Speculative sullivan the.., p.50
Speculative Sullivan: The Collected Short Fiction, page 50
I wearily sit in the lawn chair on my balcony, looking down on brick apartment buildings and the back side of a shopping mall. I won’t fall asleep out here, I tell myself.
But I’m mistaken.
The alarm goes off at eight. Eight-oh-one, to be precise. I fumble for it, cursing, and sit up in bed, groping until I silence its chirping.
“How’d I get in bed?” I mutter.
But nobody answers.
“Vera?” I say. But who is Vera? The woman I met last night at the bottle club. But where is she now? I get up slowly and look around the apartment. No sign of anybody.
“A dream,” I croak, tasting my own fetid morning breath.
More like a nightmare. But I don’t need a shrink to explain this particular dream. Today is the day I am to pick up Mary and take her to the clinic.
Tired as I am, I will go into D.C. and take care of business before meeting Mary. I shower, shave and dress, and then go to start up the car. I cross Memorial Bridge and tool up to E Street.
I find that people are quiet today in the east wing of Interior, almost in an expectant mood. It’s probably just me. I assemble today’s contracts, explain to my secretary what to do with them, and leave. I drive over to the National Gallery and feed a parking meter.
Mary is waiting for me under the giant Calder mobile in the lobby.
“You’re on time for once,” she says.
God, she can’t resist sniping at me even today. She senses that my guilt lies heavy on me, an almost palpable thing, a vile worm crawling through my guts.
“The doctor is going to be late,” she says. “He can’t see me until two.”
Great. Probably can’t bear to pull himself away from his golf game. I nod. “Have you eaten?” I ask.
“I’m not hungry. Maybe a cup of coffee.”
“Sounds good.”
“First let me pick up something for my mother in the gift shop. It’ll be Mother’s Day soon, you know.”
Mary doesn’t notice the irony in this, which is typical. I keep my mouth shut as we ascend the stairs to the second level. The rays shafting through the skylight illuminate her face beautifully. She is an attractive brunette, in spite of the overbite, which gives her a quizzical look.
While she’s looking through the souvenir art books, I slowly spin a post-card rack displaying reproductions of famous paintings. I remove one and examine it.
It’s by Joan Miro, showing squiggles and amoebalike splotches of color on a sky-blue background. Beneath it is another reproduction of the same painting. This second card has a slightly different blue tint than the postcard I’ve removed from the rack, lighter. I look at the third to see yet another subtle variation. Behind this one is one with a hair-thin flaw cutting across the lower left hand corner.
Each person who buys one of these cards gets something different. They are only superficially the same, but you must look very closely to detect the difference.
“Ready for lunch?” Mary is behind me with a yellow bag in her hands.
I place the postcards back on the rack. “Sure am.”
We walk down to the basement, to an underground passageway connecting the east and west buildings. There we ride on a moving walkway to the cafeteria.
“How are you feeling?” I ask, once we’ve bought our coffee and have sat down at a table.
“Lousy.”
We sip the coffee in silence, watching a waterfall splash down from the street level fountain outside, against an immense sheet of glass on the north hall, here underground. The water gurgles through vents in the floor, mingling with the hum of the diners. There is a civil defense insignia on the wall next to it.
At one-fifteen, we walk to the car. There’s a ticket under one of the windshield wipers; the meter has run out of time.
“I’ll worry about this later,” I say, unlocking the car door and stuffing the ticket in the glove compartment. Mary gets in the stifling front seat as I let myself in on the other side. In a few moments we are on our way to Falls Church, the air conditioner beginning to cool us.
We arrive at the clinic a few minutes early. It is a clean, freshly painted place. Several glum young women are reading magazines in the waiting room.
The receptionist gives Mary some forms to fill out. I find myself staring at her, almost certain I’ve met her sometime in the recent past. Unlikely; I’ve never been here before. She is a stranger, surely.
It’s forty minutes before the doctor sees Mary. He’s a serious looking man of about fifty. The two of them go into another room after Mary hands the receptionist the forms she’s been filling out.
I know that he’s explaining the dangers of abortion to her. The risk of infection, of damage to the uterus, even of death. But how do I know this? How do I know what he’s saying at all?
Mary will tell me later, of course. She’ll tell me everything, sparing no detail, no matter how it makes her feel. No matter how it makes me feel. Maybe she just likes to get a rise out of me, I don’t know. That’s just the way she is.
I pick up a copy of Newsweek lying on the formica coffee table in the center of the room. I start reading about the miserable failure of the summit at Oslo, but don’t finish it. I’m depressed enough without this. Besides, I could swear I’ve read the article before, but it’s dated for this week. I haven’t read Newsweek in months.
I put the magazine down and stare out the window. Children are playing across the street. Occasionally their high voices can be heard over the air conditioner. It saddens me to hear them.
At last Mary appears, looking confused and yet almost triumphant. She pays the bill herself, though I have offered to give her the money. But I know she’ll take half the money from me later.
“Do you want to go home now?” I ask her in the parking lot.
“No.”
“Do you feel all right, then?”
“Yes, I feel all right. I’m fine.”
“Where to, then?”
