Fish in Exile Read online

  CATHOLIC: I want to think of ways I can love you properly. Right now you’re getting in the way of that contemplation.

  ETHOS: Don’t you think it would be good for me to be a part of this conversation?

  CATHOLIC: You can’t be involved, Ethos. You can’t be involved in my happiness.

  ETHOS: Don’t you think this is wrong?

  CATHOLIC: No.

  ETHOS: I’m confused.

  CATHOLIC: We are not two halves. We are not some bifurcated thing. Happiness is not a fluid. It doesn’t contaminate the body of melancholy. It separates the chaff from the wheat. Think of it this way, love, you are solitude. Our marriage works because I’ve deserted you completely. Let me be and I’ll love you properly. I assure you.

  I watch her heels lift emptiness from the ground. Those footsteps. My longing. The heat of the home condenses. My thoughts expand. The contractual obligation of physicality in the face of ennui. Her shoulders come to me again. And again. I am alone again. To face the stairs. To face the falling body of the curtain, the blank wall, the canisters, the blender, the toilet paper, the beater, the garlic peeler. My wife has spoken about solitude. Has woken me up from the despair of my body. The despair of a life. This separation between married individuals. This disconnected and obscure and elliptical space between husband and wife. Am I now finally alone because she has a strong compass about our solitude? She is convinced of our separate paths in a united realm. What is solitude if not two parts (or more) emerging as one? Is this what she means? I don’t understand.

  I fall asleep in the chair. When my body wakes from its perennial flight, I walk my body into the bedroom. The world is moving slowly. Light shifts, lifting the four corners of the room into an origami box. As light moves around the sculptured paper, darkness begins to enclose me. Darkness falls on my chest and an involuntary impulse pushes the frame of my body toward the pillows, where a fetus or two may have crawled out to make room for my head. My head falls into the deflated pillow. My hands tucked between my thighs. I dream the earth is populated with blueberries. During REM, my body sprawls out involuntarily; my left hand overlaps Catholic’s torso. The contact stirs me awake. My eyelids flutter open.

  ETHOS: You were in my dream.

  CATHOLIC: Ethos?

  ETHOS: Where are you going?

  CATHOLIC: I’m going nowhere.

  ETHOS: Are you sure?

  CATHOLIC: Certainly.

  ETHOS: I dreamt that your placenta was packed with blueberries.

  CATHOLIC: You mean my pancake?

  ETHOS: No, your placenta.

  CATHOLIC: Don’t be foolish. Go back to sleep.

  Catholic’s eyes roll back into her head. Her head rolls back onto the pillow. Moonlight walks naked through the bedroom window, and I’m tortured with nostalgia. I turn my head to her profile. She lies on her back like a white mausoleum. She is white as stone. I am rigid. I turn my head to try to threaten my rigidity into movement, but my head falls into the abyss of the pillow. I dream that I kiss my wife’s forehead before wrapping her body in a blanket of snow. I am naked, dehydrated, and cold. Afterwards, I try all day to unwrap her. Though I spend all day removing snow from her body, she is eternally covered with frozen water + atmosphere + vapor + ice crystals. I drift in and out of consciousness. I am awake again.

  Catholic, lying next to me, is still a breathing stone. I try to breathe slowly and carefully, as I imagine a stone would, but my breath comes out of my nasal chimneys rustling like paper. The sound carries the neonatal memory of my firstborn, Abby, who would shift unpredictably from one place to another, her diaper rustling beneath her hyacinth dress. If she were here, she’d spread her fingers out on my stubbly cheeks. She’d scoop out spoonfuls of dreams from my head and insert them into the pillowcase. When finished with that, she would holler into the pillowcase and ask the dreams to come out and play. Awake and alert, I lift my body from the bed.

  Hunger moves me into being. Nude, I walk away from the bedroom, and my body drifts toward the kitchen. The lids on the mason jars seem to contain not pickled onions or quail, but children’s breath. Moonlight spills onto the pinewood table. I want to whisk the nocturnal yolk into my mouth. I remember kneeling here before my wife as her face receded in the darkness and her belly advanced. With my ears pressed to her belly, I listened for Abby and Colin, adrift in the embryonic moon and pulsating like a song. The wind twirls the curtain from the far window. I walk toward the drawer near the refrigerator. I grip the drawer and pull it toward me. I lift a spoon from the face of another spoon and shove the drawer until it cannot be shoved further. Then I turn my body to the moon. Before the moon, I stop.

