Ghouljaw and Other Stories (8 page)

We loved Sundays. We were married for a little over five years, so that gave us about twenty seasons together as husband and wife. We really had some wonderful mornings with each other.

One of Julie’s favorite things to do was clean house on Sunday mornings. We’d wake up, maybe make love, then drive into town, eat breakfast at a café, and return home. Julie would turn on the radio (a college station was her favorite, one that played two hours of Beatles music: “Beatles Brunch,” they called it) and open the blinds, letting the light stream into the living room, what we would have eventually called the “family” room—I know she wanted that: a family. I know she wanted to turn this dilapidated place into a good home to raise kids.

Anyway. Julie would make her rounds—dusting, laundry, vacuuming. I’d lend a hand where I could, but really, Julie did most of the work. She just seemed . . . content. I should have (and could have) been a better helper.

Julie died in a car accident. Maybe reading that and telling you that seems abrupt, but so was the accident. She’d been coming home from work. It happened out on County Road 700—a car full of teenagers, speeding, lost control of their car; it was a head-on crash. The three kids were hospitalized and lived. The doctors said Julie probably died instantly. Of all the things I avoid recounting, that’s the worst—whether or not Julie suffered.

That was six years ago, seven years this coming spring.

Uncle Jasper, having already gone through the process of coping with Aunt Susan’s death, tried to help me through Julie’s death—the funeral arrangements, the money, those sorts of things.

In those first few months after the accident, I’d go out to the cemetery every Sunday and take flowers to Julie. I’d sit, I’d cry, I’d talk to her. And at first, I was eager to go out there. At first, it felt as if I was actually talking to Julie, and she was listening; but then it started feeling lonely, as if I were just talking to a cold rectangle of marble; then it just felt like I was talking to myself. And that was like talking to no one at all. So—even though Uncle Jasper said it was good for me, and good for the memories I had of Julie—I quit going out there.

Memories are funny like that. Why do you think people hang up pictures in their house?—they need physical proof to validate memories. We all do. That’s another reason I’m writing this now, to sort of keep what happened this morning glued together. I’m writing this now not only as an exercise to maintain sanity, but to bring keener clarity to what I saw this morning. Because if I lose my mind, then I can kiss my memories of Julie goodbye.

I’m downstairs in the den right now; but I can still hear them—upstairs, in the walls. You might say a smart person would have called an exterminator. Maybe so. But knowing what I know now, a smart person would have never had time to call, because a smart person would have run.

Here’s a silly thing I used to do from time to time: Back before Julie, back in high school—and during my first and only year of college—I’d make a chronological list of all the girls I’d ever kissed or had sex with. (Admittedly, in high school it was a pretty slim list.) It was a physical list of physically intimate conquests—a list running from my first kiss (Kelly Baker, first grade) up through Nikki (which I’ll discuss in a minute).

I’m not proud to admit it, but in the years since Julie’s been gone, and in my widower’s loneliness, I’ve shared my bed with several women.

Let me say that none of these women were the kind that leave sweet notes in the morning. Not like Julie. These women never said sweet things before falling asleep. I have fond memories of Julie leaning over and whispering, “’Night, ’night, Dennis.”

“Sleep tight,” I’d say.

Then she’d reply softly, “Don’t let the bedbugs bite.” I’ve missed that little routine more than I can express here to you.

That being said, this morning, lying in bed—and further distracting myself from confronting the issue of going out to the cemetery—I began making another, more recent list.

There was Abby, who I met at the library in town. She was shelving books, and we somehow struck up a conversation. Abby had the blackest, straightest, silkiest hair I’ve ever seen or touched. We saw each other for about a month or so, but things didn’t work out. She was intelligent. I don’t think my being a college drop-out was a turn-on for her.

After Abby was Vanessa. I was at a tavern down on Main Street one night with a few guys from the landscaping company. Vanessa was sitting at the bar by herself. I bought her a drink. And even in the neon-dim light of the bar, her eyes twinkled green, almost emerald—so green they affected sobriety, albeit briefly. Things were short-lived with Vanessa too. She didn’t ask a lot of questions and didn’t expect a lot of answers. She liked meeting at hotels a lot. I think she might have been married.

