The First Bad Man: A Novel Read online

I nodded regretfully. I know.

  What could I do? I wanted to lift him out of his carrier and finally encircle him in my arms again, but this wasn’t an option. I mimed an apology and he accepted it with a slow, wise-eyed blink that made my chest ache with sorrow and my globus swell. I kept getting older while he stayed young, my tiny husband. Or, more likely at this point: my son. Sarah hurried over and swung his baby carrier to the other side of the desk. His foot went wild with kicking.

  Don’t give up, don’t give up.

  I won’t, I said. Never.

  It would be much too painful to see him on a regular basis. I cleared my throat sternly.

  “I think you know it isn’t appropriate to bring your baby to work.”

  “Suzanne said it was fine. She said she brought Clee to work all the time when she was little.”

  It was true. Carl and Suzanne’s daughter used to come to the old studio after school and hang out in the classes, running around screaming and distracting everyone. I told Sarah she could finish the day but that this couldn’t become a routine thing. She gave me a betrayed look, because she’s a working mom, feminism, etc. I gave her the same look back, because I’m a woman in a senior position, she’s taking advantage, feminism, etc. She bowed her head slightly. The interns are always women Carl and Suzanne feel sorry for. I was one, twenty-five years ago. Back then Open Palm was really just a women’s self-defense studio; a repurposed tae kwon do dojo.

  A man grabs your breast—what do you do? A gang of men surrounds you and knocks you to the ground, then begins unzipping your pants—what do you do? A man you thought you knew presses you against a wall and won’t let you go—what do you do? A man yells a crude comment about a part of your body he’d like you to show him—do you show it to him? No. You turn and look straight at him, point your finger right at his nose, and, drawing from your diaphragm, you make a very loud, guttural “Aiaiaiaiaiai!” noise. The students always liked that part, making that noise. The mood shifted when the attackers came out in their giant-headed foam pummel suits and began to simulate rape, gang rape, sexual humiliation, and unwanted ­caress. The men inside were actually kind and peaceable—almost to a fault—but they became quite vulgar and heated during the role-plays. It brought up emotions for a lot of the women, which was the point—anyone can fight back when they’re not terrified or humiliated, when they aren’t sobbing and asking for their money back. The feeling of accomplishment in the final class was always very moving. Attackers and students hugged and thanked each other while drinking sparkling cider. All was forgiven.

  We still teach a class for teen girls, but that’s just to keep our nonprofit status—all our real business is in fitness DVDs now. Selling self-defense as exercise was my idea. Our line is competitive with other top workout videos; most buyers say they don’t even think about the combat aspect, they just like the up-tempo music and what it does to their shape. Who wants to watch a woman getting accosted in a park? No one. If it weren’t for me, Carl and Suzanne would still be making that type of depressing how-to video. They’ve more or less retired since they moved to Ojai, but they still meddle in employee affairs and attend the board meetings. I’m practically, though not officially, on the board. I take notes.

  Phillip sat as far away from me as possible and seemed to avoid looking at my side of the room for the duration of the meeting. I hoped I was just being paranoid, but later Suzanne asked if there was a problem between us. I confessed I had shown him some heat.

  “What does that mean?”

  It had been almost five years since she’d suggested it—I guess it wasn’t a phrase she used anymore.

  “I told him when in doubt . . .” It was hard to say it.

  “What?” Suzanne leaned in, her dangly earrings swinging forward.

  “When in doubt, give a shout,” I whispered.

  “You said that to him? That’s a very provocative phrase.”

  “It is?”

  “For a woman to say to a man? Sure. You’ve definitely shown him—how did you put it?”

  “Some heat.”

  Carl walked around the office with a dirty canvas sack that said OJAI NATURAL FOODS and filled it with cookies and green tea and a container of almond milk from the staff kitchen, then he bounced over to the supply closet and helped himself to reams of paper, a handful of pens and highlighters, and a few bottles of Wite-Out. They also unload things they don’t know what to do with—an old car that doesn’t run, a litter of kittens, a smelly old couch that they don’t have room for. This time it was a large amount of meat.

