False bingo, p.9
False Bingo, page 9
Bernadette forced a small smile. “Not much! You know, same old, same old.” She was not trying to blow off her friend’s request. She could not think of anything worthy to tell her. The operation occupied her mind for a moment, but Bernadette decided not to mention it. It felt melodramatic to call it an “operation.” For a brief second she considered saying something bold, like, I’m getting plastic surgery! but her mind was already three steps ahead. The joke was not that good. Her friend would express horror and then concern and then amusement. Bernadette could see it all unfold so clearly that she opted not to mention it at all.
* * *
At home that night, Bernadette tried to read her book for a while, a historical fiction that painted romance and intrigue in the court of French royalty. She couldn’t get into it, though. She mined a pen out of her purse, tucked beside her on the floor next to the bed, and set about drawing the waiter from the restaurant on an endpaper of her book. She drew his heavy brow and speckled in a five-o’clock shadow. She made his nose the same width all the way down and drew crude teeth between the lips that remained slightly parted the whole night. For his hair, she couldn’t quite remember, but she imagined it was short, and drew abbreviated straight lines crisscrossing his head, the result most comparable to a mussed haystack. Bernadette ripped the page from her book and got out of bed. She tucked the picture she’d drawn under a different corner of the realtor’s magnet. She looked into the eyes of the patient, her niece, the realtor, and the waiter.
* * *
On the bus home from work the next day, a woman was passing out flyers for a young boy who’d gone missing. Severely autistic, he’d run out the open bus door before his mother could haul him back. Bernadette knew, as soon as her hand closed around the picture, that the boy belonged on the fridge as well. On her walk from the bus, Bernadette saw a duplicate of the realty magnet still stuck to the fence mailbox of a house that wouldn’t sell. It was cracked from weather damage, but Bernadette grabbed it, wondered if her action constituted theft, told herself she was cleaning up the neighborhood.
She added the boy to the fridge, alongside the duplicate realtor, tried to cover the duplicate realtor with a corner of her portrait of the waiter, but then decided that the realtor’s twin having been added to the family of faces was a sign she belonged there. She stood, for what she felt to be a long time, looking first into the eyes of the handsome man, then her niece, then the first realtor, and, immediately after, the second realtor, then the waiter and the missing boy. In reality, this action filled only a few seconds, but Bernadette could feel a strange routine developing, and she told herself she must stop.
* * *
In the following week, Bernadette added several more faces to the fridge: a female model from a perfume ad, a headshot she grabbed from the bulletin board of a coworker’s local theater production, the illustrated portrait of a new columnist in the newspaper. Her magnets were getting weak from the weight of what they were being asked to hold.
The day for the surgery approached, and Bernadette asked her brother to accompany her to the appointment. He acted put out by having to take a day off work, but he didn’t make Bernadette say what they both knew: that he was the only one she could ask.
In the waiting room, she was too nervous to be aware of the cast of characters populating the office, but she caught her brother staring at a man whose face looked like it had been blown back by a sudden gust, and she elbowed him. She regretted her action when he responded, “What?” Everyone looked at them and she stared straight ahead, unable to cover for his rudeness.
Bernadette woke woozy from the procedure. She felt alert, but her brother kept laughing at her, which she knew meant she was being silly or slow to respond.
When he’d come to take her to the appointment, he asked if he could drive her car because he needed to get gas and he didn’t want her to be late. She agreed. When they returned to her apartment, he considered leaving right away, but thought better of it when she fumbled with her keys at the lock. He took them from her, and opened the door easily. Bernadette felt embarrassed, but remembered the nurse telling her to accept help for the next few hours. She might feel fine, but it would take a while for her to return to full capacity.
Light-headed, she took a seat at the kitchen table and asked her brother if he’d pour her a glass of juice. When her brother reached toward the refrigerator door handle, he saw all the faces. “What’s all this, Bern?”
Bernadette looked at him and shook her head. She felt rounded off, like anything she said would be an approximation.
“Did you draw these?” he asked, gesturing to the handsome man, the waiter, a newer portrait of a street preacher, a college student she saw working in the window of the coffee shop she passed each day.
Bernadette shrugged. The front and sides of the refrigerator were now mostly covered. A set of magnets featuring vintage-looking fruit crate labels held up the newest pictures.
Bernadette’s mind flitted for a second on the word “prayer,” but she knew better than to say that to her brother, even in her current state. She repeated silently to herself, Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.
“This is creepy, Bern.” He opened the door and poured her a glass of orange juice. “I’ll stay and watch TV until I’m sure you’re all right. You hungry?”
She shook her head, and her brother disappeared to the living room. Bernadette could see that something about her new hobby was unusual, but the faces formed a comfort. She wanted to defend herself, but saw no real need. She flipped through her purse. She found the pamphlets she’d pulled from the rack at the doctor’s office, close-ups highlighting the unlined smile of an older woman, the plumped cheeks of another, the before and after of a man with a restored hairline. She would wait until her brother was gone, and fit them into the fold.
Bernadette decided to take a nap. She informed her brother of this decision, and he let out a sigh of inconvenience. A nap might take a while, but he didn’t fight her.
