The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving

  I forgo my own drink and turn my attention to the wall of family photos behind the bar, from which I’m noticeably absent, save for my right arm, which I recognize steadying Piper’s shoulder as she perches on her new bicycle in front of the Christmas tree.

  “So, then, how have you been?” I say.

  “Fair,” he says, still peering over the rim of his reading glasses at the instructions.

  I drift a little closer to him, as though drawn by curiousity. “Brooklyn Bridge?”

  “Manhattan,” he intones.

  There was a day when my slightest curiosity would’ve been met with a soliloquy to the Manhattan Bridge, an ode to the engineering genius of Ralph Modjeski, a poetic inventory of spans and dimensions. Now it seems there’s no bridge big enough or strong enough to span the distance between us.

  “Eighteen nineties?” I venture.

  “Nope,” he says, without further explanation.

  “Ah.” I fall back again to the photographs, as Bernard studies his schematics. I’m just glossing over the photos now, as I might gloss over photographs of somebody else’s life. The man in the fishing hat is not Bernard. The woman in the wedding gown is not Janet. The child being steadied by the ghostly right arm is not Piper.

  “Nineteen oh nine,” Bernard says, after a long silence. “The bridge.”

  “Wonder if the Yanks won the series that year.”

  “They didn’t,” he says. He looks up at me for the first time. “Ben, why are you here?” His gray eyes are not without pity, but the cruelty of the question takes the breath out of me. I don’t have an answer, not a sufficient one. All I can do is stand there, exposed and aching dully like a giant tooth.

  “Go home, Ben,” he says. “Move on.”

  the horse

  Forest is convinced tonight is a big step for me. Like Janet and everybody else, he thinks it’s high time that I set my grief aside and get back on the old horse. It’s Saturday midmorning, and despite his invitation for french toast with Melissa and the girls, I’ve pulled Forest away from his family yet again, this time for coffee in Poulsbo at the Poulsbohemian, where I’m too anxious about this evening’s events to pay the cute counter girl much notice. Upon prior sightings in the food court with Trev, we’ve discussed in no small detail the possibility of giving this counter girl a Dirty Muskie or a Gaylord Perry. But today I am too consumed with the possibility of getting back on the horse.

  “Relax, Benji. Lord knows I’m not telling you to go out and get hitched. I’m talking about a hookup here—maybe a booty call. What’s it been? Three years?”

  “Two,” I say into my coffee cup.

  “Tonight’s the night. Everything will work out great,” he says, clapping me firmly on the shoulder. “Hum now. No reason to be nervous. She’s not expecting a marriage proposal, and she’s not expecting Brad Pitt, either.”

  I lower my coffee midsip.

  “No offense,” he says.

  “None taken.”

  “Besides, I’ve met her ex-boyfriend and he’s a total goat roper. Just don’t go getting all, you know, needy and stuff. No crying.”

  “Got it. No crying.”

  “What about the papers? Did you sign the papers?” He can see I haven’t signed the papers. He closes his eyes and shakes his head grimly, then sighs. “Tomorrow you sign the papers. Tonight you get laid, tomorrow you sign the papers. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  I know that Forest has only my best interests in mind, and I also know that he’s absolutely right, that immobility is slowly draining the life out of me, like a car left to sit in the driveway too long. For all my mall gazing and talk of Rusty Trombones and Alabama Hot Pockets, it has never actually occurred to me to take decisive action with a woman since Janet left. The idea of ever seeing the world through somebody else’s eyes again—as I saw it through Janet’s or Piper’s or little Jodi’s—seems neither possible nor compelling to me.

  I will not be needy, I tell myself, piloting my dented Subaru south on Highway 3. I will not cry. I will not mention Janet. My shirt hasn’t seen an iron since the Clinton administration. Forest says to work the caregiving angle. Forest says to be myself. He says ask questions—but not too many.