  “It’s called beefalo—it’s the fertile hybrid of cattle and bison,” said Carl.

  Suzanne opened a Styrofoam cooler. “We ordered too much,” she explained, “and it expires tomorrow.”

  “So rather than let it rot, we thought everyone could enjoy beefalo tonight—on us!” shouted Carl, throwing his hands into the air like Santa.

  They began calling out names. Each employee rose and received a little white package labeled with their name. Suzanne called Phillip’s name and my name in quick succession. We walked up together and she handed us our meat at the same time. My meat package was bigger. I saw him notice that and then he finally looked at me.

  “Trade you,” he whispered.

  I frowned to keep the joy in. He gave me the meat that said PHILLIP and I gave him the meat that said CHERYL.

  As the beefalo was distributed, Suzanne also wondered aloud if anyone could take their daughter in for a few weeks until she found an apartment and a job in LA.

  “She’s an extremely gifted actress.”

  No one said anything.

  Suzanne swayed a little in her long skirt. Carl rubbed his large stomach and raised his eyebrows, waiting for takers. The last time Clee had been to the office she was fourteen. Her pale hair was pulled back into a very tight ponytail, lots of eyeliner, big hoop earrings, pants falling down. She looked like she was in a gang. That was six years ago, but still no one volunteered. Until someone did: Michelle.

  THE BEEFALO HAD A PRIMAL AFTERTASTE. I wiped the pan clean and ripped up the white paper with Phillip’s name on it. Before I was even finished, the phone rang. No one knows why ripping up a name makes a person call—science can’t explain it. Erasing the name also works.

  “I thought I’d give a shout,” he said.

  I walked to the bedroom and lay down on my bed. Initially it was no different than any other call except for that in six years he had never once called me on my personal cell phone at night. We talked about Open Palm and issues from the meeting as if it wasn’t eight o’clock and I wasn’t in my nightgown. Then, at the point where the conversation would normally have ended, a long silence arrived. I sat in the dark wondering if he had hung up without bothering to hang up. Finally, in a low whisper, he said, “I think I might be a terrible person.”

  For a split second I believed him—I thought he was about to confess a crime, maybe a murder. Then I realized that we all think we might be terrible people. But we only reveal this before we ask someone to love us. It is a kind of undressing.

  “No,” I said in a whisper. “You are so good.”

  “I’m not, though!” he protested, his voice rising with excitement. “You don’t know!”

  I responded with equal volume and fervor, “I do know, ­Phillip! I know you better than you think!” This quieted him for a moment. I shut my eyes. With all my throw pillows around me, poised at the lip of intimacy—I felt like a king. A king on his throne with a feast laid before him.

  “Are you able to talk right now?” he said.

  “If you are.”

  “I mean, are you alone?”

  “I live alone.”

  “I thought so.”

  “Really? What did you think when you thought about that?”

  “Well, I thought: I think she lives alone.”

&nb
sp; “You were right.”

  “I have a confession to make.”

  I shut my eyes again, a king.

  “I need to unburden myself,” he continued. “You don’t have to respond, but if you could just listen.”

  “Okay.”

  “Yikes, I’m nervous about this. I’m sweating. Remember, no response necessary. I’ll just say it and then we can hang up and you can go to sleep.”

  “I’m already in bed.”

  “Perfect. So you can just go right to sleep and call me in the morning.”

  “That’s what I’ll do.”

  “Okay, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  “Wait—you haven’t said the confession.”

  “I know, I got scared and—I don’t know. The moment passed. You should just go to sleep.”

  I sat up.

  “Should I still call you in the morning?”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow night.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Good night.”

