BACK
HANDS ON THE WHEEL
simon a. smith
By the time we get home it’s after four and raining hard. Rain has a way of
making our neighborhood look sleazy and hostile. Forgotten objects mix with weeks
of debris and float toward clogged gutters like mudslides. The streets are empty. The
lone lamp outside our door turns the porch a beery gold, and for the first time I see it
as something to be grateful for. I realize how difficult it would be to find our way into
the apartment without it.
Beulah has hit a wall. For now at least, her body has refused to keep up the savage
pace. When I park she flops out of the car and slams the door. Her white T-shirt is
soaked through to the skin and her black hair is pasted down against her ears. She
staggers toward the door, twice almost tripping over her own purse, using her
outstretched arm to refuse any help. She takes the stairs like someone who has given
up caring, like someone who has sworn off caring for the rest of her life. Beulah gets
inside first and flips on the lamp in the living room. She tosses her purse onto the
couch and I watch as she knocks into the coffee table, then the bookshelves, and
then the wall on her way to the bathroom. The apartment is a mess. I pick up a few
beer cans and crush them before throwing them away. I pluck underwear off the
radiator and carry it into the bedroom. Before I know it, I’m on my hands and knees
swabbing the floor with a dishrag. I hear the rain hitting the roof and I can hear the
sound of Beulah’s urine spraying the bowl in the bathroom.
“I want you to call Ronny first,” she says through the door. “Are you on the phone,
Harry?”
Beulah has a point but not an obvious one; she has a request but not a realistic
one. From what I can gather, somewhere around three Beulah overheard Ronny
Skinner telling St. Christopher that I planned on breaking things off with Beulah
before Christmas. Ronny said he had no idea that Beulah was in the room. I spoke
with him just before we left and he whispered to me his deepest apologies. Of course
I told Beulah that he was mistaken. I had no idea where he had gotten that idea. I
told her it was a vicious rumor and that whoever started it should be killed – I knew
she’d appreciate a severe word like that. Beulah swears that everyone in the room
heard about the plot, and that everyone was already treating her like a widow – her
words. It was as if she had been stabbed, she told me, and she demanded recourse.
The only way that she was going to believe me was if I called all the people at the
party and set each of them straight. I’d have to raise my voice, she said. I’d have to
yell at them on the phone like someone filled with profound hurt and resentment,
someone who meant it.
Beulah comes bursting out of the bathroom. She is distracted by some plan she
has concocted while on the commode, bolting past me without watching where she
steps. There is something lovely and bewitching about her when she is drunk. In the
past, long before I had ever thought it possible to date a girl like Beulah, I would
observe her type in classrooms, bars and cafes throughout Chicago. It is certain that
at one point, likely when she was too young to appreciate it, she was a stunning
beauty, the likes of which made men stupid with flirtation. She no doubt viewed this
kind of attention as frivolous, meat-headed behavior, a sort of treatment that could
only lead to a dulling of the senses, heartbreak, disorientation and distraction. And
so she has spent the last six years of her life trying to make herself physically
undesirable to the opposite sex. She has done so by accentuating other aspects of her
individuality. She covered herself in tattoos, chopped off most of her hair, lost every
ounce of body fat, and lined her walls with books and records that she had heard
people in big cities describe as “wild,” “trippy,” or “progressive.” Of course none of
this works. It has served to uncover a separate sect of society that longs to be close to
her. Underneath her grimy fingernails, stained tank tops, and aggressive
affectations, she is the picture of female perfection. But if someone should allude to
it, she will defend her stance the only way she knows how, by crouching down and
crawling through houses on all fours – I’ve seen her approach unsuspecting boys
and challenge them to wrestling matches from this position.
I hear her use the flame on the stove to light another cigarette. This too is part of
it. Her posturing.
I’m doing more harm to the floor than good. Standing up makes me realize that I
have only wiped more smudges onto the hardwood surface. I make my way into the
kitchen where Beulah is draped over a steaming pot, breaking spaghetti sticks in
half. A few flecks of ash drop from her cigarette into the water. I sidle right up behind
her, grab her around the waist and inhale the scent of her neck. She drops the
spaghetti, fires an elbow into my sternum.
