dislocate Issue #5

The Vanishing Husband

Kevin Wilson

My bed split in two while I was away at work. Where there had this morning been a single king-sized bed, now sit two brand-new double beds spaced a few feet apart from each other. In the span of a few hours, it has split apart like a cell dividing. Two from one. Blessa was sitting on our front porch, rocking slowly on the swing, when I pulled into the driveway. I remember driving up and watching her legs move slowly with the swing, the way her feet stretched out in front of her, and I was happy. I was happy to be at our large, comfortable house, and I was looking forward to a quiet dinner of pasta and some kind of vegetable dish and a bottle of wine. The usual. The good things we had afforded ourselves. And then she tells me, “Yelt, I want you to come see the beds.” I thought the way she phrased it was odd at first, because up to that point I had remembered only one bed in our house. But she was right. Two beds.

Our previous bed, the single bed, was a nice one. It was a king-sized sleeper with lots of springs and cushion, the kind you can drop watermelons on from high distances and not topple a tower of champagne glasses. And it was true, the watermelons onto the bed, because we tried it the first night Blessa and I had brought it home from the store. One of us stood on a ladder with a watermelon while the other stacked champagne glasses, and no, the glasses would not move. The bed was comfortable and warm and held both of us with room to spare. And now it is gone. I cannot make heads or tails of it, try to imagine someone slipping in during the afternoon and taking a chainsaw to the bed, moving the two halves apart from each other. I look at Blessa, expecting to see the same puzzlement on her face. She is smiling, holding the hem of her sundress in her hands and squeezing tight. “Do you like it, Yelt?” It starts to come to me, slowly.

I do not understand things very well, am not what you would call a fast learner. I had thought she was just as baffled as I was, had spent the whole afternoon pacing the long hallways of our house, trying to understand why the bed had split. But here she is, crawling onto one of the beds, the one nearest the door, and beckoning me to lie down. So I do. I drape my sport coat over the easy chair that, thankfully, remains the same dimensions as when I had left, and sit down on the far corner of the bed and look over my shoulder at the other bed, which I assume will be mine. The bed is hard, the mattress not yet accustomed to the contours of my body. I ask her why there are now two beds and she tells me, “It just seemed like the thing to do, get some space.”

We talk more about the beds over dinner, or rather she talks and I listen. We have outgrown the single bed. Not literally of course. We are still the same size physically, but emotionally it is time to define our space. And the bed seems like the easiest way to do this. While I eat a plate of noodles and pesto that I am not hungry for any longer, Blessa reassures me that it has nothing to do with me as a person, as a husband. We are still husband and wife, just in separate beds, which doesn't make much sense to me because what else do a husband and wife do but sleep in the same bed? She laughs when I mention this, says that I am being silly. We will still have relations with each other; that's how she says it. Relations. We will push the beds together on those occasions when we feel the need to have relations. I don't ask if we will separate the beds afterwards, don't want to hear what I think she would tell me.

That night, after we shower, change into our sleeping clothes, and turn down our separate beds, I ask Blessa if we can't push the beds together for the night. I want to get used to the idea of sleeping apart from each other, think that we can push the beds together for the night and then slowly separate. We can move them an inch apart every night, little by little, like two continents ing off at strange angles and drifting apart, putting an ocean of space between us. Blessa is not fond of this arrangement, prefers to go with the separate beds scenario. “It's like a band-aid,” she explains, “it needs to come right off. It hurts worse to go slowly.” So we slip ourselves into our respective beds and lie there on our sides, facing each other. I can see her eyes in the dim light from the hallway, which creeps under the door. I reach my hand out towards her, stretch my fingers until I am nearly halfway off the bed, reaching for her. She extends her arm, grips my hand tightly, and smiles. Blessa has a beautiful smile, even in the dark, and it makes me happy. It makes me feel as if everything is right with the world, that we are fine as long as she keeps smiling and I can feel her fingers on mine. But soon she pulls away, presses herself into her bed and closes her eyes. I keep my arm like that, outstretched, and even long after she has fallen asleep I keep reaching for her, reaching for something in her direction.

