“I’m going to tell you something that I’ve never told anyone else in my life,” he said once all nine jars of jelly had been re-sealed and moved to the backseat. “Sit back and relax, because we won’t be moving anytime soon. This is going to take a while. And I guess I’ll start at the beginning. With the juice boxes and the model airplanes and loquacious. But I think I’ll begin with Jimbo Powers’s birthday party and the balloons first. That red balloon.”
Milo told his story in chronological order, moving from the demands of childhood to those that plagued him as an adult. He described the repeating demands in detail, the pressure seals, the Weebles, the ice cube trays, and the like, explaining their origins when possible and the strategies by which he managed to satisfy them all. He described some of the one-hit wonders that had arisen over the years as well, those demands that would mysteriously appear, never to be seen again. The smashing of lightbulbs. The need to dial 911 from the pay phone inside the New Haven train station. The demand to flush every toilet in the ladies’ room at the now defunct Hartford Civic Center, a demand that had required attendance at three Whalers games and the risk of arrest and imprisonment each time.
He told Emma about Jenny’s bar and the twenty-four-hour bowling alley in Vernon and his recent removal of price tags from Bibles at his local Borders Books and Music. He told her about his need to watch certain movies over and over again and his sincere belief that in time, their endings would change, if only once. He even told her about the image of the U-boat captain that he had assigned to the purveyor of his demands, and how he had come to hate the submariner. He described how he managed to conceal these demands from his friends, his family, and especially his wife, creating a life that revolved around secrecy and subterfuge, and how he had begun to realize that this, more than any boredom that Christine might be feeling, was the primary cause of the demise of their marriage.
“As much as I’d like to think that Christine is to blame for our problems, I think I’ve always known that I deserve a lot of the blame too. Instead of being a good husband, I’ve spent most of my time being a liar and a sneak. I’m not cheating on her or using drugs, but it amounts to the same thing in some ways.”
He finished his story with the litany of demands currently plaguing him, leaving off the pressure seals, since that one had thankfully been satisfied.
“So I need to bowl a strike, which wouldn’t be hard if I could find a bowling alley. I could probably find one using the GPS.”
“Okay,” Emma said. He couldn’t tell if her response was sincere or patronizing, but he continued.
“And I’ve got this new one. God, I feel like an idiot for even saying this, but I’ve got to let the air out of the tires. Replace it with fresh air.”
“The air in these tires?” Emma asked, motioning to the corners of the car with a quick twirl of her index finger.
“Yeah. These tires. God, I hope these tires are enough,” Milo said, suddenly realizing that they might not be.
“Me too,” Emma said, grinning. “Otherwise you’re going to piss off a whole bunch of people.”
“Yeah,” Milo said, suddenly concerned about a demand that he had considered relatively benign moments ago.
“Anything else?”
“Yeah. One more thing, but this will probably have to wait. I need to sing at a karaoke bar.”
Emma smiled, one that could have easily developed into a laugh, but this time, she held back.
“And it can’t just be any song. It’s got to be ‘Ninety-Nine Luftballons.’ The song by Nena from the 1980s.” Milo paused for a moment before adding, “The German version. But I have the CD if we can find a place.”
“Is that it?” Emma asked.
“Yes,” Milo said. “I mean, I’m sure there’s stuff I forgot to tell, but considering I’ve never told a soul anything about this, I think I did pretty good. That’s it.”
With those final words, Milo sighed. His story was complete. He’d been as honest and as forthright as he could possibly be, and he marveled at how the number of people on the planet who knew his secret had suddenly doubled. He wasn’t sure if this was the end of the world for him or the just the beginning.
Unsure of what to do next, Milo remained silent, determined to wait for Emma to respond. He began counting in his head, ticking the seconds that passed in order to avoid filling the void with his own words. He had said enough, he thought. More than he had ever said before, and he was ready to wait and listen. He had reached the number thirty-eight when Emma finally spoke.
“So where should we start? The tires, maybe?”
“What?”
“The tires. We’ve got to let the air out. Right? It seems the easiest to do, as long as we can find a gas station with free air. And as long as our four tires are enough.”
“You don’t need to do this, Emma. This isn’t your—”
“Stop.” She raised her hand with the misplaced authority of a crossing guard, halting him midsentence. “Look, Milo. I’m not going to pretend that I’m not a little stunned by what you just told me. Stunned and a little sad for you and even a little impressed. And I have a million questions, if you’re willing to answer them. But either way, we’re in this thing together. At least as far as Connecticut is concerned. So let’s get this done and get moving. Okay?”
“I can wait until we find a hotel, if you’d like. I can handle it myself.”
“C’mon, Milo. Do you really think that I haven’t noticed the changes in you in the last few hours? The way you’ve been gripping the steering wheel like you’re trying to tear it off. The way you can barely sit still in your seat, like you’ve got ants in your pants. You’ve nearly sweated through your shirt, for God’s sake. I was starting to think that you were on something. I’m kind of glad to find out it isn’t drugs. It’s not quite what I expected, but at least you haven’t been shooting up in the men’s room every time we stop. If we’re going to make it to Cassidy, you need to do these things. Right?”