“The country . . . or at least a park.”
“Okay.” We get in the car and drive east on Route 50. Then I turn south on George Mason and drive to a park I know. We sit under a willow tree without speaking.
It is late afternoon when Mary asks me if our affair is over.
“Of course not,” I say, lying. “Both of us have been through a lot, but things will be back to normal soon enough.”
“It seems like forever,” she says, “since this thing started.”
“Then you’ve noticed it too.” I’m grasping at straws. It just isn’t like Mary to notice unusual things, especially when the effort requires a leap of imagination.
“Noticed what?” There is a note of annoyance to her question. Is he off on one of his weird flights of fancy? Can’t he come down to earth just for today?
“Nothing.”
Even this blank exchange possesses a chilling sameness. It isn’t just that we have had a thousand such bathetic conversations; this one has happened before. I knew how it would go before it started.
I recall my dream of last night. Vera.
“I’m not feeling very well,” Mary says.
“The anesthetic must be wearing off. I’d better take you home.”
Traffic is heavy on the way to Georgetown. We cross the Potomac as we have so many times before, and at six we enter Mary’s apartment. “I’m gonna take a shower,” Mary says, “and then I think I’ll lie down for a while.”
“I guess I’ll go home, then.”
“No, please. Stay here, baby. You don’t have to come upstairs with me. Stay down here and read, or watch TV, but don’t leave me alone just yet. Please.”
I am moved by her plea. “All right. I’ll be right down here.” I sit on the sofa while she goes up to the bathroom. Halfway up the stairs, she gags and rushes to the toilet. I hear her puking and fight the impulse to run out the door.
After the toilet flushes, I call to her, “Are you all right, Mary?”
“Christ,” she rasps. “What do you think?”
I do not run to comfort her. I am emotionally numbed, and my only escape at the moment is to recall last night’s dream in its every vivid detail.
It started in a restaurant around midnight. An Afghan place in Old Town, Alexandria. The restaurant is real enough. I’ve passed it many times. Tonight I’ll go there, with or without Mary.
Having determined this, I feel a little better. I snap on the television and look at the news on the cable network channel. The economy’s in rough shape, and war is spreading in the Middle East. The Oslo summit is getting nowhere fast.
Maybe that’s it, I muse. Maybe the world’s economy has become so intolerable that the G-7 are willing to throw it all away in one last nuclear conflagration. A communal nervous breakdown. To hell with it, boys, let’s blow it all away. It’s just not worth it anymore. A moment’s madness, civilization an irretrievable ruin.
I flick the channel selector. The Bad Nevus Bears is showing on the Movie Channel.
At quarter past eight, Mary comes downstairs wearing her robe.
“Feeling better?” I ask.
“A little.”
“Want to go out somewhere?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
I go up and take a shower while she dresses and puts on her makeup. There’s a Bergman retrospective showing at the Circle Theater. Tonight’s feature is The Seventh Seal.
Toward the end of the film, when all the people who have cheated Death are holed up in the Knight’s castle, I have a vision. It is the only genuine revelation I have ever had, and it is this: Like the medieval peasants in the film, we all know the end is imminent. Perhaps at the moment the bombs go off, the combined psychic energy of the entire human race—the collective unconscious, if you will—somehow pushes time back a day. Maybe the energy of the blast helps, affecting the space/time continuum so that we may fulfill our desire to live this final day over . . . and over and over and over. . . .
At eleven twenty-eight we leave the theater. “I’m kind of hungry,” Mary says.
I take this as a positive sign. “What kind of food would you like?”
“Something different.” She manages a little smile. “Not pickles and ice cream anymore.”
“Well, I know a place that might be pretty exotic. It’s an Afghan restaurant over in Old Town. I’ve driven past it a hundred times, and I hear it’s excellent. Want to go over there?”
I frequently make fun of her for being too white bread and mayonnaise. Sometimes she balks, but she usually indulges my tastes in order to prove her sophistication. “Okay.”
“What if you don’t like what I order?”
She laughs. “You can order camel shit for all I care. I’m starved.”
On the way, Mary tells me she is financially strapped. She wonders if I will pay for half the abortion.
“Of course,” I say, without batting an eye. “I’ll help in any way I can.”
“It’s not that easy, you know.” Her voice is low, deliberate, accusing.
“What are you talking about, Mare?” Mare is an affectionate name she has often been called by since childhood. I use it now to soften what is coming.
“You know what I’m talking about. You can’t just say you’re glad to help and give me a check and then forget about it.”
“Who says I’m going to forget about it?”
“You’re going to drop me like a bad habit as soon as I’ve recovered.” Christ, how does she know? Is this the vaunted women’s intuition?
“You don’t care, do you?” She is merciless now, Mare or no Mare.
“Of course I care.”
“You don’t care that I lost my baby today.”
“That’s not true, Mary. It was your choice. I told you I’d abide by whatever decision you made, and you decided you didn’t want to be tied down by a child. You decided to have an abortion.”
“If I’d decided to have the baby, I suppose you wouldn’t have put up an argument. I suppose you wouldn’t have tried to talk me out of it.”
