Kelly DeLong
A Pale Shade of Yellow
Blood. You’ve tried all your life to distance yourself from what the sight of it does to you. You tell your friends and relatives what you hope are humorous stories that best illustrate your need for them to insulate, to protect you from the sharp corners of your life. How in ninth grade shop class your best friend came to you for help after slicing his hand on the electric saw. How you looked at his ghost-white face and opened hand and took off for the nurse’s office, where you lost consciousness on the only bed, forcing your friend to lie on the floor as the nurse bandaged him up before taking him to the hospital for stitches. And how once, after being forced by a doctor to have a tube stuck in your arm to extract your liquid, you wobbily stepped out of his office into the narrow hallway and knocked over a nurse who was holding a cup containing a urine sample, how it spilled out all over the front of your shirt.
It’s not only you who is like this, who is this vulnerable, other stories you tell are meant to convey. You want people to know you’re the victim of heredity. You have to be because once, when your father was nineteen and studying to be a machinist, he accidentally cut off half of his index finger and was out in a second. You tell how your grandmother took the call from your father's teacher, yelled up the stairs to your grandfather what had happened, and how her story was stopped short -- she was just about to explain your father’s reaction upon seeing his blood flowing out from the stub of his finger -- by the bam! of your grandfather’s slack body hitting the bedroom floor.
That’s your favorite story, makes people laugh every time, though you often wonder when its authenticity will be questioned. It’s been a long time since your grandmother, now deceased, told it to you, so you don’t know how true to the original your version is. You’ve been known to embellish in hopes of giving your cause more immediacy and understanding. Accuracy, you realize, has never been important to you. Your stories, true or not, are meant to serve your purpose.
Your wife has heard these stories, and the more you tell them lately the more she gives you that troubled look of hers, the one with the frown and the stare at the walls, the one that says, Why did I marry you? But you don’t know what else to do. It seems you tell these types of stories during the recent silent moments -- the silent moments that lead you to believe she is gearing up to launch an attack at you -- when the two of you are doing something like washing dishes, as you are tonight. More and more her silence toward you is becoming unbearable and causing -- you’re sure you can feel it in your side -- a fresh wound opening in you, allowing your insides to spill out. That image makes you squirm in your shoes. Sweat is pouring from you, staining your shirt. You have to let her know you aren’t ready for her attack. You’re too soft a man for it.
You’re not sure what's happening anymore. You used to be able to make her laugh with your stories -- you can be a funny storyteller, acting them out and using distinctive voices for the characters involved -- but tonight, as it’s been for you lately, you’re floundering. She doesn't even look at you as you imitate yourself in the seventh grade fumbling for the wall after viewing slides of glass cuts in health class. You muff the voice of Mr. Hammer, your Health class teacher, saying, “What in God’s name is wrong with you!” so that you sound like a weak-voiced old lady. Everything is so off tonight, and you have no idea why or what to do about it.
Your wife is staring down into the cloudy dishwater while shaking her head. You must have told her this story too many times. Four years of marriage have taught you that right now your wife is running through her mind all the other guys she could have married, how they would have made wonderful husbands, how they were normal men.
Your wife says to you as she reaches into the dirty water and pulls the plug for the drain, “All I know is that if something horrible ever happens to me and my blood is everywhere and I’m unconscious, you better not faint and let me die.”
“Don’t worry, dear,” you say, trying to sound convincing, as your wife, her back to you, walks past you and out of the kitchen.
The last of the water drains out of the sink in a loud suck.
Your wife is tall. In fact, she’s taller than you and that’s been difficult. You thought by now, after you’d been married awhile, you’d be able to shrug it off, not give it a second thought. But you can’t. She’s too tall for a woman! When the two of you take walks together in the neighborhood, you try your best to walk on the high side of the slanted sidewalk, but that does little good. She’s still taller. You’re sure when strangers pass by their first thought is, Hey, look at that, the wife is taller than the husband, the shrimp.
