In Spite of This
by Sahra Kuper
The character Perry, in the following story, is based loosely on Richard Cytowic, M.D., author of the book, The Man Who Tasted Shapes. Scientific information about the phenomenon of synesthesia used in this story comes from his published work. The personal details of the character Perry are entirely fictional. If there are any resemblances they are purely coincidental.
In Lillian’s dreams open-mouthed kissing is the sour metal of dirty pennies. But is doesn’t stop there. The pennies have been soaking in a well and the water is a gelatinous corroded liquid. While trying to get her mouth back to herself she wakes up sick. It’s this taste that Lillian’s mouth fills with as, on her way home from getting her haircut, she crosses Boylston Street near the Hynes Convention Center and glances to her left to spot her husband in the courtyard of Vinny T’s half-standing over a large plate of meatballs frenching her stylist. It was under an hour ago that this same woman had called Lillian sweetheart then sugar while narrating an account of a man she is seeing and his clueless wife that he speaks of only in terms of the rotten egg. Lillian delighted in the dense pain of the couple’s situation. She’d said, “I can truly feel both sides,” priding herself for being emotionally ambidextrous. Now that she knows it is she who is the rotten egg, everything the stylist said is ricocheting and stinging that fragile thing called heart.
His wife used to be a successful something or other, but now sits around the house all day in smelly old t-shirts. Hadn’t he encouraged her to quit her job as a curator? Hadn’t he said, “Don’t hang other people’s art. Paint your own. He says he wants to have children but his wife won’t even discuss it. Hadn’t he said if she didn’t want kids after what happened then that was okay by him? After days of standing in the dim light of their hallway—the hallway that leads to the room that was a potential nursery and is now her art studio. After nights of standing together playing back the first three months of pregnancy wondering what idiot thing they had done wrong. If they had only been more puritan then maybe she wouldn’t have had to see the doctor’s face go pale as a scallop when he explained he wouldn’t be doing the ultrasound.
Hadn’t they agreed just last week to dismantle the crib and take down the homemade origami mobile? To empty the room of baby and fill it with her oils, pastels, and coffee tins. Hadn’t they had all those nights standing, unable to move, unable to speak or cry and scream or rip hair out? Until finally he had said I love you anyway or something like that, his words the color of faded blue jeans.
***
The stylist was a self-claimed synesthete.
“I read your book,” she’d said. “I feel bumps when I taste cherry cough syrup.” She’d gone on to ask him to meet her for lunch in an hour since she had some pressing questions. He’d received many calls and letters comparable to hers since he began publishing his research on synesthesia. It was common for his subjects to come against language as a barrier in accurately describing cross-modal sensory experiences. A chunk of metaphors had to be unpacked.
He’d been sitting at his desk, working on a review for the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Consciousness, and thinking he could use a few fresh participants. He could have phoned over to MIT to inquire about the possibility of using a database to find some legitimate research subjects. Instead he tucked a copy of his book and some notes into his satchel (he was hungry) and hailed a cab to Vinny T’s.
***
A decision must be made. This is all Lillian knows for sure. She walks through the Prudential Mall, her fingertips skimming the surface of the shop windows as she glares at the exaggerated collarbones of the mannequins. A decision is more than just a switch-click moment. It is a process. Lillian knows this because her favorite professor in college made a big to do about it. “To decide, Lillian, comes from the Latin decidere. It means to cut away what is worthless, eliminating all but one possibility.” Now the cutting away has nothing to do with options; everything to do with limbs and organs.
-Kill or maim myself.
-Kill Perry??
-Don’t kill myself but say I did* (*interesting possibility. Many sub-options to be explored.)
-Confront Perry? (How would that look?)
• Lay the marriage on the line. Say to him, “You should have thought about all this before hand. Now our marriage is on the line.”** (**In order to show there is no hope, follow up with, “The line is a tightrope and marriage a fat animal with poor balance.”)
-GET REAL TOUGH.
