I was doing a little work on the computer this morning and saw a file on my desktop which I didn't recognize--not an uncommon occurrence. (Picnic, lightning, steel trap.) Opened it up and started reading a bit of it--it was a short short story--and kind of remembered it and found some things to like in the prose. Then I scrolled back up to the top and saw there was a bit of a dedication:
Here's a new story. I wrote it for my Great Books class, and it's hot off the presses, so I'm feeling a bit uncertain about the whole thing. But I want to put it down NOW, so here it is. It is dedicated to and inspired by my lovely wife, Clare.
What really surprised (and, yep, hurt) was that I had saved this to my desktop on August 9, 2010 . . . not quite a year after the end of the marriage. I don't know when I actually wrote the story. But since I found it, I thought I'd go ahead and put it up here.
Wherever You Go,
Wherever You Go, You Take Yourself With You
1.
The kids were cheering, and he couldn’t understand that at all. What had he ever done to them? He searched their faces, saw no hint of recognition there. And as the pebble presaging the avalanche fell into his guts, Brian’s fist connected with his stomach and he was bent in half and a cupful of vomit burst from his mouth. Laughter rose around him like the flames of an auto-da-fe. He wondered if Brian would go away if he just stayed down on all fours. He didn’t wonder long. Brian’s hands grabbed Jerry’s shoulders and he pulled him up. For a whisper of a second, Jerry thought that it was over, that Brian was letting him know that there were no hard feelings . . . wolf bares throat and lives. And then Brian’s fist connected with Jerry’s jaw, and Jerry fell to the ground and lay there. Blackness punctuated by silver flashes filled his vision, but he could still hear the laughter.
When he could see again, Brian was gone, the others were gone. Jerry was looking into a puddle of water and probing his mouth with his tongue. There was blood, but all of his teeth felt intact. He felt no pressing urge to get to his feet, not even when it began to rain. He just watched the raindrops merging into the puddle, and it made him feel like laughing. A gentle rain. He thought of Ray Bradbury’s Venus. A soft rain.
He caught a glimpse of something in the puddle then. A glimmer of light. He wanted to touch it, but was afraid. Unlike most of his schoolmates, Jerry had no desire to hurt anyone. Even now, no anger coiled about his spine, no venom splashed into the engine of his heart. Again there was that glimmer of light, the quick movement of something very tiny and fragile . . . like a newly fertilized egg.
He couldn’t stop himself. Jerry reached out a cupped hand and caught the glimmer of light. He closed his fingers tightly so that the water would not escape. And then he lifted his hand from the water, rose to his feet, and walked home very carefully. The rain helped to keep his cupped hand full. But with each step he took, he felt a new pain begin to chaff at his being.
2.
Jerry opened his wallet and pulled out the picture of Susan and Melissa and Tony. Underneath it was an older picture with Susan and Melissa, and beneath that an even older picture of Susan and Jerry, awkwardly smiling newlyweds. Then the cab was pulling up in front of the hotel and he was getting out, trading money for his suitcase, and moving into the hotel lobby. The suitcase felt strange in his hand, but before the thought registered in his consciousness the desk clerk was leaning towards him, mouthing something inane. Jerry looked away from the man and put the suitcase on the floor, pulled out his wallet and extended a credit card.
“Jerry Tuvalu. I’ve got a reservation.”
The clerk leaned toward Jerry, his mouth opening as if to taste him, but Jerry anticipated his question and spelled his last name, then repeated his first name. The clerk seemed saddened by this, settled back into himself and typed on his keypad.
“Ah, yes. Mr. Tuvalu. Room 4040 , if that will suit.”
“Sure, that’s fine,” Jerry replied, but before he could escape the clerk was leaning toward him again and saying, “Can I get someone to help you with your bag? It looks terribly heavy and—”
“No, it’s okay. I’ve—“ Jerry interrupted, and for a moment they were singing a cacophonous duet.
“—you seem to be . . . leaking something.”
“—got it. What?” Jerry almost shouted, looked down at the floor and saw that the clerk was right, that there was a puddle of water on the floor beside his suitcase. Had it been raining when he came in? he wondered wildly, but when he looked out the front window it was, of course, a dark, dry night.
“No, I’ve got it,” Jerry said, grabbing the key and picking the suitcase up in both hands, turning it so that it was sideways, then he ran for the elevator, banging the up button with his elbow. The doors opened almost immediately and he stepped in, hit the button for the fortieth floor, and tried to calm himself.