  Her name is Katya. Forest has briefed me as to some of her particulars—the fact that she’s twenty-nine, that she recently dumped the aforementioned Goat Roper, and that she’s “pretty cute” and “really nice,” which doesn’t necessarily bode so well. The one piece of compelling information which Forest provides is that Katya works as a trapeze artist at a casino dinner theater in Tacoma. A trapeze artist! Who better to bedazzle me with her high-flying antics? Who better to defy the stultifying gravity that is my life?

  Katya’s eyes are as big and dark as avocados. You could hide a Cuisinart in her voluminous hair. Though her skin is a little on the bumpy side, her bone structure is remarkable; high, wide cheekbones and a plunging jawline. We are building our own Mongolian stir-fry at Colonel Lee’s in Bremerton—her pick. I’ve decided to be up front with her.

  “Just so you know,” I say, tonging some bean sprouts. “I’m only using you to get to the sword swallower.”

  She laughs. Already, a great weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I do not feel needy. I will not cry. Janet who? I avoid the frozen chicken and pork as I move down the line, stacking my plate with cabbage and bamboo shoots and julienned carrots. I’m wary of the raw meats, even if they’re frozen, because Jodi once went volcano on some frozen chicken. But I won’t mention that or anything about the kids tonight.

  Having performed the early show before meeting me, Katya is still in uniform beneath her long tan coat. “Sorry about all this,” she says of her jewel-encrusted blue leotard. She’s wearing a pair of running shoes that look like they might’ve belonged to her father—they’re huge. “Misty was late,” she explains. “So I didn’t have time to go home first.”

  “I think you look adorable,” I say.

  Her face pinkens like a sunset. I should’ve said hot—adorable is too familiar. But the sad truth is, already she feels familiar. I’m restless to be with her, impatient to hear the intimate details of her life. My neediness is not a hole to be filled but something beneath the skin scratching to get out.

  Katya absorbs this trespass gracefully. “So, Forest said you’re a nurse. That’s really cool.”

  “Not exactly. I’m just a caregiver.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “At least fifteen grand a year.”

  She smiles. “Who cares about money, anyway, right? It’s all about freedom. Hey,” she says, as we arrive at the hissing grill. “You totally forgot your meat.”

  I CAME OUT tonight expecting awkwardness and ultimately failure. I came with my exit in mind, armed with excuses. Still, I’m determined to stay on the horse as long as possible, so that next time, next horse—if there is another—I might stake my purchase a little longer. And in this manner I will inch my way toward manhood again. But things are not unfolding as I expected. At our table in the corner, beneath a frameless print of a Mongolian market scene at once reminiscent of Gauguin and Hanna-Barbera, in the shadow of a potted plastic monkey tree, my evening with adorable Katya unfolds swimmingly. Aside from a near slipup, when she asks me if I smoke and I almost tell her my wife made me quit, I’m pretty sure I’m holding my own. She seems charmed by my brief (and I’m pretty sure botched) recitation of Rimbaud.

  Once she starts talking about aerial dance and static trapeze, and the difference between a double cutaway and a triple cutaway half, I know that I could love Katya. As she regales me with the details of her job at the dinner theater, I playfully press her for information regarding the sword swallower. I press her for information about her family, her dreams, her future. I want to know everything, every sad little detail, all the ways in which she’s been broken or mishandled by life. My Katya does not disappoint. She is forthcoming with the details of her life—her childhood in Connecticut, her stint as a s
tripper, the profound freedom she feels letting go of the trapeze bar—a bit of reckless verve that makes me want to lean over and kiss her big chapped lips. I am fascinated by her life, mostly because I’ve been granted access to it.

  The empty Tsingtao bottles begin to congregate near the center of the table. I haven’t had four beers coursing through me in months. I will not surrender to their downward pull tonight. If I’ve retained a shred of dignity after the fall, I owe it to the wisdom that it’s better not to tempt old Bacchus with my mental and emotional instability and risk running that blurry gauntlet once more. I am here, at least in part. I am in the now, to some degree. I am engaging the circle of life. Hopefully, I’ll remember it tomorrow.

  “You totally remind me of someone,” she says, considering me over the rim of her green bottle. “Like someone famous. Wait! I know who it is!”

  I’m dreading the answer. “Who?”

  “Johnny Depp.”

