I lugged my pots back to where I was supposed to meet my wife — right by a temporary special occasion holiday incense kiosk — to find her surrounded by a female allergist, a male dermatologist, a guy with a Ph.D. in history, a woman gynecologist, a chiropractor who seemed to be ambisexual, and two men wearing tweed coats with honorary doctorates for their contributions to the well-being of South Carolina. When Mella came to she said both “What’s your name?” to the strangers who wanted to know what caused her to flail around orgasmic, and “What’s that smell?” to the incense nearby.
There in the stalled and relentless car, I said to my wife, “Yeah, I remember.”
I didn’t hear what Dr. Ubinger said to the faintful woman. The next caller came on after a commercial concerning Gold Bond foot powder to say he had a boil on his next-to-big toe. He seemed to be either in pain or ecstasy about the situation.
Mella said, “You should pop the hood. Maybe this mechanic has a good soul and will understand how he should come over and fix us up before he visits the dead. The dead can’t do anything about it. Pop the hood.”
It wasn’t a bad idea. I reached down and pulled the latch, then got out of the car to lift the hood rightly. I thought about Thucydides as I performed this action, for I thought of Thucydides on an hourly basis — he might’ve been the godfather of actuaries. At least that’s what an economics professor told me in college. I don’t know if Thucydides had anything to do with insuring soldiers during the Peloponnesian War, but if he did I bet it was an easier time than my insuring that Mella didn’t unconsciously act fool in public.
The time passed, as time does. People showed up. Dr. Ubinger talked to a man about his theory that lima beans might ward off skin cancer. Mella and I watched as people dressed in polyester suits and near-gingham dresses got out of Ford and Buick sedans, out of Dodge and Chevy trucks, in order to look down on a man who may or may not have owned a quirky ability to woo local women outside of his betrothed.
“There are people called Slopeheads up in Tennessee,” I said. “They’re not supposed to be insured, according to all the actuarial charts and tables. I might have to talk about people around here to my bosses. This could mean a big bonus for me, one way or the other.”
“It’s sad,” Mella said.
“Please don’t start.”
“I mean it. People dying every day. Before their time. Look inside there.” She pointed to Harold Glymph’s establishment. “You know for a fact that we just witnessed unrequited love involved in that tragedy. I’ve never known unrequited love to really happen in the real world. If Calloustown is the real world.”
The parking lot filled up. Mella got out and slowly walked around, looking through people’s car windows. Sometimes she wondered what people kept in their backseats, and she made a point to later acquire and sell these objects over the Internet. At least she didn’t cry or howl. I tried to imagine what went on inside the funeral home. Did Ms. Harrell stand in the receiving line, right next to Nelroy Munson’s widow? Did she consider the sconce as a likely weapon?
Mella wandered back, smiled at me, and closed our hood. When she got back in the car she hummed one of the more famous dirges, though off-key. She told me that everyone in Calloustown took great care in keeping their car interiors free from collectibles, child safety seats, or fast-food wrappers, though she did spy more than a few empty liquor bottles. Something happened to the radio station, and we barely heard the doctor talking about the importance of old-fashioned hardback books, for a reason that I couldn’t tell. I think the topic dealt with either depression or carpal tunnel syndrome.
I said, “Why’d you close the hood? The mechanic might not find us.”
Mella scooted over. She said she wanted to look at the sky in front of us, seeing as there were clouds that looked like the ones she remembered from childhood.
Ray Charles Shoots Wife Quenching Earth
Until my wife discovered the unending tunnel in our backyard, we’d approached our record for ignoring each other, which is to say she’d not spoken to me for four days. The record was six. There’d been innumerable bouts that lasted between twelve and forty hours. Those so-called therapists, counselors, and magazine writers who’re all about communication for a healthy, survivable marriage have never bothered to study up on us and discard their ancient and impenetrable findings. I had gotten up early — she discovered the unending tunnel on a Saturday — and driven away from our house. I didn’t leave a note. There was no cell phone for me to take along. I headed out.
When I returned, a few hours after normal lunchtime, my wife said, “Hey, come out in the backyard. You need to see this.”
Every window in the house was open. It didn’t take abnormal auditory skills to hear her voice. When she opened every window it seemed as though we resided, quiet and baleful, inside a screen room. I looked in a number of directions, thinking that she spoke to another outdoor person, a person lounging in our backyard. We didn’t have neighbors back then. The adjacent land hadn’t sold, and the developers hadn’t horseshoed a subdivision around us.
I reminded myself to fetch the ledger and mark down that she spoke first.
“You want a beer or anything?” I said. “While I’m in here, do you want something?”
She shook her head. My wife held one hand up. In the other she kept our garden hose shoved straight into the ground. Our soil, for what it’s worth, makes red clay seem like heated petroleum jelly. One time I planted sweet potatoes back there and when I pulled the tubers up 110 days later they looked like I’d harvested flat, flat lip plates. “I don’t want to lose my focus. I need to concentrate. And I need your assistance,” my wife said.
I picked one of my Nikons up off an end table.
Unfortunately I had never fully documented the causes of our silence. It went both ways, of course. Sometimes Didi said I drank too much and got verbally abusive. There were matters of finance, especially after I “retired early,” at the age of thirty-nine, from my position as photography instructor at Graywood County Community College, in order to “specialize” in wedding portraits, graduation photos, and annual arts and crafts show entries that offered prize money. We argued as to who bought the dog food last, who fed the dogs last, who paid for vet bills, who cleaned up after the dogs last. I couldn’t count how many times I closed my mouth, intending muteness until one of the dogs chewed on a lens cap, because Didi “made a decision” about our telephone service provider, the arrangement of furniture, laundry detergent choices, how much money to send her nephews and nieces on birthdays even though they never sent thank-you notes, how come the car’s engine threw a rod when Didi’d lied about taking the thing over to our mechanic for an oil change.
She didn’t like it when I holed up in the darkroom, listening to Ray Charles. “I hate Ray Charles,” she said about daily — or at least when we were on speaking terms.
My name happens to be Ray Charles.
It’s a gift to have such a moniker, to be able to own Ray Charles Photography. I’ll admit that I didn’t love third-rate community college students saying, “How hard could it be to make a A from Ray Charles?” or “How would Ray Charles know if he was in a darkroom or somewhere else?” or “What kind of crazy zoom lens does Ray Charles need?”