  IT WAS HARD TO THINK of a confession that would make a person sweat that wasn’t either criminal or romantic. And how often do people, people we know, commit serious crimes? I felt jittery; I didn’t sleep. At dawn I experienced an involuntary total voiding of my bowels. I took thirty milliliters of red and squeezed my globus. Still rock hard. Jim called at eleven and said there was a mini-emergency. Jim is the on-site office manager.

  “Is it about Phillip?” Maybe we would have to rush over to his house and I could see where he lived.

  “Michelle changed her mind about Clee.”

  “Oh.”

  “She wants Clee to move out.”

  “Okay.”

  “So can you take her?”

  When you live alone people are always thinking they can stay with you, when the opposite is true: who they should stay with is a person whose situation is already messed up by other people and so one more won’t matter.

  “I wish I could, I really wish I could help out,” I said.

  “This isn’t coming from me, it’s Carl and Suzanne’s idea. I think they kind of wonder why you didn’t offer in the first place, since you’re practically family.”

  I pressed my lips together. Once Carl had called me ginjo, which I thought meant “sister” until he told me it’s Japanese for a man, usually an elderly man, who lives in isolation while he keeps the fire burning for the whole village.

  “In the old myths he burns his clothes and then his bones to keep it going,” Carl said. I made myself very still so he would continue; I love to be described. “Then he has to find something else to keep the fire going so he has ubitsu. There’s no easy translation for that, but basically they are dreams so heavy that they have infinite mass and weight. He burns those and the fire never goes out.” Then he told me my managerial style was more effective from a distance, so my job was now work-from-home though I was welcome to come in one day a week and for board meetings.

  My house isn’t very big; I tried to picture another person in here.

  “They said I was practically family?”

  “It goes without saying—I mean, do you say your mom is practically family?”

  “No.”

  “See?”

  “When is this happening?”

  “She’ll come with her stuff later tonight.”

  “I have an important private phone call this evening.”

  “Thanks a bunch, Cheryl.”

  I CARRIED MY COMPUTER OUT of the ironing room and set up a cot that is more comfortable than it looks. I folded a washcloth on top of a hand towel on top of a bath towel and placed them on a duvet cover that she was welcome to use over her comforter. I put a sugarless mint on top of the washcloth. I Windexed all the bath and sink taps so they looked brand-new, and also the handle on the toilet. I put my fruit in a ceramic bowl so I could gesture to it when I said, “Eat anything. Pretend this is your home.” The rest of the house was perfectly in order, as it always is, thanks to my system.

  It doesn’t have a name—I just call it my system. Let’s say a person is down in the dumps, or maybe just lazy, and they stop doing the dishes. Soon the dishes are piled sky-high and it seems impossible to even clean a fork. So the person starts eating with dirty forks out of dirty dishes and this makes the person feel like a homeless person. So they stop bathing. Which makes it hard to leave the house. The person begins to throw trash anywhere and pee in cups because they’re closer to the bed. We’ve all been this person, so there is no place for judgment, but the solution is simple:

  Fewer dishes.

  They can’t pile up if you don’t have them. This is the main thing, but also:

  Stop moving things around.

  How much time do you spend moving objects to and fro? Before you move something far from where it lives, remember you’re eventually going to have to carry it back to its place—is it really worth it? Can’t you read the book standing right next to the shelf with your finger holding the spot you’ll put it back into? Or better yet: don’t read it. And if you are carrying an object, make sure to pick up anything that might need to go in the same direction. This is called carpooling. Putting new soap in the bathroom? Maybe wait until the towels in the dryer are done and carry the towels and soap together. Maybe put the soap on the dryer until then. And maybe don’t fold the towels until the next time you have to use the restroom. When the time comes, see if you can put away the soap and fold towels while you’re on the toilet, since your hands are free. Before you wipe, use the toilet paper to blot excess oil from your face. Dinnertime: skip the plate. Just put the pan on a hot pad on the table. Plates are an extra step you can do for guests to make them feel like they’re at a restaurant. Does the pan need to be washed? Not if you only eat savory things out of it.