  I am in love with this girl.

  KATYA’S APARTMENT BUILDING would’ve looked right at home in East Berlin. Situated directly behind an old hospital, colorless and hemmed in by concrete, the floodlit complex evokes a desperation familiar to me. I follow Katya up the walkway, through the heavy glass door and down the brown carpeted corridor, clutching a six-pack of Henry’s. The interior of her studio is no less stark than the outside. Sparsely furnished, walls unadorned, there is little sign of life here. The wood floors are painted gray. The windows look out over the empty hospital parking lot.

  Katya sets her purse on the kitchen counter. “I’m never here,” she says, as though she could hear my thoughts. “I used to mostly stay at Todd’s.”

  Todd must be the Goat Roper, I figure. Katya looks different now in the glare of the apartment. Her hair seems less voluminous. Her skin is scalier. Her big eyes look less sultry and a little more bulgy. She looks crazy in her raincoat and leotard. Somehow I like her better for all of this.

  “Go ahead and put those in the fridge if you want,” she says, removing her raincoat. Kicking off her clown shoes, she retreats to the bathroom.

  I stow the beers in the barren fridge, crack one open, and stand around to no purpose in the glare of the kitchen for a minute or two, planning my next move. I wonder if my breath is bad and swish a little beer around in my mouth, just in case. The overhead light fixture is a gallery of dead moths. You can practically smell their singed wings. The lone decorative flourish is a picture of a dog stuck with a magnet to the door of the fridge. It looks like a border collie or some kind of cattle dog, nuzzling curiously right up into the camera lens.

  “That’s Timber,” she says, emerging from the bathroom in jeans and T-shirt.

  “Yours?”

  “Was.”

  Drifting toward the living area, I take the only available seat on the edge of the futon under the window, where I prop an elbow on the sill and gaze out over the lighted parking lot, hoping I strike a thoughtful pose.

  “Sorry, I don’t have any music. I mean, I have music, just nothing to play it on.”

  “I know how you feel.”

  “You wanna beer?”

  “Got one,” I say, hoisting the bottle.

  When she moves to the kitchen, she doesn’t move like my idea of a trapeze artist. Her movements are tentative. She considers the contents of the refrigerator before selecting a beer. She briefly straightens the photo of the dog, before joining me on the edge of the futon, where we share a moment of silence. I pretend it’s an easy silence, and I suppose it’s easier than most, but I can still feel my neediness scratching to get out.

  “You’re nice,” she says at last.

  Taking this as an invitation, I lean over and kiss her chapped lips. She stiffens but does not resist. Her mouth is cold and tastes of metal, but I don’t mind, because she tastes human. She runs her cold tongue over my teeth. Our hearts begin to gallop, and we are breathless as Katya begins to wrestle the shirt off my back. Then suddenly she stops herself. I can’t say exactly what stops her, whether she recognizes my hunger as something more than sexual, or the force of my neediness is pressing in on her, but I can feel her pity like a warm stick of butter sliding down my esophagus. She lets go of my shirttail and looks right at me, her big avocado eyes inviting me to share her sadness. Smoothing the back of my shirt, she pecks me on the cheek and offers me a little apology by way of a smile. Part of me is grateful, though I know that her pity alone cannot sustain me.

  For the next three hours we sit shoulder to shoulder, upright in bed, talking and not talking. We dance around my past as though it doesn’t exist. Even in the silence, it hovers there. I’m certain by now that Forest has briefed Katya about the disaster and perhaps even my role in it. I can hardly blame her for wanting to know the details. I don’t doubt that knowing them, she would only wish to comfort me. A bigger man than I would at least acknowledge it, so we could both stop pretending there’s nothing wrong. But she doesn’t push me, and I’m grateful for that. However, I’m beginning to suspect I could really use a push. Tonight, though, with Katya asleep on my shoulder, and her kinky hair grazing my face, I’m content to pretend.

  poetry

  Monday morning, Trev wants a full report with his Ensure.

  “So, did you give her a Moroccan Meatball?”

  “Nope.”

  “Fishhook?”

  “Nope.”