Bernadette crawled into bed with all her clothes on: a nice button-up shirt she wouldn’t have to lift over her head if her face had been tender and drawstring linen slacks that were comfortable, ironed to crispness that morning. She loved how linen looked so clean when freshly pressed, but hated how quickly it degraded into wrinkly sloppiness. All the same, she wore it often. She thought linen lent her the air of a woman more sophisticated than she actually was.
In a dream, Bernadette revisited the well-coiffed man from the waiting room. He told her how much he admired her for her natural beauty, that he was tired of all the women who looked the same, as if an assembly line had spit them out but was getting a bit out of sync, so that from one to the next, the eyes were just a little out of place, or the pink of the lips was printed just a hair to the right, making it obvious that something was wrong, but difficult to detect what. Bernadette, though, he said, was obvious, her minor flaws easier to look at, real. And then the man turned into a donkey, and then Bernadette got lost in a jewelry show where Oprah was interviewing an old friend from high school, and then she woke up. Bernadette ignored the events that ended her dream, but drowsed in bed thinking of that man wanting her, deciding he saw something in her that matched his desire. She emerged from her bedroom to find her brother already gone.
She returned to the kitchen and ripped carefully around the fold lines of the pamphlets. She fit them in white spaces between existing pictures on the fridge. She sat at the table and regarded her handiwork. She felt an ache, an identifiable want, and approached the refrigerator again. She removed the original drawing she’d made of the handsome man, and fit it perfectly in her palm. She reached this hand beneath the waistband of her rumpled linen pants, and she allowed the man to show her his affection, while everyone else watched.
GLADNESS OR JOY
A young man and woman sit at a bar, a setup for a punch line.
They trade names of books they’ve enjoyed recently until they find one on which they can agree. “I’ve never read a domestic story that’s happy, though,” the man tells the woman.
“I’ve never read any story that’s happy,” the woman says, and they laugh. The young woman searches in the young man’s statement for what she believes might be an accusation—that women should be happy to have the privilege of keeping a home—but she cannot find such an insinuation embedded in his words or demeanor, and so they finish their drinks and order another round.
They date for a respectable amount of time and then marry. They have a child. Their child starts walking, and the first time he takes a spill, the husband’s eyes tear up, though the child is unfazed.
Is my husband too kind? the woman thinks, but she has come to recognize this habit in herself and slaps her own hand.
* * *
BY THE TIME the family arrives home from the store, the frog is dead. Why would I think it was a good idea to buy an animal at Walmart? the mother asks herself. Her child is bereft. He had already named the frog Puddincup. They don’t even unpack the groceries, just reverse their course, returning to the store. They approach the customer service desk with the plastic-lidded cup, now reminding the mother of the wet specimen jars at the science museum, filled with two-headed cat fetuses and see-through fish.
“We purchased this frog less than an hour ago and it’s dead. Can we have a refund?” She smiles apologetically at the child, but in her mind she is balancing her dramatic tendencies (What is a life worth?) and her pragmatism (How attached could my child have become to the pet in less than an hour?).
The child places the cup on the counter. The bored employee nods like nothing is out of the ordinary and asks if they have their receipt.
Disgusted by the request, but also realizing the receipt is in one of the grocery bags in the car, the mother clucks, “Never mind,” and ushers her child back out to the parking lot.
* * *
A WOMAN HAS grown blind to the advertisements and sweepstakes that ghost around the margins of her browser until one day her vision acknowledges them again and she asks a coworker, “Does anyone ever win these things?”
A moment passes before her coworker responds. This is the speed of their workday: the chitchat nearly constant, but irregularly paced as one or the other of them finishes writing or reading an email. When they’re entering data they can keep the conversation moving at a quick clip, the task requiring only visual cortex and muscle memory. “No, no one wins those contests. They just want your information.”
The woman nods and then quickly fills out the entry form for a trip to Rio. I can always unsubscribe, she thinks.
Months later she receives an email that tells her she’s won. The message addresses her personally, features a typo, and is signed by the assistant to the head of marketing at the Brazil Board of Tourism. She calls her coworker over. “Does this seem legit?” She remembers the time she scratched off a lotto ticket, sure she’d won a cruise, only to find the fine print informing her that what she’d won was an entry into a secondary lotto drawing to win a cruise. She’d thrown the ticket away.
Her friend has to read the email three times to understand. “You won a trip to Brazil?”
The woman balks. “Probably not. I’ll email them back, but it’s a hoax, I’m sure.”
It takes about a week for the details to come together, but all of the communications indicate that, yes, the woman has won a contest held by Visit Brazil. For ten days she will be put up in a hotel of her choice, an all-expenses-paid trip for only one attendee. Though she implores her friends to come along, none are able to scrounge up the cash quickly enough. The woman prepares to go alone.
“You’re going to end up coated in rainbow feathers and locked in a birdcage,” jokes her coworker. “Nice knowin’ ya!”
The woman laughs. On the plane she tells herself that if she dies on this trip, then it is meant to be. There are fates worse than death, but rather than finding comfort in this self-supplied sentiment, she spends the rest of the flight imagining possible fates that would be worse than death.
