Onion Songs

SLAPSTICK

That morning Terry had the familiar feeling that his face was all wrong, but even though he could feel that wrongness, he couldn’t find it in the mirror. His eyes were bright, his cheeks were rosy, his nose gleamed, his hair that color his wife called “beautiful.” He wasn’t sure beautiful was what he’d been striving for, or what was most appropriate, but no one had ever called anything about him beautiful before and he was reluctant to give it up. “Take those compliments and keep them in your pocket,” his mother used to say. Terry had large pockets, but usually nothing in them other than a pig’s bladder or a rubber chicken.

He knew he was in for a difficult day if he started it out with an unhappy thought. Wait. He leaned closer to the mirror. Of course. He’d gotten the mouth upside down. He’d painted his mouth as a big frown this morning rather than in his trademark delirious grin. Make sure they see you smiling, as his mother used to say.

He really should redo the entire look. Even though the application of the frown had probably been some random mistake it had no doubt affected the painting in of the other features, the eyes especially. But there was no time. He pulled out his kit and spread cream across the lower half of his face, much as if he were shaving. Then he wiped that half away, leaving great smears of white and red on the towel and a broad, flesh-colored hole in the middle, marred at the center by this wrinkled little pucker of lips and teeth, his naked mouth. He stopped and stared. It looked inept and pitiful, some frail insect you might expose from under a stone.

He reached for the white and spread it over the flesh-color, wanting to cover his nakedness as quickly as possible. He could hear his wife and kids arguing in the kitchen. Dwight had lately been giving them fits. He understood how, and pretty much why, his son hated everything—he had been the same way at that age. Nothing fit: clothes, shoes, skin, hair, the life that appeared to be lying in wait. But understanding didn’t make his son any easier to live with. He was always upsetting his much younger sister, but then there wasn’t much that didn’t upset Jane.

His wife’s voice sounded uncharacteristically strident, with a raw and hoarse edge. If he was very careful he wouldn’t even have to go into the kitchen—he could just give a shout that he was running late for work (which was true), and had to skip breakfast. No time for some irritable conversation. They never talked about much except the house and the kids anymore. Last weekend he’d discovered a green silk costume and makeup in one of her drawers. He’d thought that had been all settled. He’d never wanted her to go back to work—since before their marriage he’d imagined her at home, having long, pleasant days with the kids. Hours of genuine smiles and laughter.

He finished painting on his bright red—and huge—smile, then lined the inside of his fleshy lips with black. His pale pink tongue stood out in the dark hole of mouth, an exposed organ. He grinned widely in the mirror, bloody mouth stretching so far to each side he almost expected his head to fall open, something to reach out of that cavity of neck and ravage the room. He almost wished it would.

“Running late! See you tonight!” He paused briefly with his white-gloved, oversized hand on the doorknob, waiting. The argument had stopped in the kitchen, the house suddenly frozen in silence. He waited a second, let go of the doorknob, spread his arms out dramatically in supplicant posture and tilted his motley clown head back until he was staring at the ceiling, and shouted, “Good-bye, honey! Goodbye, Daddy!” He waited, one great eye cocked in the direction of the kitchen. Nothing. He pulled a crazily twisted ear horn out of one accessory pocket and jammed it into his right ear, tilting his body toward the kitchen in a gravity-defying lean.

“…’bye, Daddy…” came Jane’s little girl whisper.

Satisfied, he put the ear horn away and slung open the door, knob smashing through a previously existing hole in the plaster, rattling the walls and triggering the clock’s drunken cuckoo, the painted wooden bird dangling upside down on a spring from its door.

In order to get into his tiny yellow car Terry had to tuck his head in between his shoulders, crouch, stretch his right leg with oar-sized twenty-two shoe into the passenger’s side, then reach through the open passenger window with his Mickey Mouse hands and grab the side-mirror in order to pull the rest of him into the vehicle. His left knee typically banged the top of the door opening, and he typically uttered some G-rated curse. He then drove to work with his arms pushing out between his knees, hands spasming in pain, stiffly clutching the steering wheel.

Down the freeway under the rising sun his car joined the stream of commuters pouring from garages and tributary streets, scrambling like bugs over kitchen tile, nipping and shouldering like bumper cars, radios cranked to drown out both laughter and curses. Terry’s radio still broken, he forced his own music of mouth pops and whistles over a melodic bed of nonsensical raving.

He drove around the parking lot looking for any empty slot. For the eighty-fifth consecutive day unable to find one, he motored out of the lot, across the bright green grass, and straight into a lush bush, which concealed his little auto quite nicely. He staggered out of the branches and shook his orange wig free of insects.

Once in the expansive lobby of his office building he waited at the elevator doors. Overhead rumbled the departing troupes of the night shift. The thunder descended slowly, one floor at a time. Terry backed up, stared at his shoes as they nervously flapped the tile, beaver-like. He gazed up just before the numbers hit “1,” then backed up some more.

