The One-Eyed Man Page 19

  Sarah put a hand over mine on the table. “K.,” she said, “we should have let each other be a long time ago. We both know that.”

  I pulled my hand away, lifted the napkin from my lap, and threw it over my unfinished breakfast. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.

  “Sure you do,” Sarah said.

  A tour bus rolled slowly by, loaded with septuagenarian leaf peepers. I stared, and they stared back through tinted windows. I wondered how we looked to them. Did they imagine we were happy? That we both would live to be their age someday, and that when that day arrived it would find us still together in our dotage, holding hands and writing each other little notes of endearment to find around the house?

  When the tour bus had passed I looked back at Sarah and found her expression hovering between determination and regret. I couldn’t bear this, so I looked away again, across the street, where a woman wrestled with her Great Dane as the dog tried to pull its leash out of her hand.

  “Is this because you blame me?” I asked finally.

  “Blame you?”

  “Because if it is, I understand. I’ve been thinking about that a lot, wondering if it’s my fault.”

  “K.,” Sarah said, “what are you talking about? Blame you for what?”

  “Well, for you being so sick,” I said. “Obviously.”

  “Now you’re just talking crazy.”

  “Listen,” I said, jabbing an index finger at her over the table, surprised by the rush of my own anger, “if I have to admit I resent you for being sick, you have to admit you blame me for it in the first place.”

  “Well I don’t,” Sarah said. “And I’m not going to indulge whatever insane guilt fantasy you’ve created. But I appreciate you coming clean about the other thing.”

  We stared at each other in silence, Sarah still offering that kind, pitying look, me fuming over having been foolish enough to let slip the truth.

  The waitress, a young woman with an indecipherably florid tattoo sleeve that started at her wrist and disappeared into the shoulder of her black T-shirt, came and asked if we needed more coffee, if we wanted anything else, if everything was good.

  “Everything’s great,” I said without looking away from Sarah.

  “We’re fine, thank you,” Sarah said, smiling, smiling.

  The waitress hesitated a moment, as people will when the space they’ve entered is thick with anions of conflict, but then she seemed to decide that our problem did not involve her, and turned to go back inside the restaurant.

  We sat in silence once more. Around us joggers jogged, bicyclists pedaled, hipster couples strolled arm in arm with their shoulders touching and their heads inclined toward the other, the solidarity which precedes a seasoned marriage’s long sine wave of contempt and mellowed affection.

  Or so was my thinking, in the bitter moment.

  Sarah examined her hands in her lap. “Listen, I’m sorry this comes as such a shock. I guess I thought we were closer to being on the same page than we are.”

  “You thought,” I said, “that I wanted to divorce my ailing wife.”

  “Is that so outrageous?” she asked. “With all the other ways our life has been upended, is that such an insane concept?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It is.”

  She raised her face to look at me, and that’s when I noticed the ooze of blood issuing from her left nostril, dark lethal red flecked with black, thick as corn syrup.

  “Well that’s where I am, K.,” she said. “I’m sorry, but I’m not going to lie to you.”

  The blood crept downward, hitting the little hollow directly under her nose and angling in toward the peak of her upper lip.

  “Sarah,” I said.

  “No, K., listen to me, please. I need to say something, and if I don’t say it now I may lose my nerve.”

  I stared at the blood. “Okay,” I said.

  She talked, and I let her. After a while, I reached for the napkin on my plate, found a clean corner, stood, and went to her side of the table. Sarah stopped midsentence and looked up at me, her face full of dread; maybe she thought I would try to kiss her, or some other such grand romantic gesture. Instead I slid one hand under her chin and daubed at her lip with the napkin. Not having noticed the blood herself, she had no idea what I was doing or why, but nonetheless she sat still until her face was clean. I held the napkin out to show her the crimson stain. She took the napkin from me and stared at it, then folded it twice to hide the blood. We walked home, my hand at her elbow in a show of support she neither asked for nor needed, and we never spoke of divorce again.