A guide from the Board of Tourism, a young man named João, accompanies the woman for the entire week, excited to show her both the major attractions and the hidden treasures of the city. He invites her out with his friends one night, and, drunk on caipirinhas, she declares this evening one of the best nights of her life.
A canceled flight delays her return home and she misses an extra day of work, but her boss says it’s no big deal. “How did you break out of your birdcage?” her coworker jokes.
“Turns out it wasn’t locked!” the woman says, and remembers the worry she’d toted all the way to South America.
* * *
A COUPLE WATCH a movie together. In the beginning of the film, a dad warns his son against texting and driving. Later in the movie the son looks down to type a message while piloting a car down a country road. The couple watching clasp each other’s hands, bracing themselves for calamity.
But nothing happens. The text is sent. The kid arrives safely to where he’s going. Everything is fine. The movie ends. “I liked it!” the woman says. The man agrees.
* * *
A WRITER GOES on tour to support a new collection of short stories. Back in a small bookshop in a comfortable neighborhood of his own city, he takes questions from the audience, three-quarters of whom are friends of his, the remaining portion comprised of people he assumes took a seat out of curiosity and now feel obligated to stay. A coworker accuses him of writing only about tragic events, even if his treatment is often comic. “No one is ever happy in your stories,” she says. “Are you okay?” The audience recognizes their cue to laugh and the author takes the question in stride.
He regrets citing Anna Karenina and its theory about happy families, but does all the same. He talks about the need for conflict to drive narrative. “Has anyone read a novel about only happy people?” he asks.
A woman the writer didn’t even think was listening, splayed across a stuffed chair in the corner thumbing through children’s books, speaks up. “Sure. The Joy Experiment!”
The author smiles warmly. “That’s nonfiction, though, right?”
The woman responds, “Yes, that’s right! One of the best books I’ve ever read.” Her face remains sunny and expectant. The writer glances out at the rest of the audience, and freezes his expression, trying not to show his resistance. He has no interest in embarrassing or arguing with this woman. He sees a pair of people turn to each other and snicker. An old college acquaintance, so sweet to come all the way from the suburbs, catches his eye and raises his brow, eager to see how the situation will be handled. The writer thanks the woman and says he’ll have to check it out. She gives a quick nod, satisfied at the success of her counterargument, and continues reading the picture book in her lap. The writer asks if there are any other questions. There are not.
* * *
YOU HEAR YOUR name shouted from across the street. The doorbell rings. The deadline passes. You taste the soup for seasoning and somehow you got it right on the first try. “Listen to this,” your friend says. You wait.
DEFAULT
Every memory twisted by revision. Saying grace in the drive-thru. Bright sleep with the TV screen shining an ice rink. The way his language always blurred away from promise. A pink cassette player I tried to keep, but he insisted I give to my sister. Honor roll notices from the newspaper mailed to me, like he could teach me my own life, too. Random news articles tucked in—always something I knew about, but a week later, after it had already changed. Batteries not included. No cash for my textbooks, but an invitation to watch the pay-per-view fight on Saturday night. Grass stains dragged down my ass. Relief flickering through disappointment when I heard his car’s engine failing to apologize. Free buttons he picked up at trade shows wrapped in tissue and string. Suburban curry buffet and Goodwill Supermarket Sweep. Voice-mail box full. Ghosts halved and halved and halved again. Dirty geometry. Static tragedy. Splinters polished to a flash. Made in China. Scratching tickets and unshrinking ground beef gray with age. Sister logrolling down the hill. Mom in real life. Fairy tales about him. Nosy neighbors asking if he was back. Hundred-and-ninety-proof. Polyester. Spoilsport. Peeling his nails on the couch and flicking them at the screen, at me when I complained. Mom vacuuming. Stale donuts and an outdated globe. Give it a spin. Close your eyes. Plant a finger. Rhodesia. Too bad. Front yard. Red light. Green light. Loans in Monopoly. Only college football on Saturdays. Baptism money emptied from my savings account. Spinning quarters at chain restaurants. Picking coins out of peanut shells on the floor. Trivia at Cliff’s Tap and a beer for me because he knew better than the law. Unsealed packaging. Laundromats and still-damp sweatpants. Sister eating Kleenex. School counselors. Saturday stomach cramps like clockwork. I don’t owe you anything. Flammable. Sister drinking a vanilla shake and a cup of water for me. Even the scrambled eggs burnt, the instant ramen watered down. Glued to the back of my seat with acceleration. Tight corners. Loose timelines. Opinions on strep throat. Breast is best. Pretending I understand soccer rules. Anything not to talk. Learning soccer rules. Dead batteries. Snowy April. Illegible goodbyes on the backs of receipts.
* * *
I made all these notes and decided no one deserved them, even me. A priest he’d never met gave the eulogy: a Mad Lib of lies with his details filled in.
* * *
In the car on the way to lunch afterward, my sister turned to me with tears in her eyes. I couldn’t believe she was as sad as she seemed.
I said, “He was awful to us. Me especially, but you, too. It’s good we’re finally done.”
