Corner of the Dead

Chapter 6

[ 98 ] C H A P T E R 6 AT T H E N E X T S E S S I O N the doctor asks how the steak was. I stare at her neatly crossed legs. She doesn’t really want to know. She picks a piece of lint from her woolen jacket. It’s her way of checking facts. I want to say, I’m the lawyer. Instead I say, fine, thank you. There was no steak. We didn’t get hungry until midnight and that’s when we ate. We wanted popcorn so I brought it into bed with us. Steak and French fries. Homemade, I say. I should have stopped with the French fries. The more detailed, the more a lie sounds like a lie. I hope she’ll think the lie was about the homemade fries. It’s the steak part she needs to believe. No steak might result in a call to a social worker. A stout middle-aged woman will arrive to the house unannounced with pad and pencil. She will note what canned goods are on the shelves and what is in the garbage. This will lead to a series of questions because the pantry is stocked with just capers, popcorn and toilet paper. • • • [ 99 ] Karl and I spent one weekend at a beach on the equator. It was after the rainy season. It wasn’t until we floated naked in the ocean the first night—soothing our badly burned skin— that we realized how close we were to the sun. The full moon lit the tips of my breasts and Karl’s toes as they pointed upward toward Orion’s belt. At dawn we left the water and crawled beneath the mosquito netting. That’s when he said he loved me. I was sure I was dreaming. Why? the doctor asks. Why what? Why were you sure you were dreaming? My mother left me in the hospital. The red on my face wouldn’t look good in the family album. It was hard for her to look at me. I understand. I find it difficult too. But I don’t want to talk about this. It’s Richard, leaving Richard. That is what is on my mind. It was on my mind for at least five years. Before that beach vacation I tried but hadn’t been able. It is why I am on that beach flicking dead bugs off the cover of The Book of Illusions. I walk away. Then I’m running and when I stop to catch my breath, I study the sand between my toes—black, red, brown and a shard of glass. I’m looking at the horizon because I have no one to talk to. Richard is smoking. The kids have had it with both of us. It’s a family vacation where none of us feels much toward one another, except perhaps antipathy. I hate that Richard smokes cigars. He knows this. I stop mentioning it to him because it doesn’t make a difference. Even still, I try to sit back down next to him thinking maybe we’ll talk, and I can’t concentrate on reading. I have to keep repositioning my chair to avoid his fumes. When the breeze dies down I try again. But each time I find my place the wind shifts and the smoke from his cigar makes me cough. Phoebe is sprawled across a yellow towel. [ 100 ] Ben is bored. I ask if they want to go on the raft. Reluctantly they agree. Phoebe talks about the book she is reading. Ben does too, except his is on the Armenian genocide. Virginia Woolf mentions that in Mrs. Dalloway, I say. Phoebe scrunches her face into a wrinkle and holds her hand in front of her, Stop. I don’t want to hear about it. This is my vacation, too. Gulls swoop down but come up with nothing. The only fish are the decayed ones along the shore. The plastic oars cut through the water but I lose control of the circles I am making. At the sandbar I pull the raft to higher ground. There are dead fish and the air smells of rot. El Frontón. The smell of gull shit was everywhere outside that prison. We made it to the exit. As soon as the door was opened Karl took a...