subtext

Whatever I’ll carry, this is what I leave—the explanation, the story I would tell. You told me once that your own stories have no moral, no subtext. There is no obligatory response of awe, admiration, gratitude, or pity. That your presence at a certain place and moment was coincidental, and that you’re no better or worse than anyone for it. Does telling the story, then, make it not so much yours? Not so much your private and singular possession, but a shared object of all who hear it? Something others can hear—or even tell—as suits their particular ear? You’ve said you wish to share history, not possess it. But can it really ever be that way, Red? When the blood is on our hands alone?

Dolores Beekmim
The Broken Teaglass
Robinson Press
14 October 1985
49

“What do you think?” I asked.

“I think,” Mona said slowly, “that I would really, really like to know who the hell this Red guy is.”

“Me too,” I said.

“I’d like to know whose blood is on his hands. Is he called Red because there’s blood on his hands? Because he’s the one responsible for the corpse?”

“Hmm …,” I said, rubbing my chin. “I wouldn’t draw that conclusion yet.”

“This company has issues,” Mona said, slamming her finger down on the cit to emphasize her observation.

I put my feet up on my cardboard-box coffee table and waited for her to continue.

“It’s just a cold, crazy, dysfunctional New England family,” she mused, perching herself at the very edge of the futon.

“Hey. Watch yourself, Ohio. What do you know about New England families?”

“I’ve been working there longer than you, Billy. I know a lot about it.”

“A year at Samuelson, give or take? That’s nothing. I’ve lived the weird New England family.”

“Oh. Excuse me. I forgot where you grew up. I suppose you think this is perfectly normal. A couple of unexplained corpses in the family history. A few blood-spattered hands. No need to actually discuss it, or even acknowledge it. Not in spoken words, at least.”

“I had no idea you were harboring this kind of resentment, Mona. Maybe I should get you another Black Label.”

“No, thanks. But does anyone ever want to admit there’s a problem? Is anyone willing to sacrifice a little of their cold, quiet reserve and talk about it? No.”

“What’re you talking about? Where are you getting this? The Nathaniel Hawthorne guide to tortured family relations? I’m afraid my family didn’t get a copy. But then, my family’s from Connecticut. Not exactly hard-core New England.”

She curled her lip at me. “Right. Suburban Connecticut families are real fuckin’ functional. I should know. Middlebrook College is crawling with their bitter female spawn.”

“Are you trying to say, Mona, that you didn’t feel you fit in?”

She ignored the question. “I’d like to look at that corpse cit again, I think. In light of this. Where is it?”

“I don’t know. I thought you had it.”

“Shit. It’s at my apartment. We need to start keeping copies at both of our places.”

Mona tapped the side of her head, sighed, and wandered over to my living room window. She pulled up the blinds and peered outside. Then she started fiddling with the drawstring cord, wrapping it around her tiny wrist. She didn’t say anything for a few minutes.

“What’s the matter?” I asked. “You freaking out?”

“No. I’m just thinking.”

“Alrighty.”

I read the subtext cit again. Mona was right—the blood in that last line was pretty sinister. But the words that preceded it hinted that it shouldn’t necessarily be taken at face value. With all this discussion of stories and subtext, wasn’t it possible we were supposed to read the blood—and maybe the corpse—as a symbol, or a tease? Between the blood and the dead prom queen, I got the distinct feeling that our “Dolores” had a talent for inserting disturbing images in place of actual facts. And her choice of the word subtext probably wasn’t a coincidence.

Mona unwrapped the cord from her wrist. She leaned forward until her forehead was pressed against the glass. She was silent for a few moments, then she said, “Seems like a peaceful neighborhood.”

“Some of the time.”

“I’ve lived here well over a year, but I feel like I don’t know this city at all.”

I didn’t know how to respond.

“I’ve lived in this part of the country for over five years,” Mona said, “and I still don’t think I get it.”

“What’s there to get?”

“Well, first of all, people big-talk like they’re so used to the harsh winters and the heavy snow. But then nobody buys snow tires. I mean, what’s that about?”

“Not sure,” I said, shrugging. “Have you been wondering this for long?”

“And some of the people,” she continued, “can be hard nuts to crack, I think.”

“There are people like that everywhere,” I said.

Mona smiled into the window.

“Right,” she said to the glass. “There’s something I should probably tell you, Billy, just to be fair.”

“What’s that?”

“Remember ‘blow-dryer’?”

“Of course.”

“That cit didn’t just fall magically into my lap right after we talked about that first ‘editrix’ cit.”

“Okay,” I replied. “How did you find it, then?”

“I looked for it.”

