Museum of the Weird (7 page)

By noon, there were a few more boats on the water, and the campers were moving around on the shore. Dale adjusted the rod and watched the patterns his line made on the water. His Rick Clunn baitcaster glinted in the sun. “Here’s my thoughts,” Dale said. “As adults, we experience a finite number of crystallizing moments in our lives, these points when we each had to close the door on a person or a feeling, or a way of life. The night of that formal dance in high school, I closed the door on women.”

It took Howard some energy to consider that far back. “Because Jan Parmentel got sick?”

“She could have at least told her girlfriends to tell me.” Howard reeled in his line and cast it again. “Seems like a minor infraction.”

“Sure, it was. It was. But it hit me at just the right time, right on my sweet spot. You know how baseball bats have a sweet spot, and you hit the ball right at that spot and it flies over the fence? Every time?”

Dale looked to Howard for confirmation. Howard twitched his line.

“Winter Formal 1983 was my sweet spot,” Dale said, “and Jan Parmentel was the last girl on Earth.”

Howard’s portable cooler was empty at his feet, as the bag of frozen tilapia was snug in with sandwiches and beer in their larger cooler. Dale’s paring knife was still in his breast pocket. It rubbed a little against the side of the pocket and had begun to slightly cut the fabric. It was just a few threads every day, but soon the shirt would be ruined. On the shore, a lone camper, a woman in a black bathing suit, was waving. They watched her.

“I believe that woman is waving at us,” Howard said.

“She’s just waving,” Dale said. “She’s not waving at us.”

“It looks like she’s by herself out there.”

Dale squinted. “You think?”

“Maybe she needs help.”

“That isn’t our business.”

“Come on, now. A woman’s out there waving directly at us, and you’re saying that’s none of our business? There’s some idea of implicit blame there, if something was happening to her.

It was difficult to see the woman from where they were sitting, but she was definitely moving her arms in their direction. Howard could barely make out the black of her bathing suit and the white of her legs. She had both hands over her head. Howard reeled in and started the motor. “Let’s just have a look,” he said.

* * *

On shore, Wendy finished her beer and backed up to accommodate the advancing boat. “Howdy,” she said, snapping the wide band of her bathing suit on an encroaching mosquito. The men stepped out of the boat and pulled it farther ashore. Dale reached in and retrieved his Rick Clunn baitcaster and rod, carefully securing the line.

“Hi there,” said Howard.

“Good day for fishing.”

“Were you waving at us?” Dale asked.

“Pardon?”

“Settle a bet,” he said. “Were you waving?”

“I was stretching,” Wendy said. She had a wide smile that displayed the line of gums above her teeth. Howard estimated her to be about five years younger than he.

“Knew it,” Dale said. “I knew it.”

“We were just getting ready for a little lunch,” Howard said. “Mind joining us?”

“Sure, I’ve got a couple extra beers. I was about to have a bite, myself.”

Howard hauled the cooler out of the boat and planted it next to Wendy’s lawn chair. “I’m Howard, this is Dale.”

“Wendy,” she said. She was pretty, Howard observed. They shook hands and she reached into her backpack. “Care for a beer?”

“I’ve got one right here, thanks.” He opened his cooler and pulled the sandwiches out with his beer. The plastic bag holding the sandwiches had opened, and Howard examined the food inside, wrapped with wax paper. The bread was wet but salvageable. He handed the drier sandwich to Dale and picked a soaked piece of bread off a second. They were bologna sandwiches, which reminded Howard of school. He wasn’t sure how a plain girl like Jan Parmentel could ruin a man’s entire outlook on life Dale was eating his sandwich and watching them moodily. “Sorry they’re a bit wet,” Howard said. “The bag broke.” “It’s a good sandwich,” Dale said.

“Bologna from the old days.”

“What old days?”

“Back in school, like we were talking about.”

Dale shook his head. “I didn’t eat bologna.”

“Sure you did,” Howard said. “You loved those sandwiches. You got my mother to pack you an extra one on Fridays.”

“I never liked bologna. I never ate it.”

They stared at each other. “We appear to be at an impasse,” Howard said.

“We can be at whatever you want, Howard. This is the first bologna sandwich I have ever eaten.”

“In your life?” Wendy asked.

Dale grinned at her and lifted the sandwich.

“He’s full of shit,” Howard said.

“Tasty sandwich,” Dale said.

Howard closed the lid of the cooler with his foot. “How can you know you never liked bologna if you’ve never had it?”

“What I meant is, I never liked the idea of it.”

“That’s
not
what you meant.”

“What did I mean?”

“I don’t know what you meant.” Howard flung a piece of soaked bread into the woods. “What you meant is a mystery between you and Jesus.”

Dale took a careful bite of his sandwich. “I’m not sure we have to bring higher powers into it,” he said. “I’m just enjoying a sandwich while you enjoy our fine company, here.” He smiled at Wendy, who smiled back a little nervously. She leaned towards the cooler and opened it again. “Whatcha got in there?” she asked, and before Howard could stop her, she pulled out the bag of frozen tilapia. “Seems a bit expensive for bait, hmm?”

“Let’s have that,” Howard said, trying to reach casually for the bag.

Wendy pulled it back, playfully, and turned it over as if examining the package. “Don’t these things have mercury in them? That could be bad bait, you know. Can’t have a mercury level in your body, that never goes away.” She snorted. “Unlike some things.”

“S’not bait,” Howard said.

“What’s that?”

“It’s not bait.”

