Bathing the Lion
Authors: Jonathan Carroll
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For Izabela Kedziora
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Heartfelt thanks to Ellen Datlow and Jeffrey Capshew for helping to bring this lion to life.
CONTENTS
THE HOUSE INSIDE THE HORSE
ONE
Most men think they are good drivers. Most women think they are good in bed. They aren’t.
She’d said that an hour earlier, apropos of nothing, as he was walking out the door with the new sled under his arm. Sitting at the kitchen table with a mug of fragrant coffee in her hands, she spoke while staring out the window at the snow.
“Am I … Am I supposed to respond?”
“No. I was only making an observation.” She did not look at him while speaking, but that was nothing new. Sometimes she spouted these non sequiturs while staring into the distance, as if she were addressing an invisible audience out there in the ethers.
Impatient to get going, he was nevertheless tempted to ask if she would like him to write down her remark for posterity. She had high opinions of both herself and her insights. Part of their recent trouble was he did not.
These days the couple coexisted uneasily in an edgy state where both knew a separation was inevitable and imminent but neither was brave enough to say so. They were in the almost-terminal stage where trivial things the partner does are keenly noticed and continuously resented: how they wipe the kitchen counters after a meal, the messy state of the bathroom after their shower, the toilet seat up, the toilet seat down. Things routinely ignored before, much less cared about, now glimmered like they were Day-Glo purple, or stunk like milk gone bad.
It was why he liked the sled. Months before on first seeing the ad for the Alurunner Sports Sled in a magazine, he whistled in admiration at its incredibly sleek all-aluminum body. It looked like a toboggan on steroids and had an overall allure that somehow touched both the boy and man in him. It said, “You wanna go fast? Get on and I’ll show you what fast is.” One extremely cool object. But who would pay so much money for a
sled
? Later he made the mistake of telling her about it. She looked at her husband as if he’d said he was buying a nuclear submarine. “A
sled
? Why would you want a sled?”
“To go sledding. That’s what you usually do with them.”
She smiled wanly at him. “At least you don’t want a Porsche.”
“What do you mean?”
“Most men want to buy Porsches when they’re going through midlife crisis. But you only want a sled. Peculiar, but at least you’re not a cliché.”
“Do you think I’m going through a midlife crisis?”
She smirked. “A textbook case. You shouldn’t worry though. Women have menopause, men midlife crisis and Porsche envy. The joys of middle age, partner.”
* * *
Turning slowly now, he leaned his new silver sled against a wall. Then he squatted down with his hands resting on bent knees and looked at her. “This isn’t working between us anymore. Both of us know that and it’s time we talked about it.”
She pressed the cup hard against her lower lip and continued staring out the window. They had been together twelve years, married nine. Sometimes he tried to pinpoint exactly when their love had turned from solid to liquid to steam to thin air. Sometimes he wondered when she had stopped loving him. At this stage he didn’t care.
“What do you want to do about it?” She looked at him. Her eyes were gray-green, beautiful and expressionless.
“I don’t think we like each other anymore. It’s that simple. Why live with someone you don’t like?”
“You don’t like me?” Her voice came out somewhere between a statement and a question.
“No, not often. Do you like me?”
She blinked several times and then silently mouthed no.
He nodded, unaffected.
She tried to swallow; her mouth had suddenly gone dry. “Wow. I guess
that
cat’s out of the bag now.” She was deeply impressed he had finally said it.
“Yes, it is. And now we must talk about it.”
Leaning forward she put the cup down. “Wow.” Placing both hands flat on the table, she lowered her head between them until her right cheek touched the cool wood. Her heart was pounding. She could feel it pulse up through her outstretched arms. “This sounds dumb, but I don’t know what to say now. I’m an absolute blank.”
He remained silent. She
always
had something to say. It was just a matter of time before it came.
His cell phone rang. The shrill sound was a reminder that a normal world existed nearby where people not teetering on the edge of their lives did things like make telephone calls and wait for them to be answered.
They were glad his phone rang a long time. It gave them both a chance to breathe a little and think about what next. But the ringing eventually stopped. Looking at each other, they waited to see who would speak first. Even in the few minutes that had elapsed since he spoke, important things had already begun to shift between them. A completely new and different light now lit this person who had slept peacefully beside them last night.
“It’s so bizarre—I think I should cry or shout or something, but I only feel empty. You want us to separate? To divorce?”
He nodded. “I think we need to talk about our options.”
“Like when? Very soon?”
