Careen

Her name was Angela.

They'd been dating for months, she imagined them married. Her mother, Barbara, fawned over him, made him absurd quantities of Polish food he could never finish. She confided in him that Angela's last serious boyfriend had slowly drifted into alcoholism, and the way he treated people had never sat well with the family. He took this in stride and played the role of the incumbent beautifully, always eager to ask after pregnancies and funerals. His vacantly hardworking lifestyle fit well with all of them and he melted into their home so easily they began to imagine him a cousin. The food Barbara made was always delicious and he admired the delicate preparatory efforts that went into it. Sometimes he arrived early just to watch her roll out flour or deep fry suspicious little pockets that he knew would end up in his mouth hours later. All of this was for him, he was treated like a prodigal son, always in need of fattening, everything available, everything enforced. Angela's father barely ate, barely spoke English anymore since he'd retired. He sat at the table smiling and playing cards when it was time, but largely his eyes were distant and content.

Initially he thought the old man was unremarkable, of a type, even. But the more he studied the wrinkled, patient distance he'd cultivated from the fray of his own house, the more he was impressed. He emulated him in small ways; ignoring questions, fighting off interruptions, freezing the drift of a conversation on a whim. He imagined Frank's life was that of a stone caught ceaselessly in the very center of a whorl of water, neither moving with the current nor against it. A static and frozen thing.

Barbara always moved rapidly, a pleasant counterpoint, and watched everyone's plate like a hawk. Whenever he arrived a meal miraculously appeared, as if even unannounced the very possibility of his arrival materialized hours of painstaking preparation. He couldn't grasp the simple things which had to happen for him to eat like this every day, but he reveled. Barbara was a flurry of arms and gestures and ladlings and 'Have one mores'. She left no silent moment free of a phrase and gossiped to him about the neighbourhood as if he had grown old and died there many times over.

Occasionally, he had felt wonderfully at home with them and even with Angela, alone. But there was still an indecipherable crust of loathing covering over everything he said and did with them or for them. Even as he smiled and laughed and admired he felt as if he wre lying, poisoning their generosity and good-natured friendliness. Angela never sensed it, but he felt like he was watching two separate scenes or two lives superimposed, while he remained always outside watching everything with a curled lip.

Nothing of this life penetrated to him and none of it seemed to join together into any coherent or recognizable shape. To him it was lumps. All of it lumps unworked and not life with its exactness.


***

"Am I right?" she asked, playfully. He hated this tone she had afterwards. Lying there in the dark he only wanted to hear her breathing, asleep preferably. Alone with his thoughts he could weave himself into her life without the bare fact of her interrupting.

"Hm?" He said. He knew full well what she'd said but she couldn't see his face, his shoulder was blocking her vision, and he didn't want to play her idiotic games tonight. He wanted to love her somehow. Everything about him felt dishonest and cruel.

"You know that I love you more than you love me, don't you? I'm right. Admit it" She pushed him, still playful, slightly revolting. Her finger slid over the rim of his ear, and he recoiled partly from instinct.

He decided to immerse himself in this scene, a trivial slice of what he imagined it to be. The whole dense mass of his body shifted almost instantly and he was straddling her. The violence of it surprised and pleased him, and he planted the ends of his arms on either side of her head with a single motion. He conjured a serious look and stared directly into the insipid mass of features that formed her face. She was smiling, he surmised, and she expected him to kiss her. That he knew. He kissed her, kept his eyes open, looked into her eyes when they opened. Still smiling.

"Look at me," he said it cold and definite. She looked. "I love you without degree." He imagined spitting in her face just as he said it.

He knew it sounded overly poetic and a bit out of his usual range of banter. But her eyes shifted and softened and she buried her head in the cleft between his ear and shoulder. The rest of the night they lay there intertwined and he ignored her questions and was happy. She was happy, too, and didn't mind his silence.