“Yes. I’m sorry, but yeah. I really do.”
“Don’t be sorry. You said it yourself: You don’t have any control over what or where or how these demands hit you. Right? So how could it be your fault?”
Milo shrugged. Though she was right, a lifetime of assuming responsibility, accepting blame, and feeling shame was difficult to relinquish.
“Look, Milo. I’m the last person in the world who is going to pass judgment on you or tell you how to live. But you realize that this thing you have could probably be treated. Right? You don’t have to live with it if you don’t want to. These demands that you have, they can probably be managed with some counseling and maybe some medication.”
Milo had considered the possibility of treatment many times, especially as he had gotten older, and he knew that there was therapy and even medication for people with certain mental disorders. But he did not believe that his condition was like any other. He had seen movies and read about people with obsessive-compulsive disorder: the need to count things or clean things or check the stove fifty times to make sure that it had been turned off. But his condition was something more than simply having to obsessively count the letters in people’s names (his had nine, unless you counted his middle name; then it rose to sixteen) or storing the iron in the trunk of a car in order to ensure that it was turned off (which Milo had admittedly done once or twice before). In his mind, his condition was more insidious and more sophisticated than simple OCD. It involved the interplay between Milo’s arbitrary, incongruous demands and his strategic, creative problem solving, going beyond simple compulsive need and obsessive fulfillment. Milo’s circumstances demanded intelligence, ingenuity, and flexibility. He doubted that any doctor would be equipped to deal with this rarified condition, and his inability to share his secret with anyone, including a doctor, because of the potential embarrassment that it might bring had always prevented him from finding out.
But more important, Milo knew in his heart that there was no way to subdue, c
ure, quarantine, or remove this pervasive part of him. His condition had become an integral component of his very existence, insinuating its way into every muscle and tissue and organ of his body. It was as vital and as omnipresent as blood cells or bone marrow. Milo could imagine Dr. McCoy positioned over his body in sick bay, warning Captain Kirk, “Removing the demands might kill him, Jim.”
“Look, Milo, I’m not saying that you need to see a doctor or change one damn thing about yourself. You’re sitting next to a girl who has refused to confront her own fears for more than twenty years. My therapist says that I have post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s why I haven’t had a good night’s sleep for literally my entire life. I go to bed late and wake up early just to avoid being in bed any longer than necessary. I sleep with the lights on and the bedroom door locked. I can’t remember a night when I didn’t wake up from the same goddamn nightmare with my sheets soaked with sweat. It’s why I couldn’t go to my mother’s funeral and why I start to shake just thinking about how close we are to Connecticut already. My therapist tells me that I need to desensitize myself to all the stuff that happened to me when I was a kid. I have to talk about it and write about it and think about it until it isn’t so … I dunno. Awful, I guess. But I can’t. Twenty years later and I can’t, and even if I could, I think she’s nuts to suggest that it could ever go away. That it could ever stop being awful. My mom is dead and my dad is in prison and still I’m stuck in a corner like a frightened mouse. So I’m the last person on earth who’s going to tell you to go see a doctor and get yourself fixed. I just want you to know that you can, if you want to.”
Milo was silent for a moment, thinking first about all that Emma had shared about herself, and then standing in awe of her acceptance of his insanity. What could you say to a person who had heard your deepest, darkest secret and declared you to be fine just the way you were?
“Okay, then” was all that he could manage.
“So we start with the tires?”
“Sounds good.”
It took almost thirty minutes for them to empty and refill all four tires, only after determining what specifically needed to be done. They had found a Mobil station less than a mile down the road from the Burger King, complete with free air behind the pumps. Initially Milo began letting the air out of the right rear tire, so with nothing else to do, Emma moved to do the same on the left. He had thought nothing of her offer to help at first, but on hearing the hiss of air from her tire, Milo realized that it was the release of air that was required of him and that Emma’s releasing of the air would not satisfy his own demand. After he explained this to her, comparing it to her attempt to open the jelly jar (and feeling incredibly foolish while doing so), Emma took the air hose and waited for the first tire to be empty. Then, as Milo moved to the next, she proceeded to fill the first with what Milo thought of as gloriously fresh air.
“So you kept this from Christine for all this time, huh?” She had to shout to be heard above the roar of the air pump and the hiss of air issuing forth from Milo’s tire. Her volume made Milo uneasy, fearful that others might hear.
“Yup. I’ve kept it from everyone. You’re literally the only one who knows.”
“That must’ve been hard.”
“It was,” Milo said, also shouting. “But you’d be surprised how you can arrange your life around just about anything. Once I started working for myself, things got much easier. I have the freedom during the day to meet clients and handle any demand that might come up. When I was working for the nursing home and punching a clock every day, things were tough, but that’s when I worked on some of the strategies to hold off the demands a bit. Like the balloons and the bubble wrap that I told you about.”
“And you don’t think Christine ever suspected anything?”
“I think she knew that I was a little odd. Maybe not until we were well into the relationship, but she figured it out eventually. Like watching the same movies over and over again. That’s got to be strange in her eyes. Did I tell you about that already?”