I love Blessa, and I know that she loves me too. We met seven years ago in college and married three years later. We have a happy life. We have a big, twostory house, two cars, a garden in the backyard, lots of clothes and accessories and entertainment products. We exercise regularly, read novels, and watch public television. Our Sundays are easily broken down and pleasantly familiar. Crossword, jazz brunch, antiquing, sex. Find something wrong in that equation. I work for a small, fairly lucrative company called LearnAboutYou that manufactures personalized school textbooks. Blessa works three days a week at the county library and is a member of a skeet-shooting club that meets on Wednesdays. We have always been happy; I cannot remember a single unkind word between the two of us, and we are proud of this. It's just this damn bed thing that I can't understand, makes my head hurt when I think about it.

“Damn strangest thing I ever hear tell of,” is what my boss tells me the next day at work. I am personalizing a series of History textbooks for a high school in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The school has sent names of every student, and I enter each one into the computer, where the computer will insert it in place of actual historical characters. Instead of Abraham Lincoln being shot, it will be Jeremy Littleton who was killed in Ford's Theatre. Supposedly, this method helps increase student interest, makes them feel a part of something larger than themselves. At least this is what we say in our brochure. To me, it seems slightly strange to imagine teenagers spending the rest of their lives thinking that Gina Beauregard was the father of our country.

My boss, Mr. Hudgins, giggles softly when I tell him about Blessa and me. “Two young people not sleeping together. There's trouble in paradise. One's got a venereal disease, that's the only thing I can possibly think of.” But I do not think that is the answer, feel that maybe this is just something couples go through, sleeping apart. Mr. Hudgins slaps me on the back and tells me to keep him posted, but I think I have told Mr. Hudgins more than I should have as it is. I already know that Blessa would not be happy with me telling everyone about our sleeping habits, or rather our habit of sleeping apart. I concentrate on my work, turn the Alamo into a war between the Eagles of Blanketville High School and the larger, more imposing Water Dogs of Simpson High School. I watch the clock and think about Blessa. I pray that maybe when I get back home the beds will have moved back together by magnetic force into a single and understandable bed again.

There are still two beds. Blessa acts as if nothing has changed, whistles as we wash the dishes. She heads off to shoot skeet, to blast small things out of the sky, and I sit in our room, on my bed. When I hear her car pull onto the street, I press my shoulder against the bed and push it until it touches Blessa's. I lie down on the single bed, roll from side to side. When Blessa opens the door to the house, I turn off the lights in the bedroom and wait. I hide behind the door and when she enters, I wrap my arms around her. I place my lips against hers and taste her mouth. She smells like gunpowder and I carry her over to our bed.

We slip out of our clothes and screw with a force that makes the two beds come apart several times so that we have to stop and push them back together. We move in time with each other with a kind of reckless abandonment that I am not familiar with. We go until there is nothing left, until we are both empty. When we finish, Blessa kicks off the covers and begins to pull her bed apart from mine. I grab her arms, do not want to let her go. Then I look in her eyes, the sad, quiet way they look back at me, and I roll over. I listen to the bed scratch against the wood floor. And when it is quiet, when I think she is asleep, I slip out of my bed and crawl on the floor until I am at the foot of her bed. I see her hand hanging off the bed and I touch it with the tips of my fingers. I stay like this all night, sleeping on the floor beside her like some kind of loyal pet, and I feel that something is not quite right.

We have not made love for three weeks. Blessa dives under the covers immediately after showering and falls asleep. My back is stiff from sleeping on the floor beside her; I can hardly sit upright at work. I want to press myself into Blessa. I feel that her body is losing the creases I have made on her skin. Finally, I have to sleep in my own bed; the floor is too hard. Sometimes at night, I can feel this prickly sensation on my fingertips, can feel her body against my hands like phantom pains from something long since separated from myself. I sleep four feet away from my wife and I am unhappy.

