Clean

Twelve minutes click by between long miles of seconds if the situation is right. Alan Goodman lost the first five minutes to leisure. He sat at the kitchen table sipping weak white tea and inspected the new paint-job. It wasn’t bad for amateurs, though they’d speckled the ceiling a little around the edges in their haste. The expertise with which they’d painted was not at issue. Color was the issue. It was yellow; not the raucous “yaller” his grandmother had despised, pointing at street signs with an accusatory finger whenever she saw it. It was canary yellow or, as Quinn had insisted, “sunshine” yellow. “I want my mornings bright and airy,” she’d said.

“Off-white does that,” he’d protested, though it had been decided before he’d ever known they were to paint the kitchen. Quinn’s eyelids lowered; he felt her condemnation writhing into his skin.

“It does not. It washes me out and makes me more tired. It’s too cold and impersonal, like we could be anywhere; a penitentiary, a hospital, a hotel for God’s sake. You can live with ‘sunshine,’ alright?”

“Okay,” Alan said, knowing the end of almost every argument with Quinn could be predicted the same way. He figured he put up a fight so as to never stop testing her boundaries. She could be made to bend on occasion, but the matter of the yellow paint was not such an occasion.

Alan set his cup on the table and listened to the muffled patter of the shower. He thought briefly of Quinn naked in there, squeaky and warm. The image wouldn’t hold; it shifted and warped as if viewed from outside the billowy glass door as steam gradually thickened on the panes.

He had not touched her intimately in months, their contact limited to an occasional brush-by in the kitchen. Alan tried to kiss her the night before but she refused. He’d reached out to touch her face in the dark and felt a cool coat of sweat at her temple. She did not say anything as he stroked her lips with his thumb, leaning closer, the shift of blankets sounding like ocean waves from a distance. His lips had only just touched hers when Quinn turned over. “No,” she said.

Alan traced the lip of the cup with his forefinger, staring at an Escher print Quinn loved and he despised. Quinn had miscarried six short weeks ago, and they had bumped up against the “fear of intimacy” subject since, but only in fits and mumbles, embarrassed to speak in pop-psychology terms. They shared a mutual distaste for psychoanalysis and the charlatans who sold it to the weak-minded, needy public desperate for answers that did little good once the problem was acknowledged. They did not speak of the baby; the strange amphibious creature Alan had held briefly, after they’d taken Quinn away and sedated her. She’d never looked.

Alan understood Quinn’s distance, the miscarriage was particularly bad. She had nearly reached the third trimester when the baby came, stillborn. Alan mentioned giving the baby a proper funeral and Quinn had become hysterical. “No. No, I will not, goddamn you. Have them take it wherever they take them.”

He finished off his tea and glanced at the clock, surprised that it had only been five minutes since he’d checked last. It seemed as though she’d been in there forever. Alan knew he would have to make an effort to please her this morning; she had taken the unusual night shift to cover for another waitress and would probably be in a humorless mood. Quinn’s clothes hung from the back of the chair nearest him; he could smell old bacon grease and hash-brown oil emanating from them. She washed them every three days, but he wished she’d do so more often, though he would not volunteer laundry duty himself.

Three brisk knocks at the door snapped Alan out of his reverie. Who would be calling at eight in the morning? He shoved his cup away and went to the door, ruffling his hair as he walked. Alan squinted through the peek-hole and saw a brown-clad man standing on the front step. Alan opened the door and the UPS man smiled. “Delivery for Quinn Goodman?” the man said, presenting a large cardboard box to Alan like a prize. Alan did not return the smile.

***

Quinn spent fifteen slow minutes in the shower, taking the longest time stroking thick suds through her long hair, heavy with water. Quinn is short for “Quinella,” her father’s whimsy born from one lucky day at the track that spent itself in a matter of days.