-Watch a movie about an affair and ask friends, “Does art imitate life or is it the other way around?”
-Just pretend the whole thing never happened*** (***let it become the unspoken thing in your marriage that makes loving Perry a lot like hating him.)
“Excuse me? Are you looking for anything in particular?” A salesman approaches Lillian as if he knows she is running through choices in her head and he wishes to add himself to the list. Lillian is clutching a pair of men’s briefs on the sale rack in Neiman Marcus.
“Yes, I am. That’s just the problem.”
“I'm sure I can be of assistance,” he says as he ushers her towards the women’s eveningwear.
The saleswomen are not used to seeing a heterosexual man in their section of the department store. Lips shut and shrink and skin turns embarrassingly splotchy. They scamper off, as if on command, one by one, and form into a cluster near a couch in the corner by the DKNY. They don’t sit down. They are a pack of wolves. They will suffer and stare together, multiplied into thousands by a long three-way mirror.
“Wait in the room of your choice. I will bring you things.” He motions towards a lit hallway to the right. It looks warm and inviting, every dressing room door wide open with possibilities. Lillian shuts herself into the smallest one. As she stares into the mirror, she lets her eyes go blurry. She sees the image of herself ten, twenty, fifty years older until finally she is all bones and eye sockets.
“Are you okay in there?”
“Fine.”
“Try these.” The salesman drapes three dresses: silver, pink, aquamarine, over the door. “My name is Andy. Holler if you need anything.” Lillian can see the poof of his hair above the door and the tips of his shoes from underneath like pieces of a Mr. Potato Head.
“Excuse me Andy, but pink and blue are not my colors.” She takes the silver though and undresses with giddy expectation. Before she puts it on, she bundles up the fabric and sticks her face in it. The smell of new gown is a boy’s choir chanting softly—all vowels.
She opens the dressing room door to find Andy waiting for her. He has pulled up the sleeve of his shirt to reveal his tattoo of the face of Kandinsky on his left forearm. He tells her the dress shows off her freckled shoulders.
This reminds her of Perry. “A Practical Pepper Shaker” he had called her the first time he saw her naked. There was a blizzard outside and they were in the bathroom of his one room apartment on Commonwealth Avenue. They had been taking it slow. They had intended to take a bath together to warm up their cold feet.
“I’ve never done this.” Lillian was propped up on the sink, her legs spread around Perry and her toes on the towel bar across from her. They laughed at how cold the porcelain was and how the water was still running in the bathtub even though they had never gotten around to plugging the drain.
“Exactly this, I mean. Not on a bathroom sink.”
“You are so practical. I love that about you. And I love when you show off your shoulders. You’re a Practical Pepper Shaker,” he’d said. It hadn’t made sense. She looked more like she had pepper shaken over her. But this distinction went unspoken and although there was nothing funny about what he’d said, they both laughed hard until the sink made a noise and they realized they were pulling it off the wall.
Afterwards, for a week straight, Lillian turned up the heat in the house so she could wear tank tops whenever she was visiting.
He says his wife never dresses up anymore.
Lillian says, “My arms will get cold. Besides, paint gets on everything even if I'm not in my studio.”
“You’re a painter?” Andy asks.
“Oh. Yes.”
“I’m a painter. Did you teach a class called The Sound of the Painted Brush Stroke?”
“I did. Yes. Well, it was for Adult Education.” Andy looks far too young to be an adult. “Did you take my class?”
“Actually, my roommate did. I went with him one day. I thought you looked familiar.”
“Yes. Well.”
Lillian is holding up the sides of her dress feeling very out of place. Andy’s face changes, grows softer. He looks up at her, now sheepish.
“You really look beautiful in that.”
An animal emerges from inside Lillian’s weary heart and comes clawing up her throat. “Andy? I think you better be free tomorrow night.”
***
He might have left earlier, since his immediate hunch was that the stylist was a fraud, but she was willing to listen to him review the current knowledge of synesthesia and he needed to talk the ideas out loud for his paper.
