So Far Freddy

M rode the bus home from St. Genesius and thought of the woman who walked into the emergency room overnight. Her scent was strong, of mildew and too ripe fruit, and she was holding tight what looked to be a little baby or maybe a lifelike doll. Her clothes hung loose, a collection of rags, as if one wrong move and that’s it. Dissolved. Sent to the ground. The woman limped towards M at the intake desk, leaving an odd circular footprint behind her. M couldn’t tell what was wrong, but as the woman drew closer M could see that, where her foot should have been, there was nothing but a mess of meat and bone. She was walking on the stump as if she didn’t yet realize or know that her foot was gone. And in her arms, not a baby, but her foot, still looking alive, the toes curling. The nurses came to take her away, but she continued towards M until, rising higher and higher with each step, the woman was floating, floating, until someone woke M up at her stop.

*

At home, a note:

Bridge today, 3:00. This will be the one. —F

It was the second time Freddy had threatened suicide that month, the sixth that year. The notes, he said, he left for no one, for anyone, but who else to read them besides M? The first one, an entire page in blue ink and nearly illegible hand. Exclamation points, erratic upstrokes, stunted downstrokes, declarations of love, allegiances to and through death—all of which he took back as soon as he left the hospital, swearing it the chatter of some fool. A man I no longer am, said Freddy. Was I ever? Though it hadn’t even been a day.

The second note simply said M—.

M collected the notes in a box which she hid from Freddy. Sometimes he asked about them, sometimes for them.

For what? M would say.

To burn them, Freddy would say.

Whether the notes were meant to impress her or imprison her, who could have known back then? Who can see things coming?

It’s not that Freddy wouldn’t take the pills or cut himself or turn on the oven. He took back ten or so aspirins with mineral water. He fell asleep in the front seat of his running Mitsubishi with the garage door open. He hunched over the steering wheel and drove to the bridge but only stayed long enough to peek over the edge, pace back and forth. A pen and pad of paper from his pocket. Another note: too shallow.

Freddy got back in his car. In the mirror his pursed lips and brow. Still his hooded eyes. Still his underbite.

After hiding the note M made a Manhattan chowder, which she burned a ruby with too much onion. That evening they ate together in silence, but, together, Freddy thought.

*

The next morning, a Sunday, M appeared.

Good morning, M! You look beautiful! I made coffee! I’m making eggs! Here! Sit!

M shifted her eyes around the room and noted where things were, that things were there at all. Okay, she said. But could you stop speaking in exclamations? Always in the morning, Freddy. It’s too much.

Well? Freddy said. He seemed to lose his place for a second. Sit! I’ll give you breakfast.

M looked at a knife on the counter and the towel wrapped around Freddy’s hand. Freddy noticed her noticing and grew half hard at the idea.

It’s nothing! he said. Really, it’s nothing.

But M could see the towel bleeding red and wondered of the wound that bloomed beneath. Is it a valley? she thought. Can I drop things into it? What would I drop? Where would it go? To a river? When does it turn from a valley into a mouth and what can go between the lips? She looked back to Freddy’s hand and asked for a glass of wine.

Anything for you, Freddy said.

After breakfast Freddy asked M to bandage his hand. She said she would. They went into her bathroom where the lights, M thought, were always a bit too bright.

*

The house where M and Freddy lived has been built over a number of years and in different wings which converge on a galley kitchen you can enter from either of two living rooms. The way the house is built made it possible for them to live entirely separate lives without seeing each other, the only overlap the kitchen.

*

On Monday morning Freddy found three chipmunks in his two patio traps. He released them at the edge of the backyard. Back on the patio he reset the traps and marked their side with his pen. He kept a running tally of how many chipmunks he had captured and released. It was still dawn. He walked the perimeter of the backyard with his hands clasped behind his back, leaning forward so that his center of gravity was in his shoulders. As the sun came up, he looked up to M’s window and put his hand in his pants. When he pulled his hand out, the bandage, a wrapping of gauze which had already been damp with sweat and blood and now a little semen, came falling off. Freddy looked at his palm and noticed that the edges of his wound were a little red. He picked up the bandage and went inside to find M before she went to work to ask if she could clean him, but she was gone.

*

The kitchen cabinetry is a tawny teak with golden tubular pull bars. Inside the cabinets are M’s kitchen goods. Stewpots, casserole dishes, glass custard cups, cake pans, rolling pins. Frying pans and skimmers and ladles and spatulas. Coriander and lavender, yeast and bouillon. The range is gas and well worn. The refrigerator is a Jack and Jill, M’s side stocked with proficiency. Freddy stores his food in ziplock bags. Sprigs of dill, hard-boiled eggs, butter, all of it mush now. There is a sunlight whose light comes down from a long drywall-framed shaft which stretches from the kitchen, up through the crawl space, to a window in the eave of the roof. Standing there, in the middle of the kitchen, looking up through the sunlight, M and Freddy often joked how it felt like a tractor beam. A peninsula of soapstone looks onto Freddy’s living room which is home to an old black leather couch, a large armoire, and not much else. The shades in this room are closed. There are stools at the peninsula.