A lot can happen in the space of minutes: a shower can rinse a spider from a slick, wet thigh; a woman can grab her smokes and purse on the way to another life; a father can say “Quinella” to a stunned nurse’s face, the hollow breath of his drugged wife accentuating his decisive tone and unflickering eyes.

Quinn shampooed her hair, soaped her arms and legs, lingering at the spaces between her toes. She cupped lather under her breasts, passing a cursory twirl through her belly-button. Quinn scrubbed between her legs and ran her sudsy fingers across her buttocks. Her mind wandered. The steam made her head swim a little, her thoughts circled the insignificant annoyances of the day. She saw how things should’ve gone, might’ve gone had she been a swift thinker under pressure. She was not; the punchline often evaded her.

She stooped down to see that the faucet was securely off, knowing Alan would ride her about it should it drip. Fortunately, Alan reserved most of his severity for environmental arguing, rather than things like, say, her refusal to be impregnated again. They had not discussed children lately, but Quinn knew Alan’s mind and, more importantly, knew he understood her mind. Some things were “off limits.” She didn’t know if he could comprehend her feelings about impregnation anyway. She hardly understood them herself. The very word “pregnant” sickened her. She would remember that horrible movie “Aliens,” imagine the gooey egg slowly opening, some slithering horror suctioning onto her, injecting some bitter liquid deep into her throat. Quinn could not get past it, the image would not fade -- it would only take on brighter hues, crisper sounds. Kodak moments in Hell.

Quinn toweled obsessively. She enjoyed being dry, the velvety feeling of newly washed skin, as yet unflawed by body oils and various dirt and dust. Quinn tucked her hair into the towel and admired the way it pulled her skin back. Alan said she looked exotic, like a pale Sophia Loren. Her mind flickered back to the night before, when Alan tried to kiss her. Did he see Sophia in her bone structure, her thick, almost awkward lips? Quinn’s eyes narrowed as she remembered his face pressing nearer, how she had sensed some odor, metallic and shrill, something like desperation or fear or anger. The kiss was averted; Quinn had turned on her side and listened to the fan stir papers on the night stand. She did not know if the smell came from Alan or herself.

Quinn swept the bathroom door open to let out the steam. She could feel her pores tightening in the cool air conditioning as she emerged into the dim hall and entered the kitchen. The smell of paint still lingered, though they’d nearly finished moving all the furniture back to their original settings.

A sudden crash from the garage jarred Quinn from her inspection. Her head snapped in the direction of the entryway and pain flared in her neck muscles. What the hell was he doing out there at 8 a.m. anyway? She sweated day-in and day-out at the restaurant while he meandered about at school in the supposed pursuit of an MBA. It wasn’t enough she worked forty hours plus a week to support them both without his careless disregard of her nerves which his very existence, at times, had already stretched thin.

Quinn glared at the dull glow of the door knob, waiting for it to turn. She heard his pounding steps and crossed her arms tightly around her ribcage. Alan slammed through the door and froze at the sight of her. Quinn noticed an oily sheen of sweat coated his face. She snapped, “Well? What the hell do you have to say for yourself?”

Alan clutched the door knob and did not move. Quinn could hear his throat click.

“What’s the matter with you?”

“I just…I was just in the garage. I was, uh, looking for that drill Steve loaned me.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Then why do you look so guilty?”

“I…I made so much noise. I didn’t, uh, didn’t want to upset you.”

“That’s very kind of you.”“Quinn, please. I don’t want to fight.”

“Fine.”

“Okay?”

“Fine.”

“Okay, good.”

Quinn turned away and swept the towel from her head. Her dark hair hung in wet slivers, glowing in the morning light. Alan’s mid-section quivered at the sight of her, so unaware of her own raw beauty. She turned to him and raised her brows. “Everything will be just fine once you tell me why you’re lying. And I want you to tell me now.”

Alan’s mouth closed. He swallowed. A squadron of lies circled and dipped around his head, but he could not grasp one. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he looked her in the eye and tried to say the words.