  “Pasadena Mudslide?”

  “Hey now,” I caution. “She’s a classy girl.”

  “C’mon,” he persists. “What’d you give her?”

  “I really shouldn’t kiss and tell.”

  “Disappearing Panda?”

  “No condom.”

  “Pittsburgh Platter?”

  “No coffee table.”

  “Change Machine?”

  “Only had bills.”

  “C’mon, I give up. I know you gave her something.”

  “Okay, okay,” I relent. “I gave her a Minivan. I would’ve given her a Snowmobile, but she lives on the bottom floor.”

  “But seriously, did you bang her?”

  “Of course.” But I’m too slow to answer.

  “Did you even come close?”

  “Yeah,” I say, lamely. “Pretty close.”

  The truth, of course, is that I didn’t even get so much as a Raspberry Beret out of the deal, but I’d be lying if I said I haven’t been clinging to a certain desperate hope in the thirty-six hours since Katya’s trapeze act swung into my life. That this crazy-haired girl with her clown shoes and her leotard and her love of a dead dog invited me into her sad little apartment, if only to pity me, means that there is still hope for me.

  While Trev was sleeping this morning, I Googled the name Katya down many a blind alley, without so much as a last name. I Googled dinner theaters in Tacoma, trapeze acts in the greater Puget Sound region. I learned about straight jumps and bullet drops and whip-to-saddle swings, about inverse double suicides and half turns, along with a dizzying array of departures. With the cat curled in my lap, I was even moved to write Katya a little note of gratitude, a poem of sorts, really.

  Adorable Katya,

  May you live your life like a trapeze artist, by letting go and describing your graceful arc with confidence and ease, knowing that your grip will not fail you on the other side.

  Yours,

  Ben

  While composing this little missive, I begin to mist over at the nobility of my own gesture, knowing, even before it’s finished, that after work I will drive to Bremerton and slide the note under the door of her apartment, and Katya will see that I’m worth loving.

  guess who’s coming to dinner

  I’ve finally submitted to dinner at Forest’s house, albeit shamefully late. I’m sitting in his driveway behind the wheel of the Subaru, working up the nerve to make my entrance. I can see him at the window impatiently waving me in. I should’ve brought wine, dessert, something. Instead, I’ve arrived empty-handed, smiling sheepishly as I mount the steps, where Forest greet
s me at the front door with a clap on the back.

  Though I am some eighteen months behind Forest’s timeline, he is apparently sticking with his plan to facilitate my redomestication by degrees, for soon after my arrival—before Melissa has even emerged from the kitchen—I learn that the girls have been packed off to a friend’s house. While it embarrasses me that he’s made such provisions, part of me is grateful not to have to see the girls, particularly Maggie, who at ten and a half is precisely the age that Piper would be. And I’m not sure how I’d hold up under the force of their curious gazes.

  The house smells of curry. Melissa is lovely with her cherubic cheeks and plump arms. She flutters from the kitchen on butterfly wings and wraps me in a hug.

  “So good to see you,” she says. “God, I haven’t seen you in ages.”

  Melissa is generous with her familiarity, in spite of all those rebuffed dinner invitations, in spite of the fact that for two years I’ve avoided her like a creditor.

  “You look great,” she says. “Have you lost weight?”

  “Nah. Actually, I think I’ve gained some.”

  She smiles sweetly. “Well, it looks good on you.”

  In college, I dated Melissa. She was rock solid, even back then. She liked my poetry and my thick hair and believed, blindly, in my confused heart. But like a dummy, I let Melissa get away, drove her away, really, into the arms of my best friend. Knowing how good and giving and loyal and sympathetic she is, it’s an easy thing to regret from where I’m standing now. But she’s better off with Forest, and we all know it.

  “So, how’s the nursing?” she says. “Are you still working with the boy with ALS?”

  “MD, yeah. But I’m not actually a nurse. More of a manservant.”

  “I think it’s wonderful,” she says.

  “Me too,” says Forest.

  “It’s just a job,” I say.

  “Not everybody can do a job like that,” she says.

  “Not everybody can afford to.”