Fiction from The Literary Review

Rebecca Brown

I am moving my mouth but nothing is coming out.
     I am opening my jaws and my teeth are clacking and I am trying to push something up and out of my throat      a lump a knot a ball a gag      but either it's caught or it's permanent and can't come out, won't go back down, or at least not without tearing everything up like rusty wire like broken glass like rocks against my skin, like sandblasting my innards. I can hear my bones move deep inside my ears and my retarded---excuse me---developmentally disabled moronic stupid blithering tongue is flapping away like an idiot a ticker tape a flag on the fourth of July the wagging foot of a slobbering dog whose flabby guts are being rubbed by some pathetic oaf, but nothing is coming out. Nothing is coming out that you could answer.
     I am trying to tell you something but I can't.
     
     It isn't---oh, it couldn't be, not after all these years---I love you?
     Or, Please come back?
     It can't be any more, What happened?
     Can it?          
     
     Favorite terrible memories I go back to despite the fact that they can still really torture me:
     The day at the train.
     The day on the bridge.
     The walk down the mountain.
     The afternoon in your back yard.
     The walk in your neighborhood
     that night when we saw that yellow light and heard those people running and we went to the park too. It was such a lovely park near where you lived, very civilized, and the yellow lights came on, all misty and romantic, the air looked like magic, full of shimmery spots. The lights looked kind of orange actually, not yellow, rosy and moist, and there was a sweet scent, some kind of flower, you would know what it was, I wouldn't. Maybe you said so. But maybe you didn't know. Maybe I only imagine this when I think of how many things you knew that I didn't or that I thought you knew. Aw gee, I thought you were the greatest! Anyway, everything smelled green and nice and clean, like Spring was in the air! (It was November, actually, but no matter. It felt like spring. As if it should have been spring. So actually maybe that sweet smell was clumps of filthy wet decaying leaves piled up in the gutters or caught in the drains or rotting windfall worm eaten apples.) In any event, the road really was slightly wet, shiny under the street lamps, and lovely! Extremely lovely! The air was soft and warm and moist with new things about to happen, new green and tender yellow shoots and darling little bunny rabbits and eggs and lambs and so on so when we went back to your house we went to the living room and sat on the floor (we had already had a few drinks, each) where we had to be quiet because your daughter was asleep upstairs and I put a hand on you then both hands then my mouth my tongue on your neck, your perfect neck, my tongue on your perfect neck, then your beautiful perfect hands then your mouth on me then we went upstairs to your room.

     The night in your room.
     The night that never seemed to get dark enough.
     (Your skin always looked kind of blue.)
     Then the light of the morning in your room.
     Then the next night. The next night
     and so on.

     It had been years already
     I had wanted this.
     I told you this.
     That did it.

     How much of you did I make up from the start? How much did I not see you at all? How much of what I “remember” was only made up in my head?

