Onion Songs

STRANGENESS

Short-lived particles. Trish looked up from the dictionary at Martin. A half hour ago she’d had to tell him that his best friend from college had dropped dead from a heart attack the previous week. The man’s much younger wife had phoned with the news. She hadn’t provided many details—she’d said she had so many of these calls to make—she just thought Martin would like to know. “Like” seemed cruel in such a circumstance but what word should she use? Want? No, there had been no history. Absolutely none. The woman had skirted around the precise circumstance and Trish, guiltily, had just naturally assumed sex had been involved. A transformation having taken place when two short-lived particles interacted. The result being this alien state, this strangeness, the lights dimmed, no one left at home.

Martin appeared to be taking the news with equanimity. “He was never in the best of health,” he said softly, but would not look away from the television. It was one of those reality shows; Trish wasn’t sure which one. People yelled at each other quite a bit on those shows—more than she herself had ever experienced, although she knew this was probably normal behavior in some parts of the world. Then someone was voted out of the house, off the island, into the plastic box suspended from a crane, or whatever.

She waited to see if he had more to say, if he needed her comfort in any way. This man had been Martin’s best friend for many years. But Martin had barely reacted—it might as well have been some stranger on the news who died.

Strangeness had been coming into her life for years—now at last it had fully arrived, courtesy of Martin, her husband of twenty-six years. Did men undergo a change of life? Angie once said “The difference between men and women is that men go through a menopause every five years.” Angie was on her third marriage, this time to Harry, a small man who hid part-way behind her at all social occasions.

It was that sense of strangeness that had driven Trish to open a dictionary for the first time in probably ten years. Not even for Scrabble—if she had to look it up it probably wasn’t a word she’d feel comfortable using. The dictionary had been hard to find, pushed to the back of a bottom shelf in a corner of this basement rec room shared by Martin’s big old TV and assorted storage. Not much “rec” had occurred in this house for years, not since Molly had grown up and moved away to a series of eastern towns, none of whose names she could recall.

The top edge of the dictionary had been covered by a thick bed of dust, and curlicues of someone’s long hair—whose she could not imagine. She and Molly had always worn theirs short. Maybe it’s angel hair, she thought, chuckling, scrubbing off the book before daring to open it. But angel hair was a pasta—who would eat this? Of course there were poor people and people a world away whose lives she could not begin to imagine, but that was making her sad, so she derailed that train of thought.

She peeled the pages back carefully, looking for bugs. If she found any she knew she would just throw the dictionary across the room and then that would be the end of this little project.

Along the way to the ‘S’s she’d stopped now and then to look at a word—cynosure, destructionist, hydromancy, placebo, resistivity. The dictionary was like the estate list her mother had of what had been in her grandmother’s attic at the time of the reading of her will. So these are the things in grandmother’s attic, which we don’t use anymore, although once they had been important in our lives. These are things she had but which she doesn’t have anymore, her being dead, and which we don’t have, our having sold them. This is just a list of what used to be in that huge empty attic up there—this is all we have to remember them, and our grandmother, by.

That list had been no more substantial, really, than a list of the contents of her grandmother’s pantry might have been. And these are the things that she consumed along the way. This is just a list, mind you, for the pantry is now empty, our grandmother having eaten all these things over the course of her long lifetime, a time that has now ended and will not be, ever again.

On Martin’s television, young twenty-somethings lounged on inflated furniture in an indoor pool. She could tell by their body language that several different sorts of flirtations were occurring, seemingly at cross purposes. The volume was turned down so low she could make out a general pattern of tone, but no specific words. This had become Martin’s preferred mode of television watching: the volume turned down, brightness and contrast turned up. The lights in the television room were set to the lowest level of dim. The combination lent a yellowish pallor to his face, interrupted by lightning flashes of white. Simply watching his face she might have thought he was watching battlefield footage.

When Trish got into the ‘S’s, a letter that had never been her favorite, which she hated to use even in Scrabble, she remembered that this was a letter that had vaguely unsettled her even as a child, because it so resembled a snake.

She was somewhat surprised. Was that what the word really meant? She had expected some description of unease. Disquiet. Now that was a good word. Disquiet was the way she felt most of the time, in her house, in her life, in the marriage. Disquietude would be the noun. The place where she lived now.

