scenes from an epilogue

JONATHAN

            Laura would have hated her funeral. She disapproved of any event that put men in black or forced her mother to wear sensible shoes. “She’d have preferred for us to skip the formalities and go drinking,” remarks Jonathan.

            Alexa reminds him that they were going drinking.

            “You are,” replies Jonathan. His doctor has prescribed doxycycline, which isn’t supposed to be mixed with alcohol. Jonathan’s chlamydia is at its worst. Since Laura is the one who gave it to him, he takes it to mean that even her bacteria mourns her. This doesn’t surprise him; Laura had always been very popular.

            Jonathan studies the faces of the mourners. Alexa does not believe that whoever infected Laura is there; Jonathan isn’t so sure. Unfortunately, chlamydia isn’t all that visible and there’s no polite way to inquire about it, especially at a funeral. Still, since he imagines everyone can see the disease in him, he is hoping he’ll see it in someone else.

            “There.” He points to a pinstriped banker.

             “Laura would never sleep with him. He doesn’t look a thing like you.”

            As the service ends, Jonathan feels a hand on his shoulder. Isa is dressed like a shadow, grey and somber. “Sorry I’m late,” she says. Jonathan squeezes his wife’s hand. His stomach shifts. The doxycycline continues its assault.

LAURA

Jonathan despised poetry, but went to poetry readings. I was halfway through flight of the rotten lover when I saw him creep into the bar. I had not seen him in almost a year and the rhythm hiccupped in my throat.

            My entire life I’ve been in love with two things: men and the English language. Most people don’t think about either. Men are everywhere and language is a way to order lunch. Few people realize that both are evolving, beautiful things. A single word can be both noun and verb, both person and action. Men are the same way.

            I shouldn’t have been surprised to see him. My relationships always come complete with epilogues. In the beginning, there was Robin, who broke up with me before going to a movie. “But let’s see it anyway,” he suggested, and spent two hours kissing me in the dark. I met Jonathan after my first poetry reading several months before. I’d adored his argyle crewneck and haphazard shave, but Eddie, my editor, was instantly suspicious.

            “Never trust a man who goes to a poetry reading alone,” he had whispered.

            I thought he just being protective. Now I thought there was an indefinable logic in the warning. After all, here we were a month after his wedding, Jonathan was alone, and I was quite certain I could not trust him.  

            By the time he reached me, he was a little drunk. I had set up a small table where people could buy my chapbook. My Actual Book was there too, but it was a great deal more expensive. “I assume these poems are better?” asked Jonathan, weighing the Actual Book in his hand.

            “They have their moments.”

            Jonathan was quick at math and quickly worked out that if you bought the Actual Book, you were paying twenty‑eight cents a poem, but if you bought the chapbook, you were paying only twenty‑two cents. So he went through the chapbook, ripped out a page, and handed me a quarter. He was halfway out the door when I caught up to him. I gave him three pennies.

             “It’s good to see you again.”            

            “Then why stop?” he asked and, of course, I let him follow me home.

JONATHAN

            Not everyone can have both marriage and pleasure, but for six months Jonathan has Isa for one and Laura for the other. No one challenges his ethics. Alexa likes Isa, but her romanticism is incurable. Even at the funeral, Alexa remains somehow convinced that Jonathan’s chlamydia has beauty.

            “There’s nothing romantic about bacteria,” says Jonathan. “It’s asexual.”

            “Adultery is the last romantic institution.”

            “You don’t have to be in love to commit adultery.”

            “But you are in love. I mean, you were supposed to marry her.”

            It’s true. Marriage to Laura had once seemed so self‑evident that when he married Isa, everyone thought they were in the wrong church. “Laura and I haven’t been in love for a long time,” he says.

            At the wake, Laura’s mother presents them with vegetables, dip, and an impressive array of cheese. The sheer variety makes Jonathan resentful. When one is in mourning, one should not have to choose between cheddar and gorgonzola. Isa doesn’t have any problems. She has never known Laura, and her plate is piled high. “My husband found her,” Isa explains to the mourners. “It was a hit and run. He was going for breakfast and found her at the side of the road. Can you imagine? Finding a body is one thing, but finding one that you know?”