Good God, is she so blind she can’t see that the child would have been a terrible mistake? No wonder she doesn’t notice anything unusual in the air, the crushing repetitiveness of it all. Such an insight requires some attention to the world outside one’s own skin.
“You’re probably right,” I admit, knowing that it is useless to lie. “But let’s try to enjoy our meal.”
She remains silent while I search for a parking space. I finally find one down the street from the restaurant, and angle the Civic into it.
“How’re you feeling?” I ask as we come up to the restaurant door.
“I’ll live.”
Thank God her little scene is over, at least for the moment. I have too much on my mind for that. The end of the world, for Christ’s sake. I take a deep breath before entering the restaurant.
If there’s anything to my wild theory, if last night’s meeting with Vera was real, I ought to know very soon. And if I’m flipping out . . . I’ll know that too.
The maitre d’ seats us, his face right out of my dream. Everything is the same. A clay figure stands out in relief on the back wall, the tables are arranged the same way, the waiters are identical. Every detail is the same.
There is only one possible explanation. I must have been here before, drunk on my ass, and do not consciously recall the incident. It’s the only thing that makes sense. Everything else today was predictable enough, but this . . . this seems as real as death itself. And just as inevitable.
We are taken to the same table we were seated at in my dream.
Or is it the same table? Is my memory playing tricks on me? Am I suffering a schizoid episode because of what I’ve been through today? Logically, Mary should be the one to break down, but she is holding up just fine.
“You know,” she once told me after a particularly vicious argument, “for someone who’s always going on about art and philosophy and the goddamn Meaning of Life, you don’t have a hell of a lot of compassion.”
My reply? “I guess you just bring out the best in me, sweetheart.”
But now, sitting in the Afghan restaurant on King Street, I don’t feel like making wisecracks at Mary’s expense. She’s right: I have always lacked compassion. Always an elitist, always a snob.
Ordinarily, I would laugh at the people singing “Happy Birthday” in the back of the restaurant, disdain their conventional funmaking. But not tonight.
Mary becomes ill before our dinner of sabsi chalow arrives, remarking before she goes to the ladies’ room that the aush makes her sick.
Be sick, I nearly say aloud. This is the last day you will ever have to be sick in . . . though you will be sick again and again in just this same way. At least you’ll be alive.
I pay the bill and take Mary home. The drive is exactly as I remember it, right down to the tiniest detail. Even the Capitol Dome melting through my damp windshield.
I drive to Arlington. On the way, I think, what if I’m the only one? Like Atlas, every morning at eight, holding up the doomed earth by a sheer act of will? That’s what it will take from now on. I will remember from now on. I will know.
Does such a reverie make me a prime candidate for the rubber room? Not if Vera exists.
My stomach is in my chest as I drive down Columbia Pike toward the bottle club. If Vera walks in, it has to be true. If she doesn’t, I am surely suffering a nervous breakdown. Who would have ever thought it could happen to such a cold, analytical prick? And yet it is by far the more reasonable scenario.
A cool mist descends on my bare arms as I lock the car door. I am almost convinced now that it is all in my head. Just a little paranoia.
I go inside, into the dim lighting of the club.
Sid is polishing glasses as I sit at the bar. “Hey! How ya doin’ ?” he says.
He still doesn’t remember my name. Why should he? I haven’t been in here for weeks, months even. Unless I was in here last night, and the night before, and the night before that . . . unless the whole world has been turned upside down.
I listen to the soft voices of the other customers, who are the same people I remember from my dream. Or am I kidding myself? Do I want to recognize them? I really only see them as types: hospital types, theater types, newspaper types. I am unable to see their underlying individuality, their humanity.
This is my great failing as a human being. It is something I don’t enjoy thinking about. It’s much easier to lose oneself in art and reading, foreign films, and obscurantist works, than to face the fact that one is an asshole. I lost my baby today, and my reaction to this is to dump Mary after a suitable mourning period. The issue here is not the complex one of abortion, but love, compassion . . . or lack of same.
I lift my Wild Turkey to my lips with shaking hand, knowing fully for the first time that I have no right to judge Mary, or anyone else. My only right is to live and make the best of it. Have I done that? No. I work in a government office, applying myself minimally to meaningless busy work, accepting my promotions and pay raises as they come, creating nothing, helping no one—not even myself. Surely I have no right to bring an unwanted child into the world. Surely abortion was the correct choice; after all, it has prevented disaster, hasn’t it?
Just as disaster has been avoided by aborting time in my paranoid fantasy.
“Got change for the jukebox, Sid?” I know what I want to hear.
In my dream, I didn’t pay much attention to Brubeck’s piece. Now I notice, however, how the piece is structured to always return to its starting point, no matter how intricately the sax riff is interwoven with the piano, bass, and drums. Its inevitability is what makes its form so appealing. The odd pattern constraining the instruments obsessively. It can never break out of its circular design . . . until the record wears out, as it inevitably must.
“Another Wild Turkey?” I nod. While he fixes the drink, it occurs to me that this is the part that differs from all the other nights spent here at this bar. I have always left before the song ends. Except for last night, in my dream.
“Want me to run a tab?” Sid asks.