     It went on for a while but then too long for you but you didn't know or only partly knew that, certainly didn't know how to say that or actually even have much of a chance to say anything because I kept saying, insisting. Or even if you had, it might not have mattered much because I kept hearing things you had not said.
     Though I do, I think, remember you saying to me, “Your relationships take place in your head.” Then rather than think about what that mean, assumed that therefore you found me fascinating rather than what I was.
     At first, invited, I kept coming back and back to you, literally, as in showing up at your doorstep, meeting you overtly for and in polite social situations (your friends who didn't know who I was were nice to me) and then for our covert private assignations for which you were, as I, happy for a while.
      But also figuratively, as in I returned both like a figure, a fragment, the outline or shape of something, a form, a person thought of or seen in a specified way, a likeness of a person or thing, an illustration, a shadow to you, in your memory, I think, though I can't be certain because I can't talk to you, as well as I also return to a figure of you, that is that which is left in my own want gouged, love slammed, envy eaten addle of a brain.
      I do this (these) figurative returning(s) again and again, as if I were beating my head against a wall. (nota bene: The simile of the wall here is meant only to suggest an upright structure of wood, stone, etc. serving to enclose, divide, support or protect a room, and of one (me) beating one¹s (my) head against it. It is meant to be only a figure of the intractableness that beating one¹s head against a wall so ongoingly suggests. It is not intended to suggest an image of a physical beating upon a person, (you). (N.B. also---and I want this on the record---I never beat you repeatedly.))
      For example, one of the walls in your house. Such as a wall in the living room with the half wall high bookcases, your various cloth and paperbound volumes of classics, with which you were very generous, and the occasional glossy photo travel book though you didn¹t travel much. I didn't understand that because I loved to run around, but now, perhaps because I am at last beginning to settle down, starting to realize that you didn't want to leave and/or ruin your life.
      But I'm getting away from myself here. Where was I? The bookcases. Yes. Not a page of dreck upon them. Knickknacks, few and tasteful, (silver cup, Etruscan- style statuette, Venetian style glass paperweight, Georgian style silver candlesticks) on top of the bookcases. The fireplace, the tidy desk, small but classy, though you would never have used that word, the beige lampshade that threw that lovely toasty beige warm honey colored fleshy light over everything including, but not limited to, ourselves.
     Or a wall in the kitchen downstairs, though there wouldn't be many places one could actually beat one's head, what with all the hanging pots and pans and cabinets and counters and frig. In fact, I think the only exposed wall space was above/behind the breakfast table which was against the wall so one couldn't beat one's head against the wall unless one were leaning over the table to reach the wall, in which case one wouldn't be close enough to get a really rousing, bloody, nose, lip and/or eyeglass splitting wallop in. Though one could, I suppose, sit in one of the chairs at the head or the end of the table and beat one's head against the wall while sitting down, but then I doubt one would get any real oomph behind it. Though I also suppose, now that I spend all time thinking about it---and that's the real is the problem, isn't it? all this stupid thinking---if one moved one of the chairs at the head or the foot of the table, one could stand next to the wall and beat one's head. But why go to all that trouble when there are plenty of other walls in other rooms?
     Such as the walls in the guest room where I, as your “guest” “slept,” the wall opposite the (single) bed for example, which had only one framed picture, I think of a some calm quiet peaceful Dutch landscape thingy that even I could not disturb. There was also an unobstructed head beating sized place by the window in the “guest” room I snuck to when I snuck from your room after we had done what what we had to do and wanted to do and would do again and again as long as we could for the foreseeable future, or so I came to believe. I had to get back to the “guest” room, so I would be there in the morning when your daughter woke up so she wouldn't see me with you.
     Or your room, the room to which we waited, all day the days and the weeks I was there, to go to after your daughter had, at last, gone to bed and, we hoped, to sleep so she wouldn't hear what we were doing. The room wherein we grabbed bit thrashed pawed dug tugged pushed stuffed slipped slid cried out collapsed and then, after a brief period of respite, went at it again.
     Why don't I let myself get over this?
     I tell myself because some things remind me.
     For example, the other day I saw a woman who reminded me of you: the shape of her face, her narrow cheeks, the unspeakably exquisite beautiful slender line of her almost perfect (yours was, in fact, perfect) neck with that bump which on a guy would be obtrusive and clunky, his adam's apple, but on you was perfect and whereupon I put my mouth tongue, etc., the sleepiness of her eyes.
     

     Though many things remind me of you
     Sometimes
     everything.     
     There is a tumor in my throat. A gag.

     “Reminded” or not, I go back, if no longer in the real physical geographic world, then at least in a figurative world where, I am loathe to confess I live a substantial portion of my life, to “you,” or rather, as you seemed to know before I did, to that place in my head where my relationships took place. Wherein I pulled yourself.
      Returning to what I remember includes the way you rasped, pulling air out of your throat when your teeth were clenched and you almost couldn't say what you needed, though what you “said” was not actually “speech,“ as much as some kind of noise. I am trying to understand how to say what we can't and I can't. Then how you wilted, limp, around my hands my mouth, my flapping idiot tongue and told me, once, Remember this.

     Maybe I should have known back then that remembering is what we do to something is over. But I was young.
     (You were not a spring chicken.)
      I wonder what you know now but I don't know because I haven't been able to talk to you for years.
     Though if I could, what would I tell you?
     If I could, would I even want to?
     Because if I can't, I can remember (invent) whatever I want.
     
     What might I try to say? I have not forgotten you. Duh. That doesn't even begin to describe it. I mean, I also “have not forgotten,” loads of people: my high school gym teacher, Miss O'Brien, Casey and Crawford, the two boys down the street in Kingsville, my sister's first boyfriend who she said looked like Stephen Boyd and was a Jew which was a big deal in Texas then, Mary Kay Ellington, Mary Kaye Ethridge, Lydia and Kenneth, Sharon Whitely, who drove a stick shift station wagon, the girl we called Baby Face whose real name I actually can't remember, my brother's first wife, whose name I do remember but whose privacy I will respect, my father's second wife (ditto), my seventh grade Texas History teacher, Mrs. Duvall, the son of my seventh grade Texas history teacher, Evan Duvall, Bob Ewald, the chubby guy in ninth grade speech and drama who did the great Paul Lynde impersonation, etc., etc. I “have not forgotten” any of them either. “Not forgetting” doesn't even begin to get close.
     Or, I am still in love with you? Closer, but still not there. I mean, honestly, even I can no longer call whatever this thing was/is (“Love seeketh not its something to blah blah . . .” “Love's not true love that something's blah blah blah . . .”) love.
      How about, I am still obsessed with you? Better. At least that doesn't dress it up as something nice. But I have to admit it isn't constant, it's only sometimes, only when I work on it, which also brings me to the fact that obsession, to me, at least in how I read the Webster's New World Dictionary, suggests involuntariness:
     ob.sess (eb ses, ab - ) vt. [< L obsessus, pp. of obsidere, to besiege, ob ( see OB-) + sedere , to sit] ': to haunt or trouble in mind, esp. to an abnormal degree; preoccupy greatly. (Second Concise Edition, l975) (Which is also, in a fascinating, though only to me, coincidence, the year I fell in love with you! Or should I say, began about you to “obsess”.)
      It may have been the case back then that I/my mind was “besieged” “haunted” or “troubled” by something outside of itself, that I was acted upon, if not by you, by something else I couldn't control such as my body.
     However, my being besieged is no longer the case. I volunteer. I willfully purposefully doggedly pursue follow chase desire this abnormally preoccupying mental trouble.
      It is no longer, if it ever was, done unto me. Now I do it.
     Herein's a shame.