The middle elevator doors bulged out, then sprang open. A dozen or so clowns spilled onto the tile, many clutching their briefcases, papers bursting from cracks and holes in the cloth and leather. The contents of the side elevators joined them—the three streams colliding, tumbling, clowns in back somersaulting over those in front. Terry sighed and stepped forward but then more clowns—clowns by the dozens—came out of what appeared to be empty elevators, streams of them without pause. He waited after the last one apparently departed, then entered the middle one cautiously.

The flattened body of a clown lay face down in the middle of the floor. Terry turned around and tried to push the “Close” button quickly, but before he could two hobo clowns carrying a stretcher ran inside. They lifted the flattened clown onto the stretcher and ran out through the lobby, their mouths making loud, whiny siren noises. Terry made the trip up to the thirteenth floor staring at the mirrored interior smeared with gobbets of clown white, clown red.

Once in his cubicle he discovered that his evening counterpart had left pizza and salad debris over much of his desk. On the carpet under the desk were bits of underwear, bits of peeled skin. He used one broad gloved hand to rake all this garbage into the other gloved hand. He dumped everything into the trash including the stack of carefully numbered, illustrated, and mostly meaningless reports the Bozo had labored over the night before. If anyone asked he would deny any knowledge of their whereabouts. If he remembered he would leave an armed mousetrap in the pencil drawer as a present.

He wiped spittle off his monitor screen and turned the computer on. He pulled out his kit and using a small mirror he kept in a file drawer he painted lines of determination on his face. For good measure he added more red to lips and cheeks, thinking Indians, thinking war paint, thinking drugged-up urban street dancers. He began to feel giddy and a few chuckles escaped his lips before he’d even finished the paint job. His head swam in heated sensory overload; his nose pulsed with strange smells.

Terry grabbed his giant “World’s Greatest Employee!” mug with the company logo emblazoned on the side and got up for coffee. The office was starting to fill up again. Here and there clown heads popped up above cubicle walls, then fell out of sight as if smashed by an enormous invisible mallet. At the coffee station Terry examined his mug, then began drinking directly from the much more spacious carafe. The coffee scalded his mouth and he did a spit-take, spraying hot brown liquid onto Walter from accounting. Walter nodded and spat back half-heartedly, looking sad and bored. Terry poured more scalding coffee down his throat, laughing hysterically. Nervous twitters spread across the office like an orchestra warming up.

Strolling back to his corner cube Terry glanced into a neighboring space as a file drawer eased open and a diminutive clown in a billowy white jumper climbed out, his tiny pointed cap drooping to one side. “Morning, Bob,” Terry said.

“Too soon,” the small clown replied. “Night shift had a party.” He yawned, then burst into tears, pulling out some big red satin bloomers to blow his nose.

Terry turned away. He preferred his clowns with their tears painted on. “Steady, Bob. It’s only Monday.”

“You got that right!” a fat clown said, squeezing past and knocking the cubicle walls out of alignment. He had a target painted across his ample rear. Terry’s feet suddenly itched, but he managed not to act on the impulse. Here and there across the office he heard a quick, explosive guffaw and an anxious dancing of oversized clown shoes on plastic antistatic mats.

Back in his chair Terry was suddenly overwhelmed by a cloud of suffocating perfume. He rolled to the edge of one cubical wall and peered around. At that same moment Laura across the aisle, newly arrived, turned in her chair, her legs spread. He’d seen her only last week leaving late, her lips smeared down the side of her face as if her mouth had been ripped open with a knife. She did not look up, but a spring-loaded clown’s head with razor-sharp teeth popped out from between her legs on a scissoring extension arm and attempted to bite his face. Feeling that face go red beneath his makeup he retreated back to his desk. He’d once heard one of the office clowns say “She melts my face paint,” but hadn’t known what he’d meant, until now.

“Finish your reports yet?” she called mockingly behind him, and he grew frantic trying to remember if there had been a memo concerning some sort of promotion for her. Before he could reply she waved and said, “It’s like the boss always says—there’s always too much until you need just a little.”

Terry could not recall ever having heard their boss say that, and wondered if it might be some bit of boudoir talk inappropriately revealed. To be safe he started to laugh, and could not stop himself until he began to choke on his own absurdity.

From cubicles all over the office his fellow employees’ strained laughter echoed his, followed by the scattered struggle for breath, the cough, the nervous curse.

Some changes had been made since the previous week. A mime now managed the communications group. Whenever someone asked him a question about deadlines, he frowned and stared at an invisible wristwatch.

Terry could see into an office at the end of his aisle of cubes. It had been without an identifying sign ever since he started working here. From what he could tell it had a beautiful view of the distant mountains. Inside, a delicate white-faced clown wearing slippers shouted silently into a phone receiver.

Terry went down to the supply room to make some copies. Inside a very tall clown with a blue mouth was pressing another clown’s face violently against the copier glass. Copy after copy of the clown’s flattened facial features floated down, layering the floor. Terry picked one up. He was impressed that he could clearly see the broken pattern of veins in the eyeballs.