            “Are you ever going to tell her the truth?’ Alexa whispers.

            Jonathan shakes his head. Where would he start?

            Eddie sits down. As Laura’s editor, he had had the misfortune of not only hearing her problems, but fixing their grammar. Now he’s the only one left to deal with her dog. “I don’t know what to do with the damn thing. Do glue factories buy dogs, or is that just horses?”

            “Don’t you dare do a thing,” Jonathan growls. The doxycycline has cracked his bowels wide open—movement of any kind is torturous.

            “Stop being sentimental. The thing doesn’t even have a name.”

            This isn’t exactly true, but Jonathan doesn’t correct him. Isa picks broccoli off his plate. “Speaking of dogs, how’s your foot?”

            “What?”

            “Your foot, how is it?”

            “It’s fine.” His left foot has been bandaged for ten days. Isa knows it’s from a dog bite; she does not know whose dog did the biting. Likewise, she thinks he’s taking antibiotics for the wound. He has to hide the bottle to keep her from reading it; one does not take doxycycline for dog bites. The dog is a monster but only to him. Eddie will be perfectly safe.

            Later, Alexa pulls Jonathan aside. “Today’s Tuesday.”

            “Doesn’t matter anymore.” Tuesdays, Isa works the graveyard shift at the emergency ward. It has always been the night Laura and Jonathan spend together. Now he will have to watch television. He has no idea what’s on.

            “You should still go. You have keys. Grab what you can before her mother has everything bronzed.”

            Jonathan drives to Laura’s loft, a tiny paradise with high ceilings and a balcony that overlooks the park. In the summer, Laura liked to drink wine and watch people fool around. She once saw a politician grope a girl half his age; it was also how she found out about Jonathan and Isa. I swear I didn’t know where we were, Jonathan insisted, but Laura never believed him, and why should she? He could have kissed Isa in the car.

            Eddie had saved the dog, but he left everything else untouched. The air smells sour.  Jonathan used to love being there. Alexa suggested he take something for sentiment, but what can he take when the entire apartment was his sanctuary?  His stomach does another twist. He goes to the desk, finds Laura’s address book, and stuffs it in his pocket.

LAURA

            Pablo Neruda had time to both write and promote communism, but the rest of us can’t afford such luxuries. Like Isa, I also worked the graveyard shift, but it was a factory, not a hospital, and I never saved anyone’s life. I used to visit Jonathan when my shift was done.  He would wake just long enough to let me in. Later, he would wake again and make me breakfast. He’d wear his pajamas bottoms. I’d wear very little—maybe a sarong, or just one of his shirts loosely buttoned.

            He knew how I liked my eggs. “Let me guess: sunny-side down.”

            “And don’t you dare break the yolk. You break the yolk, I’ll break your heart.”

            I have the habit of making simple tasks monumental. Breakfast was such a challenge that love proved impossible. On the morning I ended it, I came by, showered, brushed my teeth, and climbed into bed. Half asleep, Jonathan put his hand on my leg. That was when I said, “I don’t think we should do this.”

            “Do what?”

            “I don’t think we should see each other.”

            He opened his eyes. I was in my underwear. It was just after seven. It’s never easy to break up with someone, but one should at least give them a chance to sleep in and have a hot meal. I braced myself for Jonathan to reply as Joseph Welsh did during the Army‑McCarthy Hearings: “Have you no decency? At long last, have you no decency at all?” 

            Instead he just told me to leave. 

            It was shortly after that he met Isa. She had just come from the hospital and smelled vaguely of antiseptic. Perhaps the scent made him grateful; perhaps after me, Jonathan felt he needed to be thoroughly sterilized. On the same night he found her, I drank too much and called him from my balcony. I heard his cellphone ring from the park below. 

            “Don’t answer that,” a woman’s voice whispered.

            I hung up, conscious of the fact there was not a single thing in the apartment that Jonathan had not touched. Even his shampoo was still in the bathroom. I grabbed my address book and called Vincent Aaronson. “I want a dog,” I said.

            “Any preferences?” he asked. Vincent worked at a shelter.