Then there was Nikki, a waitress at a chain restaurant a few counties over. Nikki was the youngest and the kinkiest—the worst and the last. Nikki and I lasted for almost six months; but if things would have continued, Nikki would have been trouble for me. While she had a sort of fleeting, injured tenderness about her, she was, more than anything else, a casually cruel girl. Besides her frequently changing hair color, the most memorable characteristic about Nikki was her tattoo—a large, elaborate praying mantis that ran from the outside of her thigh and wrapped up around her back, its long spiny legs extending up over her lower back.

Only once did I inquire about the tattoo’s significance. I was driving her home one morning when I asked. She was in the middle of lighting a cigarette when she looked over at me, froze for a few seconds before laughing—laughing as if she were watching a child doing something adorable and totally foolish. It was a laugh I’d grown tired of. I kept driving. Eventually Nikki quit giggling, sighed, and lit her cigarette. I saw Nikki at a bar not too long ago; she’d been playing pool with a couple guys, or rather
acting
like she didn’t know how to play pool—letting one of them repeatedly reach around her from behind to show her the proper way to use a cue.

It’s occurred to me before, although I haven’t had the language to explain it until now, that there seemed to be some form of emotional parasitism with these last three women—some sort of lonesome anesthetization.

Sometimes, particularly when I avoid dwelling on Julie for days on end, I have dreams that she’s returned to our bed (the bed I’ve disrespected), slowly materializing in the depression where she used to sleep, like fog drifting into a gully at dusk. Sometimes, in my dream-eager need to communicate, I speak; and as I do, my breath curls the delicate features of the phantom and the fog dissipates. As little use as I have for religion and superstition, I often find myself praying for that phantom to stay.

The goddamned thing is this: once you give license to old wives’ tales and the supernatural—once you sincerely marry mental energy and commitment—there’s no telling what will break through.

Most of these Julie-dreams have been pleasant—some of them even felt therapeutic. But sometimes they’re bad; or rather, their essence is bad. The tone is all wrong, and that
feeling
invariably carries over into the next morning, setting the miserable tone for a miserable day. It was almost as if, through the dreams, Julie had been dictating what kind of day I’d have when I woke up the next morning. Last night I had a bad dream.

So let me finally get out of bed, or at least tell you about when I finally got out of bed this morning. Let me get back to what this is really about: neglect.

Rousing myself from those cold sheets, I yanked up the blinds at the window and stood there, looking out over the countryside. Sure enough, it had snowed overnight, and the wind was rustling some of the broken stalks spiking out of the cold, white blanket covering the empty field (again, I think about the chemicals—the bugs). The belt of trees out west was all blacks and browns and grays under the pigeon-colored sky, which hinted at more snow to come. I closed my eyes and gently pressed my forehead against the frigid glass—the icy contact having a pleasantly sobering sensation.

I started in with my usual litany of resolutions: no more casual sex . . . no more barroom arguing . . . no more blackout drinking. But then I stopped. I realized I was just making another list. Resolutions?—I needed to start making
promises.
Promises I could keep, especially if they were for Julie.

I pulled my forehead away from the window and opened my eyes. I’m going out to the cemetery today, I promised. And I’m going to clean the house. So I decided to start here, with the house.

After showering, I pulled on an old pair of jeans and a worn-out flannel and walked downstairs. When it comes to accomplishing dull tasks, I’ve become a creative practitioner of delayed momentum. And at first, I found a few things to distract myself from the
real
job of housecleaning. I started a pot of coffee, laced up my boots, and stalked through the snow and out to the mailbox to get the Sunday newspaper, and came back inside and started a fire in the cobblestone fireplace. Soon, the house was filled with good smells—the acrid percolation of chicory and smoky-warm fire scents. I turned on the radio to some static-lashed jazz station. At this point I could have easily given in to old habits—I could have dropped down in the recliner, started reading the paper, maybe turned on the TV. But this morning—more so than usual—I had self-disgust on my side. I stoked the crackling logs in the fireplace a few more times before setting the tongs down on the hearth.

