Manuche, Muddled

The three of them sit in the corner: the bald one, the furry one, and the skinny one with glasses.  They wear crisp suits, unadorned, and they drink whiskey, neat.  They mask their defects well: desperate, impoverished eyes behind precision, good posture, and tones of authority, maybe even condescension.

It’s the furry one with round, impish eyes and a thick, graying moustache that Nettie knows well.  Manuche.  She has loved him for most of her life.  Sometimes, especially on dark, clammy days, she believes she still loves him.  But she has lost her understanding of love.  It had once been so clear – like a simple, sunny day where everything is bright and life with all its perfumes is abundant, and even the weeds, in their nuisance, are never minded. 

For much too long, though, it had been like this: Days dragging and Manuche, a distraction, an irritation - like a light too dim while trying to read, or a closet overstuffed while trying to hang a coat.  Other days food would be cooking, the scent of garlic and meat overpowering, and Manuche, bellied and pink, cutting onions and warning her because he knows her eyes will water from the onions; he might even open a window - and there would be comfort in this, the way one is always comforted by the idea of being known.  She hates steak, bloody.  She cries when it rains.  She never forgave her father.  Who else has seen this, has known that when she is being overly social - loud, even - it’s because she is nervous and trying to overcompensate?  It is easy to be seduced when one wants to be seduced.  But then there are the days of spillage, when everything held in is instantly poured out; when Manuche is young and foolish, and he is striving to be something he will never be, and she is waiting for him, always waiting, because someone else sees him as bigger and she (that someone) is softer, more gullible than the one he comes home to.  Then, fast forward and the failures are piling up, and he is less of a man - but only at home - and she despises him, and she worries, and she is distracted, reading fiery words in crumpled letters, and she is emptying drawers, searching, always searching, and finding, many times finding – and then a child is dead. 

The waiter, a boy around twenty-years old, approaches.  He has noticed her wine glass is empty.  She hasn’t ordered yet because she isn’t really looking at the menu.  She isn’t interested in eating the way she had been when she first sat down.  She is only interested in watching Manuche. 

Ma’am, more wine?  Ready for an appetizer?

She is annoyed by the interruption.  Her thoughts are jumbling again.  A salad, please.  No beets.

He nods.  He fills her glass because she lifts it to him. 

When he is gone, she notices Manuche is standing.  He is laughing and smoothing his jacket.  A waitress, bubbly and fresh, passes him and smiles.  It is a playful smile.  Perhaps she wants a big tip.  Perhaps she sees him as someone important, someone who can advance her career.  He is staring at her legs (he always liked legs) and then at the curve of her waist, even after she is at another table smiling at another man.  There is eroticism in seeing this behavior from afar.  As if it is Nettie he desires.  As if the years in between never happened.

Manuche begins to walk towards the restroom.  Nettie lowers her body into the chair, but he won’t see her.  She is all the way on the other side, in another corner, not near anything, and she is hidden behind the menu because she didn’t let the waiter take it.

Even if he were to see her, would he recognize her?  Her hair, which had been curly and grey on that last day, is reddish-brown now - chestnut, she believes, was the name on the box - and it is no longer past her shoulders like it had been for all their time together.  It is angled and cut sharply at her neck.  She is a new woman.  A different woman. 

She works now.  In an office with other women.  Younger women.  Also, men.  There is one man, his name is Lance.  He is just a bit younger than she is and he is quiet and not much to look at.  He slouches and has a lazy eye.  But he is smart.  Educated.  He knows things.  He knows the names of bridges in Zhejiang.  He knows words that aren’t ordinarily heard, and he uses them daily in sentences, as if everybody uses them - and he does this without arrogance.  When someone asks him about a word, it's meaning and such, he doesn’t sigh or sneer the way Manuche would.  He simply explains.  He’s a teacher by nature. 

Early on, in the first few months of working with Lance, Nettie found herself comparing him to Manuche.  The contrast was striking, invigorating.  She realized she had come to see all men the way she saw Manuche.  If she saw a man in the supermarket, for instance, standing on the register line, doing something as simple as flipping through the pages of a magazine, she would think: Inattentive. Haughty.  It was unfair, certainly - but how could she help it?  And all men, of course, fell short, even when they didn’t, because her love for Manuche had so long been tied to his flaws that she had stopped seeing them as flaws and only as the way things were supposed to be.  Imbalanced.  Impatient.

Once, there was a meeting and Nettie was late and her heart had been pounding because she’s a woman of a certain age and they already wonder if she can really do the job - if she’s, perhaps, too inexperienced or too mature to have the same drive as the younger ones - and so she hadn’t had time to dry her hair.  The elevator had been broken so she ran up three flights of stairs to the conference room, and she had been out of breath, wheezing, when she opened the door.  A few people turned to look at her, some of them mumbled, others were indifferent, thinking perhaps: Oh, just that one.  All the chairs had been taken, so she was left to stand and lean against the wall.  The back of her shirt was damp from her hair, and it was uncomfortably cool with the air conditioner and all.