She’d asked, “So, then why can’t it mean any crossing of the senses? Just, like anytime I think I should be seeing something, but instead I taste it?”
“It’s not that it can’t. It’s that it doesn’t.” He explained to her that the most common misconception of synesthesia is that it’s a poetic experience. And artists and writers have only made it more confusing by amplifying the metaphorical possibilities of the idea. But in fact, it isn’t an idea, it’s a neurological phenomenon and it occurs in the limbic system—not the cortex as one might assume—the same way again and again for each person that experiences it in his or her own idiosyncratic way.
The stylist had played with a strand of her hair while she listened. She seemed open to his knowledge and this had perhaps convinced him to stay longer and keep talking. It was refreshing considering Perry had argued with Lillian about the duality of the term synesthesia since he had begun his research in the seventies.
Lillian had insisted synesthesia was in fact the power of the imagination to elicit results from all the senses. She even went so far as to teach a continuing education class on Vasilly Kandinsky and his sympathy for sensory fusion. The very idea of synesthesia, it seemed to Perry, had come to represent, in one way, all that was different between them as husband and wife, and in another way, their shared grief over the loss of their baby. Perry would shout things like, “And where in the hell do you think the imagination is, in the foot?” Lillian would scream, “I just am saying that I don’t know how you can claim to understand the nature of subjective experience and still attempt to form a theory!”
These arguments tapered off quickly. Most of the time they admitted they were saying the same thing in distinctly different ways. Lillian’s passion about the subject had influenced Perry’s conclusion that the phenomenon was no more than a normal sensory process barred to the consciousness of certain individuals—that in fact many people experience a cross-modal sensory process but are aware only of the final product.
He had told the stylist all this. It was mid-conversation (right after he noticed the sauce-drip that landed above her faultless left breast) when he’d found himself switching uncharacteristically into divulging his personal life and the struggles in his marriage. The stylist was eager to hear about his marriage, specifically the problems, and she’d told him that in her experience many married men felt this way at one time or another. She’d gone on to say that she is currently seeing a man who refers to his wife as nothing more than a rotten egg.
***
“There was a deal at work. So I got you a cellular phone.” Perry is bent over, his head in the refrigerator.
“Why do I need that? I'm an artist. Not an executive.”
Lillian took three sleeping pills the night before in order to avoid seeing her husband and now she can somehow convince herself, if only temporarily, that it was all a bad trip.
“If you don’t want it, don’t use it. Stick it in your purse for emergencies.” He turns around, milk in one hand, cell phone in the other.
“That milk is rotten,” she says as she snatches the cell phone from him and drops it into her open purse hanging from the chair.
“Did you taste it?”
“Oh yes.” She says. “It was awful.” She thinks about telling him that the taste of rotten milk is the unexpected sharpness of coral. This would really piss him off. Instead she says, “Next time you buy milk, pick the one from the back. Take three or four out if you need to. Pile them on the floor.”
“Why would you taste the milk if you knew it was rotten?”
Lillian has no answer. It occurs to her she is sitting at the kitchen table in an old smelly t-shirt and her husband is looking at her like she is a lame dog.
“I’ll grab something on the way to work.” He kisses the mutt of hair tied up in a bun on her head before he leaves by way of the back door.
This is how it is now. Déjà vu after déjà vu of pointless life task such as shopping, laundry, sex.
“Hey Cretia, it’s me. I am thinking of having an affair.” Saying it out loud, to her closest friend over the phone, it sounds like something that needs planning, prodding and baby formula.
“You mean you haven’t had one yet?”
“I’m serious here. I saw Perry with my stylist. Can I do it?”
“You went to a stylist?”
“Cretia!”
“What? Have an affair? I don’t know. You are made of cedar and bolted to the ground.”
“No. That’s not me. I’m wild.”
“Oh.”
“So, should I do it? What do you think?”