  We all do most of these things some of the time; with my system you do all of them all of the time. Never don’t do them. Before you know it, it’s second nature, and the next time you’re down in the dumps it operates on its own. Like a rich person, I live with a full-time servant who keeps everything in order—and because the servant is me, there’s no invasion of privacy. At its best, my system gives me a smoother living experience. My days become dreamlike, no edges anywhere, none of the snags and snafus that life is so famous for. After days and days alone it gets silky to the point where I can’t even feel myself anymore, it’s as if I don’t exist.

  The doorbell rang at quarter to nine and I still hadn’t heard from Phillip. If he called while I was with her I would just have to excuse myself. What if she still looked like a gang person? Or she might feel terrible about the imposition and start apologizing the moment she saw me. As I walked to the door the map of the world detached from the wall and slid noisily to the floor. Not necessarily an indicator of anything.

  She was much older than she’d been when she was fourteen. She was a woman. So much a woman that for a moment I wasn’t sure what I was. An enormous purple duffel bag was slung over her shoulder.

  “Clee! Welcome!” She stepped back quickly as if I intended to embrace her. “It’s a shoeless household, so you can put your shoes right there.” I pointed and smiled and waited and pointed again. She looked at the row of my shoes, different brown shapes, and then down at her own shoes, which seemed to be made out of pink gum.

  “I don’t think so,” she said in a surprisingly low, husky voice.

  We stood there for a moment. I told her to hold on, and went and got a plastic produce bag. She looked at me with an aggressively blank expression while she kicked off her shoes and put them in the bag.

  “When you leave make sure to lock both dead bolts, but when you’re in the house it’s fine to just lock one. If the doorbell rings, you can open this”—I opened the tiny door within the front door and peeked through it—“to see who it is.” When I pulled my face out of the peephole she was in the kitchen
.

  “Eat anything,” I said, jogging to catch up. “Pretend this is your home.” She took two apples and started to put them in her purse, but then saw one had a bruise and switched it out for another. I showed her the ironing room. She popped the mint into her mouth and left the wrapper on the washcloth.

  “There’s no TV in here?”

  “The TV is in the common area. The living room.”

  We walked out to the living room and she stared at the TV. It wasn’t the flat kind, but it was big, built into the bookshelves. It had a little Tibetan cloth hanging over it.

  “You have cable?”

  “No. I have a good antenna, though, so all the local stations come in very clearly.” Before I was done talking she took out her phone and started typing on it. I stood there for a moment, waiting, until she glanced up at me as if to say Why are you still here?

  I went into the kitchen and put the kettle on. Using my peripheral vision, I could still see her and it was hard not to wonder if Carl’s mother had been very busty. Suzanne, though tall and attractive, would not be described as a “bombshell,” whereas this person leaning against the couch did bring that word to mind. It was more than just her chest dimensions—she had a blond, tan largeness of scale. She was maybe even slightly overweight. Or maybe not, it could just have been the way she wore her clothes, tight magenta sweatpants low on her hips and several tank tops, or maybe a purple bra and two tank tops—there was an accumulation of straps on her shoulders. Her face was pretty but it wasn’t equal to her body. There was too much room between her eyes and her little nose. Also some excess face under her mouth. Big chin. Obviously her features were better than mine, but if you just looked at the spaces between the features, I won. She might have thanked me; a small welcome gift wouldn’t have been unheard-of. The kettle whistled. She looked up from her phone and widened her eyes mockingly, meaning that’s what I looked like.

  At dinnertime I asked Clee if she wanted to join me for chicken and kale on toast. If she was surprised by toast for dinner, I was going to explain how it’s easier to make than rice or pasta but still counts as a grain. I wouldn’t lay out my whole system at once, just a little tip here, a little tip there. She said she had some food she’d brought with her.