Fight Song (9 page)
Everyone is standing and waiting for him to finish writing.
Jane looms, bouncing one of her legs in a quick rhythm. Coffen can see her anger. It’s in the eyes. Yikes, it’s even in the nose and eyebrows and wrinkles. It’s in the way she stares and shakes her head back and forth.
“Almost done,” Bob says.
“Jesus, just pick something!” Jane says.
“I’m trying.”
“This is what’s wrong with our marriage. Do something, Bob. Act. Be here!”
Coffen can see her frustration cranking to ire. She thinks he’s floundering, though that’s not what he’s doing, at least not intentionally. He’s being thorough, practical, shrewd. Then it dawns on Bob that the night with Schumann is the key for how best to convey his newfound message—people will keep ramming you into the oleanders forever if you let them. You have to be your own defender.
Coffen hurriedly writes his message.
Then he joins his standing comrades.
He smiles at Jane, who averts her eyes to the stage, keeps shaking her head.
“One last word to the wise,” says Björn. “Seeing your partner’s sign is not going to be easy. It might make you mad or sad or defensive. These are all valid responses. Maybe you can go so far as to say they’re inevitable. But remember that tonight is merely Step 1 of the process. And what’s
Step 1? Step 1 is ‘Read the Signs.’ Step 2 is my intermediate show, which I highly recommend. For tonight, you are honestly sharing your vulnerabilities with each other, and maybe it’s been several years since you’ve been honest in the relationship. Otherwise, why would you be here? So no matter how hard it is to read your partner’s sign, try and put your own self aside and see what has caused your partner to feel the way they currently feel.
“In retrospect, I think Vivian was bored in the bedroom because I have a low testosterone count. That’s not my fault, people, that’s science. However, if Vivian had been willing to turn her invisible dangling sign into a visible dangling sign and communicate her heart’s true feelings, I could have gone to the doctor and gotten a shot and my testosterone could have exploded through the roof. Do you see what I mean? So read the signs, no matter how painful the message might be: I’m offering a chance to save your marriage. Now make sure that you and your spouse position yourselves on the red X taped on the floor behind your seats. Stand less than a foot apart from each other and directly on the X. Here goes … ”
The lights go dark again.
The prerecorded heartbeat thumps from the speakers.
Everybody attaches their dental bibs.
Björn the Bereft says, “Abracadabra … Abracadabra … Abracadabra!”
Everything becomes clear as the room is lit once more.
Here’s what comes clear as the room is lit once more: First, Bob and Jane are no longer standing on the red X on the carpeted floor. They, like Sputtering Husband and Zombie Wife, are now standing on
thin ice
. Bob Coffen taps his foot on it, leans down to touch it, verifying that this isn’t some kind of optical illusion. It is not. Coffen looks around at the other couples whose feet he can see, and they, too, are all perfectly framed in their own small circles of ice.
A slap!
A woman slugs a man whose sign says A
SIAN
F
ETISH
and W
IFE’S
N
OT
A
SIAN
. He falls flat on his ass on the ice. It shatters and both husband and wife crash through it, flailing around helplessly in the freezing water, panting for air.
Another couple bickers close by the Coffens. The guy says, “So that’s how you really feel?” and she says, “Yeah, that’s how I feel all right,” and he says, “I knew you didn’t forgive me,” and she says, “You don’t deserve forgiveness,” and the bottom falls out and down they fall through the ice.
Other couples crash through their small frozen ponds, too. Ice explodes all around. These couples are in the midst of arguments, spats, screaming matches that Coffen can’t quite hear, but it’s easy to transcribe the sentiments: They are embarrassed and brokenhearted and enraged at what’s
written on their partners’ dental bibs, and they can’t control their ire, can’t see that there might be truth written on the dangling signs: All they see are profane accusations.
More ice smashes.
More couples coughing and wading in the water.
Coffen sees one couple holding their ground nicely. They are nodding, hugging, kissing. Their ice appears stable.
It’s all such an overwhelming scene that Coffen hasn’t yet read Jane’s sign, but now his eyes move toward her dental bib. He’s so scared. Petrified that her sign will say S
UCKING
G
OTTHORM
C
OMPLETES
M
E
. Or: N
OBODY
P
ILLAGES
L
IKE
G
OTTHORM
! Or worse yet: I’
M IN
L
OVE WITH
G
OTTHORM
. Or it might not have anything to do with her water-treading coach. She might not be having an affair at all. Coffen is in no direct way suspicious of infidelity, but he frankly can’t believe that Jane is satisfied with their sex life. A woman has certain needs, after all. So does her husband, if anybody’s asking.