*

When M came home from work on Thursday the house was empty. There was a note:

I’m tired of putting compliments in your pocket when you aren’t looking. —F

M put a red dutch oven on the range and turned on the burner. She added to it a mixture olive oil and butter. She sliced a white onion, the pieces falling off like a loose bandage, placed it in the mixture and put the lid on. After twenty minutes she turned up the heat to brown the onions then added sugar and salt and stirred while everything reduced. She brought the heat down, up and down, and added flour. She added stock and wine, a little red, pouring herself a glass. She scraped the bottom of the dutch oven with her wooden spoon before letting it all simmer for another half an hour. In the meantime M heated up the oven, tore up a loaf of bread, and drizzled the chunks with olive oil. She sprinkled them with salt and put them in the oven. Eventually she combined the bread and soup with some extra wine in small ceramic bowls, wiping their thick lips to keep them clean. She grated gruyere over top, added olive oil and pepper, and placed the bowls in the oven. After another half an hour passed she broiled them until they blistered.

M was eating and reading Freddy’s note again when he called.

Well? he said. Would you like to know where I am?

Where are you?

I am at the top of a very tall building in the city!

Are you on a ledge?

I am in a chair. Security pulled me from the ledge! This place is full of paramedics and police officers.

Are you going to jail?

I might even be in the news! They say they are bringing me home. M was nodding her head. I love you so much, he said.

How is your hand?

They asked me the same thing. It is not good. It is not good.

Freddy, M said. What does this note mean?

How do you mean?

Is it addressed to me or the world?

That note means nothing to me now!

M hung up.

*

The officers who drove Freddy home wanted to speak with M. They were aware that he had previously tried to kill himself.

Yes, but he never does it, M said. Or he always does it wrong.

It sounds more like, maybe, it’s something he’s doing for attention?

That’s exactly what I’m saying, M said.

Whose attention?

I don’t know. Yours?

Well you can see why we’re concerned. We didn’t want him to be alone.

He can be alone if he wants to be. What does this have to do with me?

Are you his wife?

No.

His nurse?

No.

What are you to him?

I’m not his anything.

When the cops left, Freddy ate cold French onion soup in the kitchen. M poured another glass of wine. She looked at the substantial new bandage on Freddy’s hand and thought she saw a drop of blood make its way out and jump into the soup, but it was hard to tell. Blood didn’t often jump, and Freddy was a messy eater, splashing everywhere already.

*

The west wall of the original living room, M’s living room, is skip-troweled, soft sage, with mid-height bone baseboards. M hung a number of different prints of paintings here over the years (currently, a bit askew, a Modigliani). The north wall is flat-finished, painted fossil, home to the room’s lone outlet and a carbon monoxide detector with a blinking orange light. The east wall, a fireplace with two built-ins, one on either side, also bone. M filled the shelves with her crafts, handsewn pronghorn antelope, creatures of burlap and driftwood, as well as discount big-box poetry collections from major midcentury poets. There is nothing of Freddy’s on the shelves. The lower half of the south wall is wainscoted, wide board and batten, painted bright white. The top half is glass and looks out over the patio, the shed, the backyard backing to a wood. At the hinge of the west and south walls is a brass corner bookshelf filled with bookends. To the left of that, low in the wainscoting, are three holes.

*

M awoke on the couch in her living room. She didn’t remember walking there. She was under a gray wool blanket, one of Freddy’s. It was dark, but she didn’t know what time it was. She could see into the kitchen. There was Freddy at the peninsula still hunched over his soup, his hand hanging at his side. The new bandage was almost completely stained with broth or blood or both. M stared at the bandage and noticed its gentle movement, up and down, up and down, in cadence with Freddy’s body, his sloping shoulders, his heaving chest, his entire self in cadence with each inhale and exhale. Unable to tell whether he was snoring or crying or laughing or simply breathing, M called to him.

Oh! M! he said without moving. My hand!

Let me see, she said, getting up from the couch. But he wouldn’t lift it.

I can’t, he said.

So M lifted it herself, grabbing Freddy’s elbow and wrist, placing his hand palm up on the soapstone. She grabbed a pair of scissors and cut the bandage. The liquid seeped out beneath the pressure of the cut. Freddy stopped sobbing and watched her as one watches a hornet around their head—reverent, without breath.

The smell hit M, and she thought of the woman in the emergency room. At first it was sweet and metallic, then rotten, having sat for too long. It filled the room, making M both sick and hungry. She looked into the wound. The lips around the edge pulsed, found and obsessed their palpitations, were possessed by them. They were raised and full, and though the valley between them was dark and hardened, they were sensuous and animal. M turned away.

Can you fix it?

No, M said. I can’t.

Freddy brought his hand before his face. A sound escaped him. At first a whimper, then a tea kettle. Maybe I’ll kill you and then myself!

Wouldn’t you feel bad?

What would it matter? After you are dead, there is no one, for anyone.

M agreed to clean the wound, but she wouldn’t bandage it. She told Freddy that it needed air, which was not a lie, but not the truth. She thought it might like to breathe.

*

The next morning Freddy put on a glove. He went outside and found more chipmunks in his traps and freed them. He reset and marked the traps, walked the perimeter of the yard, his center of gravity in his shoulders. There was M’s window. Freddy took off his glove, put his hand in his pants, felt himself hard there, but it hurt to touch. He pulled his hand from his pants and looked at his wound. Sleeping, smiling, yawning little baby. As Freddy tells it this is when M came outside and started walking away, presumably towards the bus stop, but she never showed up to work that day. He said he called to her and that she said something in return, but she didn’t turn around, and he couldn’t hear what it was. He watched her walk away. Only instead of getting smaller in the distance she rose higher and higher with each step until she was floating, floating, somehow appearing larger, until no one woke Freddy up.