She weighs more than you too. Not much more, she isn’t fat, really, not yet; still, you can’t carry her anywhere, to bed, for instance, as you’re sure most husbands can and do. And whenever your weight is asked, as when you renew your driver’s license, or at the doctor’s office, you add fifteen pounds, knowing that when she is asked she drops ten, making you, at least on paper, the weightier.
Why do you think these things about your wife? Why are these the first things that enter your mind when you come home from work and it’s the first time you've seen her all day, or every time you think she’s convinced once and for all that your blameless blood aversion renders you abnormal and suspicious?
You don’t know, you think as you dry the dishes. You just can’t help it.
You can’t see her, but you know your wife is stretched out on the living room sofa, trying to recover from a hard day of teaching at an inner-city high school. She’s having doubts about her chosen profession, and you tell yourself that that is why she’s so touchy with you lately. Has to be. You’re pretty sure she’s over the other night when your friend and you had your feet up on the coffee table while you both stared at your cracked TV. Something came over you when the picture turned fuzzy. You suddenly became ashamed of your poverty. You wound up blaming your wife for not making enough money to be able to buy a new one. Then you somehow found yourself pointing the finger at her for your being stuck driving a fifteen year old, sputtering Subaru, and for this rat-infested apartment in a bad section of town. You finished by saying that because of her you’ll be treading water for the rest of your life.
You got so carried away you forgot your wife was in the bedroom with the door open. She came out, folded her arms and glared at you. “I can’t believe you said that,” she said, with a look that could have dug your grave.
You hear the TV, laughter seeps into the kitchen, and you think about going out there and nudging your way alongside your wife to let her know that you’re okay with her if she’s okay with you. You’ll forget for the moment that she’s bigger than you and she’ll forget about your minor weakness.
Your technique is good, aiming, as you do, for the end of the sofa where her legs are. There is plenty of space for your own skinny legs, but finding room for your waist on up is a problem. It means having to pull out the back pillows, but even then you don’t fit. And she’s not helping any, just lying there like a sack of clay. What are you doing, she wants to know.
“I was hoping we both could fit on the sofa and snuggle,” you say.
“Think again,” she says.
“I thought it would be nice. For once.”
“Get off,” she says. “I’m in no mood. I’ve had a rotten day and you’re not making it any better.”
This angers you. You hear men criticized all the time by women for not showing their soft side, and here you are taking the initiative and you get rejected. You’re fuming. You knee her in the ass as you remove yourself from the sofa. She yells OW! and that makes you glad that you hurt her. You stomp off to the bedroom without uttering a word.
It’s now your mission tonight to see to it that you fall asleep before she comes to bed. You don’t think she’ll want to make up -- you can’t remember the last time she did -- but just in case, you want to be out cold. It’s also good, you realize, to be asleep when she comes in, probably late, because if you’re still awake, lying there in the dark listening to your own breathing, you might weaken and want to break the silence between the two of you, just to hear a gentle voice.
You wake early with a splitting headache. Some time during the night, maybe it was all night, you’re not sure, you had these terrible dreams. In one you were swimming in the middle of the ocean with no one around and no sign of land or life of any kind. You kept calling out the names of every person you knew, knowing somehow that when you ran out of names you were going to drown.
Your wife is not in bed, but her sheets are rumpled and folded back, indicating she shared the bed with you. This is a good sign, as she has been known on occasion to sleep on the sofa when she is really mad at you.
You squint at the clock and see that you still might be able to catch her before she leaves for school, if she’s running late. There’s nothing you really want to say to her. You just want her to react in some way hopeful towards you, such as a nod at your presence, or the coffee left on the burner for you. But you don't find her. All that’s left is her perfume, which leaves a suspended trail from the bathroom to the living room. You breathe it in, feeling it add fuel to your inferno of a headache.