  That night I lay in bed beside her, sleepless. My eyelids did not grow the slightest bit heavy, and I did not yawn even once. For hours I lay there listening to the sounds of our bodies: her gut gurgling and cooing, my pulse throbbing against the pillow, the bellows of her lungs sighing steadily, all our dull human clockwork blaring like a Wagner symphony in the silence. And it was during those hours, utterly awake beside my wife, when I understood for the first time why people choose to believe stories about a bearded man in the sky who loves us like a father and promises something greater and more permanent for those who are righteous.

  16

  A SEEMINGLY INNOCUOUS INTERLUDE

  Of course one is not supposed to describe anything or anybody as “retarded” these days, but just once, for the occasion of this review, I’m going to resuscitate the word and state without equivocation that America, You Stoopid is retarded—but only because it reflects the inanity of our age. Come for the comic violence inflicted on the show’s principle, stick around for the damning indictment of We the People, flopping around the muck of late capitalism like pigs in a sty.’”

  “Pigs are actually quite intelligent,” I said.

  “Not according to the New York Times,” Claire said. She pecked away at the keyboard of her laptop, peered at the screen a moment. “Here’s something a little less highbrow,” she said. “Vegas odds on you surviving a second season are at eight to one.”

  “You can bet on this sort of thing?” I asked.

  “Course you can. It’s Vegas. But what do the numbers mean?”

  “That if you wagered a dollar on me surviving and won, you’d make eight dollars on the bet.”

  “So they believe, in other words, that you’re going to get killed.”

  “Very much so, it would seem,” I told her.

  We sat in the living room of Claire’s new condominium, an exceedingly modern two-bedroom full of stainless steel and hardwood, with a gas fireplace that resembled a television and large windows that looked out on the bay.

  “You want to see what they’re saying about us on Tumblr?” Claire asked, still gazing at her screen.

  “Probably not,” I said. Out below, where the river met the ocean, a yellow and white ferry steamed for the small coastal islands on the horizon. Squat as a tugboat, it cut the waves and turned east, and I watched it grow smaller and smaller, listening to the chatter of Claire’s keyboard echo off of new drywall.

  My phone rang. On the other end was Theodore, saying MSNBCBS had called.

  “First, my dear,” he said, “they wanted to apologize for Raquel Haddock’s mob of vegan pacifists trying to murder you with their bare hands.”

  “No apology necessary,” I said.

  “That’s not what I told them,” Theodore said. “And the apology was insincere besides, being as they wouldn’t have issued it if not for their desire to book you on their program The Ted Show. They’re having a discussion about guns in America. Or guns and America. I wasn’t quite clear.”

  “That’s what it’s called?” I said. “The Ted Show?”

  “It’s hosted by a gentleman named Ted,” Theodore said. “So, yes.”

  “Don’t these political programs usually have more incendiary names?” I said. “Isn’t it usually something like Bark at the Moon with Rod Lycanthrope?”

  “Are you interested, my dear?” Theodore asked. “You’r
e under no obligation at all. These sorts of talks can become very heated. And after that Francy Finesse fiasco.”

  “I’ll do it,” I said. “Though I don’t understand why they want me instead of, say, a constitutional law professor from Yale.”

  “Simple,” Theodore said. “Because unlike any constitutional law professors from Yale, you are the star of a new and very popular reality television program. Also, you’ve been shot recently.”

  Claire declined to come to New York, instead opting to stay in her new apartment for two straight days and consume, like Narcissus at the pool, every bit of ephemera the Internet could offer about us. I, meantime, found myself under the hot lights in the Ted Show studio at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, sweating through a gummy layer of pancake makeup during a commercial break. I sat at a short oval table, with the show’s eponymous host to my left and, across from me at the far end of the oval, a bespectacled, jowly man who represented the NRA.

  I’d been in my seat for only two minutes when the cameras’ on-air lights flared to life.