Every couple of hours he went into the bathroom to check his face. He stood in line with the others as they silently patched, reapplied makeup, intensified colors, redrew lines, practiced eyebrow raises, smiles, frowns. Some had a settled expression they simply reinforced. Others felt the need to twiddle, to change, so that their faces were never very predictable, or very neat. These employees made the others nervous, and seldom lasted.

Later he went to Carter’s cube looking for newer data. Carter was leaned back in his chair, staring so fixedly at the ceiling Terry was afraid the older clown was dead. But when he crept closer he heard the soft snores, saw the open eyes painted on the closed eyelids.

Lunch was a quick soup and sandwich at a diner that serviced clientele from the surrounding office buildings. There was plenty of seating but people were always stepping on each other’s shoes. When he came back to the office he could see clown after clown in the exterior windows, identical white-gloved hands pressing against the inside of the glass. On the grassy median between parking areas numerous clowns lay face up, staring at the sky, looking as if they had fallen from a great height.

After lunch he had a meeting on procedures. Twin clowns with giant bow ties stood at one end of the conference table, facing off with water-squirting sunflowers in their lapels. Finally the clown on the right grew tired of the back-and-forth, pulled out a slapstick, and proceeded to beat the other clown with it. No one intervened until chunks of painted skin and bright wig filled the air. Terry remained frozen in his chair, watching, thinking, it’s like peeling clown fruit.

He assembled reports all afternoon. When he couldn’t find the data he copied from the day before. Sometimes he added random graphics in bright primary colors. He had spent years mastering his templates—they were sure-fire, guaranteed-to-please. Sometimes he wanted to cry, they were so beautiful. By the end of the day he had hundreds of pages. They were his big blow off, his major guffaw, his extended joke. He simply could not stop the giggles they caused. He turned to look out the opening to his cubicle space, out the window, out to the sky beyond. He imagined floating there. He could not believe he sat in an office with no door or ceiling. He could not believe he had a boss who paid him for such things.

A dark shape blotted the sky. The cloud of perfume descended and filled him. Panic rose like gorge. “The boss wants to see you. Now,” she said.

Terry could not believe he was trotting eagerly down to see the CEO, his size twenty-twos making a merry slapping sound. He could not believe he was knocking on the man’s door, this company fixture who almost never left the building. He could not believe he was going in grinning, grinning so extensively he might have just had his throat cut ear to ear.

He could not believe he was saying “You wanted me,” and so very pleased by this statement.

The boss’s huge clown face, some four feet across, sat wedged behind the desk, although “sat” seemed to be a misstatement. It was propped up with crutches on either side of the chin so as not to crush the delicate little body beneath. The eyes were tiny and pressed into the face like a pair of bullet holes. The nose was long, slender, beautiful, and completely unsuited to this face. The mouth was wide and slit-like except for two rounded swellings of lip parted at the center, revealing great, blocky white teeth that gleamed like ice blocks. When the mouth opened further a tongue like a great pink pillow heaved in the yawning cavity. When his boss began to speak that mouth was the only thing in the room as far as Terry was concerned.

“How long?” the mouth asked.

“Em—pardon?”

“You have worked for me, how long?”

Terry felt dumb. He’d never thought of himself as working for this creature. In truth he worked for his family, to keep them fed, clothes on their backs, roofs over their heads, to keep them comfortable, and hopeful.

He thought all these things, but what he said was “Almost six years.”

The lips pursed, and their undersides adhered to the too-large teeth so securely it appeared they would tear when the head started to speak again. “You have completed so many reports, haven’t you? Thousands. You have contributed. So many hours.”

Terry didn’t know what to say. Was this an accomplishment? Was this a compliment? All he could do was grin, but he had no choice, did he? His clown face grinned for him. And the great clown head of his boss grinned back.

The commute home was always the worst. If you wanted a leisurely drive of sightseeing, you didn’t go out on the highway at rush hour. Clowns rolled out of every passing street in their bright funny cars, all of them heading, it seemed, in the same direction, but not everyone lived in the same direction, did they? He could never make sense of it. Clowns cursed and clowns collided, raising their fists and shouting “Bozo!” out their windows, all of them already home in their minds, with only this inconvenience of concrete, metal, and asphalt, this maddening delirium of transit, in their way.

“I believe I got a raise today,” he said with a slight hoarseness, raising his fork as if it signified his turn to speak. “They must be very pleased with my work. Delicious roast beef, by the way.”

His family said nothing, quietly staring. Little Jane appeared to have been crying. His wife leaned over to him, whispering harshly, “Terry, you should have changed for dinner, don’t you think?”

He turned his head to her, not sure exactly what she was trying to say. He looked over at Dwight, who looked back at him out of an angry and defiant mask of red and blue, the edges attached to his skin with safety pins. Then he turned to Jane, whose tears started up all over again. “What’s the matter, sweetie?” he asked. “You’re not scared of clowns, are you?”

He could feel the lower half of his face stretching. He could feel the skin around his mouth cracking. “It’s the smile, isn’t it?” he asked, and thought he might start crying himself. “It’s the smile that will kill you every time.”