“But how did you know where to start?”

“I didn’t.”

“So what’re you saying? You just started at the beginning of the file? Started at ‘A’ and flipped your way through till you found something?”

“I started in the middle of ‘B,’ actually. It’s kind of bad luck to start with ‘A.’ Dan’s told you that, right?”

“Yeah.”

“You were that desperate to find another?”

Mona hesitated. “Not at first. Not until I showed the ‘editrix’ cit to Dan.”

“You showed it to Dan? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You were a little … reluctant to get involved. I didn’t want to make you even more nervous. But don’t you remember that you were actually the one to suggest it? I showed you ‘editrix’ and you suggested showing it to a senior editor. Since maybe they’d have read the Teaglass book, or have some insight on it.”

“I forgot about that. I didn’t think you’d take my suggestion.”

“Since you were just trying to get me off your back at the time.”

“I guess I wasn’t quite thinking of Dan when I suggested it. Maybe Grace. Maybe somebody like that.” I rubbed my eyes. I couldn’t quite get my head around it. How could the seemingly calculating Mona have made such a rash move? “What did Dan say about it?”

“His reaction was kind of weird,” she answered.

“Okay.” I put my hands out, inviting further explanation. Mona was still turned toward the window, but I’m pretty sure she could see my reflection in the glass. I wondered if I should tell her about Dan catching sight of the cits while we talked about beauty queen.

“He took the cit from me and read it,” she explained. “He just sat there reading it, maybe a few times. Then he said to me, ‘I’ll come by your desk later. I’m a little busy for this right now.’ Sort of cold, the way he said it. Now, no one would ever call Dan warm and fuzzy. But he’s not cold like that. And the odd thing about it was that it was eight-thirty in the morning and he was just research-reading a fly-fishing magazine. He wasn’t busy. Then he comes by my desk after lunch. And guess what he says?”

Mona finally turned around and looked at me. She didn’t wait for me to answer. “He hands it back to me. And he says,” she lowered her voice in imitation of Dan’s usual under-the-breath delivery, “‘Citations can come from almost anywhere. Most of the citations come from published works or established periodicals, but every once in a while, you come across something strange.’ I just stared at him. Then he finished his speech, the same old speech he does the second day of training. About how citations can come from jar labels or flyers off the street or overheard conversations. Some weird stuff ends up in the cit file, and that’s why you can’t take any one cit too seriously.”

“Sounds reasonable.”

“But I’ve been working there for over a year. Dan knows I know all of that. He didn’t even acknowledge what was weird about it. That it seemed to be written by someone at Samuelson. I go to his desk asking if he’d heard of this Teaglass book and he comes back to me with a response like that?”

I thought about Dan’s reaction for a moment. On one hand, it sounded a little odd. You’d think Dan would be concerned about someone jeopardizing the integrity of the cit file, cramming their own little thought nuggets into it, tainting the purity of a century of research. On the other hand, I could see him considering one random cit—even if planted by a sadly disturbed editor—not worth his attention.

“And,” she persisted, sitting tentatively on the futon, “why the hell did he need to wait a few hours to give me an empty response like that?”

“You think he was consulting his coven in the meantime, on how to deal with you?”

“Billy.”

“Sorry. I’m with you. I think it’s interesting. Did he let you keep the cit?”

“Yeah. He didn’t take it back.”

“Did he seem nervous?”

“No. Only … circumspect.”

“As always,” I pointed out.

“I guess, but I’d say more so than usual, in this instance.”

“Do you think he’s somehow responsible for the cits?”

Mona’s eyes looked bleary as she decided how to respond to this question.

“I don’t know,” she answered, sounding a little angry. She got up and moved languidly toward the window again. “Anyway. That’s what really got me interested.”

I watched as she stood by the window, gazing at the streetlamp outside.

“I see,” I said. I wondered why she didn’t seem to want to look at me.

I wished she would get away from the window, where she was starting to look like a little waif trapped in an attic. I considered standing up and going to her, but wasn’t sure how she’d interpret it. This definitely wasn’t a date—I’d figured that out by now. At her place last time, it wasn’t so much that she’d fallen asleep before anything romantic could happen. The bottom line was, nothing like that was ever going to happen. I wished she’d made this clearer somehow, but it was probably just as well. She wasn’t really my type. Not for anything long term, anyway.

“Maybe we should do more on Samuelson’s nickel,” I said. “Do a little searching at our desks. Might go faster that way.”

Mona didn’t reply. Instead she slapped the blinds down and wandered back to the futon. “I guess.”

“We’ve found some pretty intense stuff here,” I told her. “Maybe we ought to call it a night.”