Lance had been sitting nearby.  After a few moments he stood.  He walked over to the table where there were muffins and coffee.  She didn’t dare go over and take anything because everyone had eaten already before the meeting began.  That’s how things were done.  He poured some coffee into a cup.  He placed a muffin onto a plate.  She thought: Bold.  He walked over to her, slunk, really, and stood beside her.  He quietly handed her the coffee and the plate.  He said: I heard you saying, once, that it’s hard for you to concentrate without coffee.  And she had that intimate feeling, a warmth, like the feeling of being known.  Except this man didn’t know her at all.  That was the difference.  He didn’t know her, but he paid attention to detail.  He was thoughtful.  Manuche knew what he knew because there was really no other choice.  Just like she knew that Manuche's back hair was patchy, or that he never replaces the toilet paper roll.  These weren’t things one strives to know or even thinks about.  These are things that simply become marked in one’s mind; that are forced upon people.  She watched as Lance fussed with his watch, a tattered, leather thing that had seen better days.  She thought: Lance and Manuche are different, very much so - but the same in terms of financial success.  Neither of them has it.  Manuche, though, would never give so much away.  Lance, on the other hand, wasn't afraid of displaying himself.  She wondered who she was more like. 

Manuche never had that special something one must have to blossom, to stand out for longer than a first impression.  He wasn’t smart, he played smart.  He wasn’t ambitious, he looked ambitious.  He didn’t have a passion for learning, he used what he already knew and shuffled it around, making it appear fresh.  He focused too much or only on material things; possessions he might have all to himself one day.  But one can’t only be fueled with a desire for wealth, can they?  How?  Without any idea about one’s capabilities?  Lance, on the other hand, could have done great things.  He could have been someone important; valuable to the world.  So, what happened?  She wondered if maybe he preferred the simple life.  Then, she thought: Maybe life decided for him.

On one night, only very recently, she found herself in bed with Lance.  They began to get friendly at work.  Sometimes they would have lunch.  They spoke, not at all about the past or very personal things.  She didn’t know if he had been married - or even if he was married now, though he didn’t wear a ring and he didn’t have pictures on his desk of children in holiday outfits, or anyone at all for that matter.  And he didn’t know that she wasn’t divorced yet, only separated, and that Manuche’s picture was still in her wallet, folded behind another picture.  Instead, they talked about the present time.  He said things like: Your eyes are not really green - more gray, aren't they?  Or:  It's barely noticeable, but you've an accent - Dutch, perhaps?  In these simple conversations, she saw he was learning about her.  He wanted to learn about her.  So, she invited him over for tea.  He came with daisies and a bottle of chilled chardonnay.  She didn’t have a chance to put the flowers in water.  She never opened the wine.  Instead, they entangled themselves right there in the kitchen.  And Lance was aggressive, more aggressive than she imagined he'd be, but gentle, if that’s possible.  He wasn’t afraid to unbutton or unzip.  He wasn’t afraid to touch or to taste.  But he did so cautiously, in case she might stop him, or perhaps he was trying to figure out what she liked.  Afterwards, they went to her bedroom and slept.  Nettie, though, awoke before sunrise, her thoughts scattered - parts of her sore, throbbing, from years of disuse.  They had been candidly naked: lights on, no covering, no manipulating to hide the unattractive parts.  She had been raw.  Then, Manuche appeared, somewhere between the knotted bodies on the bed.  She spoke to him, silently.  She said: All the nights that could have been like this.  Why weren’t they? 

How does one separate from something so intimately attached?

Manuche is sitting again.  The two beside him are Earl and Jeffrey.  Earl, the bald one, is out of work quite regularly but somehow manages to keep up with his mortgage, to buy nice suits and shoes.  Years ago, she asked Manuche about this, but he was always quick to defend: There are many ways to make money, not just nine to five.  Your mind is too narrow, I always say it.  So, she had let it go.  Once, Jeffrey hid in their house, in the damp basement, for nearly three months.  She asked: Why is he here?  But Manuche only made her feel foolish.  He is our friend, he said.  He needs our help.  It’s not our business. 

Manuche liked to keep her quiet.  And she wasn’t really a quiet woman by nature.  Maybe sometimes with strangers - with people she didn’t know very well, because she was introverted, hated small talk - forced herself, often, to engage in it.  But not with those closest to her.  Not even as a girl, with her father the way he was.  But as time passed, it became easier to say nothing at all than to have another fight with Manuche.  The years with him changed her.  Or maybe it was simply the years, alone, that changed her.  Things she never believed she would put up with had become normal for her, simply a part of the journey.  For instance, when she was young, she often scolded her mother for not working, for relying solely on her father for everything and letting him use this against her.  For years, she felt her mother's shame and destruction.  She vowed never to be like her; never to marry a man like her father.  Then, Manuche wanted her to quit teaching - because there was much to do around the house and because they wanted a baby and it was a bit of trouble getting pregnant.  He thought the stress was part of the reason.  Unnecessary pressure, he had said.  But I have the perfect job, she’d said.  Think about the hours.  Summer’s off, even.  She didn't dare mention that they needed the money - that his job, alone, wasn't enough to sustain them.  But he was firm.  There are nights of grading papers, he said. Too much loyalty to other people’s children.  And he would dance around the blame, shooting her with looks that said: All of it's on you.  So, she gave her resignation, but she had been bitter.  Eventually, a baby had come - when she was older than she wanted to be.  A girl.  But she was gone now.  And with her went any possibility of a future.