I begin to notice things missing from the house. Pictures of us are no longer displayed, framed portraits are replaced by black and white photos of trees and mountains. Our wedding video has been taped over with reruns of game shows. The entire house is redecorated in a southwestern motif, and Blessa serves food that I am allergic to. When I tell her I cannot eat cucumbers, she laughs. “Of course you can, crazy. You love cucumbers.” I tell her that if I eat a cucumber I will die, will fill up like a water balloon and explode, but she keeps shoveling them onto my plate. “Well, you should have said something before now.” One day, while she is signing checks to pay the bills, I notice that she signs them Blessa Pearl, though that is her maiden name. I ask her why she doesn't sign it Blessa Menlo like she always has, and she tells me that this is her name, that she doesn't want to have another argument about it. “Argued for six weeks before we married, and I told you every time that I wanted to keep my own name.” I try to find our marriage certificate but I can no longer find anything in this house, don't even know where to look.

Mr. Hudgins tells me that I am overreacting, that women are strange creatures. We are eating lunch in the picnic room, a tiny closet of a room carpeted with Astroturf and outdoor sounds piped in through speakers. We sit on a red-andwhite checkered blanket and eat ham sandwiches. While we eat I tell him everything about Blessa, that she may or may not be the woman I married, that we have not slept with each other for a very long time, that I have driven up and down the street that prostitutes frequent late at night. I feel like Blessa does not love me anymore, but I really can't explain why. She is just as nice as she has always been, still smiles at me while we eat. We still watch documentaries on public television and she brings me books she thinks I will like from the library. But her kindness feels different, seems to have shifted slightly, though I cannot pin it down. It has something to do with the beds, with the maiden name, with the abstaining from sex, but it's something more, as if we are simply not the same people we used to be.

Mr. Hudgins does not care to hear any of this, seems put off by any mention of relationships. His wife lives in Bermuda, comes back once a year for the annual Christmas picture that is mailed out to our clients and then heads back. Mr. Hudgins is of the opinion that distance is good. “Not seeing a person,” he says, “never hurt anybody far as I can tell.”

My bed is gone. I come home from work, still tired from all my revisionist history, and when I open the door to our bedroom, I see that there is only one bed. I am happy for two, maybe three seconds, but it feels like longer. I think perhaps that Blessa has finally given up and gone back to the single bed, but I can tell pretty quickly that only her bed is left. It is just her single bed and suddenly it seems so small. I do not think Blessa wishes to share.

She is still at the library, working the late shift, so I walk down the hallway, into one of the several spare rooms that we have yet to fill with new things, and this is where I find my bed. My desk is also here, as well as my clothes and books. I wait on the porch swing for Blessa to come home, but she does not show up until four in the morning. She smells like alcohol, like sweet mixed drinks. Her wedding ring is not on her finger and for a second I question whether or not I ever gave her one. When I ask her about the bed, she says that she was pushing the beds apart this morning, getting a little more distance. She pushed the bed a little further, then a little more, and before she knew it my bed was in the hallway. And then it was in the adjoining room and it seemed silly for her to move it back.

She treats the action as if it is perfectly logical and, to be truthful, she almost makes it sound as such. I am tired; Blessa is drunk and so I do not question my wife, only walk up the stairs and into my new room. I hear her showering, then her door slam shut, but after that I can hear nothing. There is silence in her room and I lie awake and think about my bed. I think of it as a Ouija board's pointer, as an arrow that was moved by something more than us to this spot in the house. It feels like this must mean something. I think there is a hidden message that I just cannot quite decipher and I fall asleep still not understanding.

