“
Really? You have someone you can totally trust? Someone you can absolutely count on to make you laugh, to help you out, to let you know when
you
’
re messing up? Someone you
’
ve known a long time who looks forward to your company and whose company you look forward to?
”
“
Yeah. Sure. I guess. Sure I do, Henry. I consider you my friend.
”
Henry turns and looks at both Marcus
LeBlancs
. He shakes his head and closes his eyes for a second, but that makes him dizzy, makes his stomach turn. When he opens them again he sees a singular Marcus, and he decides that he won
’
t reveal the harsh truth to him about their supposed friendship. About all friendships. He decides that tonight Marcus has earned the right to go home wrapped in the comfort of the lie.
“
You want to know the most disturbing part about my marriage, about my vasectomy, Marcus?
”
Marcus LeBlanc sits upright. Maybe the Cherry Garcia can wait. He smiles and nods at his very good friend Henry Tuhoe. Yes. Yes, he certainly does.
~ * ~
Poolside
The first week after the vasectomy procedure:
•
Stay off your feet as much as possible.
•
Ice the scrotum for 20 minutes every hour (except when sleeping). You can make your own ice pack by using a bag of frozen peas.
•
Do not have sex or lift anything heavier than 10 pounds.
—
Sn
ipped.
com
Henry sits poolside on the end of a chaise lounge, staring at the cloud-
scrimmed
moon, listening to the wet hum of circulating water. He wants to lie back and close his eyes, but the sour swirling in his stomach will not allow it.
Rachel may or may not be inside. If she
’
s home she
’
s surely asleep, the sound machine on her nightstand soothing her into REM with
“
Ocean Waves
”
or
“
Rain Forest
”
or the urethra-taunting
“
Trickling Stream.
”
Speaking of which.
Henry rises and crab-walks to the bed of impatiens near the pool house and releases a long, scattershot piss.
Two days before the procedure, Rachel went away for her annual weeklong Internet Security Convention in Vegas. If things had been better between them, Henry would have accompanied her, as he had in previous years, and they would have made the most
of it, gambled, tried to see Prince
’
s show, maybe piggybacked a trip to Tahoe onto it. But he told her that this was the first available date and he wanted to get it over with. Even though he could tell that Rachel was relieved, she had offered to cancel the trip, to stay home to help him, but Henry would not hear of it. It wasn
’
t a big deal; plus she generated most of her new business leads for the year at the Vegas convention.
“
There
’
s really nothing you can do,
”
he said.
“
Most people have it on a Thursday or Friday and if all goes well are back to work on Monday. I
’
ve already got the peas in the freezer. A vegetable medley too, for variety. So you see, you
’
re not the only one capable of icing my balls.
”
He shakes, zips, and sits back on the edge of the chaise lounge. The night that they closed on the house, they had a poolside candlelight dinner with a $200 bottle of red Bordeaux that one of Rachel
’
s clients had given them. Afterward they swam naked in the clear heated water and began making love in the deep end, then moved to the shallows, the pool stairs, and finally the carpeted floor of their otherwise empty family room. Once last May they
’
d had a poolside party, just over three months after the miscarriage. At the end of the day, while he was barbecuing and Gnarls
Barcley
’
s
“
Crazy
”
played on their outdoor speakers, he heard a woman shriek and looked up to see Rachel pulling their neighbor
’
s two-year-old girl out of the bottom of the deep end. The parents had not been paying attention. No one except Rachel had even heard the tiny splash. She jumped in wearing a beautiful white sundress and with a red hyacinth in her hand. He
’
d brought a dozen home from the city the day before. When they came up, the wet flower was pressed against the little girl
’
s blond hair. Staring at the very spot where it had happened, Henry remembers thinking that maybe saving the girl would change Rachel. Maybe she would interpret the event as a life-altering moment and she would revert to the way she had been, or mutate into something altogether new, rather than what she
’
d become. Yet the only change that came from what Henry would later refer to as the Hyacinth Incident was Rachel telling him that she was now certain that she wanted him to get a vasectomy. A bomb had gone off somewhere in the world that morning. A jetliner had mysteriously
dropped out of the sky the day before. The markets were in free fall, and in the past week another house on their block had been abandoned by its owners in the middle of the night. Did any of that inform her decision? Or something else?
Or had she made up her mind long before that?
“
Why?
”
he finally asked her.
“
Why are you so certain?
”
“
The world feasts on evil and random tragedy,
”
she said.
“
And I will not bring another innocent child into it.