Manuche is talking to a woman at the table next to him.  She is alone and she is blonde, and she has a laptop in front of her.  For a moment, Nettie compares herself to the woman.  The woman is young; Nettie is old.  The woman is feminine, quite dainty in her movements; Nettie is quick, sometimes clumsy.  The woman is doing something important, like writing an autobiography, or maybe even a scientific essay; Nettie is on her third glass of wine.  Tomorrow she will type other people’s letters. 

She can see that Manuche is quite taken by the woman, and that the woman is out of his league.  But something in her belly burns, maybe closer to her chest, and she pushes away her salad, which has beets in it anyway.  She tries to remember if Manuche had ever been this way with her.  In her younger years she was slender and quite fashionable.  Had he pursued her?  Or had she been the one chasing him in the beginning?  Maybe, like the woman, she simply didn’t know either way at the time.  Now, because she knows him, she can see what he is up to.  She can see the way he is containing his smile.  He is doing this because he knows it's charming.  Perhaps Nettie had been the one to first point it out, the way he only half-smiled sometimes and how it was appealing.  But it’s different now because it’s intentional.  But the woman doesn’t know it.  So, to her, maybe it’s charming.

Lance walks in, overly bundled, hat and all.  He stands for a moment, by the door.  Someone points to the area with the coats.  He nods.  He unzips his bulky jacket and emerges, sweater-green.  He pulls off his hat.  His hair is flattened but curly still.  He sees Nettie.  He waves.  She has been sitting by herself for nearly an hour.  She called him and changed the time, because she saw Manuche and she hadn’t seen Manuche in a long while.  She wanted to think, to understand what she was feeling.  She had only just ordered her wine, and then she looked up and Manuche was there.  She thought of leaving.  She stood, even, and put on her coat.  When the waiter came over, she whispered about wanting another table, a private table.  From her new spot, she phoned Lance.  She said: I won’t be there for an hour.  Then, she examined Manuche as only Manuche, not as Manuche, her husband.  He wasn’t cooking for her or grunting on top of her.  He wasn’t chewing too loudly or monopolizing the television remote.  He wasn’t hiding behind excuses with rose-colored smudges or weeping because the lone, gray stone read only: Loving Daughter.  He wasn’t blaming now, and neither was Nettie - for what was blame without something for your words to hit?  He was, instead, a man without commitment.  He was a man who no longer needed his collection of untruths.  She saw him, though, exactly as she always saw him because she always knew more than she even told herself. 

Lance is sitting, now.  He is placing his napkin on his lap.  He is pointing at her glass.  Another?  He doesn't know that she had three glasses already, and that she is feeling tingly, maybe a bit dizzy.  He might know, though, when he sees the check.  Or maybe she will simply pay.  Or maybe she will simply say: Look, I'm a little drunk.  You see, that’s my husband over there.  We’ve been married for thirty-five years.  We own a house just down the road - it’s white with blue shutters, because I always wanted a white house with blue shutters.  It doesn’t have a yard, though, so thank goodness we never got a dog – because who would have walked a dog?  I never cared much about animals, anyway.  Neither did he.  Too much work.  But we thought our daughter might want a dog one day.  Because isn’t that what people do?  Get married, buy the house they really can't afford, have children and get a dog?  Don’t worry, though, we’ve been apart for years - two, actually.  I left him.  I packed a single bag one day and left.  Maybe I wanted him to stop me.  He didn’t.  And I knew he wouldn’t.  So, in that sense, maybe I really wanted to leave.   Our daughter’s name was Clara - after some aunt I barely knew.  She was going to be a pianist, because I always thought it so lovely: the music, the white piano, the stage surrounded by silent people, listening.  Manuche, though - that’s his name - wanted her to be something else.  He envisioned college and many degrees: a doctor, a lawyer - crooked, even - wherever the money would be.  In reality, she may not have been any of those things, because she was not me or him, but her own person.  We didn’t see her that way then.  She may have decided to be a drifter, or even an outlaw.  We won’t know, though.  She fell asleep one day and never woke up.  I was there but I wasn’t there.  Manuche wasn’t there either, but he really wasn’t there.  So, who’s to blame, huh? 

She says none of this, though.  She stays quiet.  The waiter comes over.  Lance speaks: Another glass for her.  And I’ll have whiskey on the rocks.  He isn’t a serious whiskey drinker, because now it will be diluted.  She knows this from Manuche, who always likes to do things properly - or rather, always likes to seem an expert at things.  She says: It will be watered, now.  Not the same.  He smiles.  You’re right.  But I want it anyway.  Of course he does.  And isn’t it refreshing? 

From the corner of her eye she notices three men standing, putting on their coats.  Lance places his hand on top of hers.  His nails are nicely groomed, shiny, even.  She thinks: Manuche never had nice hands like this.

The three men leave.