Not native. That felt absolutely correct. Suddenly, unexpectedly, she had discovered she was not native to this place. The lands at the periphery of her vision, the island out the corner of the eye—that’s where she had come from.

The twenty-somethings were now in a bar somewhere. The camera work was jarring and aggressive, the colors bright, violent. Something about to happen, although she saw nothing evident on the screen. But she did not look away.

Once she’d arrived at the correct place, Trish had felt compelled to read the remainder of that dictionary page. It was like a rest stop on a long trip. Since you were already there, why not visit “the world’s largest prairie dog hole?”

Strange woman, apparently, was an archaic term for a prostitute. There were other meanings, of course. But did they all have some sort of sexual association buried in their etymologies? Weird sisters and harpies and sphinxes. Strangeness back to the beginnings of art and writing. Angie, who believed in astrology and evil spirits and the living Christ, and all manner of things Trish considered strange, said that it was men who made up the words and men who compiled the dictionaries, so it should be no wonder that women were associated with things strange and vaguely sinister.

She became aware of an insistent susurration in the room. She glanced over at Martin, whose breath whistled, as if he had fallen asleep with his eyes open. He fell asleep often these days: in front of his computer, sitting out on the porch. And this despite the fact that he was always in bed before she was. He used to complain about the resulting neck pain in the morning, although now he did not complain about anything, ever.

She did not think he was asleep. She could see his eyes flickering, his tongue darting between his lips. But he continued making that noise. As if he were having difficulty breathing. As if he were in pain.

Susurration. Like snakes gathered together to exchange the secrets of the world. Trish hadn’t realized that she even knew the word.

Martin sat motionless at the dinner table, his eyes two wet gray pebbles floating on yellowing jelly. Late afternoon spring sun afforded a relatively clear glimpse. He’d requested these earlier dinners, and eager to please him (did she imagine this would magically fix things?) she’d obliged. It hadn’t resulted in additional time together, however. He just had more time in the evenings to ruminate, to vegetate, to do exactly what, it now seemed, he did best: to stare unblinking at a life she wasn’t sure she understood anymore. They used to walk in the park, garden, sit in the sun, together, but not anymore. Martin was either too tired or too busy, but she honestly couldn’t figure out what he was being busy at.

His skin had a grayish, raw dough patina. The tiny cracks at the corners of his eyes appeared to have multiplied since the last time she’d noticed. She wasn’t sure, but his hair appeared to be visibly thinner. It was certainly grayer. There was also a puffiness about him, as if air was trapped in hidden pockets beneath the skin.

So people age. Headline news. She chided herself. If he wanted he could no doubt catalog a dozen similar changes in her face. But did he notice her enough to do so? He was still a handsome man—she needed to appreciate more what she had and not, as her grandmother used to say, “borrow trouble.”

“So,” she ventured. “You haven’t said anything about the ham.”

His eyes rolled towards her from somewhere behind his lids. “This isn’t ham.”

“Well, no. It’s what we always have. Turkey ham. It’s healthier.”

“It’s also pinker. Real ham doesn’t come this pink. I don’t believe so, at least. We haven’t had real ham in a very long time, I don’t believe.”

“If you want real ham, Martin, I’d be happy to fix you some real ham.”

“No, no. You said this is healthier.”

“Then what are you trying to say?”

“I’m not trying to say anything. I’m just saying that you asked me about the ham, but this isn’t ham. It’s turkey ham. But it’s perfectly fine for us to eat. It tastes just fine.”

A few years ago she would have been offended by the conversation. He was so hard to please. Now it seemed more likely that he was too easy to please, or that “pleased” hadn’t much meaning for him.

The remainder of their dinner conversation consisted of factual statements about the weather, the progress of the neighbor’s new patio, and a repeated recollection of Molly’s phone call from four days ago. She was pregnant, due in six or seven months. She lived across the country and they rarely saw her. They’d met her husband once, last Christmas. Martin had commented that the young man appeared to be stable, but that he needed a better haircut. She’d agreed. She’d actually said, “I agree,” even though she thought it was a ridiculous thing for him to say. It was the only comment he’d ever made about their son-in-law.

Later that evening Trish peered into the study where Martin was reading. She watched surreptitiously as he periodically turned the pages, tears tracing his cheeks with almost parallel trails. She left quickly so that he wouldn’t see her watching him.