In the bathroom mirror you wink at yourself as you admire your ruggedly handsome morning face. A day’s growth of beard and your sleepy green eyes give you that look of manly vulnerability you’ve been trying to perfect. You’re sure this look will engender sympathy from everyone with whom you come in contact today. They’ll know you’re in pain.
You’re better at work. The four aspirin you took must be taking effect. You work customer service for the local newspaper. Part time. You’ve been here two years now, and although at first you wanted to yell to everyone that you are college educated and were only here until something better came along, you now feel as though you fit in. You kind of like it that you’re the only male among fifteen women, mostly middle-aged and motherly. The boss told you that she hired you exclusively for your gender, to add legitimacy to the position so that her employees wouldn’t be thought of as secretaries. This offended you at first, to be viewed as only a penis, but eventually you realized it beat the daily rejection letters you’d been receiving from prospective employers for longer than you wanted to remember.
You walk around the room saying hi to your co-workers, patting them on the shoulders or flipping a little wave and mouthing your greeting to the ones on the phones. You make them all smile. You’re the rare, and sometimes you feel, exotic bird here. In fact, your birthday was last week and they bought you a big cake and turned off the phones to celebrate. You haven’t seen them do that for anyone else. As you settle into your chair, turn on your computer monitor, and slide your headset on, you think about how cozy it is here. How they even like your stories.
In no time your phone is ringing, ending your serene thoughts. You push the blinking button, give your standard intro and ask, “How may I help you?” It’s an old guy, and before he says his second word you can tell by his tone and his heavy, excited breathing that it’s one of those calls. What a way to begin your day. He’s yelling at you as if you're the one responsible for making his life a misery, screaming that his paperboy and the paperboy’s dog trampled his newly planted garden of daisies and tulips. Not only that, the damn dog likes his yard so much that every morning he lets loose his load on it. You lift the earpiece away from your head as the old fug raises his voice another octave to tell you he plans to sue.
Wow, that’s original, you think. If only you had a nickel for every time . . . You make a comically distressed face at Barbara, who’s standing near your cubicle smiling at you. You grab your throat and act like you’re being strangled, then you close your eyes and droop your head on your shoulder. When you open your eyes you see Barbara laughing. You like Barbara. She reminds you of your aunt, who laughs at anything you say and calls you dear.
You wait for an opening with your yeller, for the pause that will come after the old fart has let out everything he’s been planning to scream at you all morning. When the pause comes, you jump right in with what you’ve been trained to say, “Mr. Lester, I think what has happened to you is deplorable. I can’t apologize enough for the way your carrier has treated your property. It’s appalling the way some people have such a blatant disrespect for the things that others have put so much time and care into, especially something as beautiful as a flower garden.” You hit your groove from the get go. Sheer poetry. You have him listening, his breathing slowing, his anger dissipating. Your experience pays off with callers like these.
“It is not the policy of the Times Register to have its paper carriers destroy one leaf of vegetation on a customer’s lawn,” you continue. “Therefore, Mr. Lester, what I will personally do is call your carrier and relay to him your anger and frustration, and I will also give you three weeks of the newspaper at no additional cost. We will get this situation rectified and make sure that from now on you will be a satisfied and pleased customer. How does that sound, Mr. Lester?”
Ah, ah, he stutters. He wanted to put you to shame for working for a newspaper that would have its carriers trample gardens and its dogs shit on lawns, but you’re too good for that. You’re a pro. You’re not wishy washy the way some of the women here are, letting angry callers push them around, get under their skin. They end up taking it personally and get upset stomachs and ulcers, or they quit. It’s amazing how many don’t last through the training of this job. In your two years you’ve seen countless women come and go.
Mr. Lester is, if not happy, appeased. He even thanks you for your help and understanding. “We aim to please,” you tell him.
Agnes, your supervisor, has just arrived. She places a hand on your shoulder and asks you how it’s going. You tell her a shitting dog is on the loose and all hell is breaking out. “Same as usual then,” she says, and leaves for the coffee machine.