            “Anything that will listen to me,” I said. I wanted to be obeyed as willingly as Jonathan had obeyed Isa. But I shouldn’t have trusted Vincent. flight of the rotten lover had been about him. He avenged himself by giving me an ugly, balding mutt who ignored every command I ever gave.

JONATHAN

            Being married to a doctor has its advantages. Affairs are easy and books on chlamydia are on the coffee table. Jonathan learns that it’s a silent disease. Most people never show symptoms. Those who do will manifest them between one and three weeks after infection. Given that Jonathan has been sleeping with Laura for nearly half a year, he knows he is looking for someone who slept with her in the last month.

            He goes through her address book alphabetically. Most of the men listed under A are perplexed, but Vincent Aaronson is unsympathetic. He only wanted to know one thing: “She didn’t leave me the dog, did she?”

            “No. Were you expecting her to?” 

            “Well why else would you be calling? We haven’t spoken in months.”

            Jonathan crosses the name out with a pen. “I’m just calling people to let them know.”

            “What a terrible way to spend an evening.”

            In an unusual occurrence, Isa is in bed when he crawls into it. He listens to her toss and turn. It’s a survival technique; the moment she gets comfortable, her beeper will sound. Jonathan strokes his wife’s shoulder. I am a bad man. He has a sudden flash of what might be common sense. The next morning, he puts the B’s on hold and calls another good doctor.

            “I have diarrhea,” he says.

            “That’s a normal reaction to doxycycline,” says Dr. Paul.

            “Are there any other side effects I should be aware of? Like impaired judgement?”

            “Not that I know of. Why? Have you been exhibiting strange behavior?”

            Jonathan looks at Laura’s phone book. “I’m not sure.”

LAURA

            I had elaborate plots to make Jonathan jealous. “I’ve filled my address book with names,” I told Eddie. “Every time a guy gives me a number. Or my mother tells me her friend has a son. I left it for Jonathan to find.”

            “You should try calling some of them. You might be surprised.”

            “Being a mistress is great inspiration. I’m going to write a trilogy.”

            “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I’ll settle for a sequel.” My deadline was fast approaching and Eddie knew I was behind. Even so, he dug out a matchbook and scrawled down a number. “Here. His name’s Ryan Fitzgerald. You’ll like him, if you let yourself.”

            Ryan was smart and had capped teeth. His kisses were plastic, like those that happen under fake mistletoe. But even a plastic kiss can be invigorating; Sleeping Beauty only needed a stranger’s kiss. I let Ryan take me out a few times. When it came to Jonathan, I had thought I was the story of the shipwrecked sailor. Barely alive, yet tinged with the heroism of a survivor. But I never really survived anything, except six days of waiting for Isa to work at night. Six days isn’t much. You can go six days without food—and without Jonathan, apparently.

            The next time Jonathan stayed over, I woke with such confidence, such impulsive conviction, that I quickly shook him awake.  “You should be with your wife,” I declared.

            “Is it so hard for you to do these things later in the day?”

            “I’m only brave in the morning.”

            “It’s not brave to ambush someone when they’re in their pajamas.”

            “You should go home.”

            Jonathan struggled through bleary vision to untangle his pants.  I struggled to remember Ryan, but I weakened as Jonathan put on his socks. They were socks he had bought with Isa, socks he had never owned with me. I could write poems about those socks. I couldn’t write about capped teeth and plastic kisses. 

            I grabbed one.

            “You just told me to leave!” 

            “Shut up.” I fled the room, sock in hand. Jonathan came after me and stepped on the dog’s tail. The dog yelped and bit Jonathan in the foot—the socked foot. Barks and howls followed, both his and the dog’s.

            Jonathan banged on the bathroom door. “Laura. Laura, let me in. Laura, I’m bleeding.”

            “Good.” But I paused. If I didn’t tend to the wound, he would just go running home.

            There were puncture marks and an impressive laceration. Jonathan winced as I dabbed him with alcohol. “I hate that dog,” he said.

            “It’s not Isa’s fault you stepped on her tail.”

            “You named the dog after my wife?”

            “Keep still. I have to name her something.”

            “Why are you acting like this?”