      There are moments when some relatively benign thought memory idea of you wafts innocently across some outskirt of my brain but rather than merely glance nostalgically toward or “recollect in tranquility” then wisely turn and let it go, or hoary headed, stoop shoulderedly with all the well-earned wisdom of my age sigh “I shall be (trying to) tell(ing) this with a sigh . . . ,” I instead, after an heroic labor of picking scratching worrying digging around the scab of it, unstaunch unleash launch forth what I've been itching to get back to, the one sharp thrust like the poke of a poker up a hole, thereafter which I, gouged, twist, writhe, struggle but I do not let go. No rather I invite the jackhammer Gattling gun tongue swallowing spit flailing furniture breaking seizure that crashes hurtles spews busts over into me. I give way to welcome chase indulge in actively pursue these thoughts, memories, internal electrical events, insistently regretting, reliving, desiring, whatevering you. Then I, both consecutively and simultaneously, hate that I do this and that I do it willfully, despite because of? ) (and here's the real shame) the fact that I now have a stable, good, decent, solvent, healthy, well-rounded, satisfying, valuable---and I really mean all that, I am not being ironic---life.
      Why do I do this?
      I worry, whenever I get in this state, which I am embarrassed to admit is not as rare one would hope, that I am not merely going to turn back into my regular old nutcase self, but that I am currently, by virtue of having thoughts like these within this otherwise decent life I lead, a complete fucking sham.
     Why why why why why, I repeat, do I do this?

     The obligation of a promise?
     A perceived promise? Whose?
     A promise to remember? What?

     Maybe it's because I've been forbidden to talk to see hear from you.
     Maybe if you and I were in good old boring once yearly when we feel magnanimous Christmas (or some other more spiritually culturally or politically appropriate holiday) card and family photograph touch, I'd be able to roll my eyes and huff, in the snottily superior way I do about the others, “God, she's really going to seed,” or “Same old plastic smile! When is she going to realize she is no longer the hot young thing?!” or “Jesus Christ, look at what a hairy old slob that husband is!!” or “Holy Mother of God, those kids look monstrous,” or “Where on earth did she find that pathetic creature?!?!” or “What on earth did I ever I see in her?” However, having forgone even this piddling contact---

     I wonder if you decided to cut off all contact because however mistaken you may have been about you and me, you were at least able to retain or revive enough sense to figure out that if you and I kept in touch you and I would continue to have the same disastrous effects not only upon one another but also upon (talk about innocent bystanders!) everyone around us.
     I often have to remind myself that much as I have tried to cast you as a coward, it's not like I put up any great protest. If I had protested or done some kind of carry you off on horseback thing, then I would have had to become responsible to you and your life and everything else that went with it and I sure didn't want to be saddled with that. In retrospect, you made it easy for me. In retrospect, I see that what you did was brave.
     Or, I wonder, if we had been able to keep in touch, would we have turned into the same old ho hum, ex whatevers the rest of them do? Like, if we'd stayed in touch, would we be actually slightly embarrassed that whatever had been had been?
     Instead of being, as we are now fixated/ obsessed/rendered senseless by it.
     I say “we” but of course I have no idea about you. Maybe you haven't thought of me in years. Or thought only in the way that one would think of a funny old friend, or one's junior high school Texas history teacher's son, Casey and Kenneth, Mary Kaye Whitely or whatever her name was . . .
     Maybe you haven't because you got over whatever it was and now your life has became decent and good. I hope, I truly hope this is true for you.
      Maybe I am, at last, beginning to think I might get over it too.
     Maybe I am going back to this stuff now in the lurid, self-lacerating detail I am because I am able to now because my life has---and god knows how, I sure didn't make it happen---become truly good and decent and blessed.     Because these days I am beginning to think that I am, not only loved but actually capable of giving love in return.     Am beginning to finally feel not afraid of what this.     Maybe because now, at last, I am beginning to believe that I will not lose my marbles again, I can allow myself to slog back through the debris of my past in the hope that I might actually be able to understand it, and even---and this was inconceivable until recently---forgive it. Forgive you and all the other poor unsuspecting souls with whom I tangled thereafter and well as my equally poor pathetic unsuspecting self for what we did to 0ne another, for what I did.
      Maybe if I can remember what really was I can begin to forget.      Maybe I can do this now because I am beginning to believe that I will not do it again.
     Maybe I am trying to say Forgive me.