Your next caller is a familiar voice. Too familiar. You don’t have a direct line to your phone, so it’s a guess as to which one of the customer service reps a call will be routed. You look around and count how many of you there are on the phones at this moment and calculate the odds of this caller getting you at one in twelve. There’s something to these odds, you’re sure.
She’s using her very serious voice, the one she reserves for solemn occasions -- car accidents, deaths, etc. Not good. She tells you she’s been doing some thinking. She tells you she’s been thinking about the way things are and the way she sees them continuing, and it’s not the way she wants it. She has a lot of things to work out.
It bothers you that she’s speaking in TV-drama cliches, but you realize that she’s probably doing it for your benefit, this generic let go, because it’s easy to recognize and releases her from having to go into particulars that you might not like. She finishes by telling you she won’t be coming home tonight.
“Why?” you say in a voice that crumbles.
“I need time,” she says. “Things aren’t working out as I’d hoped at this point.”
“You mean with your job,” you say, though you know by now that’s not really it.
“That’s part of it,” she says, “but there’s a lot more to it than that.”
“Like what else?” You look around to see if anyone is looking at you. You’d like to be as invisible as possible, since the look on your face right now doesn’t fit the image you’ve tried to cultivate here. Your computer wants to assist you, the cursor flashes for you to enter the name and account number of this caller so it can provide you with the innnerworkings of what you’re up against. If only it could be that easy.
“Well,” she says, “this is more than I wanted to go into on the phone.” She pauses, and when you don’t say anything, she says, “Well, the problem is you. A lot of things . . . your job.”
“My job? What does my job have to do with this?”
Dare you listen to what will follow?
She says your job says a lot about who you are, that you’ve stayed in a mindless position that was just supposed to be temporary, that you’ve promised her time and time again you’d put your education to good use and get a solid position in your field so the two of you could eventually buy a house and have a family. She says that it says something profound about you, that you’ve given into a nothing job with no hope of promotion. You’re not a fighter, she says. She needs a fighter. You give up, and plan on others to pick up your slack for you. This is what she’s learned about you in four years.
“But you’re my wife,” you say desperately. “We’re a team. Picking up my slack is part of your job. It was in the marriage vows.”
That wasn’t her interpretation, she says. “And, anyway, this really isn’t something to talk about on the phone,” she says. “I need to get going.”
You’ll show her she’s wrong. You won’t give in. You’ll fight. You've been taught to never let a caller hang up dissatisfied. “Hey, come on now,” you say in a conciliatory tone. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll make you supper tonight. Your favorite -- Chicken Parmesan, with my special spaghetti sauce. You can’t say no to that. What do you say?"
“I don’t think so.”
“Sure you will. Hey, I just want you to know I’m sorry about last night. Didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to. So, what do you say? Tonight?”
“I’ll have to see.”
“Okay then, I’ll even pick up some wine and Italian bread. I’ll see you tonight, right?”
She sighs loudly into your ear and then hangs up.
You slide off your headset and turn off your phone even though it’s not your break time for another two hours. You need some time to think about what happened. That was your worst call in months. You run every word of it through your mind, searching for your mistakes and what you’ll need to improve on next time, if you’re given the chance.
In the bathroom you look under the stalls and in the corner where the two urinals hang from the wall. You’re alone. Leaning into the long sink counter you look at your distressed face in the mirror. You scrunch your lips in the corner of your mouth for the appropriate look, but then you realize you look silly. You don’t have an appropriate look for this situation. You try again and again, nothing works. You frown to yourself because that’s the best you can do right now.
When you walk out of the bathroom, you see Margaret, the old lady of customer service, six months from retirement, on the other side of the room, waving a doughnut in the air for you to see. She buys your favorite, Boston Cream. You know from experience that she won’t stop waving until you acknowledge her, so you fake a smile and give her a thumbs up.