Gesturing over his shoulder he said, “Do you see my sled? I thought I bought it because it looked so great and just the idea of sledding again, do something I loved so much as a kid, after all these years, was really appealing. But you know what I like most about it now? I do it alone. It’s just me out there with nature and speed and those great pungent winter smells we always talk about.… But you have never even asked where I go when I do it. Not once.”
She lifted her head a few inches off the table. “You go to the park. The big hill there—”
“Wrong. I never go to the park, never. See? We don’t
interest
each other anymore.”
She stiffened and venom seeped into her voice now. “How do you know? Because I don’t ask where you go
sledding
?”
“Cut the crap; don’t be facile. You know exactly what I’m saying.”
“No, not really. I guess I’m just too stupid. Maybe you need to spell it out for me. Maybe after twelve years together I at least deserve clarity.”
“You can spell fine.” He rose slowly. Looking directly at her, his face gave away nothing. She was so used to his face, so used to the familiar expressions and wrinkles there. They usually showed her what he was thinking. Now his face said nothing except pay attention to what I’m saying. He had gone from being her husband of a decade to a stranger in less than ten sentences.
“I’m going sledding now. Then I’m going to stay away from here for the rest of the day. It’s better I do. It’ll let us both think this over alone. When I get back here tonight we can talk about it if you want.”
She was dismayed. “You’re going
out
now? How can you, for God’s sake? You said it yourself—we have to talk about this.”
He took his sled from the wall. “And we will. But first we should think about it alone. Then we can talk. I’m sorry if you don’t like it, but it’s what I want to do.” He stretched out his left arm and looked at his wristwatch. “It’s 8:30 now. I’ll come back tonight around 8:30 and we can talk more then.”
“I cannot believe you’re doing this, Dean. I can’t believe you’re walking out of here after saying those things.” Her voice was as sharp and mean as a paper cut. She used the tone whenever she felt wronged or morally superior.
“Believe it.” He shifted the sled in his arms to balance its weight better. “What did I say you didn’t already know, something new? Did I suddenly break new ground in our relationship? I don’t think so.
“Stop playing the wounded victim here, Vanessa, because you’re not, not by a long shot.
Both
of us have to deal with this; you’re not the only one.
“I don’t believe we like each other anymore—plural. The ground has shifted and we’ve got to deal with it now. We’ve both avoided it because it’s ugly and scary. But it’s true and it’s here:
We don’t like each other anymore
.” He waited for her to reply: to say something typically snide, cutting, or self-pitying.
“Okay.” She put her hands in her lap, swallowed, and straightened up. She looked at the clock on the kitchen wall. “Twelve hours. Okay.”
Surprised at her reaction, he didn’t move. He was curious to see what came next.
She waved a hand toward the door. “Go. What are you waiting for?”
“Five minutes ago you said—”
“That was five minutes ago.” She stood, walked over to the stove, and poured herself more coffee from the pot.
“Okay.” He started for the door, passing near her, heartened she appeared to be all right with this.
“But what if I’m not here when you come back, Dean? What if I decide to leave in those twelve hours?”
He closed his eyes and scowled. He knew it was too easy. “Why would you want to? Don’t you think we need to talk this whole thing over when we’re both calmer and clearer in our heads? Let’s have a day apart to put our thoughts in order and then come back and talk it through.”
Without warning, she abruptly flicked her hand out at him—as if throwing a Frisbee. A long ribbon of hot black coffee flew through the air and splashed against his chest, the silver sled, and his bare hands. Burning drops hit his face. The sled clattered to the floor when he threw up both hands to his stinging cheeks. Luckily he was wearing a thick ski jacket so the coffee that hit his body did not burn him.
Aghast and thrilled by what she had just done, Vanessa didn’t want him to see her face because she had no idea what expression was there. It might have been delight, because it was definitely part of what she felt. Hurrying from the room, she put her head down so her chin almost touched her chest. Fleeing, she brushed him and he jerked away from the contact.
His fingers on his face trembled. Bringing both hands down quickly, he was someway ashamed to be shaking then. He didn’t know what to do. Her action had been so unexpected and shocking. Did she really hate him so much? What had he said she didn’t already know and feel? Did the truth out loud set her free, or simply free her inner bitch?
When the electric air of alarm and disbelief had lessened, he wanted to know only one thing: Had she done it to hurt him? Or was it only an unplanned emotional act, a lightning bolt of sudden madness or fury she’d take back now if she could? An
oh shit
moment in life where you wish you could rewind time back ten seconds and do it again differently or not at all. Did she wish it now or was she happy to have flung scalding coffee at him? Was she somewhere in this house grinning and thinking, yes, I’m glad I did it?