I do not see much of Blessa anymore. We do not share meals anymore. My food is left on the kitchen table when I come home from work, covered in colored saran wrap with smiley face post-it notes stuck to it. “For you!” they say, or “Enjoy!” I've moved the TV into my room so I can watch public television by myself because Blessa doesn't have time for it anymore. The house has been completely redecorated again. I wake one weekend to find men outside putting a new shade of paint on the house.

Late at night, I think that I can sometimes hear someone else in Blessa's room, a deep voice that mixes with hers. But the walls are thick, good strong walls that block sound so I cannot be sure. I sit there in bed for hours, unable to sleep, and I strain my ears to hear something that I do not think I want to hear. I slide my hand inside my pants and feel a hardness, grip it tight, and think about Blessa but there is no hope of any of that. I slowly jerk myself off with one hand, press the other hard against the wall, as if I can shove myself through it and into Blessa's life again.

Work is very difficult. I am always tired, cannot bear to write the names of dull high school students into textbooks. I sleep a lot, sneak into the picnic room and roll myself tight in the red and white checkered blanket. Mr. Hudgins does not say much, and when I try to apologize he waves his hand. “I know a man who ain't getting any when I see it, son. You are that kind of man.” I slip up and put a Browington High School student's name in place of Mussolini. This is a no-no at LearnAboutYou. Students are never to be given designations as unsavory dictators. No student wants to be Hitler or Mussolini or Idi Amin. “Goddamn, son,” yells Mr. Hudgins, his bald head turning disturbingly red, “you think some snot-nose punk wants to hear about how he is responsible for creating a fascist society?” I am failing very quickly at all aspects of my life.

This morning I come down the stairs and find someone sitting in the seat I usually frequent. He is a man about the same age as me, with darker hair and a slightly more muscular build. I can tell this about him because he is not wearing a shirt. There is a shirtless man in my spot. Blessa returns from the pantry and sees me, smiles, and motions towards a new seat for me to sit down. She scoops eggs and strips of bacon onto both of our plates, though I notice this new man gets more of both. We eat silently as I stare across the table at him, trying to make eye contact with him, to shame him for what he has done, what I think he has done with my wife.

Finally, Blessa comes by with coffee and tells me that it had completely slipped her mind to tell me but “this is Franklin. He's going to be living here from now on, up in my room.” I mention that it will be pretty hard for both of them to share such a small bed, and she says that they have a king-sized bed now, that Franklin brought one over. He smiles at me, shovels more egg into his mouth. I do not like this man, feel that I would dislike him even if he weren't sleeping with my wife, getting bigger portions of food than me.

At work today I completely disregard the list of student names. For the Classics textbook I replace every male name with my own and every female name with Blessa's. Now, every student at Greenlow Academy will know that I took Blessa from Troy because I wanted her for my very own and they will somehow know this is true, that Blessa is so pretty that entire nations will fight for her. They will read of how Yelt cast a spell on the Greeks to keep Blessa on the island, and I hope somehow this will make Blessa stay, to see her name put down in black ink on so many pages. I hope that she will have to spend years with me in the house because she will be so interested in our history, in this new history I've made for us, that she cannot leave until she reaches the end, until she finds out what happens.

There is a party at my house tonight. I was not invited. I notice over two dozen cars parked all over our front yard, loud music pouring out from the house. When I walk inside, several people stop talking and turn to face me. Their expressions are blank, uncaring, and when they turn away, I begin to wander through the house, searching for Blessa. I cannot find her on the first floor, and Franklin is nowhere to be found either. I stand beside the refreshment table and eat crabmeat on crackers, drink wine spritzers. It is a party after all, my party, so I'm going to drink wine spritzers all night if I want to.