  I stop at two a.m.At three a.m.At four a.m.I stop.

  I stop. My breath is white. I dip the spoon into the insoluble surface of the moon. I shovel light urgently into my mouth. I try very hard. I try so hard my face turns white. Light spills between the cracks of my teeth. Craters stick to my premolars. I eat part of the moon in the kitchen like onion soup. Its liquid spills onto the china cabinet. The corner of the chair and counter. The edge of the cutting board. The pine table. A large pool of moon soup migrates onto the floor. The moon descends my Adam’s apple and passes through my esophagus. When it falls past my rib cage, my organs—heart, lungs, gallbladder, liver, intestines large and small—glow in the dark.

  I stand there eating quickly, trying to stuff Colin back into my mouth. The fetus. My wife’s placenta. The spoon dips in and out of me, shoveling light and shadow into my mouth before the moon withdraws her onion soup back to the cosmos. When I am done, when the sun is about to poke its diurnal head through the clouds, and when there is no more moon to eat, I turn my heels to bed. I pass through the dark tunnel of the hallway and find my wife sprawled out on the bed like an island. She is naked, and I am nude.

  I walk up to my briefs and grapple with them before donning them. I insert my body between the bedsheets and stare at the darkness, at the long interludes of empty hours. I try hard not to wake my wife or activate the sweat glands of her calves. Next to me, she is still, a breathing, dreaming stone. The darkness tries to latch its hinges to the morning hours, but dusk is a door that cannot be opened on command. I have a lot of time to contemplate the gesture of blankness and to complete it if it hasn’t been fulfilled.

  I reshift my body, trying to mold it into the bed. In the midst of shifting my body, my left hand swings involuntarily to the side of the bed, and the tips of my fingers brush against a tough material. I hold the fragile thing with my index and middle fingers like the wing of a blindly caught butterfly. A distilled, static image of a rope replays itself from the projecting slides of my consciousness in the theater of my head. I had wanted to be closer to the chandelier.

  Memory, having revealed the identity of the obscure object, also reveals my hand’s motive from yesterday’s activities. Tips of the fingers grope for the rope. The edge of the rope’s synthetic fibers etch an electrical road through the sandy, cloistering sadness of my membrane. Yes, this is where I had been, and this is where I am now. I grope the rope further into its history on the floor below the bed frame. A fragile thing, so open and so light, strokes tenderness and vulnerability into my fingers. Beating freely and weakly in the moist atmosphere of light and dark, a hyacinth. And soon, like a child that blooms into a hand, I fall asleep.

  In the morning it rains. The drums of the rain shout into the ground, opening the curtain of November’s wound. After a while, sex doesn’t make sense. There are certain things about women I have learned over the years: they keep things concealed. Tupperware shopping is very important. I watch the rain fall while I shovel Cheerios from a porcelain bowl into my mouth. I woke up this morning from a strange dream. I dreamt of suitcases as funeral homes for children. I read somewhere that Einstein didn’t think energy could evaporate.

  My wife disappears around the corner, preparing for work. I place the Cheerios bowl in the kitchen sink. When I could fumble through her body in search of lost keys, love seemed real. There is nothing here anymore. I am giving my wife time to process bliss. So she can break us apart—we, the mechanical and chemical operations of happiness.

  I stare vacantly at the windowsill. My hands flank my torso like arms of machines. The refrigerator notices me, so I open it and take out the eggs. I twist the cap off the extra-virgin olive oil and drizzle it into a frying pan. I crack three eggs in a porcelain bowl and whip them into a liquid the color and consistency of urine. I pour it into the pan as soon as the pan becomes hot. I salt and pepper for taste. At this point I see no reason to find work. I have seen enough of the indentured seasons. I have seen enough of death. I am, after all, in exile. At first I thought it was an existential asylum. Of my freedom and my fatherhood, taken from me unjustly. I feel displaced. I would argue that tragedy deported me here. Take me away from me. Take me away from my homeland. I’m a refugee inside my own home. I have abandoned my job, my vocation, my education, my subordinate employees, and adopted a lifestyle that is nearly uninhabitable.

