The Melancholy of Anatomy: Stories (12 page)

Sometimes I still think I am wrong, a little glad-handing never did anyone any harm. I think,
This “phlegm,” what is it?
Only a social convention. Only a ritualized transaction through which the tribe reaffirms the bonds of kinship, convenience, and casual domestic disgust that hold it together. Without which we would all fear and suspect one another.

But then I remember: we do fear and suspect one another.

…

I have been phlegm-free for weeks. I feel thin and brisk and clear-sighted. I wipe Father’s nose with unnecessary vigor and brook no complaints. I avoid my boss. I am examining the phone bill, on which some unfamiliar numbers appear, when there is a knock at the door.

I open the door. A corpulent man with an ID tag is there. He is holding a clipboard. Pustules dot his cheeks. He says he is a census taker.

Maybe it is true, as Father says, that I need to work on compassion. I send the man packing. Closing the door, I think,
Why so angry at a fat man with pustules?
And I am filled with unease.

There is a prickling sensation around my eyebrows, and my eyes feel fat. Two or three minutes later, a light sweat chills my arms and upper lip. I hold my breath. Then, when I think the danger has passed, I bring up a tiny slug of phlegm, about the size of a Tylenol capsule.

They say you always love your own. Well, you can tell them from me, it’s a lie. I feel about as much for my phlegm as I would for a scrap of baloney trim. Fold it in a napkin and dispose of it! Though to be honest I do not do that. I touch it. I manipulate it. All right, I lose control, I wring and shunt and crimp and “volunteer” and I even lie down and roll on it.

At first I perform these actions with an ironic air, like a person with free will, who is doing something wrong or absurd for her own reasons. But the feeling comes over me that there is very little difference between doing something ironically and just doing it. So I resolve to stop touching the phlegm. Then I discover that I want to touch the phlegm, very much, and there is nothing ironic about it. Then I fight against it with the feelings of a martyr. Immediately I am bested. I fling myself at the
phlegm and indulge myself upon it more violently than ever before.

When I am done I have another little freak. “I’ll call you family,” I say, “my little kelpie, and I’ll sew you a little nightgown with my own two hands. Yeah,
sure
I will.”

I take the thing outside and throw it in the Handi Humus.

After this, I cannot stop phlegming. I phlegm for a commercial, an old photograph, a red windbreaker. Only Father has the power to dry me up.

I tell myself that it is time to stop riding the high horse of the tramp who knows her way around phlegm, and get help. So I talk to this girl at work.

“Let me get this straight,” she says. “You’re trying to have
less
phlegm? I should be so afflicted.”

“But some random guy comes to the door? Some, like, clipboard guy? And for him I start phlegming?”

“Well, why not, I mean it’s perfectly natural. You just have to stay present with the phlegm and honor the miracle of it. You can’t dictate when and where you’ll phlegm. That’s one thing I’ve learned. From Mordechai? In my Phlegm Fitness Workshop?”

She gives me a flyer. It says,

“Hello, dear persons!”

“Hello, Mordechai!”

“We’re all here because we want to get friendly with our phlegm. Let’s take a minute to acknowledge that this is a sad moment but also a happy one. How sad that we are holding back our phlegm for whatever reason! At the same time, how natural! How great that we are able to admit that we have a problem and take the plunge of spending a little money to work on the problem with someone like me who while not materialistic has to keep the wolf from the door. How great for me to be honored with the gift of helping people with their phlegm problems.

“Don’t worry if the phlegm doesn’t come, at first. What matters is that you take the time to sit and open yourself to the possibility of phlegm and accept whatever comes. If it’s a thin dribble, great! If it’s nothing at all, that’s great too! Some of you will get big yields right off the bat and will be feeling pretty pleased with yourselves and others will be looking at you and feeling kind of downcast about their own meager productions. This is natural, but it’s not a place to get stuck. This is not about who has the best phlegm. Someone with low yield may have a better relationship to herself and her phlegm than you highvolume folks.

