Catapult Page 5

  “People don’t give near enough credit to suburban sprawl.” Sage nodded. “It makes all the ugly farms that ruined the prairie look so much better. Like Bush the first. Bring in the son, and we grow wistful for the father.”

  Sage had severe dyslexia as a child and retained an odd habit of turning his head and looking at faraway things from the corner of his eye. This made his face seem dubious and scheming; people had difficulty trusting him. They felt he was hiding something, and Sage, in turn, felt rebuffed. Nora, though, was fond of his sideways glance. It meant he was paying close attention.

  She said, smiling a little, “What I miss is the swamp.”

  He said, “I miss the town dump. Do you remember? Any old clearing in the forest, and in goes the broke-down refrigerator. Leaky batteries. Old books and comics, even encyclopedias!”

  They were driving more slowly now. Overhead, the clouds were white and tall, like shoveled drifts of snow.

  Nora said, abruptly, “I found a tarot card once.”

  “In a dump?”

  “In a student paper.”

  She wasn’t sure what made her think of this. It happened a long time ago, back when she was barely older than her students. For years she thought of that period in her life as The Mistake, when she was dating a yogi and had joined a macrobiotics club. Now that just felt like someone else’s tedious story.

  In the passenger seat, Sage was trying to get another envelope out of the glove compartment. “Someone had a crush on you.”

  “It wasn’t that kind of tarot card.” She pulled into a driveway with two rusted station wagons. “It was a horned man with a blindfold.”

  “The devil!” Sage cried. “You must have really pissed off the kid who left it for you. Did you give him a bad grade?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  But she did. The boy sucked lemon drops and his nipples showed through his shirt and she gave him an F even though he killed himself before she could get the paper back to him. Or maybe that was someone else. Maybe she was confusing things.

  Sage started opening the door, but Nora called, “Wait!”

  She wanted to tell him something. She had the impulse to be comforted, so she leaned over the seat and put her head on his lap. Then Nora thought about the dream she had, the one where Sage was pregnant with their baby. He was a big man, and he let the baby grow into a small child in his womb—a big, toddler-sized fetus. Sage grew fat and Nora stayed thin. In the dream she felt forgiven.

  Sage licked the envelope over her and patted her head. Nora could smell the bright, sticky scent of glue and wet paper.

  The screen door was propped open with the statue of a frog, but the inner wooden door was shut and Sage had to jiggle the knob. Inside, they saw a few blue plastic cups on the coffee table. There were potted flowers instead of florist arrangements, petunias drooping from window sills.

  “Where’s the prodigy?” Sage sang out. But when no one answered, he said, more hesitantly, “Hello?”

  There was a collection of soccer trophies on the mantelpiece, little bronze boys balancing balls on their shoes. In the middle of the crowd was a candid photo, a kid in dark sunglasses turning his head.

  Sage looked at Nora. “Did we get the right time?”

  She could feel him shrinking back, closing down. Sage didn’t like to feel socially vulnerable. She said, “It’s an open house. There is no right time.”

  “Well, did we get the right day?”

  “Agda!” Nora called into the kitchen. Then she turned to Sage and whispered, “Or is it Inga?” She muttered, “It’s some funny Swedish name.”

  Sage said, “Allie?”

  “That’s not Swedish.”

  Sage was backing up. “We should go.”

  Nora rolled her eyes at him. It was perverse of her, but she liked it when Sage was thrown off by unexpected events. He grew shy and suspicious; he didn’t know whom to disparage and whom to defend. It was understood, then, that Nora was the sensible one, the one to defer to. She said, officiously, “We should check upstairs.”

  “God, Nora. No. No way. That’s like breaking and entering.”

  “We were invited. We should make sure nothing’s wrong.”

  Nora climbed the stairs gingerly, but without hesitation. She noticed the bedroom walls were gray with fingerprints. On the bed, the covers were pushed to one side as if love or sleep had only recently ended.

  Sage declared anxiously from behind her, “Not a burglary. Nothing taken.”

  Nora hushed him. “How would you know if anything’s gone?”