            “I don’t know.” I could never explain myself, not to Jonathan, not to anyone. That’s why I write poetry; it’s so cryptic, I can claim divine genius. Not even I have to understand it. I taped the gauze to his foot in a fashion that hopefully would make Isa proud. “Go home. I’ll see you next week.”

            He gave me a warning: “I’m not coming back if the dog’s name is Isa.”

JONATHAN

            Vincent Aaronson is right; it’s a terrible way to spend an evening. Most men have opinions about Laura, but they are all about her poetry.

            “Poets write about things they have no intention of doing,” says Mark Bradbury.

            “I got more affection from her sonnets,” says Abner Cohn.

            Sam Detroit exclaims, “The only thing that could make that woman happy is a rhyme for orange.”         

            “Her poems don’t rhyme,” snaps Jonathan and he ends the call. He’s bewildered by the swarm of Almost Lovers. On any day but Tuesday he had played the loyal husband. He never expected Laura to stay loyal when he was betraying her six days a week and on all major holidays. Laura had not played fair. Once again, she had made a thing as simple as adultery monumental. Jonathan leaves a message for Ryan Fitzgerald and continues to phone everyone from G through Z. He is convinced he will find the red-hot lovers he is looking for. But the end of the alphabet is exactly like the beginning; Laura’s little black book is twenty-six pages of the platonic and the unrequited.

            Laura’s chastity confirms all of Alexa’s romantic impulses. She seems determined to believe that Laura is the first woman in history to manifest a venereal disease by herself. “You should have left your wife,” Alexa says.

            “My wife should have left me,” Jonathan corrects.

            Later, he sits in the bathtub, drinking beer. He has called every number in Laura’s phonebook. The doxycycline has cured his chlamydia and Isa’s bite is almost healed. He wills his wounds to fester. Maybe Alexa is right and Laura created disease out of desire. Perhaps he can do the same. He tells himself to stop being maudlin. Laura’s death, while tragic, absolves him. He loved two women; now he only has to love one. Isa is smart. Funny. Saves lives. He dries himself, suddenly determined to not just be married, but to do it right.

            But as he puts on his robe, the woman he married tells him that Ryan Fitzgerald is on the phone.

            You’re not home. You don’t who he is.  It’s a wrong number.

            “I’ll be right there,” says Jonathan.

LAURA

            The best poetry is written either by women or by men about women. For two more months I slept with Jonathan and counted syllables. At the end of it, Eddie read my manuscript with a scowl. He loved the book but hated the title.  “The Dog’s Name is Isa?”

            “What’s wrong with it?”

            “It’s a little obvious, don’t you think?”

            I shrugged. “I’m tired of being cryptic.”

            Even though it wasn’t Tuesday, Jonathan took me to celebrate. Isa was at the hospital. We went to my favorite restaurant, where we smashed lobsters with wooden mallets. Jonathan was flattered that the poems were inspired by him. “I’d have thought you’d have killed me in a rhyming couplet.”

            “I couldn’t do that. My poems don’t rhyme.”

            We drank white wine and I reveled in the illusion that it had all been a dream, that Jonathan was not married and I was not relegated to writing poems about things I couldn’t have. Then I lost my head and told Jonathan the manuscript’s name.   

             “You’re joking, right?”

            “She’ll never see it. Isa doesn’t read poetry.”           

            Jonathan tore at his bib and threw money at the waiter. The abandoned lobsters glared at me. We could have lived another day. Do you know what we could have done in a day? I went to the bathroom and turned on the automatic hand dryer to muffle the noise of a calculated scream. I sat on the toilet and was so miserable that I barely noticed the burning sensation as my urine dribbled out of me.

            The clinics were all closed. I could have waited, but I had an excuse to go to the emergency room and I wanted to use it. Perhaps my symptoms were psychological. They seemed too convenient.

            Even if Isa’s name hadn’t been on her coat, I would have recognized her voice.  Marriage had not changed it since that night in the park. “This isn’t really an emergency,” she warned me.

            “It is for me.” I pretended my symptoms were worse than they were.