An old woman comes up beside me and asks who I am. I tell her and she shakes her head. “Just moved in a few months ago so I'm afraid I don't know everyone just yet,” she says. When she asks where I live, I tell her that this is my house and she laughs, punches me in the arm a little too hard for such an old woman. “A joker you are. Isn't this a lovely party though? Have you seen the hostess? She's a vision in that dress, so pretty.” I ask her what people think about the husband and she tells me that the neighborhood seems very fond of Franklin, thinks anyone is good for Blessa after her first marriage. I eat more crabmeat, wash it down with more wine spritzer. The party is in full gear now, people laughing and dancing and drinking and I do not recognize any of them, do not think I have ever met them before. I ask the old woman what was wrong with the first husband and she tells me that “oh, he was just a selfish man from what I hear, wanted her to always wait on him hand and foot and she gave up some good years for him. Then this man took up with his secretary and moved off to somewhere up north. Left her high and dry is what he did. Thankfully, Franklin came in soon after and gave her some happiness.”

I excuse myself, feel a little dizzy, and march myself into my room. I press my ear against the wall and listen for something but there is no sound. I look at myself in the mirror, try to decide if I am a horrible man, if I have done bad things in my life, but I cannot remember anything. I think about Blessa, about the good times I remember with her, but they are fuzzy, distant, and they could be about anyone. I start to realize how exhausted I am and drift off to sleep despite the party that rumbles underneath me. When I wake up the next morning, my wedding ring is gone.

Mr. Hudgins calls me into his office today and tells me that I have made one too many mistakes. I am making students even stupider, if that's possible. “Nothing I hate more than a man who tries to set himself up as a Greek warrior,” he tells me. I am fired, am expected to finish work today and never come back. “It's all lies,” I tell him, “it's all lies that we put in those books. History shouldn't change. It's got to stay the same cause that's the only way we can remember.” He smacks his hand against his forehead and lets it slide down, like I have thrown an egg in his face. “Goddamn boy, it's all lies, every last piece of it. Seems like you'd have figured that out by now, all the years you worked here. You take the history you want, draw up the one that sounds the best, and that's the one you use, the one that sticks. Cause history always changes. It's the slipperiest thing there is. It removes and edits and highlights all the time and every one of them is true. Every last bit of it is true and perfect and beautiful, but it's all lies, cause that's all that holds.” He dismisses me, and the look on his face is not so much like anger or annoyance but pity, like he is letting me out into a world he knows I'm not going to do well in. I let myself into the picnic room and sleep for the rest of the day. I sleep past closing time and have to crawl out of a window late that night in order to get home.

All of my clothes are in the front yard. The locks to my house have been changed. I spend twenty minutes jiggling the key in the lock but it will not move, will not turn. I look up at the second floor and see the light on in Blessa's room. I figure this means it is over, think that she probably does not want me around anymore and so I gather up armfuls of my clothes and head to the car. My shirt is caked with sweat and wrinkled beyond belief so I slip into one of my other shirts and when I do I can feel a piece of paper in the breast pocket, realize there are pieces of paper in the pockets of all my clothes. It is a note, written in Blessa's hand, and reads:

You are no longer named Yelt Menlo. You are not married to Blessa Pearl and never were. Your name is Marcus Riley and you are a good man, a kind man who tries very hard to do the right thing. Your wife's name is Allegra Riley and she is waiting for you at your house on 354 Currant Street. Do not take the car, as it is not your car anymore. You will remember only this about your life until now: You once loved someone and you were loved by her. You will move on, you will discover new things and you will be happy.

I repeat the name in my head, make it sound like my name, and it comes to me with surprising ease. I think about my wife, my new wife, and what she will look like. I gather up only what I can carry of my clothes and begin walking down the streets of the subdivision, out into the dark, following the glow of reflector strips on the road. I walk further and further and know in my heart of hearts that where I end up will be a good place.

I wonder if Allegra likes children, if she would like to have some, if we have some already. I wonder what we like to do together, how we spend our time when we are with each other. I think of our house on Currant Street and I think I can see it in my head, the way it must look, and it seems like I have always been there, have always been this person. I begin to realize that I can be happy, that I will always be a happy person for as long as I live.

 

Issue 5 Table of Contents