  Catholic, after rummaging in the bathroom drawer, reenters the kitchen. She has donned a red silk blouse tucked under an indigo linen knee-length skirt that sways between her black Audrey Hepburn kitten heels.

  ETHOS: You are my wife.

  CATHOLIC: Yes.

  ETHOS: Where are you going?

  CATHOLIC: I’m going to work.

  ETHOS: Are you sure?

  CATHOLIC: Yes.

  ETHOS: What will I do?

  CATHOLIC: I don’t know.

  I open the refrigerator and take three leaves of lettuce from a translucent container. I untwist the tie from the plastic covering the bread and withdraw two pieces. With a spatula, I forklift the scrambled eggs onto the bread. I am useful. I wrap the sandwich in t
infoil and put it in a paper sack for my wife. I am useful.

  ETHOS: I’ll get depressed.

  CATHOLIC: You certainly will.

  ETHOS: What will I do?

  CATHOLIC: Be obsolete.

  ETHOS: No, that’s impossible. It’s not a choice.

  CATHOLIC: There are many fish in the sea. There are also many choices. I have to go!

  I push the paper sack into her body, and she walks out the door. Her heels click as she descends into the street. Alone, I turn to face the wall. I stare at the daedal patterns on the wallpaper. I can smell the scent of egg yolk and of something arriving and departing. I want to write the world a letter.

  Dear Ithaca,

  In the morning, your beautiful left leg came to me anatomically.

  Ethos

  Instead, I walk eight miles to the sea. To the cemetery. When I walk I can feel eternity in my throat. A barrel of sky in my throat, ready to cough its way onto the street. I walk with my haversack strapped to my chest like a hollowed-out defibrillator. Two cypress trees greet me on the way to the sea. Two cypress trees side by side, two feet apart. It must be cruel to be so close to another cypress and only linger, but not touch.

  Light moves, shifts, stirs between clouds. The air is so still, and the grass, awake, lies dormant on the surface of the earth. Winter is approaching. I am afraid of her. Last year, October bowed her head low, afraid to look up, to gaze at anyone, passing through like a baby stroller. Winter held her white coat out like a rifle, ready to blow anyone’s head off at any moment.

  When my body approaches the undulating salt, the waves are breaking the back of the sea. They come crashing into the living room of sand. I stand there and think about the waves and the slanting nature of light, and God’s hands torn out of his pockets as he folds my life, like a letter, into an envelope and inserts it into the mailbox of the sea.

  A mailbox, after all, is where letters go to die. My life soaked in salt and seaweed before it’s delivered to me on the living room of sand. My life flutters as it tries to crawl toward the salt water. I stand before God for hours while the sea roams. Salt-fermented clusters of air chase the outer rims of waves. Sun. Gun. Gone. Where is winter now when I need her to fire and split a bullet of light into two? I walk along the shoreline. Along the shoreline, there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of desiccated jellyfish.

  I once watched a dozen jellyfish carry their cloud-shaped tentacles across a home made of fluorescent twilight. These jellyfish, expired, do not look like clouds carrying thunderstorms on their backs, but wilted, sepulchral embryos. I dig into the haversack for a wrapper. I bend down and collect a pair of aquatic coelenterates and toss them into the haversack. I tear apart a piece of bread and take it into my mouth. Time elapses. I stand up and gaze onward. It’s inevitable, then: my children must return home. I will take their aquatic, nomadic abode into our home. The wind breaks me open into the darkness. The sea blurs, and my thoughts blur with it. Night falls; light stands behind my body like a sentry. I make the eight-mile walk back home. How long have I been away? Perhaps my wife will be waiting for me with a plate of fried calamari.

  Lidia is at the doorstep with a letter in her hand. I pass her to open the screen door.

  ETHOS: Have you seen my wife?

  LIDIA: No.

  ETHOS: I’m sorry we couldn’t make it to dinner the other—

  LIDIA: It’s alright. I’m sorry we forced you to come. Callisto can be brutal when he’s feeling sensitive. Will you give this letter to your wife? From Callisto.

  ETHOS: Of course.

  LIDIA: Thank you.

  I toss the letter into the haversack.

  ETHOS: How’s his tailbone?

  LIDIA: Not good. He’s in the hospital. In a lot of pain. I have to go.

