Lessons from the Cockroach Graveyard

 

Expression (Volume Three, 1991)

 

Charles Deemer

 

THE OLDER I GET, the less I understand women. Their sense of cause and effect, for example. I am opening a beer in the kitchen, prior to preparing tonight's stir-fry, and as I do a cockroach appears on the wall over the faucet. I see it, I probably even see it first, but for the moment I do nothing because the critter is still too close to the faucet to ambush — one move by me and it'll be scurrying into the plumbing. I know this because I've tried it before: cause and effect. And Maggie was there when I tried it, too, screaming as if she'd just spotted a ten-pound rat.

This evening she doesn't scream. When she sees the cockroach, she says, "You're doing this on purpose, aren't you?"

"What?" I reply.

"You know what. Jesus."

Even though my back is to her, I can sense Maggie moving slowly toward the refrigerator, reaching for the can of Raid we keep up there. I buy Raid because it was the great poet Lew Welch who wrote, "Raid Kills Bugs Dead!" I raise the bottle of Full Sail and tip my head back, drinking deeply, taking in a third of the brew. Then I belch.

"Ahhhh!" screams Maggie, charging forward like a mad bee, spraying Raid at me and the cockroach, though I'm not sure which of us is the primary target. I cuss under my breath and get the hell out of the kitchen, grabbing a full beer from the fridge on my way.

In a couple minutes Maggie joins me in the studio's largest space, the bed-living-dining-room. She looks exhausted. She is as dark as a Mediterranean gypsy but is proud to be Irish and doesn't like it when I start talking about gypsies in the woodpile.

"Any luck?" I ask.

"He got away into the plumbing." She always refers to cockroaches in the masculine.

I don't get it. Will my beer bottle hit the ceiling if I drop it? Don't women know anything?

 

EVENING. The stir-fry was average, conversation at dinner non-existent. We've been living together almost three years and haven't talked of marriage for the last two. We still have sex, which is about all we have.

I'm still drinking beer, Maggie has poured another glass of Chablis, and we stare silently at the small black-and-white TV that sits on my trunk. It's one of those television magazine shows, full of scandal and gossip.

My mind is adrift, trying to remember the closing lines of Lew Welch's "Chicago Poem," which for some reason has been on my mind lately. I no longer have a book of Welch's poems. I no longer have books. I met Maggie three years ago after a bad divorce and have been traveling light ever since.

Trying to recall Welch's lines, I don't see it at first. But Maggie does. She has eyes like a hawk. Suddenly she throws her wine glass against the wall, and I jump.

"What the hell's the matter with you?" I ask.

"You drive me crazy, pretending you don't see it."

"See what?"

"On the screen!"

She's on her feet, going for the Raid, when I see the dark speck moving across the belly of a woman in her underwear. At first I'm confused, wondering what scandal I've missed, but then I understand that it's a Maidenform ad.

Maggie is a wasteful cockroach hunter, she's spraying the Raid when she's still six feet from the screen, not only wasting spray but warning the cockroach, which now hurries down a thigh to try and escape under a tuning panel. But Maggie is on the critter before it gets to the woman's foot, spraying like crazy, until the room is filled with a mist of Raid.

"All right already!" I shout, standing up. "You don't have to waste the whole can on the thing."

Maggie stops spraying. She turns to me and gently, like a father pitching the first softball to his son, tosses me the can of Raid. Then she grabs her coat and leaves.

I fetch another beer, sit down, stare at the television and try to remember Welch's lines. "Chicago Poem" is a wonderful poem about Welch finally refusing to contribute anything more to the stinking polluted mess that is Chicago. But I can't remember his phrasing.

 

I'M IN BED when Maggie gets home. She's brought her girlfriend, Martha, to help her move out.

At first I pretend to be sleeping. I'm not surprised, really, I'm just angry she chose to do it this way, at this hour. I keep my eyes closed under the bare lightbulb and listen to them gathering her things in the closet, taking her spices from the kitchen, sorting through the mess that is everywhere for what belongs to her. It's all as clear as day, even with my eyes closed.