At the grocery store the cashier is young and cute and without any of that wild face piercing. She greets you warmly as if she knows you, and you take this as a good sign. You tell yourself that she isn’t like this to every customer, only that rare one she’d like to nuzzle up to.
Your wife isn’t there when you arrive home. You look in the bathroom, then the bedroom, to see if she's come and taken her stuff. Nothing seems to be missing. Another good sign. She probably has a meeting at school, you tell yourself, or she stopped to have her hair cut. You remember that she mentioned the other day that her hair is getting out of control.
You start with the chicken, trimming off the skin, whacking the breasts flat with a cutting board, breading them, adding spices. You put the pasta in a pot of water and place it on the stove for when you’re ready to cook it. You look at the clock above the sink. School let out nearly two and a half hours ago. Okay, you admit to yourself, it’s unusual for her to be this late.
You wait another five minutes, watching the clock tick away before you call your mother as a way to take your mind off your wife’s absence. It would also be good, you realize, if your wife came home while you’re on the phone. That way it would look like you haven’t been worrying or wondering if she’d come. You’d cover the mouth piece of the phone with your palm and say, “I’ll be with you in a minute, Babe.”
Your mother sounds bored as she complains about your father’s drinking and your sister’s no-good boyfriend. She tells you that the more she thinks about it, she should have stopped with you, not had any more children, 'cause it’s having your sister and her lazy, fat boyfriend living with them that’s making your father drink again. Your sister has always made him drink, she says. She yawns, says that you were always her boy. You never drove her crazy. She yawns again. But that’s life, she says. Either your kids drive you crazy or they don’t.
She wants to know when you’re coming over, and you give her a vague answer because you don’t really want to see your sister and her greasy boyfriend any more than your mother wants them living with her. You tell her you have to go, you have chicken in the oven and sauce to make. You hang up and look at the clock. You killed ten minutes, but your wife didn’t come home and see you casually on the phone. You don’t want to think about that. You’ve promised her dinner, and when she comes through the door you’ll have it ready for her.
Your special sauce is nothing more than plain Ragu with fresh cut onions and pepper and sugar and red wine. You splash the wine in, add two spoonfuls of sugar, and stir it around a few times. Then you take out the small cutting board with the handle you flattened the chicken with, pull your favorite knife out of the knife stand and begin chopping.
First you dice up the pepper, saving the onion for last. You like the way your hands smell after you’ve cut onions, but you don’t like the way onions sting your eyes. But, tonight, you think, any tears it draws out of you would be appropriate for the occasion.
No wife yet, and by now you can’t imagine that she could be three hours late. That wouldn’t be like her at all. You think about eating alone, then watching TV alone, then sleeping alone, and you begin to feel awful for ever blaming your wife for her size, for her shoddy housekeeping, for leaving candy wrappers in the car, for that time you yelled at her when she called your father a drunk. You think about how stupid you are for finding fault with a woman you decided in the first place was perfect for you and would always be perfect for you, and, also, you think, she chose you even though she could have had her pick. There has to be something wrong with you, you realize, as you cut through the onion. Your eyes well up with tears, while you mentally kick yourself for your stupidity. You say to yourself that you’ll never think those bad things about your wife again. Never. How you wish she were here so you could tell her that.
You can be ridiculously emotional for a man. You sniffle and glance up because your tears are interfering with your vision and you realize, after it’s too late, that you're letting your thoughts distract you from what you’re doing. You have a knife in your hand that you haven’t stopped using while you’ve allowed your mind to run free of this task. It’s now, as your eyes are still focused up and your attention elsewhere, that you feel the metal slicing through your thumb.
You can’t look, though you need to. Then you do -- part of the blade is gone, buried deep into the base of your thumb, so deep that you have to pull the knife out. It’s stuck within you. Your thumb is lifeless, a big flap of skin hangs there, but so far no sign of . . . then it comes, quick, out onto the onion and pepper pieces, and the cutting board, until it has coated the space around your hand like an oil slick. Your heart sinks through your body. You want to yell out to someone, but then you remember -- you’re alone.