3.
It was dry. The sound a little girl might make when her cat shook her canary by the neck escaped from his fifty year-old throat, and his mouth immediately went slack. Sweat burst from his forehead. He turned and ran into the bathroom, pulled up the stopper in the tub and turned both hot and cold water on full blast, then ran back to the bed and gently picked up the suitcase, took it into the bathroom and lowered it onto the surface of the water, then pushed down on the edges until it was submerged. He let go and it stayed down, under the water, and after a minute he checked the temperature with his wrist and turned off both faucets. There was no movement in the water. He slumped against the wall and cried, gritting his teeth so that he would make no sound. He felt himself slipping away, sleep stealing over him as irresistibly as a solar eclipse, his heart pummeling him into complete submission.
If she was dead . . .
4.
His father had been a Kirby man. He was proud to sell the finest vacuum cleaner ever made, and when he delivered on a sale he would spend an hour, sometimes more, demonstrating each of the attachments that were included in the cardboard armoire that accompanied the machine. Something beyond the obvious lived inside of that box, curled up like a genie in the corners, and when he showed the housewife (it was always a housewife in those days) the proper function of each attachment, he felt something expand inside of his lungs. Most of the housewives sensed this as wild joy, as a happiness beyond anything contained in their mediocre days, and they were often inclined to allow him to demonstrate his other skills. He told these stories to Jerry when his son was only six years old, and though he could not understand them, they anchored little Jerry even when the vast waves of grief and loss pummeled him at night, even when he missed his mother and his sister with a ferocity that insisted that he obliterate himself. He longed to grow up and be like his father.
But he could not. Something inside him . . . or almost inside of him, hovering near like a guardian angel . . . made him turn away from the girls who smiled at him in high school and his one year of college. He looked at them and saw the broken bodies of his mother and sister wrapped up in the twisted metal of the family car. Their smiles made him feel nauseous, and he fled from them, sought refuge in his room with the locked door and an aquarium which did not contain a fish.
5.
She grew to be very beautiful, but not large. Jerry’s room was inviolate, so this was no need for disguise or subterfuge there. His father never even came up the stairs to the second floor—where his old bedroom and Janey’s old bedroom were left unattended, unchanged.
And as she grew, she began to sing. At first Jerry could not make out the words, but her song soothed him to sleep at night and gently awakened him in the morning. Her song filled him with joy.
Until one day when he began to understand. “The sea,” he heard, and he leaned close to the glass and looked into her pale blue eyes, saw the longing there, and felt anger grip him and throw him from the room.
She did not relent. “I need the sea” was the first complete phrase he heard her sing, and his anger made him want to break the glass and let her die. The ingratitude of it overwhelmed him. He had rescued her, he thought. He had nourished her and cared for her, and she wanted to leave him.
“No!” she sang, “I need the sea.”
He married Susan because he thought that it would hurt her. It was difficult to find a place to hide her, but she seemed to be happy for him, and she smiled when he told her. And then she folded her hands against her small breasts, held her tail in a rigid, downward sweep, and sang, “Please, Jerry . . . I need the sea.”
He gritted his teeth and snorted contemptuously.
6.
That was when he first thought of the suitcase. He fitted a plastic tank inside of it, reinforced the opening so that no leakage was possible, and made a small area for clothes to hide the compartment. There would be no fear of discovery . . . a fear which intensified with the arrival of the children, one and three years later. He carried her with him as a punishment, though he would not allow himself to admit to that. If he had simply not wanted her to be discovered, it would have been easier to give her what she asked for, what she so desperately needed.
7.
When he swam back to consciousness and looked into the suitcase he saw that she was dead. Years of traveling had not killed her, but a moment of neglect had done the trick. She was gone, and the world was empty.
8.
That night, Jerry ordered room service for the first time in his life. He ordered a steak, very rare, and a bottle of Turnbull Cab. When the tray arrived at his room he tipped the young man fifty dollars—all of the cash he had in his wallet. He lit a candle and burned his credit cards as he drank the wine and picked at the steak. And then he stripped himself naked and dumped the food from the plate into the trashcan, washed it in the bathroom sink, and then placed her carefully dried body onto the empty plate.
When he had finished eating, he began to pray for the first time since his mother had died.