“Get off of me!” she screams.
She smells of powders, sour liquids and cigarette smoke. I’m unsure if she alone
smells of cocaine or if the odor still clings to the insides of my own nostrils, but it is
as if the nape of her neck and the spikes of her hair have acted as sponge and mop,
absorbing all the various half-drunk bottles of liquor and opiates that had been cast
about St. Christopher’s maze of rooms. Christopher, the notorious party thrower, the
man who suggested his own nickname by hanging a sign on his kitchen door that
read: "Whoever shall behold the image of St. Christopher shall not faint or fall on
that day.” Two years ago I wouldn’t have been caught dead at one of his self-
important sleepovers.
“Why would you start cooking at four in the morning?” I asked.
“Because I’m hungry. What did you think my response would be?”
To show her that I’m feeling sorry, I at least pick up the cordless phone in the
kitchen and hold it in my hand. I sit with it for the next fifteen minutes, pressed
against my forehead, waiting for Beulah to finish what she is doing. She has splashed
tomato sauce on her white shirt, her bare arms, and the thighs of her jeans. Every
few seconds she screams “ouch,” forgetting that the pot retains heat long after the
burner is turned off. I watch her carry a plate of it over to the table. She walks as if
she is balancing books on top of her head. I’m surprised at my stomach. The
spaghetti looks tasty and I decide to bring a plate down from the cupboard and dish
myself some of it.
“You won’t eat any supper until you make those phone calls,” Beulah says in
between slurps of noodle.
“You make me laugh,” I say. “Who do you think you are?”
“I,” she says, dipping four fingers into a nest of spaghetti, “I am your God damn
girlfriend!” She throws a fistful of sauce and noodles at my head. I see it coming and
duck. The fallout is splattered across the walls behind the stove. “Or have you
forgotten?” she says. Her mouth is full of food and some of it oozes out between her
teeth. “Huh? Huh!”
The truth is, I have always known that I am intellectually superior to Beulah. She
has never been to college, takes everything too lightly and shows little to no interest
in the arts or anything worthwhile. A lack of ambition is a sign of weakness. Beauty
can only travel so far with me, and sexual fervor takes its toll. I told Ronny that this
whole thing had been an experiment. The irony is that I’d been telling people for
weeks that I wanted to leave her. Making phone calls to assure people that we are
still in love just seems silly. So yes, I told Ronny and Christopher, and just about
anyone who’d listen that Beulah wasn’t good enough for me. Ronny understands.
Even St. Christopher is finishing up his MA at Northwestern for God sake. But I’m
no fool, and I know the second I turn my back on Beulah they will hunt her down
like border collies.
“What the hell is your problem?” I scream. I’d been slumped over, holding onto
the sink.
“Oh, go fuck yourself!” she says. She scoops her hand into the pasta again and
slings another handful in my direction. There’s even a piece of pesto on her eyebrow.
“You little cunt!” I’m finished doing all the taking. I pick up the pot of sauce on the
stove and right away Beulah shrieks and runs down the hallway. “You filthy whore!”
I keep shouting as I chase her. She makes it to the bathroom door, dodging inside
and flinging it shut with a bang. The door closes just in time for me to pitch a quart of
lumpy red gravy all up and down the frame and onto the floor.
“You have to come out sometime,” I tell her. I’m standing outside the door,
rocking from foot to foot with the pot in my right hand.
The rain is still coming down pretty hard and the hallway is dark. The lamp in the
living room gives off a dull glow. At the other end, the greasy lights in the kitchen
look unhealthy and offensive. I hear Beulah turning on the shower.
“You can’t wash off stupidity. That won’t come off,” I say, and then Beulah
explodes through the door. She is naked and she whips me across the face with a
single noodle that she must have found hiding in her clothing. Just as quickly she
bounds back inside and slams the door again.