  “Welcome back to The Ted Show,” Ted said. “Last week’s shooting at an Illinois elementary school, in which sixteen students aged seven to nine were killed along with three of their teachers, reignited the national debate about gun control. On the left, people are calling for universal background checks and a renewed assault weapons ban; on the right, there’s the usual talk about the Second Amendment, as well as threats to primary out of office any Republican bold enough to sign his name to gun control legislation. Here to discuss this issue I’m joined by executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, Dwayne LaStrange, along with the star of the new reality television series America, You Stoopid, who himself was recently a victim of gun violence and now is a staunch supporter of gun control, a man who goes by the name K. Thank you both for being with us tonight.”

  “Good to be here,” LaStrange said.

  “You’re welcome,” I said.

  “Dwayne,” Ted said, “let’s start with you.”

  “If I could interject, for a moment?” I said.

  “Uh, sure,” Ted said. “What is it?”

  “I’m not really a staunch supporter of gun control,” I said. “In fact, it’s not accurate to say I support gun control at all.”

  “Duly noted,” Ted said. “But let me ask you, as a victim of gun violence, you must believe that renewing the Federal Assault Weapons Ban would be a good thing.”

  “I was shot with a pistol,” I said.

  Across the table, LaStrange smiled.

  “And if we’re looking at it purely from the standpoint of numbers,” I added, “handguns kill a lot more people every year than what are termed assault weapons.”

  “Nevertheless,” Ted said to me.

  “As with most things,” I said, “it’s far more complicated than you’re willing to get into on a program like this, which traffics only in hysteria and half-truths,” I said.

  Ted blinked at me.

  “I mean absolutely no offense at all,” I said.

  “Well clearly,” Ted said.

  “Listen, of course one could make a convincing case for banning private ownership of firearms of every kind, sure,” I said.

  “Right,” Ted said.

  “One could also make an equally convincing case for having no restrictions on the ownership or use of firearms whatsoever.”

  “Uh-huh,” Ted said, sounding somewhat less convinced.

  “Other than not being allowed to kill people with them, obviously.”

  “Obviously,” Ted said.

  “But what you want is spittle, not dialogue,” I said. “You want me to froth at the mouth about how everyone who owns a gun is evil and stupid and possibly an extraterrestrial reptile in human form, so that Mr. LaStrange can then froth at his own fleshy and somewhat arrogant-looking mouth about how there is only one possible interpretation of the Second Amendment, and anyone who doesn’t agree with him on that point is a Marxist and a pussy.”

  “Oh … kay,” Ted said.

  “None of which has anything to do with either an intellectual or moral understanding of firearms,” I said. “Personally, I’m much more interested in the psychology of guns than I am in the public policy aspect.”

  “Except that public policy is what we’re here to discuss,” Ted said.

  “That’s fine,” I said, “but there’s so little point. For all the effect it will have on your audience’s opinion regarding gun laws, we might as well discuss homoerotic subtexts in The Lion King, or whether Coke Zero really has all the flavor of regular Coke.”

  Both Ted and LaStrange had a good chuckle at this, unaware, apparently, that I wasn’t joking in the least.

  “Okay,” Ted said to me. “Go ahead, then. The psychology of guns.”

  LaStrange sat back and folded his arms over his chest, smilingly expectant.

  “It seems to me,” I said, “that neither side of the gun debate has a grasp on what gun ownership in this country is really about. The left believes psychotic libertarians are stockpiling rocket launchers and antiaircraft batteries for use in the Second Coming, and the right believes overeducated Stalinists mean to forcibly disarm them so that they—the Stalinists, I mean—can sell gun owners’ children into white slavery.”

  Ted smirked at LaStrange. “Is that about the size of it from your perspective, Dwayne?”

  “Not exactly,” LaStrange said. “But we do have concerns about government overreach. That is true.”

  Ted turned back to me. “So if gun ownership isn’t about the political divide between left and right,” he asked, “then what is it about, in your view?”