“Now, you may be a little self-conscious and that can dry you right up. Some of you may actually feel like you have gotten worse, not better, in this environment of safety and empowerment and may be saying quietly to yourself,
Hey Mordechai, what gives?
Just know that’s perfectly natural and will pass. If nothing comes at first, just fake it. Sometimes playacting will open the floodgates. And if not, there’s no harm in learning some techniques to practice later!

“So let’s do it, persons. Let’s cast the phlegm.

“Pat it around a little, get friendly with it, tell yourself
Okay, this is my phlegm.
Sit back on your haunches and look at it. Good!

“Okay, let’s get silly with this, albeit for a serious purpose. Do you know the Country Dance? This is the Bank Robbery. This is the Potato Ricer. Shrimping. Bindling. Franking. The Bamboo Hutch. The Tenderfoot. Good! Good!”

I speak to Mordechai. I tell him about my phlegm fluctuations: molto phlegm here, zip there. We discuss disgust. I tell him about my father and his thumbs. Mordechai thinks it may be a growth experience to yield to my father in this matter. “Give a little, dear person,” says Mordechai, rubbing my shoulder. “Lose that legacy of pain!” [See
Appendix 4
.]

Finally I decide to do the thing with my thumbs. It is indescribably vile. A little involuntary phlegm starts from Father’s throat vent. I pretend it isn’t there even when it puddles on his bib. I take the afternoon off, meaning I stay in my room and ignore his cries.

I stand at the window. It is more of a mirror than a window. It is so dark outside with the phlegm closing in that I can only see my face.

I see what my face is thinking. It is thinking,
This does not work for me.
I cannot go with the Phlow.

I am surprised to find myself rooting for the fat-bottomed chick. Way to go with that hose! Water that lawn! I feel what she feels when her shoulders sag and she drops the dry hose. There is no point in bothering, we feel together, if she waters the bush today, she might not water it tomorrow or ever again, can she really anticipate in all honesty that she will water the bush every day or even every week, no, and if not, why give the shriveled bush a little water-slash-hope, why not let it die ASAP, so the guilt and regret will be over sooner.
What a sorry-ass,
she is thinking,
I can’t even water my damn bush.

“Ask her to come over,” says Father. “And you can rustle us up a little kirsch!”

I go across the street. She takes off when she sees me but she is pretending not to notice me so I figure it will be OK if I pretend not to notice her pretending not to notice me and I follow her up the driveway, watching her behind. Father is right about her keister. It is big, but friendly.

She turns around and sighs. She swipes at her throat and garners a bit of phlegm and holds out her hand politely. I feel Father watching, so I finger it gingerly. I know what she is thinking and I know what to say.

“Look at me, I’ve got a phlegm blob growing in my humus pile! You think you’re weird?”

She gives me the hairy eyeball. “You have what?” She walks away. I remember too late that just because a person is pathetic doesn’t mean she can necessarily forgive other people for being pathetic. I should know.

…

“May I please speak to Mr. Nimnick?”

“This is no longer the Nimnick number.”

I come home from work and see, first, a small pile of monies on the table, where no monies should be. In fact they are in a salad bowl, and look something like a salad no longer crisp. Second, I see a group of miscellaneous persons sitting in what might pass for lotus positions in a semicircle on the floor. Some of them look peaceful, others uneasy. At the focus of the semicircle sits my father in his chair, flapping his flippers, a drop agleam under his nose.

“What is happening here?” I say. “Can someone explain to me in a nutshell what is going on?”

“Um, maybe Sensei should speak to that?” says a young man with beard all the way down his neck. He is looking at Father. Father says nothing, just nods. He seems to be smiling.

“I’m waiting,” I tell them.

A woman in a salmon-colored pantsuit clears her throat. “May we know your name?” she says. Eventually I get out of her that she got the address from the paper. Eventually I find out that Father has used my credit card to put an ad in the paper advertising “Transformative Touch with a Master.”

I hand back the money, which is awkward, because some have paid for ten classes with free introductory session, and some for one at full price, and some have not paid at all but just rummaged in the salad bowl a little and these naturally do not want to admit it, and in the end we are forty dollars short, and there is yelling.