“What is it, then? Lunch?” She held the bag with both hands at the corner, as if she was going to open it. She flicked at the plastic with one fingernail, then balanced the whole bag in her open palm as she used the other hand to snap at her bathing suit strap again. She tossed the bag in the air and caught it with one hand. She saw the look on Howard’s face and started to laugh, displaying her shining gums. The pillow of white skin across her thighs rippled as she laughed. His expression opened something dark and playful in her, and she laughed louder, holding the bag over her head, dropping it into her lap. Howard stared at her, helpless.

Dale, deciding at that moment that he had seen enough, picked his fishing pole, gripped the rod backwards, and clocked Wendy on the mouth with his Rick Clunn baitcaster. It happened in one smooth movement, almost natural. The anodized aluminum frame of the baitcaster landed with a smart
thwup
on the woman’s face.

Wendy howled and fell back, dropping the bag of frozen tilapia and holding her reddening face. “You bastard,” she managed, reeling.

Howard scooped up the bag, threw it back in the cooler, hefted the cooler onto the boat, and pushed it off. Dale was right behind him, wading fast through the water in his galoshes. Neither of them looked back. The engine started on the third try, and they were four hundred feet off the shore in half a minute. They could barely hear the woman screaming over the sound of the engine.

Howard couldn’t bear to look back. “That was unnecessary,” he said.

“She’ll be all right.”

“We were having a conversation.”

“You weren’t going to do anything.”

“That was god damn unnecessary.”

“Are you kidding?” Dale said. “She was about to open it.” Howard reached into the cooler and pulled out the bag of frozen tilapia. Bringing the bag to his mouth, he gripped it with his teeth in the same place where Wendy had held it. He pulled open the bag and flung it, frozen tilapia and all, across the water. Howard spit out the plastic that had lodged between his teeth.

Dale gasped. “What have you done?”

The water was speckled with glittering, frozen white fish fillets. They floated, bobbing with the boat.

“We don’t eat fish,” Howard said.

They had been too long on the water, and the day of fishing was over. The motor and their commotion scared everything off. Still, the men were slow to leave, watching the tilapia waver uncertainly before sinking. Dale felt like he had been in the sun too long, like he was going to be sick.

When they finally came ashore, and the police were there with that woman, he wasn’t immediately sure why. “You’ve got the wrong idea,” he kept saying, “you’ve got the wrong idea,” but explanations vanished. They caught hold of him, and both officers had to wrestle him to the ground to take his knife away.

THERE WILL BE SENSE

And then, though they had a choice, the doctors put a generator in my heart, and they gave me a magnetic band to wear on my wrist which I must pass over my heart when the old feelings begin again.
Arnold
, they say,
you are certainly a special man.
The following are true:

1. Because of a history of powerful migraines accompanied by the trilling melody of seizure, I had certain precautions installed to prevent me from biting off my tongue;

2. A side effect of the migraines is a disorder called Alice in Wonderland which causes worlds to complicate outside of my control;

3. The word “special” often carries both positive and negative connotations.

Jeannie serves me tostadas at the café, the gold cross on her necklace (warm, no doubt, from her skin and the heat of the deep fryer) dangling close to my sweet iced tea. It’s the first thing I see as I come out of the dangerous haze, and I feel small and close enough to the cross to make a leap for it. I’d like to dig my finger nails into the soft cooling gold and balance on the arm of it as on a tree branch, holding the chain for support.

“Watch the plate,” Jeannie calls from miles above. She throws herself back like a gymnast and vertigo pins me to the wall. The generator in my heart ticks one sad farewell tick and silences. I miss it already.

“I almost had a seizure,” I say.

“I sneak up,” she says. She points to her soft-soled shoes. “Sorry if I scared you.”

“You didn’t,” I say. “It was in my head.”

Jeannie smiles like an acolyte. “Tostadas are the special today,” she says.

“They look special.”

“Are you Catholic?” she asks, folding the plate’s towel under her arm. There’s nobody else in the restaurant except the cook who, finished with the obligation of soaking a corn tortilla in tomato puree and calling it a tostada, is lighting his cigarette on the grill. “I thought I saw you blessing yourself a minute ago,” Jeannie says. “I’m just wondering.”

“God is very important to me,” I say, though what she saw as spiritual devotion was an act that has always been purely physical, my body prompting the machine to prompt my heart to regulate my brain’s foolish attempt to revolt against the whole. Religious women are often interested in me because they misinterpret the event. I am often interested in them because they remind me of my mother. This is not strange.

Jeannie rolls silverware and talks to the cook. My tostada depresses me and when I leave, I feel it in my stomach as a whole. My stomach conforms to the shape of the corn discus. I avoid eye contact out of shame.

This town has one fountain, and I pass by it on the walk home. People come to watch the water go up and down, and they throw coins in the fountain and feed the birds around it. It’s an idyllic little scene. What the world needs is more fountains. The corn disk is cutting the soft lining of my stomach in half and I lie down on a bench, feeling embarrassed and oppressively blocked. The only other person at the fountain today is a woman wearing a zippered pouch around her waist. She sits with her feet in the water, looking in, and every few minutes she reaches, takes a handful of money, shakes her hand a few times (water’s qualities in sunlight: mirrors, jewels, fire) and drops it into the zippered pouch.

“That’s illegal,” I say.

“I reject law,” she says. “This fountain has no laws.”

“What about gravity?”

“That’s just a good idea.”

The tostada grows three times larger in my stomach. I have the brief sensation of the woman shooting far away, into the trees at the edge of the park, me tied to the bench without hope of pursuit. The feeling passes before I think to move my arm.

“That money goes to charity,” I say.

“What do I look like?” the woman says.

I tilt my head to look up at her. She’s wearing blue linen pants, wet at the calves from the fountain, and a white shirt. Her hair is tied up with a yellow kerchief, which has the effect of pulling her features up and back, lengthening her neck, brightening her face. I feel heat like a rash. “The Virgin Mary,” I say.