On his web site the self-portraits had apparently disappeared for good, broken and scattered into the ether. Just before dawn there was email, and an attachment: a picture of a fattened, battered cat with his face, so professionally done as to be seamless, so much of the cat in the line of his jaw and the tilt of his head, so much of his own terror as the feline head shifts to see the thing in fast pursuit.
The Cough
A tickle like the sound of a truck rumbling in the distance, felt in the chest, where bones join tissue and there are quantities of liquid for lubrication. Something was coming. Something was clearly out there. Something he didn’t want to know about.
He’d had the cold for weeks. Three, four weeks. It didn’t seem right, didn’t seem natural. Weren’t colds two week affairs? His wife had told him that at some time or other. He remembered the time last winter he’d been moaning and groaning, thinking he was going to die, angry because she wouldn’t take care of him, wouldn’t even sympathize, and she’d said, “Two weeks and it’ll be gone. It’s just a cold. Drink your orange juice.”
Women had little sympathy for men. That had always been true. It was a way at getting back at their ill treatment under a patriarchy, he supposed. It was a man’s world, and women had little sympathy. He really couldn’t fault them for that, but it felt bad just the same.
Suddenly his body exploded into a fit of coughing. His face felt flushed. He could feel himself filling with fever. He could feel the tube of his throat constrict as he coughed, twisting at its root, trying to rip itself out of his body. Something was coming from a far distance. Something that didn’t agree with him.
He spat something milky into the sink. His wife would have hated that. “Men have such disgusting habits,” she used to say. He leaned over the sink and looked at what he had coughed up. Men did that, too—periodically they felt compelled to look at whatever came out of them. The globule in the sink was creamy, yet somewhat solid, like a small bit of half-digested flesh.
He wondered if what he was suffering from was akin to what they called “consumption” in the old days. He had no idea. But he was a man. Naturally he felt consumed. Men had a lot of things on their minds.
Suddenly the cough racked him again. His head jerked as if he’d been slapped. His wife had slapped him a couple of times, because of some dumb thing he’d said to her. He’d never hit her. He had no use for men who hit their wives.
But she should never have hit him.
Something was coming from a long distance away, something had come from a long distance, and now it was filling his throat. He thought that he would choke. He ran to the toilet bowl and coughed something up from his throat. It felt large and soft as if it were one of his internal organs as it passed his lips and plopped into the water.
He looked down. It was longish and pale, like an arm, and then it dissolved into the water.
Where was she, anyway? He couldn’t remember. If it had been her making these noises of distress she would have expected him to come help her. But when he was the one who was sick, she hid herself. Marriage ought to be a two-way street.
At least she could have fed him something. He was hungry. He hadn’t eaten anything all day, and he’d had way too much to drink last night in order to ease the pain in his throat and in other places he didn’t like to talk about. He was hungry. Men had hungers. Where was she?
The next cough practically split him in two. It felt as if it had originated miles away. Something rushed through him, then past him as if on its way to an important destination. Where was she? He looked down at what he had brought forth from such a long distance away, and saw a soft, liquid, barely recognizable version of his wife’s face floating in the bowl, a soft tinge of blood in the lips and cheeks. The image started to break up even as he impulsively jerked the lever to flush it all away.
And then he remembered.
You Dreamed It
Cheryl woke up abruptly and rubbed her eyes as hard as she could. Her father had held her head over the toilet bowl; he was going to drown her. She was sure of it.
But then he had stopped all of a sudden, and she’d looked up into his faraway face. The face had been dark, and although she knew it was her father’s face she really couldn’t see it very well. Daddy? she’d said, but very softly. She wasn’t even sure he could hear her. She wasn’t even sure she wanted him to hear her.
He hadn’t said anything. He picked her up, threw her over his shoulder, and carried her from the small bathroom to her bedroom at the end of the dark hallway. There was a bend in the hallway where the stairs came up. He was careful walking there; it would be easy to slip and drop her down the stairs.
Maybe he wanted to slip, she thought. But he didn’t, this time. He’d hit her head real hard against the door frame when he walked into the hall; she’d sobbed once and held onto her cries, afraid he would get mad. Looking at the big staircase falling off into the dark helped her stop crying — it was so scary.
When they got to the end of the hallway he’d thrown her onto the bed. She made herself really stiff trying not to cry, but that made her back hurt when she hit the bed. She gasped once, then gasped again when he started pouring water on her. Glasses full of water, hitting her face harder and harder. Soaking into the bed. Soaking into her pajamas. Making everything wet, everything dripping with it. She finally began to cry; she couldn’t help it. They would think she’d wet the bed again—Mommy and Daddy; she’d be in trouble.
He didn’t say a thing. After he finished wetting her bed he turned and left.
Cheryl looked at her bed and reached out carefully with one hand. It was damp. So were her pajamas. She stared at the one window in the room, full of bright light, like water. She couldn’t decide if she had dreamed or not.
Her father walked in. “Wet your bed again?” he said quietly.
Cheryl nodded her head and looked away.
“Well, that’s all right. You know what you need to do now.”
Cheryl got up and began stripping the bed. It was hard for her; the covers were tucked in real tight and all the blankets and the quilt were heavy, especially once they were wet, but she had to do it herself. That’s what her daddy called “the deal.”
He stepped out of her way as she waddled over to the hamper. She almost tripped at the last second, but then he grabbed her and set her upright. “Thank you,” she said softly. He started to leave. “Daddy?” He turned around. “Did you take me to the bathroom last night?”
He crouched down then, and she saw his face: all pink and newly-shaven. He smiled with large thin lips and kissed her on the cheek. “No, sure didn’t, Angel. You must have dreamed it.”
She watched his face go away as he stood up. She nodded and he smiled again.
She got in trouble that day at school for staring out the window too much and not doing her work. She couldn’t help it. Everything looked so blurry outside, like the sun had come down and made all the plants, cars, and buildings glow with a funny light. Or like she was seeing everything outside through water, but it wasn’t raining. It was funny.
Later she looked into her lunch box and brought her marbles out. They were red, blue, green, lots of different colors. Some you could even see through. A bunch of them had belonged to her first daddy, her real daddy, her mommy had told her. She liked looking at those the best. They looked so old. And they made her feel better. She brought them to school every day but she didn’t play with them. She just liked to look. Somebody might steal them if she played.