You push your dripping thumb deep into your armpit. You don’t want to look at it. Yet you can’t help but see its splatterings all over the floor. In shock you back yourself into the refrigerator and slowly slide down it, taking with you your collection of plastic refrigerator magnets. They crack onto the floor.
You know what's going to happen next. You’ve been through this so many times that you can see it in your mind before it happens. First you will dwell endlessly on your cut, on the horrible possibilities of having to look at it, on peeking under the skin at your insides, your tendons, your cartilage, and quite possibly all the way to your bone. Oh, God, you’ll lose all your breath -- your bone, that which is meant to be hidden deep within you for no one’s eyes to ever see, secretly, silently filling your saggy skin with structure, support. You’ll then break out in a cold sweat and those thoughts of yours will swirl around and around in your mind until you lose any ability to control them and they take you over. Then your body will cave in, your vision will fade until all the world becomes a pale shade of yellow and every sound you hear -- the refrigerator motor, the chicken sizzle in the oven, a lawn mower’s hum outside somewhere -- will begin to drift away from you until all is quiet, your head submerged in what feels like a bucket of water, and you’re sprawled out on the floor.
However, before this happens, before you’re breathing in the dust on the kitchen floor and all your life drains out of you in a death puddle around your body, the phone rings. Help, you think. You’d completely forgotten about the telephone. It could save you!
You won’t be able to walk to it -- you’re too lightheaded for that -- but you find you can crawl with only one arm. You focus your thinking on the phone ringing in the dining room. You’re slow, but the distance is short and you catch it on the sixth ring. You’re on your knees as you clumsily palm the phone and wedge it between your neck and shoulder. Help. Help me! is what you want to yell, but you get so many wrong numbers you don’t want to risk desperation on a stranger. “Hello,” you say, your breathing heavy and panicked.
Your wife says your name as if she’s not sure it’s you. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” you say, trying to sound like your casual self, although you can’t quite pull it off.
“Oh. I -- ah, I’m calling to say I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can come home tonight. It’s just not right for me now. I almost did. I’ve been thinking about it all day and -- I’m sorry. I hope you can understand.”
It takes you a little while to respond, to control your breathing and to think carefully about what you want to say to her. “Sure,” you finally say, surprising yourself, “no problem.” You’re still on your knees. “I understand. It’s okay. Babe.”
“No -- all right. Wait. Damn it. Forget what I said. I can’t believe I’m doing this. I’ll come. I guess it wouldn't be fair to you. Give me a little while.” She hangs up.
You put the phone back and look into the living room where you picture yourself sitting as humbly as you know how on the sofa with your wife, your knees touching, your head bowed, your hands on your lap. Your hand -- You’d almost forgotten. You hold it before you. It’s still gushing; quickly you take it away from your sight as you feel your brain shooting a current through your body, signaling you of its need to shut off.
The bathroom is not too far away. To get there you need only crawl through the dining room then down the brief hall. You lumber, trying as hard as you can to keep your hand to your side where you can’t see it. You try to put all your effort into focusing on that bathroom, on smirking at yourself in the mirror as if there’s nothing out of the ordinary, on the cool water that will wash your fear down the drain. If only you can get there, if only you can get a towel wrapped around it before . . . but you can’t. You stop. You’re not going to make it. In the back of your mind you’ve been thinking about your blood all over this apartment, the way it stains, the way it’s marked where you’ve been, . . . so dark the red of blood, your blood, so thick, so . . . you’ve been fighting this moment since you’ve met your wife. You’re giving in. All the stories you’ve told her, she’s never actually seen you like this. Your body drops to the floor, your cheek scrapes against the carpet, your eyes close. Your last thought is that you won’t ever let her see you like this again, but you know better. You’re such a pussy.
©2004 by Kelly DeLong