  She touched a slippery doorknob. She wanted to see what the Svensons kept in their closets: the puckery blue condoms, the drafts of unfinished poems. Nora believed that everyone had things they wanted seen but couldn’t show, things they did poorly for which they wanted to be absolved. It made her feel perceptive and benevolent to realize this about the Svensons, who were dowdy and boring to talk to. Very gently, she pulled open the closet door.

  “Stop it!” Sage pushed the door closed. He had a slightly hounded look, like something was biting at his neck under his shirt. “Enough of this. We’ll just leave the card on the table and go.”

  But the boy’s bedroom! Nora paused in the doorway and looked in. There was a neatly made bed, a poster of a giant hand flicking someone off, and an aquarium. She walked over and crouched by the glass. Teenage boys always unnerved her, with their dramatic bodies and bad skin, their needy flirtation. They couldn’t decide if they wanted to be liked or hated. The student with the lemon drops used to pull them out of his mouth and line them up, glistening and almost beautiful, on his desk. She remembered that he wrote eleven drafts of one paper, each with fewer and fewer pages until he was left with a single sentence: Doesthisimpressyourhighness? Inside the aquarium, a fluorescent light buzzed over waxy plants. Nora didn’t see anything alive in there, and then several unrelated stones clicked together and became a millipede.

  Nora jumped back.

  Sage, already on the stairs, called, “Did you hear something?”

  She met him in the hall.

  He said, hopefully, “Someone’s home?”

  They walked down the stairs together, neither one leading or following, like a bride and a groom at a wedding. Nora had the impression people were hiding, friends stashed behind doorways and chairs. She thought the guest of honor at a surprise party might feel something like this before the lights flicked on, and she almost took Sage’s hand, almost warned him to pay attention. But the living room was just as they left it, the same bronze boys kicking daintily in unison. The kitchen, too, was unremarkable. Ragged cereal boxes on the counter and half-empty coffee mugs. Nora had the impulse to dip her finger in one of them to see if the liquid was still warm.

  She gave a start when she saw it, but the bear didn’t bother to lift its head.

  When she thought about that afternoon later, it worried Nora that she couldn’t reconstruct her logic. She just remembered how relieved she felt in that moment, the weight of everything lifted off with the sheer unlikeliness of the danger. Her mind raced with stories: bears rolling tents over, campers jumping off cliffs to escape. She whispered to Sage, “Is it brown or black?” because she’d heard one you run from and the other you fight, but the bear looked too scrawny to be dangerous, ancient and sluggish, something only slightly more animated than an eroded boulder. It hovered over two white plates on the floor, clean enough to pile up and return to the cabinets. Then the animal took a step forward and Nora had the presence of mind to throw a box of cereal. Sage said, “What the fuck!” and the cereal box hit a cabinet with a thud. The bear gave them a pathetic, desperate look—ears back and tail between its legs—and Nora noticed it was in fact a dog. It was difficult to see because the sun was setting so brilliantly. The globe of light slid into the frame of the window and distracted them all for an instant; it was so unnecessary, so blinding. Then the dog shrugged to the floor and lifted one leg in the air, peeing and nibbling Chex at th
e same time.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Sage asked. “For Christ’s sake.”

  Nora opened her mouth but didn’t say anything. The important thing, she knew, was to accuse him first, for not seeing the bear for even a second, for not perceiving even a little bit of danger. Her fingers hung from her hands (she felt them dangling wetly there, one by one) and she was furious then because she could not even mention the bear without feeling ashamed.

  “Oh my God,” Sage muttered. “The thing peed itself.”

  He went to a cupboard and opened a door, closed it and opened another.

  “What are you doing?” Her voice was very high and ringing.

  “Looking for some paper towels.”

  “Where are we?” she demanded.

  “Nora, calm down. You’re freaking the dog out.”

  “No really! Who’s house is this?” she asked, in horror.