  “It’s about the guns themselves, what they symbolize and the emotions those symbols conjure,” I said. “For the left, guns represent a savage world that can only be tamed by force. For the right they represent God. Also, probably, penises. By which I mean large, tumescent, decidedly heterosexual penises. Whatever the opposite of a small, flaccid gay penis is—that’s what guns mean to conservatives.”

  Ted looked to a man with a clipboard and headset standing just out of frame, and received an enthusiastic thumbs-up in response.

  “Alright then,” Ted said, turning to LaStrange. “Dwayne. Got anything to say about that?”

  LaStrange scrunched his face. “Not really, Ted. I mean, I find it difficult to respond to someone who doesn’t make any sense, and is vulgar besides.”

  “You consider the word ‘penis’ vulgar?” I asked.

  “When used in combination with the word ‘tumescent,’ yes,” LaStrange said.

  “‘Tumescent’ simply means swollen,” I said.

  “I’m aware of the definition, thank you,” LaStrange said.

  “If I could elaborate a bit more?” I said to Ted. “Maybe that might help.”

  “Please,” Ted said.

  “Guns, as we discuss them in this culture, are a fantasy,” I said. “A fantasy that lets the left reaffirm its notion of intellectual and moral superiority, and allows the right to indulge its paranoiac daydream of oppression and resistance. Both sides are equally delusional, and whether they realize it or not, they’re cooperating hand in glove to preserve one another’s delusions.”

  “So they’re working together, is what you’re saying.”

  “Beyond that,” I said. “They need each other for their very existence.”

  “This is utter nonsense,” LaStrange said.

  “Really, it couldn’t be any more obvious,” I said to LaStrange. “All of your literature, speeches, and talking points are about the left. All of their literature, speeches, and talking points are about you. If everyone who opposes the NRA’s agenda were raptured tomorrow, what would remain of your organization? Merely its constituent parts, which are not armies preparing for violent insurrection, but rather men who collect firearms for precisely the same reason that little girls collect dolls.”

  LaStrange sat forward in his chair. “Excuse me?”

  “Which part
do you need explained?” I asked.

  “The part about little girls and dolls,” LaStrange said. “Because of all the ridiculous things you’ve said so far, that one truly takes the cake.”

  I thought a moment. “Maybe you’re right,” I said finally. “Maybe the better analogy would be between guns and a child’s comfort object.”

  “A child’s what, now?” LaStrange asked.

  “Comfort object. Like a stuffed animal, or a swatch of the mother’s clothing. Linus’s blanket is probably the most famous example.”

  LaStrange threw his hands up in the air.

  “And what we know about comfort objects is that they serve as a bridge between complete reliance on the mother and genuine independence,” I said. “In other words, if a person still needs comfort objects well into adulthood, then that person, at some point, failed to separate completely and successfully from his mother.”

  “So if I may,” Ted said, “what you’re saying, in a nutshell, is that Dwayne’s constituency are a bunch of mama’s boys.”

  “That’s a more concise way of putting it,” I said.

  Across the table, LaStrange glared.

  “Probably as good a spot as any for us to take a break,” Ted said.

  The cameras went dark, and LaStrange removed his microphone and departed the soundstage without a word. I stood to leave as well, and Ted rose with me.

  “Good luck,” he said, shaking my hand.

  “With what?” I asked.

  “With surviving more than a week, after what you just said.”

  “Everyone is awfully concerned about my safety, of late,” I said.

  “You think I’m joking.” Ted looked down and shuffled some pages on his desk. “You’re lucky Dwayne didn’t shoot you on air. I’m sure he’s packing.”

  “He did seem upset. Especially toward the end.”

  “‘Upset’ is far too mild a word,” Ted said. He looked up at me again, considered. “Let me break this down in a way you can understand. There are around a hundred and twenty million U.S. citizens who own at least one firearm.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “And in the general population, the incidence of serious mental illness is about four percent.”