“Take it from a single lady, revenge is the only lasting marriage.”
After Lillian hangs up the phone, she fumbles through yesterday’s pants’ pockets until she finds Andy’s number written on the back of a Neiman Marcus card.
***
The metaphor of the rotten egg made him sick. Was his life that sad? (He imagined taking a napkin, dipping it in his ice water and gently dabbing her sauce-spill from across the table) He felt a wave of superiority and made a stern comment to the stylist about her false synesthesia. Then he stood up, leaning forward because his chair was so close to the table. He’d gotten about halfway when the stylist grabbed the back of his neck and pulled him aggressively to her lips. The kiss had been awkward, but long.
When he came home that night Lillian was asleep. He planned to tell her about the occurrence the following morning, but she’d seemed bothered about something already. He figured she was down about her lack of success with the local galleries this season and he didn’t want to add any further stress. He’d decided instead to call their friend Cretia from work and get her advice as to the best way to explain the whole ridiculous situation. The next day he had a series of meetings and got lost in editing his paper. It wasn’t until he returned home that night to a dark house that he called Cretia.
***
It has been a long time since Lillian has been to this kind of a bar. A bar with class. Sometimes Perry, Cretia and she go down to a local pub for a Rolling Rock and a basket of chips. But nothing like this. The walls are textured and painted different colors: yellow with an ivory wash bordered by a blood red trim. The ceiling is sky blue with clusters of tiny stars around each mini chandelier. There are a few silver stools at the main bar. The rest of the space is filled with enormous plush armchairs set up in pairs with knee-high tables between them.
An arm shoots up and waves from the depths of an armchair. She recognizes the tattoo.
“I didn’t think you’d show.” Andy raises a brow.
“I'm a sucker, what can I say.”
They drink gin and tonics. They share a large plate of steamed mussels. They bump each other’s feet under the table. They drink more. They no longer bump each other. They wrap their legs together into one long vine and don’t pretend it’s an accident.
“When do you see the universe?” Lillian reaches over as she speaks and without thinking, wipes a piece of lime pulp off his face. Husband-Wife habit.
“When and where?” He grabs her hand from his cheek and guides it back to the table to rest with his awhile.
“Oh me? At night and in the bathroom the world opens up and seems preposterous.”
“I prefer to keep my eyes closed to those kinds of things.” His fingers are moving up and down on the inside of her palm. Lillian learned in middle school that this means: I want to have sex with you.
“No. Wide open. The world might swallow us otherwise.”
“Yeah. That old universe.” He motions to the bartender to bring them another round of drinks. “No, I see what you’re saying. It’s like the night is a canvas of potential.”
“Not really.” She feels terrible. Every time Andy’s finger runs the length of her palm lattice shapes shrink smaller and smaller.
“Well, You are what’s wide open. How about we go for a drive?”
Who does his wife think she’s fooling? He says she’s lost all sense of adventure. A woman should really be able to sense when she’s a goner.
***
Perry had listened to Cretia as he sat on the stool by the kitchen phone untwisting the white spiraled-cord trying to make all the spirals go the same way. Cretia explained that she couldn’t have known it was true since it was a ritual for Lillian and her to phone each other during the day and pretend they had turned into people they weren’t.
Just the week before Cretia had called Lillian with a tale about pricing mini vans. It was imperative not to break character and she’d ended the conversation saying she had to go steam some brussel sprouts for her imaginary kids who were coming home from the Academy. When Lillian mentioned the impetus for the affair was seeing Perry with some Newbury Street stylist of all things, she’d thought that was particularly brilliant and had accepted being trumped.
***
Andy drives Lillian away from the city. Past the lights and the fine dining. Past the roads that don’t make sense because they switch names right in the middle of themselves. Past the unending construction of everything being put underground. They are headed towards Route 2. They are going west. Like bad pilgrims, they want too much from life.