  It was absurd to see Sage so practical and generous all of a sudden. He was kneeling down and petting the dog, pushing the hair out if its eyes, murmuring softly. Since when did he know what to do with pets, how to comfort them? The dog was one of those hideous, otherworldly mixes with ears that rose partway and collapsed, with gray paw pads like the skins of old fruits. Nora wanted the bear back.

  The animal sat up and caught Sage’s face with its tongue, drumming its tail on the kitchen floor.

  She said, “That’s disgusting.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “You’re disgusting.” She was humiliated.

  He stood up to wet the paper towels, but she took the roll from him. She could never just leave him alone, could never quite solace herself adequately. “You like wiping pee, Sage?”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Later, you can stroke my brow and wipe my ass, if you want, like the doggy.”

  He shoved away the paper she held for the job. The windows were getting dark, and the kitchen smelled like wet animal. The bear had been shaggy, Nora remembered. Hulking and quiet, maybe injured. In the sink, she saw bloated peas drift in greasy water. Soon, someone would come home and be frightened. Nora and Sage would frighten them. They left before anyone came.

  A small crowd gathered in front of the next house, a man waving smoke from his face at a grill, a clump of teenagers sipping sodas. As they walked up the driveway, a woman spotted them and said, “Are you cocktail-frank people, or sausage-ball?” Later, they drank wine from clear plastic glasses and watched a video of a girl they did not know riding a horse around and around a dusty field. Nora told jokes about herself to a teenager in shorts who wanted to flirt with her. “I drove a boy like you to suicide,” she said, when it had grown late and parents and children alike were draped over furniture. She liked that it came out like a way to tease someone and not like an excuse for herself.

  “You’re bad.”

  She assured him, “I’m worse than I look.”

  He had his head on the back of the couch, very near her shoulder. “You don’t look bad.”

  With effort she laughed at him. She saw Sage in the other room, touching the stubble on his face with the very tips of his fingers. He wouldn’t catch her eye. The boy on the couch rearranged his shorts and waited for her to stop laughing.

  “You don’t know me.” She resumed flirting.

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  It was very late when they left. Sage was driving, fiddling with the radio. Nora felt the suburbs move past, dark and spectral. She wanted to reach out and touch Sage’s hand, but that seemed too complicated. “Watch out for deer,” she told him instead. She said it again when he didn’t respond. Then she was crying. She thought about how once, years ago when they were making love, she hit her head on Sage’s knee. Bright white lights had unfurled in her right eye. He had leaned over her in the dark, had kissed her face over and over again. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he’d murmured, as if those were the only words of love in the world.

  “Watch out,” she told him now, but it didn’t sound like love.

  MARCO POLO

  Before I go to sleep, I make the bed. I like that neat square: all the corners lined up, all the corners folded over each other. Sheets, blanket, comforter, pillowcase. For five minutes, I lie on top, then slowly crawl under, upsetting everything.

  No one ever makes the bed in the morning. The rumpled landscape stays—hills, plateaus, valleys—casting bewitching shadows in the afternoon. Sometimes, I think the shape holds the shapes of our bodies, sleeping. But mostly, I think it holds the shape of our bodies leaving, the places where a head lifted up, a leg slid out, a person rose. I’m always gone before A in the morning. I don’t know how she wakes up. But at night when I smooth down her sheets, I find myself imagining how she might transition out of her sleep. Once in a Minnesota lake, she hid from me for a full minute under the flat, black surface. She came out without explanation, clambered onto the dock and toweled dry. I think her waking must be like that—abrupt, but efficient.

  I think, too, about how she should find my body when she finally comes to bed. Should I be on my back like an untroubled man? I could be like that, practical about my circadian rhythms. It’s just sleep, after all. Or should I be found coiled up, twisted in sheets, sweaty with dreams, with waiting? Would she be sorry then? Would she come to me from her side of the bed, would she put her arms around me? While I exchange one position for the next, night comes down on top of me. It bears down on me, so I can’t move, so I can no longer consider my options. I don’t ever know how she finds me. If I wake at all, it’s usually too late for the traffic outside, too late for the TV in the neighboring apartment, too late for the dogs calling out against the sirens.