“You have a small dick!” she screeches.
Something inside me comes unglued. Before I can fix it, I’m already hurling my
body against the door. Beulah is screaming for help. I take my boot and start kicking
with all my might. I don’t know where it’s coming from, but I’m grunting, grunting
and growling like I’ve never heard myself before. Beulah is also making noises
(scared little puppy ones) that I have never heard before. Maybe thirty seconds later
the door gives way. It buckles and comes unhinged. I ready the pot full of sauce and
come at her with my arm raised. She’s wrapped herself in the shower curtain. The
water is still running. As I bring my arm forward she slips. I see her search for
something to grab hold of, but she is already past the point of correction and down
she goes, tearing the curtain and bringing it with her. The pot is eyelevel now and I’m
prepared to let her have it. The look on her face freezes me. “No,” she mouths,
“please, please don’t.” Tears have already begun to form in her eyes. Her legs are all
twisted and tangled beneath her and I see a small stream of blood coming from her
ankle. She’s shaking, clenching the curtain with both fists in front of her breasts.
I don’t know if I will ever be able to explain the look she gave me then. I can only
imagine that it’s the same look a child gives his or her father before they are struck
hard with the back of a hand. Or maybe it’s the look of a woman moments before she
submits to being raped. It’s a look that says, “if you do this I will never be the same
again. Regardless, I am not the man capable of delivering that blow. I look away,
tossing the pot onto the floor with a clatter.
For a long time I sit right outside in the hallway with my back against the wall.
The injured door stands crooked against the sink. The faucet is running and Beulah
is sobbing. I’m thinking about the beating of my heart. I’ve never felt it pump this
fast before. I’m thinking of how easy it has been to arrive here. It makes sense. You
can’t just leave a girl like Beulah, walk out the door. A girl like Beulah is liable to
drink herself to death and blame it on you. Who has the stomach for something like
that? You wake up every morning feeling like you have to protect her from the sun
and you go to bed each night knowing that she dreams of being rolled up in warm
blankets.
I hear her turn off the water and climb out of the curtain’s plastic embrace. She is
whimpering as she towels off., horribly congested.
“I’m sorry,” I say. I can see her pink foot on the toilet seat. She’s wiping the water
away from her knee. “It’s just that, I need someone with resolve. Someone
independent. Do you understand what I’m saying?” I get the ghost of the situation
between my hands where I can gesture, manipulate it. “It’s like if you were ever, no,
if we were ever lost and deserted in a jungle,” I say, shaking my open hands in front
of me like instruments, “I wouldn’t like to feel like all the burden was on me. I’d like
to feel like I had some backup. I wouldn’t want to waste all my energy carrying you
around on my back or killing extra food for you every meal. The least you could do
would be to map out a course. If a snake bit me I’d want you to know the basic
antidote.” I’m sweating and I have to wipe some of it out of my eye before
continuing. “And… and if you were in a jungle by yourself, I’d like to picture you
fighting your way out… not… not… not lying on the ground calling for vodka and
cranberry juice. But I can’t.”
“Oh, Harry, please,” Beulah says. “You know, please…” she tucks the towel under
her arms and sits on the toilet lid, “I’m… you know how I am.”
I sit and listen to the rain gushing out of the broken spouting on the porch roof. In
the bathroom, Beulah can’t control her spastic crying. Her face is doughy and
wrinkled from the moisture. I stare at a mildew spot on the wall in the shape of
Michigan. I stare for such a long time that I lose all sense of where I am or what I
have been thinking about. The rain has stopped. The sun will be up soon. Beulah is
asleep on the toilet with her head against the towel rack. I try two or three times to
make it to my feet before succeeding. My head is top-heavy and loose on my neck. So
many things have already been forgotten. The distance to the bed is traveled with
one continuous fall forward. It’s a miracle I make it at all. I’ll be sick in the morning, I
know all about that. I know that we’ll be sick together in the morning and that in the
afternoon there’ll be a lot of apologizing to do.
(c) 2008 by Simon A. Smith