I parted the drapes hanging over every window on the first floor, noticing that a few gold spokes of sunlight were now piercing through the gray-wool clouds. Dim light streamed into the house. I began spraying and wiping down the windows, the panes regaining their clarity. I went into the bedroom, tore the sheets from the mattress, and tossed the bedding into the laundry machine. Now with washer going and the antiseptic light revealing dust and spider webs, I set out to rearranging the living room and picking up clutter. After that came the next chore—dusting. I went from room to room, removing items from shelves, pulling novels from the bookcases and wiping down all exposed surfaces. Copious amounts of disturbed dust filled the house—glittering motes swirling in the gray shafts of sunlight streaming in through the windows.

Now that I recognized some semblance of Julie’s tidy and cozy Sunday-morning home, the work came easier. I whistled along with the staticky jazz station playing in the kitchen.

After dusting everything, I prepared to start vacuuming.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d vacuumed the house. (Months? Last summer? I still can’t recall.) Suffice it to say, the vacuuming—like the whole issue of cleaning—was something I’d ignored for far too long. The old vacuum (a long disused domestic totem, which Julie and I had received as a housewarming gift) was in the back of the hall closet, standing behind a curtain of coats.

I pulled the dust-caked device from the closet—the outdated thing protesting with a few plastic creaks—and unwound the cord. I waved away some floating particles that the flimsy dustbag had shaken off, trying to avoid breathing in too much of it, before flipping a switch. The vacuum, with a sustained wheezing, rattled to life. I began working over the carpet with smooth lunges, making my rounds from the den to the bedroom to the living room. At one point I realized I was smiling at the thought that Julie might be proud of my progress.

This would be an appropriate moment to tell you something else. It was the dust that got me thinking about it then, and it’s the dust that gets me thinking about it now.

I’ve had all day to turn this over in my mind, and had it not been for what happened, I might have completely neglected a conversation I had had with Uncle Jasper a couple months ago. It had been a Saturday night. I was at Uncle Jasper’s house for our monthly chess match, which, as usual, essentially amounted to me getting my ass kicked. It was my night to buy the beer. He was craning over the chessboard, his heavily lined forehead summoning more wrinkles as he studied the pieces. At some point I glanced over at the coffee table, at a stack of magazines. The one on top was an issue of
Scientific Frontiers;
I slipped it off the table and flipped through the pages. An article caught my eye: “Dust In the Wind, Scientists Wonder What Will Happen.”

I scanned the article, absent-mindedly mumbling one of the enlarged excerpts. “Common dust travels thousands of miles, over continents and oceans.” Silently, I continued reading about new research into how dust was altering the environment. Tons of the stuff—from smoke, soot, and soil—make “transport events” through the atmosphere which can even be seen from space. Pollutants like dust and smoke are evidently responsible for thousands of deaths in some countries.

“Skin,” Uncle Jasper said abruptly, startling me, “is the body’s largest organ.”

Wondering where he was going with this, I looked at him from over the top of the magazine. He was still scrutinizing the chessboard but was no longer scowling. “A while back I read something very interesting, Dennis.” Of course he had. Uncle Jasper—the consummate reader, the blue-collar scholar. He continued speaking without peering up at me. “The reason dust starts off light in color before turning darker, eventually turning black, is because so much of it is made up of
cells
. That is to say, decomposing skin cells.” I watched him watching the chessboard, wondering if he was trying to distract me or if he’d had too much to drink. “The cell that makes up skin—keratinocyte, I believe—is the same cell responsible for keratin, which forms nails and hair.”

Now I knew this was some sort of distractive tactic. Nevertheless, I set down the magazine, picked up my beer, and let him continue. “We lose about one hundred hairs a day, Dennis.” He ran his arthritic fingers through his wiry tangle of gray hair. “Each week we lose about, oh, a gram of dead skin cells, and we lose tens of thousands of skin cells each passing minute.”