  And A is in my arms, curled effortlessly against me.

  She tells me I’m a lunatic, it’s not like she’s having an affair. I think that’s probably true. She’s never been good at subtlety or deception. When we were first married, she came to bed with me every night, settled her naked body on top of mine, settled her face in my neck. I could tell she liked it, but she wasn’t romantic in the least. She arranged her breasts on my ribs and said, “Watch where you stick that knee.” After I covered her face with kisses, she nodded approvingly, saying, “That’s it, there we go.” Then she put her head down and went to work. It was only afterward, when she was pulling her hair from my mouth, that she grew conversational. That’s when she wanted to tell me the names of horses she rode as a child. She wanted to talk about China.

  But she never wanted to fall asleep. Sometimes she waited until I drifted off before creeping out, fumbling for her shirt and socks, slipping through the door. I’d wake when she sat up and watch her prepare to go, shaking her hair loose from her collar. Sometimes, she just tucked me under the sheet, kissed my head, and left, hauling her clothes after her. In the morning, she was nonchalant. When asked, she said she simply couldn’t fall asleep right away.

  “Would not,” I said, after a couple months of this.

  “You don’t choose to fall asleep.”

  “You choose to try.”

  “How do you know if I’m trying or not?” She bit into the toast with just her teeth, keeping her lips clean.

  “You stay with me for, like, five minutes.”

  “What good is trying something that won’t work? It’s a waste of time.” She deposited the toast in the trash, brushing her fingers. “Anyhow, what would you know? You’re an easy sleeper.” She made it sound like a personality fault, a lack of refinement.

  I was an easy sleeper, though. She was right—or at least I had been. As a child, I didn’t have nightmares or wet the bed. I didn’t wake in a sweat and worry about the shadows raking the windows. I just set my head down and switched off. It didn’t feel like I was doing anything at all: it was like digesting food, it was like disappearing. After my father died, my mother let me sleep wherever I wanted because she pitied me, and I frightened her with my resilience. (I did not sob when I heard he’d been in a crash. He did not v
isit me in my dreams like she told me he would. He did not sit at the foot of my bed and stroke his double chin and say he missed me.) My mother let me sleep in the plastic dog kennel, or under the kitchen table, or sprawled like a beached sea mammal on the living room floor. It suited her to tell her friends I was working through issues of disorientation. In truth, I just fell asleep when and where I was tired. I felt I’d been excused from certain human rules that were entirely unrelated to the accident.

  By the time I was an adult, I could sleep anywhere I chose. In college, I dozed at the solemn, boring ends of parties and lectures. Later at Fenco, I took tiny, controlled naps at my desk. I propped my chin in my hand, thought about Montana or sea lions, then slipped away and back again. When my colleagues—suspicious, envious—asked, “Were you sleeping, Mason?” it never really seemed that I had. I couldn’t understand their resentment. It seemed like an unremarkable function of the body, like pissing or blowing your nose, something that warranted little discussion.

  But after A and I got married, after we packed up her brother’s car in Winona and moved to Saint Louis, I started thinking about it a lot. In the beginning when A didn’t fall asleep after sex, I thought it was just the new place: the way the sheets smelled like a department store and the walls smelled like mold. I thought she was simply nervous, worried that we’d gotten married too quickly and moved too far away from home, to a city neither of us knew. Once, on the Fourth of July, when our neighbors were setting off fireworks on the sidewalk outside our window, she looked at me and said, “You look like someone I’ve never met.” But then she sucked me off, neatly, wiping her chin afterward, and her anxieties seemed natural and temporary. Unfounded. I was sure she felt so, too.

  Some nights I’d stay up with her and we’d watch dating shows with couples in hot tubs, people who were drunk and nearly naked and too nervous about the cameras to talk or touch. Sometimes, I felt we were on those dates as well, that we were both sitting there and watching ourselves perform, wondering what the audience would make of us. I said, leaning in, trying to put my arm around her, “That man looks like Jesus. He looks like Jesus, doesn’t he? Look at that hair.”