Shame, Fiction by Kirstin Scott

lf I did it right it would make a nice picture: the wind blowing the curls around on my head, my arm undulating, the lipstick showing where the food hole is. A bright, documented anemone, something completely natural: yes, me, smiling and waving. But when we drove practically all the way across America, I was caught off guard every time. The two kids in the dark trapezoid of that Buick's back window, their fingers pulsing on their square little palms. The guy who also got a speeding ticket in New York State, showing his teeth like a good-looking man. And the truck driver who gave us a two-fingered Cub Scout salute: Be Prepared! This last one could have been telling us, each finger indicating a lane of the highway ahead of us, or the way we should go about it, as if he could know. Dicks and idiots. Yes, even the kids. I do not have the heart for this travelling. So each time I waved back I was ashamed of myself, the way some scrap of muscle, tiny as a tongue, would flutter inside my chest.

I'm a coward but I'm not squeamish. Aim's got a pencil point inside him, a flea-sized lead that glows blue beneath the skin on his stomach. I've studied it, and I would dig it out if he'd let me. If it were mine I'd work it out with my own ragged fingernails. So in the Midwest I was annoyed: Aim was driving with his shirt off. There was roadwork going on. We were passing all the men who had given Aim the big idea: men in pickups, men driving the backhoes, in the glassed-in cabs, above the riveted engine hoods. Everybody casual about possibly being mistaken for naked, palming their chests affectionately and nodding to each other. I wouldn't have anything to say to these people. We were just passing through on our way here, where Aim has the TV job. And although the car we were travelling in is solely mine, it looked like Aim was reclining in his own private bathtub, steering the hot / cold with the heel of his right hand. I looked at Aim: elbow out the window, arm hairs quivering like sea grass in the highway roar, naked from the waist up. And I got to see that skin-pearled splinter all the time, which is the one thing I was suddenly deciding I wanted. Because I didn't know what Aim would be able to afford in a new town–number of meals out each week, number of therapy sessions per month, minutes of long-distance or amount of square footage in our first shared residence–and I didn't want to ask.

In this town, this small city, there is a new job for Aim. It's a real job, the first. We haven't been out West before, although we'd heard nice things and so had everyone else. Recreation was always emphasized, and I thought and was told that this was a place you have to see to believe. I mean I had the impression that we would be able to rely heavily on the visuals–sunsets, mountains in typical silhouette, scraps of snow in high places, bright desert dirt. I thought: OK, no sounds–no sirens or thudding waves, quiet space between radio stations–and the air will be dry. What's immediately impressive to the eye is forbidden to the touch–petroglyphs, sandstone statuary, various cacti for example–and the landscape is rich with these features which are, respectively, historical, fragile, living things with specific protective developments. Because as you can see, such things don't happen overnight. Two different guidebooks told us this: for those who know what to look for, time is a color illustration on every canyon wall. So for weeks I was dreaming only of the scenery here, and I was happy. God I was glad: to leave my edifying nine-to-five, to trade up on my piece-of-shit car, to seem to sacrifice and say yes to Aim. I'd never had the chance before and it was sweet, saying yes.

I shouldn't say therapy when I mean counseling. I'd been in counseling, back east, but I wish it'd been therapy. I didn't need advice and listening to–I was the afternoon announcer at the public radio station. I needed to work and to be told things I would resist believing. And the explanation is my old ballet teacher. This woman cut a figure: high heels, rhinestone-studded eyeglasses, black pantsuits subtly cross-hatched with cat fur. I've never told anyone this but during pointe class she would scream at us, consistently get a little hysterical. Actual moisture would glitter in her black eyes. THIS HOUR, she would cry, hammering a fist into the palm of her other hand, WILL NEVER COME AGAIN. USE IT! Miss Hut was about fifty and wore her hair up complicatedly, in the manner of the French; she was always just ahead of the beat, even in adagio: the IMBECILE accompanist lagged. I can still see Miss Hut coming at me in the mirror. And like in a novel, she drove me mad too, hissing passionately in my ear, FOCUS, ELLEN, WORK! pushing my forehead onto my leg at the barre. I was alarmed; I knew every minute the time I was losing; it was that precise, and beautiful to behold.

But back East, this counseling was not working, although twice a month I was suffering the attentions of a recent, well-meaning M.S.W., and possibly I was making her feel insecure. I told her almost zero, which wasn't easy. Counseling was covered by insurance, and I had words enough for hundreds of versions of How This Makes Me Feel–we could have gone on indefinitely, talking or not talking, and in fact we were. I believe I'll always feel the nap of that armchair's upholstery in the palms of my hands. And I believe I'll abandon counseling only for the discipline of psychotherapy, which is what would really help.

But there are so many things a woman needs–regular haircuts, Woolite–Aim couldn't possibly know. I'd said yes; I'd fought back tears when my (our) friends stood on the curb and waved us goodbye; I couldn't ask for more. But as we drove here, day by day I think it was eating at me more and more.

I should have said: Look, Aim–here's the situation.

I'm monotonous like this state of Kansas–endless, flat, evacuated.

I slept with Jeff. I read your journal. I lie like a rug; I've told myself I wish you were Paul. Nothing I've done wrong has mattered.

Can you afford to fix this?

–But in my position I couldn't ask. I was in the passenger's seat, looking out the window, infuriated by the dull blank look of the sky, the acres and acres full of the static of wind-pushed grain. People were passing us, mouthing what they read off our license plates. They liked me already, and at seventy miles per hour, I was helpless. I had to wave back. I'd become dependent, but it wasn't Aim's fault. Aim felt freer already in the Midwest, driving half-naked; he didn't mind the miles.

If you could see him: Aim is so thin, all his muscles are more than obvious. His stomach looks like the grid map of our new downtown. I like this. Archie Andrews had the same appeal up front, and remember Reggie Mantle's black pompadour, scrawled like a question mark above his forehead? Archie was the good one. I'd draw a washboard torso on every single American if I could. And Aim has more. In the third grade, the story goes, another kid jabbed him with a number two. It was the morning of the standardized testing; the class was on its way to the cafeteria. The wound didn't bleed, Aim tells me, and he thinks he didn't hit back or cry. Therefore Aim has history, childhood, and probable forbearance in that pencil point. Aim is squeamish. He doesn't want anyone, not even me, promising to be gentle, to dig.

Aim would never say he wouldn't hear of it, the way some people say their boyfriends say. Anyway he doesn't need to: I know what he likes. He likes it here. We've seen the business district's impressive castellations; we've seen the aspen in the eastern draws. We know it's everything they say it is. And we're done with moving finally, and I'm looking for a job myself. The guy in the coffee shop has been saving out the classifieds for me; he has perfect teeth. He knows my name and likes to circle what looks promising. He's eager to help. This makes me feel that I should go to see him every morning, so I'm going every morning. In an agony of patience I thank him for his useless good advice.

I don't deserve it, I was saying to Aim as I drove him to work this morning: for this I surely did not ask. But I know that helping is something Aim would do himself, if he didn't have this better job. It's a gesture he can understand. He says: Ellen–listen to me–people are bored.

I stop the car and Aim leans toward me as he opens the door. He finds the curb with his foot. Honestly, Ellen, he tells me, giving me the benefit of a lasting absent look, and a perfect silence in his dark and loving eyes: people don't mind.