Downstairs she cleaned the kitchen, although it was already spotless. She looked around for laundry to do. Towels were stacked neatly on shelves in the laundry room, sheets were in cabinets, and every bit of clothing except what they had on was tucked away cleaned and pressed in a drawer somewhere. Her rising anxiety was assuaged only when she took off all her clothes and slipped into a fresh clean robe, dropping the clothes into the washer and starting it. She would have just enough time to iron the small load before joining Martin in bed.

She went back upstairs. Martin was no longer in his study. She found him in their bedroom, lying in bed in his bright blue pajamas, sheet tucked tightly across his heart, staring at the ceiling. His lips moved slightly, constantly. She found the indecipherable whisper mildly irritating so she left.

“I’m just afraid there’s something really wrong with him that he needs to be treated for.”

Angie patted her arm with one hand and waved a cigarette sympathetically with the other. “Oh, I know, hon. You couldn’t drag my first husband into the doctor’s until the cancer ate his throat.” Then, when Trish started crying, “Oh… sorry.”

“He doesn’t want to tell me what’s bothering him. Half the time I’m not sure he even knows I’m there.”

Angie’s two-year-old—Trish couldn’t remember the little boy’s name—planted himself in front of her with his thumb in his mouth. Angie put the cigarette down and moved him like an errant piece of furniture. “Maybe he can’t help it,” she said. “There may be other forces involved.”

Trish looked up warily. “You mean another woman.” She almost said “A strange woman.”

“I mean the devil takes on a number of different roles in our lives. And when you’re wrestling with the devil, pretty much everyone else disappears, including your family. I know you may not believe that, but it’s what I believe.”

Harry was sitting at his own table, a small square of wood not much bigger than a dinner plate, in a corner against the wall by the sink. He’d turned his chair around to face them, but Angie’s wide shoulders hid most of his body. He’d been smiling since Trish arrived, his eyes floating as if he were listening to his own private, ecstatic tune.

“I don’t know what I believe. I don’t know that I know anything. I don’t know how people find each other in the first place, or how they stay together. What do you really see in another person? A few surface traits, the way they present themselves when they know you’re looking, and then those times they’re losing it, dropping the mask. And when things start going bad, those mask-dropping moments are what you focus on—you find yourself running around trying to catch them in the act, you’re just sneaking around looking for evidence that they’ve failed you—I swear, you’re collecting their worst moments, and you’re thinking that that’s what’s really true, that that’s all there is. To life, I mean. You can’t see what it adds up to other than a list of things, a list of words, objects purchased, things consumed. A long list of disappointments.”

She finished up wondering if she’d been spitting. Did she just lose her mind in front of Angie and that peculiar little Harry?

“Oh, honey, you’re just upset. You get all upset and then you get all complicated. None of us know. It’s in God’s hands, finally. There’s somebody for everybody, you just have to let God make the arrangements.”

“Angie, you’re on your third marriage.”

“And God had a hand in every one of them.”

Trish gazed at Harry, whose face split into an even wider smile. She felt warm, and wanted to leave, but didn’t know how to get out of there without being rude. The corners of Harry’s mouth began traveling in opposite directions then, until the line of mouth completely bisected his head. Harry leaned back and eased open his mouth. Trish got up and left before the top of his head had the opportunity to fall in.

When she got home she could hear Martin moving around upstairs. Low murmurs rising and falling. Snaky sounds. Reality TV. Which, she thought, must be the most despairing phrase in the current vocabulary of the world.

She couldn’t bring herself to go upstairs so she looked around downstairs for something to fill the time. She’d never had that problem as a child. Her mother used to say, “Trish makes up the world as she goes along.”

She sat on the couch in front of the fireplace. It wasn’t a real fireplace, actually, although there had probably been one, or several, in the house when it was first built. But the old chimney was at the other end of the house. This fireplace had a pretty, but plastic-looking, mantle and a painted optical illusion of a firebox with lavender gas flames.

She and Martin had redecorated this room multiple times over the years, each time to something prettier (according to the fashion of that year), and a step further away from reality, so that stepping in and out of this room was like traveling to a different… hallucination. Some day, she was sure, people would buy huge environmentally controlled boxes to live in, and video and 3D technologies would provide the decoration. Home and Virtual Living. The world outside the walls of your newly purchased skull could just go straight to hell. Why should you care?