            Isa shrugged. It was a slow night. She had a gentle, careful touch that made me think she was a gentle, careful person. “Isa,” I said. “A long time ago I made a mistake. You can understand that. Have you ever diagnosed someone incorrectly? You thought it was lung cancer when it was just a little phlegm. That’s what I did. I thought Jonathan and I were terminal but we could have lived forever.”

            “Have you been having unprotected sex?” asked the doctor.

            I hadn’t actually spoken. Isa gave me a prescription and a pamphlet about birth control. I considered asking for a second opinion. I had a feeling I’d ignore her advice purely out of principle.

            At home, I dug Alexa’s number out of the drawer. “Is Jonathan sleeping with someone else?” I asked.

            “Someone else?” Alexa laughed. “He has enough guilt over you.”

            I called Ryan. “I need you to do me a favor.” I gave him Isa’s name and a fair, if unflattering, description. 

JONATHAN

            Ryan Fitzgerald is large and imposing. Jonathan tries not to cower. “She was struck by a runaway van,” Jonathan says, not mentioning that he was there when it happened. Trying not to sound insensitive, he then asks Ryan if he has chlamydia. 

            “Excuse me?”

            “It’s just…Laura had it. And I thought maybe she got it from you.”

            “Go to hell.”

            “Please.”

            “Look, buddy, all we ever did was kiss. She was in love with someone else. Maybe she got it from him.”

            Jonathan ends the call and wonders if Laura spent her last days in love with some man whose number she never wrote down. Eddie. Of course, it was Eddie. Then he goes home and the credit card bill makes him frown. There are restaurants he doesn’t remember and hotels from the edge of the city and it suddenly occurs to him that perhaps, like most men, he has severely underestimated his wife.

LAURA

            Jonathan and I were in bed but I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t know where Isa the Dog was; I didn’t know where Isa the Doctor was either. “She hardly ever works Tuesdays,” Ryan had told me. He had bribed an orderly.

            Jonathan stirred. There was a lot to tell him. Luckily, I’m brave in the mornings. “Let’s talk,” I began.

            “Uh-oh,” said Jonathan.

             “Listen, let’s go for breakfast. There’s a café where I always have perfect eggs.”

            It was a cold day and we buried our faces in our coats. Maybe that’s why Jonathan took my hand as we walked down the street. That’s what it takes for public affection with a married man: a sub-zero dawn and scarves of wool. I grinned. Sub-zero dawn and scarves of wool was a good title for a book of poetry. And it would make Jonathan happy. It would not ease the shock, but he might not mind having the book on his shelf in the years to come. Oh, those years! The bookshelf we will share, filled with all the poetry he would inspire. A van came up the street. If adultery had inspired poetry, what would marriage give me? A short story, at least. Now I was giddy. The van’s twin lights slid towards us.  It swerved in neutral as the driver tried to control his skid. Jonathan darted ahead, but I slipped on the ice. My legs splayed apart. Jonathan turned to get to me, but the van slid between us, knocking me through the air.

            Jonathan clawed through the snow to find me. “You’ll be all right,” he said.

            I need to tell you something about Isa, I tried to say, but my mouth was no longer working. I closed my eyes. I didn’t understand how I could shatter so easily, not when I was a girl with secrets to impart. I should have been made immortal by the truth about a man’s wife or the alternate title of a book of poetry. I shouldn’t have tried to tell him so early in the morning. I never learn; if I did, I would have waited until after lunch.

JONATHAN

            Isa turns crimson when he tells her about the infection. She is a doctor; it’s humiliating that she doesn’t know everything going on in her own body.

            She packs a bag and leaves. Jonathan looks at his empty house, which now seems unbearably empty. There’s nothing in it that Isa has not touched. He drives to see Eddie, who is nursing half a dozen scratches.

            “I’ll take her,” he says.

            Eddie looks at him as if he’s crazy. “Are you sure?”                                    

            Jonathan nods. Marriages end and chlamydia gets cured, but dogs live for years. “Are you still going to publish Laura’s manuscript?” he asks.

            “Yes. But don’t worry, we’ll change the title.”

            “Don’t,” says Jonathan, and then Laura’s ugly, ugly dog follows him obediently back to the car.

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