  ETHOS: Please come by again. Catholic and I will be sewing buttons onto shirts for Dogfish and Pistachio.

  I watch Lidia descend the steps, then I enter the living room. The house is dark, somber, and cold. I turn on the living room lights and walk toward the kitchen. My empty stomach in an empty house. I open the refrigerator door. I glance past the kitchen faucet and gaze into the lighter stage of twilight. Highway and faucet. Water is dripping from somewhere. Half flushing, half drowsy, I close the refrigerator door and walk to the pantry and lift one can of anchovies from another and walk back to the sink. Dig into a drawer and take out a can opener. Press the lip of the can opener to the top of the can and roll its wheels. After two revolutions, I lift the lid with a butter knife, remove the haversack from my chest, and take out Callisto’s letter to my wife.

  His unscientific scribbling addresses Catholic from the midsection of the envelope. With Callisto in the hospital, my wife’s clitoral stem should be safe and photosynthetically inactive. Where is my wife on a Friday evening? I take out the bread and set it on the counter. I stand like a fixture in the dark kitchen, chewing on bread dipped in anchovies. Fried calamari on a plate, I pretend. Sprinkled with parsley and marinara. Sometimes when I chew as slowly as I chew, I can’t tell if the salt is tears or anchovy oil.

  In old trucks, carburetors are finicky: sensitive to particles, to climate, to air, to residue, and to tinkering. Gasoline congeals in the carburetor’s orifices, plugging the venturis with a gelatinous film. I lift up the hood of the 1987 Toyota. I disassemble the parts—Phillips screws, fuel needle, throttle shaft and plate, jet, slider, spring, carburetor body—and remove and discard the intake hose, which is like a vestigial organ. After five cans of choke and carb cleaner (B-12 Chemtool) on these parts and silicone spray on the choke rod, I put everything back together again, the parts shifting in and out of my vision. I try to remember their roles in the composition. I turn the engine on and the 4Runner idles smoothly. It’s like clearing out the coagulated ink inside the sac of a squid. I walk to the side of the house and twist the nozzle of the hose. Water rushes into my hands, and I lather them with soap.

  The mechanical squid is relentless in its buildup of carbon, muck, and rust as it prevents itself from having access to power. To clean the carburetor is a daunting task, and I don’t know why I have waited this long to get the engine running when things need to be done. But the journey to the sea is irresistible. Without the sea, my wife and I do not have a home.

  Light catches on Catholic’s caliginous, misty hair as she pulls into the driveway. Her hair has grown past her shoulders and faded since last winter. Is it light or is it gray? She only turned thirty-three a few weeks ago. She walks up to me, radiating. Her hands are occupied with plastic bags. The translucent plastic gives me access to its contents: spools of thread, folded fabric, zippers, and buttons.

  ETHOS: Catholic?

  CATHOLIC: Yes.

  ETHOS: You came home very late last night.

  CATHOLIC: Did I? How unfortunate.

  ETHOS: Yes. Very late.

  Light tosses in the air and seems to land solely on her face. She looks like olive oil spilled on a copper pan. She radiates, and I am afraid. The sun releases its glare; I squint.

  ETHOS: Why so late?

  CATHOLIC: Visiting a patient.

  ETHOS: How is he functioning?

  CATHOLIC: With massive doses of Vicodin.

  ETHOS: Are you in love with him?

  Catholic turns her face to Lidia and Callisto’s backyard. Their November garden, held up by wire frames, is an elongated chicken coop of wilted eggplants, hairy green onions, drooping sorrels, inelastic cucumbers, flaccid romaine lettuce, mulched rhubarb stalks, and putrescent tomatoes.

  ETHOS: Are you in love with him?

  Her eyes lift to the sky, then drop to their purple siding.

  ETHOS: Are you in love with him?

  CATHOLIC: No.

  I watch as she walks up the steps, shifts the materials to the left side of her body, pulls the screen door open with her unengaged hand, and slides her body into the house. I turn the nozzle off, wipe my aqueous hands on the thighs of my blue jeans. I walk to the truck and climb in, then I drive ten minutes to the hardware store. I pull into the parking lot. With the haversack thrown over my shoulder, I enter the store. I take out a blueprint and lay it flat on the counter.

  ETHOS: Can you get me these materials?

  CLERK: How soon do you need them?