”
After the Hyacinth Incident, after the vasectomy request, Henry fell into a funk of his own. At work, in addition to researching all things vasectomy, he Googled the word
hyacinth
and clicked on its mythological origin. Hyacinth, he read, was a beautiful youth killed by his jealous friend Apollo. Rather than allowing Hades to claim the boy, the supposedly distraught Apollo kept him and made a flower, the hyacinth, from his spilled blood. Other versions have Apollo accidentally killing Hyacinth or someone orchestrating diabolical events, but the spilled-blood-into-a-flower bit remained the same. Henry didn
’
t believe in mythology, and the fact that there were two entirely different takes with different villains and heroes of the same story didn
’
t help. But even though the parallels to his life were vague at best, the story freaked him out, and the image of his lost wife and the red flower pressed against the saved girl
’
s dripping hair troubles him still.
For a few moments there is a gap in the clouds, revealing the half-formed patterns of constellations whose names he
’
ll never know. The light of the moon spreads across the motionless pool like a coroner
’
s sheet. Henry gets up and turns on the switch for the underwater lights near the pool house. Illuminated from above and below, the water comes back to life. To his amazement, it is as clean and blue as he has ever seen it. As clean as it looked the day they moved in. Did he see this in her then? The quirkiness? The instability? Over the past year he has tried to help her, but now the word isn
’
t
help,
it
’
s
save.
Still, she wants none of it. Counseling, getaways, walking, talking, and absolutely no counseling or psychiatric help. She fought it all. Insulted him. She wanted none of it, and less and less of him. He
’
d be lying if he said he
’
d never considered leaving her. Kids wouldn
’
t be a problem. But she wasn
’
t well. And leaving
someone who isn
’
t well is different from leaving someone who is, for instance, a bitch. So it
’
s not that simple, especially since lately she has been more than a bit of both, not well and a bitch. Regardless, he determines to work harder at everything.
It starts with telling her everything—he really has to, and she will have to understand. They will talk deep into the night again, every night, and make a series of plans. They will keep the house or sell the house. They will stay put or drop it all. Move back to Manhattan. Start over in San Francisco. Go off the grid. Whatever it takes. They will rediscover each other. The woman she was. The man he ought to be. And she will promise to make a commitment to get well.
Or what?
At water
’
s edge he kneels and lets his fingers brush the smooth surface. Just to be sure, he undoes the cap of the test strip bottle. As he bends to dip the strip into the water, to confirm what he already knows, his throat constricts, his stomach seizes and heaves. Before he can stand, remnants of six cuts of fire-cooked meat, five specialty martinis, and a comprehensive selection of the world
’
s finest beers shoot from his mouth and arc through the bone-white moonlight before splashing down into the pool, botching its chemistry all over again.
~ * ~
Analysis of the Self
and the Semen
At your physician
’
s discretion, you can collect your
initial
seminal specimen at home and bring it directly to the doctor
’
s office or lab.
—
Sn
ipped.
com
Rachel is gone when he wakes up. Pilates. Spinning. Group walk on the bike path. Broomstick-making. Who knows? They never saw each other last night. She didn
’
t say good-bye this morning, but that
’
s nothing new. He slept on the living room couch, but that too is nothing new. He
’
s taken to sleeping on the couch more and more to see if it will bother her, but she hasn
’
t even pretended to notice. He
’
s still not sure whether Rachel got home first or sometime after he did. He doubts that she knows that he was drunk, or that he
puked
in the pool, in part because that would have required her to pay attention to him, and also because he hasn
’
t gotten drunk in years, hasn
’
t vomited from alcohol since college. Not that she
’
d be upset with him. In fact, before she changed, Rachel used to urge him to let loose more, get out with the proverbial boys, even if in this instance the boys were more likely to be addicted to Viagra than, say, adrenaline.
But rather than brightening his disposition, the outings would trigger fits of morbid self-reflection, scenarios that always played out to the ultimate endgame. After men
’
s nights, even the most
innocent reverie about, say, fishing, or granite countertops, or honey Dijon potato chips, would invariably end for Henry with a lurid contemplation of death.
Yet he kept going back.
Tossing
Jarts
and
Wiffle
balls, talking bourbon and brisket and bocce. Saying things like
Man up
and
Dude.
For all of his complaining, for all of his regrets, he still maintained a perfect attendance record. But no more.
Last night, before the Osbornes blew up, before he became drunk and obnoxiously forthcoming in his opinions, someone—was it Victor, perhaps to help him get over post-vasectomy anxiety?— suggested having next month
’
s men
’
s night at a strip club.
They serve a surprisingly good buffet there,
he remembers someone saying. He imagines himself standing in line, the PA announcer calling
Dynastee
to the main stage, strobe lights flashing off
sterno
-warmed aluminum banquet trays, passing the chicken cordon bleu spoon without making eye contact to a stranger with a post-lap-dance erection. No, sir.