Andy is saying something about North Adams being basically a white trash town and the arts being revitalized and why is that? He is talking about hiking and birds. He is talking about planes now too and their relationship to birds’ wingspans, and he seems to be making very little sense. As they begin their ascent into the Berkshires, Lillian can see the towns getting smaller below them. The windows are open just a crack and the sound of the wind is moaning through. Lillian’s mind wanders away from Andy’s voice into the imagination of her plan:
She will do what she has to do to be okay. She will get even. She will go to a motel with Andy and sleep with him and try her best to enjoy it (although she will spend the whole time thinking of diseases and her dead baby). Then she will return to Perry and say, “I know about you and the beauty school dropout.” And he will deny it and look dumb and she’ll say, “Don’t worry, chance has it, I was having an affair too.” And he will be pleasantly shocked and she will feel good to know she has surprised him. Maybe he will tell her she was being completely unpractical. She will ignore this, but smile to herself while she undresses. Because she knows they will never leave each other. She is The Wife. She holds his secrets. She knows he’s anal when it comes to underwear—he always hand washes. She holds his history. They are each other’s reference. Each other’s conscience. And she will stay with him because she knows that maturity doesn’t develop in a linear fashion but rather shoots back and forth like a rubber band, depending on the events and people that come along. She sees all this now. And she will win as she slips out of her underwear and feels his eyes all over her. Then she will cover her freezing arms, make a big pot of lentil soup and they will go on, just like they always have, in spite of all of this.
Andy’s voice is suddenly very loud, “Hey! Your purse is ringing.”
Lillian looks down into her lap and remembers the cell phone—planted in her purse like a secret tracking device.
“Are you going to answer it?”
How can she answer it? What will she say to Perry that makes any rational sense? He will say, “Lillian, where in the hell are you?” And he will sound like a broken sailor home from sea. The sound of his voice will be enough. She will want to go home immediately. She will want to talk this whole thing out like adults.
“Do you want me to answer it?” Andy is being funny.
There is a heavy force field closing in. She prepares to answer. She must answer the phone. She will not cave. She will be nonchalant. Steadfast. Pragmatic. Everything she is best at.
“Lillian here.” While she speaks, Lillian shifts her gaze onto the road ahead of them curving. But why is the car going straight?
“Hey!” Lillian whips her head around.
Without time to question or argue, the car is over the edge of a mountain.
***
The last thing Lillian saw was not the road in front of her ending, but something else. The feeling of terror came to her in an image: A ball with seven points, actually more like the shape of an egg. It was covered in sharp 3D triangle-shaped prongs, golden. The whole thing was golden except for the tips of the triangle-prongs, they were tarnished, soot-covered, or like rubbed off paint exposing black. This is the last thing she saw before the back wheels spun off the there-ness of the road to meet only air.
At least this is what, all these years later, Perry tells people she might have seen. His wife had always described this shape to him when she was trying to explain the feeling of terror that came sometimes at night. It comforts him to imagine it. It’s also easier to tell people this than to admit to the sound that haunts him. It is a sound that he wishes he could push out of his memory. Maybe it was right before the tires left the road. Or maybe right after. It was before the cell phone cut out and before the cars came and another phone call from an officer and the whole story unfolding. It was definitely before all this that he heard her. It was a haughty breath. An exasperated, short airy noise. A noise Lillian made many times. In his ear. Behind his back. Over his shoulder. In his mouth. It is this sound that knocks around in his brain every day. A sound he never thought much of. A sound that mostly vexed him and sometimes pleased him but either way was always in the background. This, despite his continuing efforts to drown it out, is what he will never be able to forget. The simple sound of sound.
For further reading on Synesthesia:
Cytowic, Richard E., M.D. The Man Who Tasted Shapes. New York: G.P. Putnum’s sons, 1993.
Cytowic, Richard E., M.D. Synesthesia: Phenomenology And Neuropsychology, A Review of Current Knowledge. Psyche, an interdisciplinary journal of research on consciousness: http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v2/psyche-2-10-cytowic.html, 1995.