I have done nothing — or, more specifically, the one thing I have done, the one big thing of consequence, was essentially a crime that led to Jane’s murder. My accomplishment is as an adulterer, an accomplice to murder, like that’s something to be proud of. …
My mind leaps to my theory about presidents — that there are two kinds, ones who have a lot of sex and the others who start wars. In short — and don’t quote me, because this is an incomplete expression of a more complex premise — I believe blow jobs prevent war.
And I can’t help but wonder, did George want to kill me too? I have no doubt that the only thing that stopped him was narcissism — to kill me was also to kill some part of himself, which might also explain why Nate and Ashley survived.
I urge myself to gather my green-and-blue Lik-M-Aid veins and leave the house and see what is outside. Things are only odd by comparison; in the absence of anything else, the odd can seem normal. My mind hops to John Ehrlichman, a Jew, a Christian Scientist, and the only figure from Watergate to serve jail time. Ehrlichman went to jail before his appeal process was completed. He offered himself up.
Like a drunk who has stumbled into the wrong house, I go back outside, reminding myself that the prior weekend, Field Day with Nate, was good, it was filled with promise, hopes for the future — it was a thousand times better than the horrific visit with George.
In the backyard, I open George’s garden cabinet and take out the trowel and split-fork weeder and get down on my hands and knees. It’s like a goddamned premature spring awakening. The yard is heavily planted, everything is thriving. I dig in the dirt. I think about my class this afternoon. I’ve told no one about being fired — who would I tell? What the hell kind of job could I get now? I’m digging, hurling clumps of weedy earth over my shoulder, and imagining the faces of my students, idiots who sit there waiting for me to spoon-feed it to them, waiting for me to inform them that there is such a thing as history and that it matters.
I crawl on my hands and knees, obsessively plucking errant growth, weed stumps, clover, various things that seed, blow, spread. I am diddling in the dirt looking like every other asshole who mucks in the backyard as though we can rekindle our ancient energy by sinking our hands into the soil.
The pet minder appears at the edge of the yard. “Are you okay?” he asks. “Should you be bent over like that? Isn’t it too much pressure on your head?”
“No one mentioned not bending.”
“Might be too much,” the minder says. “My aunt had a stroke and they told her no forward bending.”
I lift my head. “No longer bent,” I say.
“Perhaps take a rest,” he says. “I got Tessie a pizzle stick. And I gave the cat a catnip mouse — she loves them.”
“I never thought of giving the pets toys,” I mumble.
“They get bored and need something new — same as us,” he says, walking down the drive. “Call me if you need me. I’m fish-sitting not far from here.”
Tessie smells the overturned dirt. She lies on her back in the center of the yard and rolls on my pile of fresh-plucked weeds.
A minute after the minder is gone, I accidentally flip a massive clot of rich black dirt into my eye, blinding myself. I paw at my face, trying to clear it. I use my shirt, get up too fast, and step on the trowel, throwing myself off balance. I crash into the barbecue and rebound — mentally writing the headline: Idiot Kills Self in Garden Accident. It’s Tessie who guides me to the stair, with me holding on to her collar, saying, “Cookie, cookie, let’s go find a cookie.” In the downstairs half-bath I let myself have it. “Shit face,” I say, looking at myself in the mirror, thinking it is really possible that I didn’t flip dirt into my eye but shit of some sort: Tessie shit, kitty shit, raccoon or deer shit — whatever it is has a funky smell, like fancy cheese, cheese so rare and ripe that they keep it in its own cave and bring it out only for royal holidays. I have one eye open and am looking at myself in the mirror, giving myself a talking to, remembering another time when I looked in the mirror, I literally dissolved — the stroke.
“Don’t stare,” I say to myself. “You have that dumb look like you don’t even know what I’m talking about, like it’s all a big surprise. How could it be? Just because you’re hearing this out loud for the first time doesn’t mean it’s new information. I’ve been talking to you for weeks, really more like years, or the entirety of your whole goddamned life, you fucking idiot.”
“Why are you talking to me this way?” I ask.
“Because you don’t hear it any other way, you want it to be all touchy-feely. You fucked up, your sister-in-law is dead, your brother is in an insane asylum, and you want me to make you feel good about yourself? Wake the fuck up — you are a disaster. You’re even more dangerous than your brother; the fact that he’s in there and you’re out here, on the loose, proves it.”
My head slams into the wall. Slam. As though somehow it is just happening, as though someone else is doing it. Slam. Slam.
“Why did Jane call me when she wanted to know where the light bulbs were, why was I like the other half, the functional half of my brother?”
“Are you blaming her?”
“No,” I say.
And now my head is not in the sink anymore, not slamming into the wall, it’s in the toilet, and there is pressure at the back of my neck; at first I think it’s a hand pushing me down, but then I realize my head is stuck under the rim of the seat.
“Are you going to throw up? Are you sick of yourself now?”
I don’t answer.
The toilet flushes, soaking me, drowning me. I am waterboarding myself.
Coughing, sputtering, I pull my head out of the toilet. I vomit. I am on the floor of the bathroom, wet, sour — silent.
“Pouting?”
I don’t answer.
“Not talking to me? Should I stop?”
“Say whatever you want, give me what you’ve got, bring it on. Clearly you’ve been sitting on it for a long time.”
“Okay. Number one — how could you spend so many years writing a book on Nixon? It’s boring, it’s beyond boring, and it’s pathetic. I wouldn’t even care if you fucking failed, it’s the fact that you’ve done nothing that’s sent me over the edge.”
“Is my book really that bad?”
“It’s shit. You are shit. Your personality is necrotic, dying; it eats away at everything. Look at me, would I lie to you? I’m like a ghost from within trying to knock some sense into you.”
“What do you want from me?” I ask, fearing this is all hurtling towards some inevitable end.
“I want your life,” he says.
And there is nothing more to say.
The telephone is ringing.
“Hello,” I say.
“Is this you?”
“Yes,” I say.
“It’s me,” she says.
“Claire?”
“Who’s Claire?” she asks, her voice suddenly strict, as though insulted, as though I should have known.
I go deeper into my own darkness, “Jane?”
“How many are there?” she wants to know.
“How many of what?”
“Girls,” she says, “women, fuck buddies.”
“Who is this?” I ask, frightened.
“Why don’t you run down your list, and when you get to me I’ll call out, ‘Bingo.’”
“You have the wrong number.”
“Oh no,” she says. “I have the right number. I double-checked before I dialed.”
“Maybe it’s my brother you’re looking for,” I suggest.
“Does he have a heart-shaped mole over his left nipple?” she asks.
Deep silence. “Who is this?”
“Crap,” she says, sighing. “You don’t remember me. I fed you lunch and then some.” She pauses. “Look, I didn’t mean to catch you off guard. Can we roll back and try this again? Push the restart button.”