Then there is a silence that confuses me. Facing the wall, I open my eyes and see a cockroach not two feet from my nose. I slowly, quietly, roll over and can make out whispered conversation at the small table off the kitchen. I reach for my robe on the floor, slip it on and make my appearance.

Martha quickly gets up and says to Maggie, "I'll wait in the car." Passing me, she gives me a stare that would give Raid competition.

I sit down and Maggie pours another glass of wine.

"I'm sorry," she says, "I just can't take it any more."

"Take what?"

"Oh, Raymond."

"You could have warned me," I say.

"I don't believe you haven't seen this coming."

"We could've talked about it."

"You don't talk, that's part of the problem. Maybe that's all of the problem. You stopped talking when you stopped playing."

I play jazz guitar, or used to. Everything left me about a year after my divorce. You don't explain these things, you just go with the flow. If a riff doesn't occur to you, it doesn't occur to you.

"For the past year, even longer, we've both just been going through the motions," Maggie says. "I need more than that. So do you."

"Don't tell me what I need," I mumble.

"What?"

"Nothing."

Maggie drinks her wine and stands up. She starts toward the door.

"What if we talk more?" I ask.

She turns long enough to say, "Oh, Raymond," then moves toward the door again. I stand up and follow her.

When she opens the door, I say, "I don't get it. I don't understand you. No warning, nothing."

Maggie turns and starts to say something but stops. She's looking at the wall near the door, where the cockroach I saw earlier is hovering near the mattress on the floor.

When I understand what is happening, I say, "Want me to get you the Raid? One last shot?"

"That's not funny. This is as hard for me as it is for you."

"Is it?"

"Yes, it is!"

I feel bad for making her angry. Maggie takes a deep breath, starts to go, and changes her mind. She takes one step into the room.

"I don't know what you're going to do about it," she begins, "but I know what I'm going to do about it. I'm just going to walk away from it. Maybe some of it will die if I'm not around feeding it any more. Lew Welch, remember?"

I correct her paraphrasing of "Chicago Poem," saying, "Maybe a small part of it will die. Small part."

"Goodbye, Raymond." She turns and gently closes the door behind her.

I look at the wall. The cockroach is still, as if daring me to go for the Raid.

 

WE MAKE an undeclared pact, the cockroaches and I. I lay off the Raid, and they don't show up as often any more. I even come to admire them in a way. Somewhere I read that cockroaches would be the sole survivors of a nuclear war. A guy could have a worse role model, if he's interested in surviving.

A couple weeks later I run into Maggie in a bar. She's leaning over a small table, leering at a guy who dresses like a banker. I can't believe it. I can't resist going to the table either.

"Well, looky here," I say.

Maggie sits up stiffly. "Hello, Raymond," she says. "Harold, this is Raymond."

"Hi, Harry!"

Maggie gives me the smile that says, Go away! I grab a chair from the next table but before I sit down an amazing thing happens, Maggie brings out a can of Raid from her purse and points it at me. I start laughing. Then she starts spraying.

I squint, moving forward to grab the can away from her. The banker, Harold, is on his feet, ready to protect the fair maiden or something.

"You can't do that to me," I tell Maggie.

"Raymond, you're even bringing them in on your clothes now. Look, he's dead on the table."

Sure enough, there's a dead cockroach next to the ashtray. I glance at Maggie, who looks as if she's about to cry. I turn and go.

 

NOW IT’S all-out war. I complain to the manager and tell him if he doesn't get the building sprayed I'm moving, which is a lie, there isn't a cheaper studio in the city.

So I have to do it myself. Me and Welch. I buy cans of Raid a half dozen at a time, attack the critters with a can in each hand, going for broke. I wear a red bandanna over the lower half of my face, looking like a bank robber, spraying behind the refrigerator, spraying under the sink, spraying where the pipes come out of the wall, spraying around the toilet and tub.