“Yeah. Star Wars. Right?”
“Yeah. There are others too. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was a problem for me recently.”
“Was that a coincidence?” Emma asked, screwing the cap on a tire and moving on to another.
“Was what a coincidence?”
“Cassidy and Butch Cassidy? Just a coincidence, or did your mind make it happen?”
“God, I have no idea. I never even thought of it. I can’t believe I didn’t notice. Wow. I wonder if that happens more often than I realize.”
“So anyway, you said that Christine probably thinks you’re a little odd, but that’s it? She really doesn’t know?”
“Nope. She knows about the movies, but she has no idea that I’m waiting to see if the ending changes. And she thinks that my attention to little things like the urinals is weird too. But she has no idea about the bowling and the ice cubes or even the karaoke. She’s never even been with me to karaoke, and I’ve probably performed five hundred times. Oh. That reminds me. That was her calling back in the Burger King parking lot.”
“The Abba ring tone?” Emma asked with a grin.
“Don’t be mean.”
Milo retrieved the phone from his pocket and looked at the list of missed calls on the display screen. Five in all, three from the parking lot and two others, three and five hours ago. All from Christine. “She called a while ago too. I must not have had any service.” Milo finished with the final tire, the satisfying hiss of air reducing the pressure in his mind another degree, before he stepped away from the noise of the air pump in order to listen to the messages.
Though she had called five times, Christine had left just one message. He pressed the button that activated the voice mail and listened.
Three minutes later, he placed the phone back in his coat pocket and returned to the Honda.
“What’s wrong?” Emma asked. “Are you crying?”
“No,” Milo lied. “But I think I just got divorced.”
chapter 31
Hi. Milo? This is Christine. I’ve been trying to call you all day. I’m sorry. I hate to do this on the phone, but I don’t want you to be surprised by a knock on your door, and you’re not picking up your phone. Listen, I just don’t think this is going to work out, and I think you probably know it too. I don’t think it’s anybody’s fault. We’re just not right together, and I think you know that too. If we want to get a divorce, we’ll have to wait six months from the time we file the papers, and it’s what I want, Milo. I hope you understand.
So I spoke to Josh at my firm and he agreed to do it for us pro bono, if that’s all right with you. Fifty-fifty for everything, and you can keep Puggles. We can talk about the details later. But I wanted to let you know that I filed the papers today. You’re going to get served by a sheriff, but it’s totally routine. I’m not looking to screw you at all, and I hope we can stay friends afterward. Our marriage might be lousy, but I always thought that our friendship was just fine. I just don’t want to wait six months to finally make a decision and then have to wait another six months for it to be official. I think it’s better that we move on as soon as we can. But I asked Josh to make sure that you get served at your apartment, because I thought that would be easier. I didn’t want some guy serving you when you’re with a client or at Andy’s house. But like I said, it’s just routine. Okay? Don’t freak out or think I’m suing you or anything. Okay? This is just how it’s done. Call me when you get this message, just so I won’t worry. Okay? Bye.
“Did your wife just ask for a divorce through voice mail?” Emma asked, handing the phone back over to Milo.
“I think so,” Milo said, staring at his sneakers. He had taken a seat on the curb beside the air pump, waiting for Emma to finish listening to the message.
“Goddamn it. That takes some serious balls. Don’t you dare erase that message, because no one’s ever going to believe it.”
Milo still couldn’t believe it hims
elf. He didn’t know how divorces were traditionally requested by spouses, but he couldn’t believe that this life-changing moment had taken place over voice mail. For the rest of his life, whenever he thought about Christine and their divorce, his mind would return to this oil-stained slice of pavement in Virginia, to the hum of the arching, overhead lights illuminating the station and the Doppler whine of eighteen-wheelers on the interstate, and to the Honda, with its four newly inflated tires. He would think back on this moment, listening to a recording of his wife of three years as she spoke of routine warrants and fifty-fifty splits, effectively ending their relationship, as he stared at an Asian woman pump gas into her station wagon and unabashedly adjust her bra. He hadn’t expected this news to come wrapped up in a ribbon, but he never envisioned receiving it at a gas station via a recording either.
“I’m sorry, Milo. I really am.” Emma had taken a seat beside him on the curb and had wrapped her arm over his shoulder. “This kind of news is hard enough without it coming by voice mail. It’s just unbelievable.”
“Yeah. I still can’t believe it. I mean, I knew that it was going to eventually happen, and to be honest, I sort of wanted it to happen too. I think. But I never thought it would come so soon. I mean, we’ve only been in counseling for a couple weeks.”
“But it’s for the best?”
“Probably. I mean, it wasn’t great between Christine and me, but so much of my life was settled with her. We had the house, friends, the 401(k)s. I liked her parents and she tolerated my mom. We had the holiday schedules all worked out: Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve with her family and Christmas Day and Easter with mine. I just had the floors refinished last spring, and we were going to do replacement windows in July or August. I know it sounds like little stuff, but it adds up. It’s what makes a life, and it’s just hard to believe that it’s all over. I feel like I’m hitting the reset switch. Starting my life over after so much was settled.”