten home, she only remembered slurring something like, “When you fill my vagina, you empty my heart,” and the next morning she asked for a separation. He asked for Julie and the house, and she agreed (at least for now) as long as he bought her a nice little place close by. There, she kept up her writing and her planning and her oddities, while Bruce kept on with his own breed of weirdness. And after they did the deed nowadays, at least it was clear that she was supposed to leave. It was all good, well, at least manageable in terms of honesty and expectations, though she knew she had to do a bit better with Julie than she had lately. Oh, she was going to rescue her right after crawling out from under the rock Laure had lowered on top of her, sure, but what about now? Bruce certainly put food on the table for Julie, but he never played with her. In his own awkward way he held her when she needed it and kissed her goodnight and made sure the covers were properly tucked at the bottom of the bed for a “maximum warmth factor,” but he didn’t braid her hair for her, or take her sledding, or watch the latest Toy Story movie, or bring home a surprise chocolate bar once in awhile.

For some reason, that last image of a big Cadbury or Carmello or good old-fashioned Hershey’s dark chocolate stuck in Becky’s head all through the 12:00 staff meeting, her lunch of a banana yogurt and a browned apple, and the 2:30 seminar, mostly abandoned because of the lethal combination of bad weather, the semi-late hour, and the fact that it was a Friday. At 3:00 her usuals showed up to hang in 329: Missy Schindler, Rachel Waters, and Lindy Michnowicz, all a bit too thin and overwhelmed, dark tragic eyes, lonely but hopeful. They brought a guy from the dorms that they had nicknamed “Fluffy” because of his hair, and Becky connected right away because he was wearing a knit winter hat indoors with tassels and a pompom. Connecting was her thing after all, and her office was often jammed with these geeky groupie types; yes, work was work, but she had to live a little too, right? At 4:40, she gathered her materials, stocking up for the weekend, and headed home into the night, which had come on early. The wet sleet had turned to icy gusts coming across from the west. The sky was dim and the clouds black. 476 was mostly deserted, veils and curtains of powder dusting along the asphalt like ghosts.

Hershey bar. Becky didn’t want to detour all the way down to the Broomall exit to go wait on line at the Superfresh. Best to take the Springfield exit and hit the Hess at the edge of Drexel Hill. It had a candy rack, and it was on the way. Julie would be so surprised!

Becky made a left into the gas station parking lot, snow darting beneath the overhead floods in swarms. She pulled to the side between the free air pump and two green dumpsters and exited her vehicle. Her skirt flapped hard against her knees, and she put up a hand to shield her face from the pepper spray of frozen sleet. She had been polite, parking away from the gas islands, and now the walk over to the cashier shack seemed more of an ordeal than she had anticipated. Wind howled in her ears, and she squinted back to see if the no-parking zone to the side of the booth was still vacated.

Something moved back to the left, across Route 1. She saw it at the edge of her peripheral vision and turned toward it. Nothing. A deserted highway, the streetlight suspended on a dull silver pole hanging across and bobbing slightly, the Drexel line shopping center on the other side, parking area mostly vacant except for two cars in front of the nail shop.

Then she saw it again, from behind the Goodwill box at the near side of the lot over there. There was something perched on it, something at the back top edge that looked like a huge rat or possum or something with fur, bristling in the stiff wind. It slowly rose upward and it wasn’t a rat or a possum or a lost kitty cat, it was a dark blue parka hood with the face blackened out, and he had been crouching back there. Now he stood tall, chest and shoulders visible above the top of the container, staring at her across Route 1.

Becky looked over toward the booth with its three windows, the bookends marked
Snack Corner
and
Beverage Corner,
racks in front of each. The middle one was unoccupied; she could see what looked like cigarettes stacked on the back wall, or at least it looked that way from this distance.

Back across the street, the parka man had moved from behind the Goodwill box. He stood beside it now, long arms hanging down, billowing snow pants, huge black boots. Becky actually considered going and rapping on the booth glass just to have a witness, but changed her mind. This was silly. Time to get back in the warm car, get on the cell, and call the police.

She walked back to the driver’s side door, fingered the keys, pulled up the wrong one, and dropped them.

“Fuck,” she said, bending, grabbing, scratching a knuckle on the cold concrete. She straightened and looked across the roof of her car. The thing had advanced his position to the middle of Route 1, standing on the double yellow line between a cross-hatch of traffic, feet spread, hands dangling. Becky had a scream building in her nose, and she tried the keys and forced the wrong one, the one she always mixed up because her copy to Bruce’s Mercedes was so similar to her own, and she tore it out, shoved in her own, and wrenched open the door.

By the time she turned the ignition, he had gained the near curb, and the engine roared on, and Becky grabbed the wheel and screeched the tires. She burst forward, almost crashing into the Dasani ice machine, and pulled a hard left past the diesel pump. She gave a wild glance for oncoming traffic, and since there was no time to seek out the exit recess in the curb she just shot the edge, bumper coming down with a metallic scrape that she was sure threw sparks. She came back around, ran the red light she had just observed bobbing in the wind, and gave a wild stare back at the gas station parking area.

No one was there. Dead empty.

She drove home, tears streaming down her face, a crooked grin plastered up the side of her cheek.

What an asshole!

He’d tucked his yellow notepad in the back of his pants, and now he was adjusting his hat, forefinger and thumb gently pinching the front brim, fingers of the other hand delicately supporting the back. Oh, so quaint!