Whisper whisper whisper. She also didn’t care if their house hated her new attitude or not. By this time it probably realized something was up, that it was quickly losing its grip on her. Some of these things—that side table, the small Victorian lamp—had been her grandmother’s, and some—that art deco desk chair, for example—her mother’s. The rest were things she and Martin had purchased at fancy department stores, garage sales, out of a catalog (from pictures which never exactly matched what was delivered). Today there seemed no solid reason for any of it to be here. Window dressing was the phrase her mother used to use.

People never stopped playing house. What was this place but her biggest dollhouse ever? People created their worlds within worlds driven by whim—so what substance could there be to any of it?

The walls of the room suddenly faded into a child’s wavering crayon lines, a lopsided oval of red crayon sun showing through the broken drawing. It smiled down at her crookedly.

Upstairs Martin continued to whisper. It might have been her name he was saying or it might not, but she decided to imagine it was. She staggered to her feet and made for the rough box that delineated where the staircase should be.

Stair steps shuffled beneath her feet like a random stack of narrow rectangular cards. The world didn’t clarify itself again until she opened their poorly drawn bedroom door.

Martin lay on his back in the bed, his chest rising and falling aggressively. A large something stood or crouched on the floor by his feet, wings spread into a crucifix, head the size of a buffalo’s with a huge black beak the sheen of metal, cow-like eyes bright with realization, and behind those eyes, blending into the long blonde hair that flowed down its feathered and scaled backside, a pair of flaming, multi-colored gills.

Judging from the size of the breasts Trish supposed her to be female, although visual cues seemed hardly reliable.

Martin whistled and bucked, in the throws of an oddly controlled seizure. Although Trish could see no trace of it, she felt something pass between Martin and the thing, this other she. She took something. He took something.

The whole process lasted less than a minute. Finished, the creature turned slowly toward Trish, and froze, only light moving across the eye. Trish felt as if she would completely dissolve in its greater presence.

Sweeping its wings, the creature moved again toward the window. Trish thought that such a large thing could not possibly pass through that size opening, when it faded into the air. A brief smell passed through her mouth and nose, scouring, then evaporated with a slightly salty aftertaste.

She sat down on the floor and remained there for some time, peering now and then at Martin who appeared to be breathing easily, resting peacefully. Eventually she crawled onto the bed beside him, staring at the ceiling, barely touching his side with her little finger, but touching him deliberately just the same.

She kept listening for the flap of wings, waiting for a change of smell or shadow. To her great disappointment, nothing came.

Trish walked through the downtown shopping district with a forced, determined step. She hadn’t brought her purse; she had no plans to buy. She did have a few dollars stuffed into her bra, because she did want to eat. She enjoyed eating these days—she was always hungry. Food becomes me, she thought, and smiled, the way she remembered Harry smiling.

Around her the narrow lines of the buildings swayed. Threads of various colors floated together briefly, becoming patches of sky and patches of store, power lines and sidewalks, streets, the momentary smear of cars moving with one or more occupants inside. Then the fabric warped and folded, hours passed, the sun tumbled through the sky like a half-eaten fruit tossed languidly into the trash, and there she was again, continuing on her merry way.

She bent down and picked up a thread—once part of a sidewalk, perhaps connected to a person’s leg or the side of a tree—gave it a yank, then she smiled as the world tightened and leaned over slightly, before returning more or less to form, rumpled like a worn out sweater.

When she was a little girl her grandmother had knitted her the most beautiful sweater. It had at least six colors knitted into a series of intricate, irregular patterns, as if from some sweater manufacturing machine gone wild, but Trish knew it came from her slightly addled grandmother and her imperfect way of knitting things. Trish had worn that sweater proudly every day until one day one of the threads had come loose, a strand of yarn some two or three inches long. The sweater now looked shabby. Not knowing what else to do, Trish had pulled on the thread, and pulled, until it became a long line of bright color, and, reluctant to ask her grandmother to fix it, Trish had kept pulling, and kept pulling, until after an hour or so the actual shape of the sweater was gone, as if it had never existed, and instead she had this pile of shapeless colored yarn.

“Mommy, who’s that strange woman?” she heard a child ask nearby.

Trish’s lips tasted sweet, then salty, and vaguely of sex. She smiled as the thread of the child’s voice stretched out into a long, dreary wail adrift with the rest of the dangling sky.