The more I spray, the more of them that appear. Finally, I run out of Raid. Then I run out of money.

 

IT’S A DUMB GIG, playing popular songs in a seafood restaurant, accompanying a bad pianist, but it pays the rent, it pays for the Raid. Then one night Maggie wanders in. She's alone, which surprises me. She looks great, which doesn't.

I try not to look at her but during the break the cocktail waitress tells me that the pretty girl with the dark features has bought me a drink.

"Long time," I say, sitting down.

"Yes, it has been."

"So how are you doing?"

"Terrible. I miss you."

This takes me by surprise, and I almost choke on my beer.

"Didn't you get my letters?" she asks.

There were three of them, long handwritten analyses of our relationship, the pros and cons, and an indirect inquiry if I'd be interested in sitting down across the table from her to analyze the relationship together. I never answered one. I didn't know what to say.

I reply, "Of course, I got them."

"Had nothing to say, right?"

I shrug.

"I've forgotten how well you play."

I force a smile. "It's embarrassing to be here, really."

"No, I think it's good for you to be here. It's better than not playing at all."

Actually she's right, but I don't respond.

"I've got to get back to work," I say and finish the beer in a long gulp.

 

THROUGH THE LAST SET, I can't help but wonder why she's still hanging around. Is she trying to tell me something? Maybe she's horny. We managed to do that right most of the time. But as it turns out, she still wants to sit across the table from me.

"I think in a different context we can be very good for one another," she says. "I know that I love you."

Love. Do I love her? The Greeks had three words for it, eros, fidelia and agape. We'd had the first from the beginning, the second most of the time — and the third? I'm not sure if I could love a woman the way I love my music.

"I've learned a lot from living alone," she says. "I think I can bend for you if you can bend for me. I realize how important your music is to you. Not just as a profession, but as a way to communicate. When we fight in the future, I think you should start whistling jazz to me."

I have to laugh, and as I do she reaches across the table and takes my hand.

"Can you bend at all, Raymond? I don't think I'm asking for much."

"I never did understand what you were asking for," I admit.

"Respect."

The word astonishes me because I've always respected her.

"That surprises you, doesn't it?"

"Frankly, yes."

"I can't live in a hovel," Maggie says. "I'm affected too much by my environment. I know you thought it was all we could afford, since you were out of work, but we could've cut corners and rented a better place, a cleaner place."

"No cockroaches? Good luck. Not in this city."

"Someplace where they spray the building regularly. It's important to do things like that on schedule, you know? Just like it's important to do the dishes every day before they start piling up in the sink. If you ignore little things like that, before you know it everything gets out of hand. Then it's a major project to clean up. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"Neither one of us are great housekeepers."

"I'm not saying it's all your fault. I'm saying your environment can affect how you feel, how you behave, your attitude, everything. I never want to live in a place like that again."

I admit that I've been looking around for another place, now that I have a regular paycheck again.

"Maybe we can talk about your moving in with me," she says. "I have a one bedroom."

I say, "Maybe we can go there tonight."

She squeezes my hand, lets it go and smiles.

"Not tonight. I don't want us to get back together for the wrong reasons. I love you, Raymond. I want us to work. I want us to sit down soon and talk about the things that went wrong. And why."

"I was hoping you were ..." I finish the sentence by raising my eyebrows in the way that once was a signal between us.

"I am, Raymond, believe me." She stands up. "I don't know what you're going to do about it, but I know what I'm going to do about it."

She comes around the table, bends down and kisses me on the lips.

"I'll call you tomorrow morning, okay?" she says.

"I'd like that."

"Oh, Raymond."

I don't even close down the bar. Even with money in my pocket I don't buy a new can of Raid. Something has changed. I'm hearing riffs again. I celebrate by taking a cab, not the bus, to a hotel and renting a room. By the time a lone cockroach crawls out from the bathroom plumbing, the room is dark and I'm enjoying the soundest sleep I've had in months.