***

Alan tore through the garage, heading for the dusty boxes they kept in one corner. The boxes were filled with the things they couldn’t quite part with, but were too much of a nuisance to unpack. His college history books shared unlikely space with her old jewelry box that still contained the baubles of her teen years: battle ax earrings, a dragon’s head pendant, a ring with a skull staring with one cubic zirconia eye.

Alan yanked boxes to the side, vaguely aware of a twinge in his back. He shoved the new box against the wall and it jingled merrily, a sound so alien and new that he stopped and stared.

They had told everyone, of course, knowing that the baby shower was only weeks away and there were gifts to return. Quinn was very efficient with her planner opened to the list of people they’d invited and her personal phone book in her lap. Alan remembered the muffled sound of Quinn’s mother over the phone, how he’d curiously thought of whale song but knew she was just crying, a grandmother denied.

Quinn called them all, very diligently, very calmly. She accepted their stammering sympathy with practiced, articulate evenness that had scared Alan badly. He was unable to do anything productive that day; wandering from place to place, hand washing a dish at one moment, then shifting a pile of magazines from one end of the coffee table to the other at the next. At one point, Quinn clicked off the phone in mid-dial and glared at him. All the calmness left her voice, “Stop puttering. You’re getting on my nerves.” He went out on the back porch and stared at a book for an hour. He could not remember what book.

They were so careful to cover those bases, so needful of wrapping things up neat and tidy so that the baby would not surprise them again, as she had done so dramatically during her brief stay in their lives. But Alan forgot one person. He forgot to remind himself.

Alan stared at the box, its happy tinkling weight now resting silently among the dead memories neither of them could release. It was a “Fun Station,” a plastic monstrosity adorned with twenty different bright, sparkling diversions for ages zero and up.

As Alan stared at the box, squatting in his dirty garage, beginning to sweat, he saw clearly how the toy had looked in the store. There were reds, blues, and yellows, as well as swiveling mirrors and dangling clown faces, goofy smiles spread across their soft heads. The shrugging clerk had explained that it was for display only, but they could backorder it, no problem.

Alan winced as he saw himself, a big, dumb papa-to-be, smiling sheepishly and saying that, yes, he would very much like it, here’s the address. He’d been thinking of how her face would look, like the time when they’d only just begun to date and he’d brought her tiger lilies. She had been sick and he watched her sleep, placing the flowers on her night stand. When she had awoken, they were the first things she saw. God, how her face had looked! She grinned like a child at the fair. Quinn’s face surrounded by tiger-lilies violent orange and reaching outward. He could still see it quite clearly.

Alan stared at the box and cried. He did not let it slam out of him as he had when he held his child; the sobs came in strained chuffs, as though he was moving heavy equipment. He leaned against the box, its rainbow-colored joy sealed safely inside, secure in its cardboard brown shell.

***

“What were you doing out there?” Quinn said, approaching him.

“I—”

“What’s out there? Are you hiding something?” Alan jumped and Quinn’s lips pursed. She shoved him aside and was through the door before he could begin to grab her. Alan followed, kneading his hands together then willing himself to stop. She was standing with her fists to her hips, scanning the garage.

“Quinn, your feet are getting dirty.”

“Tell me where it is.”

“Quinn—“

“Stop that shit and tell me!” Her teeth were bared. Alan wondered if she would hit him.

“It was a package from UPS.”

“What package?”

Alan looked at her, tried to draw her close with his eyes. He could not shake the sorrow from his expression, it hung there, a dead weight. The anger drained from her face. “Something I ordered awhile ago. I forgot about it. It was for—“

“Never mind,” Quinn said, turning toward the stairs. He caught her hand as she reached for the banister.

“Quinn, it hurts me.”

She shook his hand away. She would not look at him. “Never mind,” she said, and ascended the stairs. Quinn shut the door behind her and Alan stood in the dark.