After I heard her Jetta pull away, I remembered the untouched fruit tart in the refrigerator.

Damn, I whispered. All that work for nothing. I imagined myself eating a slice for breakfast the next morning, alone in the cold fish-fry stink of my kitchen. Cursing again, I took my sleeping bag out of my bedroom closet and threw it back on my futon. I reached under the futon and pulled out The Colossal Compendium of Jokes, Puns, and Riddles.

My pencil was stuck in the Psychiatry section, where I’d left off.

Patient: My wife thinks I’m crazy because I like sausages.

Doctor: That’s ridiculous. I like sausages too.

Patient: Really? You should come see my collection sometime.

It wasn’t laugh-out-loud funny, but I’d penciled a plus next to it for the unexpected quality of the punch line.

How many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb?

One. But the lightbulb has to want to change.

Had anyone laughed at that in the past twenty years? I put a minus next to it so I wouldn’t read it again.

I went to a psychiatrist because I was a little cracked. I stopped going because I was broke.

Decent. Check.

I kept reading until I reached the end of the section. Nothing new. Think you’re a dog? Get off the couch! I’m a wigwam, I’m a teepee. But I need the eggs. The usual. Good stuff, but I’d read them all before. I turned the page. The next section was Rabbis, then Rednecks.

I tossed the book on the floor. This was getting to be a pathetic habit. And I wasn’t near ready to settle in for the night. I needed to get the hell out of this apartment. I went into my bedroom closet, where I’d stashed a box of old tapes. Among them was my Traveling Music, a mix tape of driving songs I’d made just after high school. When I picked it up and examined it, I discovered that it was actually Traveling Music 2. Disappointing, but I slipped it into my pocket anyway and grabbed my jacket.

Once in my car, I discovered that the tape wasn’t rewound. When I stuck it in, it was in the middle of a Tom Petty song. Four years ago I had stopped this tape right there, and now, squealing away from my apartment at full speed, I didn’t feel I’d come very far since then.

Instead of heading down Claxton’s main drag through downtown, I pointed my car in the opposite direction, toward the neighboring town of Sanford. After about ten minutes with my foot on the gas, the road grew a little darker, and the residences a little scarcer. I took a right onto a random side road and coasted along that for a while. I passed a little gas station, but trees started to dominate the roadside. I turned on my brights and turned up the music.

Maybe I’d get hopelessly lost. Maybe I’d see some gossamer figure emerge from the shadows. A dead prom queen, perhaps? Or maybe I’d hit a dog and vow to be a better man as a result. Any of it would be better than the slow death of my apartment. The poorly lit kitchen. The pantry, with its persistent scent of rotting potato. The sinking futon cushion. The overheard mirth of people downstairs who by all conventional expectations shouldn’t be any happier than me.

By this point the Grateful Dead had rolled around on the mix tape. I eased my foot up on the pedal. I couldn’t really get into revving my engine to the Dead. I took the next few curves a little gentler, and ended up in a small town center, very old-fashioned, with a gazebo and storefronts. Everything appeared to be closed. If there’d been a little local bar, maybe I’d have gone inside. But there was no such bar. This was a place where nothing was likely to happen.

When the Ramones came on, I picked up speed again. I screamed up the road so I could take the next turn fast. And the next. Take it as it comes. Keep your wits about you. Don’t think, just drive. A school flashed by on the left. I made a U-turn and pulled into its long driveway. Forget that you’re a random creep in a random town hanging out in a middle school parking lot in the dead of night. Forget that cops in small towns check these places pretty frequently for random creeps.

I circled the lot a few times, picking up speed again. I tried a little fishtailing, then did a wide, unsatisfying donut. Then I positioned myself at the very end of the lot, facing forward. I decided to see how much power this old Grand Am really had in it. And then I could see how well these brakes worked. I pressed my foot down on the accelerator, slammed the car forward, then hit the brakes hard. The jolt snapped me forward just a little. The short squeal of the brakes was about as gratifying as a single sip of beer, or a peck on the cheek from a flirty girl. Just enough to make you realize how much more it’s going to take to satiate you.

From this side of the lot, I could see that there was another full parking lot nearby, separated by not much more than a grassy little knoll. The building on the other side was likely a high school. If I hit that knoll just right I could probably get some air under this car. I could jump the hill and land on the other side.

The same Beastie Boys song would be playing when I hit the pavement, but would it sound different on the other side? Would I feel lucky over there? Or brave? Would I drive home satisfied?

I stared at the hill. I could definitely do it. That little hill seemed made for it, almost.

I could do it.

If I had any excuse anymore.

But I didn’t.