His eyes finally find her sign and here’s what it says: N
EEDS
R
EASON TO
K
EEP
T
RYING
.
Immediately, Coffen’s psyche starts thrashing—instantaneously the severity of this evening slams into him like a drunk driver. Jane, his steady Jane, his practically minded Jane—she took time off her training schedule to come here tonight. Under normal circumstances, Jane would mock this. Mock Schumann’s bagpipes. Roll her eyes at Björn. She’d call the members of his audience livestock searching for the easiest answers money can buy. But that’s not what she did at all. In fact, she insisted that the Coffens come. It’s dawning on Bob that N
EEDS
R
EASON TO
K
EEP
T
RYING
isn’t an early warning. It’s a final notice. It’s a death rattle.
The other thing that concerns Bob is reading Jane’s sign identifies a weakness in his own. Jane’s bib documents something that has to do with them both, their relationship, and Coffen thought only of himself on his sign, which says S
MEARED IN THE
O
LEANDERS
.
Jane’s eyes train on Bob’s bib. She tilts her head at it, looking perplexed, probably trying to work out its meaning.
Coffen hears their
thin ice
cracking.
“Are you making fun of this?” Jane asks.
“Let’s talk about it later, sweetie,” Bob says, worrying about falling through the ice.
“Are you making fun of me?”
“Let’s kiss and hug now and then we can really talk about it all later when we get home.”
“There is no guarantee of later,” she says. “That’s why we’re here.”
The volume of ice cracking gets louder.
“Shhhh,” Bob says to her.
“Do you know how hard it was for me to be honest?”
“Shhhh. Stop arguing with me or we’ll fall.”
“You mock all this right to my fucking face?”
“Let me explain what I mean by my sign.”
“If you have to explain your sign, then it’s a shitty sign.”
“I think we’re going in the drink,” Coffen says, solely focused on the
thin ice
.
“Forget it,” she says. She pulls off her dental bib, sets it on the table. “I need to be away from you right now.”
“The oleanders are from the other night with Schumann. Let me tell you the whole story of what happened there.”
“No more stories.”
“Jane, I’m a little lost right now, okay? I’m turned around. I don’t know who I am. I want to know who I am again.”
“You’re Bob,” she says, turning to leave.
“Yes, Bob is me.”
“You have a wife and two kids. You shouldn’t work so many hours. You’re compulsively online. And you’re acting like a total asshole tonight.”
With that, the ice buckles, but Jane has already moved off of their small circle, walking toward the ballroom’s exit. Coffen falls through the ice and into the water. He splashes around all by himself.
“I am Bob! Bob is me!” he calls to her, choking, treading water. “I want to try!” He gasps for air. Coughs. “There are reasons to keep trying!”
But she doesn’t stop. Coffen watches her leave and thinks of Schumann’s taillights moving away, the night he was smeared in the oleanders.
Interns with poles help the fallen couples out of the icy water. Not every couple falls, and those who are still nice and dry now hug ravenously. This experience has bonded them in a way that makes all the wet/no-bonders despise these public shows of affection.
Coffen treads water until an acned intern helps him get out of the cold water.
“Where’s your wife, bro?”
“She left.”
“That sucks.”
Bob runs out of the ballroom. He is dripping wet. He is running and he is dripping wet and he is yelling, “Jane! Jane! We have reasons to keep trying! Honest! We have good reasons to keep it up! I want to try!”
He runs past the hotel’s restaurant, past a sports bar adjacent to the lobby. He asks the concierge if he’s seen Jane, gives him a description of her, emphasizing the braids.
“Would you like a towel, sir?”
“I’d like my wife.”
“Right, of course. No doubt. But in the meantime, what do you think of drying off with a towel?”
Bob sees public restrooms on the other side of the lobby, sprints over and holds the door open to the ladies’ room,
and says, “Jane! Let’s talk it out! I’m ready to try if you’re ready to try!”
“Get out of here, you Peeping Tom,” a lady’s voice says.
“Is there anyone else in here who happens to be named Jane?” Bob asks.
Nothing for a few seconds.
“I’m texting my nephew who’s a cop,” the lady says.
Coffen goes sprinting outside, sees the SUV.
“So?” Schumann says, waiting in the hotel’s side lot, holding his bagpipes, maybe practicing before Bob got there. “How did it go?”
“Where’s Jane?”
“I haven’t seen her.”