I blow up. “Hello, am I in Spooky World? Can someone explain to me how it makes sense that this is happening? Transformative
Touch, my fat ass!” I hold the door open. “Get out before I Transformative Touch you where the sun don’t shine!” I throw the money out after and slam the door. There is a lot of scrabbling, then silence.

I have the phone shut off. There will be no more mysterious charges on my credit card. There will be no more calls for Sensei, or for Mr. Nimnick. There will be no more calls for anyone.

We watch the neighbor all the time now, hungrily, as if what she does will decide our own fate. Phlegm broods above the tree-tops, but the neighbor’s red windbreaker still catches the sun and it is brave if a little pathetic against the gloom.

We watch with considerable surprise as she unlocks the shed. We are impressed that she knows where the key is. We are impressed with the familiar way she seizes the heavy padlock and tugs. But that is nothing compared to how impressed we are when she comes out pushing a lawnmower ahead of her. I get a little misty-eyed. It is possible, then: people change. Lawns can be mowed, in the faith that other days of mowing will follow, or that even if they are only ever mowed once, that mowing has some absolute merit.

We watch her lay the heavy orange extension cords down the step. There is no end to the capabilities of this remarkable woman.

She mows the entire front lawn, pacing back and forth like a monk. She mows the grassy hump up the middle of the driveway between the tire tracks. We watch her only slightly hunched back recede as she heads toward the backyard.

The motor cuts off.

We are surprised to see her coming out the front door,
though we shouldn’t be, it’s perfectly logical that she would have a back door, and—why not, after the show of competence she has already made—that she has had the foresight to unlock it. She is carrying the end of the extension cord and she walks back around the house beside the orange line, which peels up some distance behind her and takes itself with her as she goes. Then she must have plugged it in again, probably in the kitchen, because the motor starts up.

“Now!” says Father. “Go now, and bring her back to us. She is just what we need.”

He’s right! I cross the lawn in the smell of grass and head up the driveway. The motor stops again.

The small backyard is half mowed. She is lying on her face. I roll her over. Her eyes are open white. How strange the white orbs look in those lids that make the shapes of two wrinkled, sad little mouths.

Of course my phlegm comes [see
Appendix 5
]. “Weird timing, I know. It isn’t you,” I explain, and then I notice she is not listening.

The fat-bottomed woman is dead. She ran her lawnmower over the extension cord. The stupid cops said she might have done it on purpose. But as Mrs. Nachtsheim said so rightly, there’s no way she would choose to die leaving a dirty litter box.

“She died,” I tell Father every morning. Every morning he weeps. Somehow he has gotten it into his head that I am to blame. “You certainly put the kibosh on that romance,” he says bitterly. “You certainly have the killer instinct.” Lately he refuses to let me wipe his nose. He sits and stares out the window. A guy with yellow hair and black eyebrows has rented the fat-bottomed
woman’s house. Mrs. Nachtsheim has adopted the cat. The cat gets out of Mrs. Nachtsheim’s house every few days and sits on the lawn at the fat-bottomed woman’s house. The lawn that is never mowed.

I bite off my thumbs.

Phlegm and Me: A Primer

B. Ambler, Wesley School Book Company, Chicago, 1897

The stuff of which the phlegm is made is very light and fine, and at first scarcely viscous at all, but as it is plied, folded and fluted, its texture changes. Touch it! Can you feel the difference? It is stickier and more resilient. With Mr. Microscope to help us, we can see wondrous alterations on the molecular level: the round atomies are joining hands with other atomies, and collecting into little strings! Soon, other changes begin to happen. Some of these strings connect to each other at an angle, and when there are three of them, it may happen that the third string connects to the beginning of the first string, making a triangle. Four strings make a square, a diamond, or a trapezoid! How many shapes can you name? Tiny cubes and pyramids are rapidly built and demolished. Then more complicated forms, so many we don’t even have names for them all! When you hear the phlegm is “castling,” this is what is meant.