waltzed at Sparle’s. In public the welts and hives resurfaced, and that’s when Faith understood that they had not been the physiological effects of love but something much more sinister: an outer manifestation of her inner discomfort; she was not bursting from love but from embarrassment. She suddenly recalled not the rich baritone of Marvin’s young voice as he belted out a soulful version of “My Girl” or the strength of his arm as he held her parallel to the dance floor, but the disapproving stares, the forced smiles, the comments that in retrospect were not as friendly as they had once sounded.
She’d meant to tell Marvin, gently, that she no longer enjoyed his overtures, his overblown displays of affection, but he preempted her. After twelve years and seven months of marriage, twelve years and seven months of wining and dancing and dipping, twelve years and seven months of welts and hives and public inflammations, he fell into a plate of linguini at Marco’s and didn’t get up. Faith blamed herself for the heart attack: she should have watched his drinking, cooked less meat, convinced him to exercise. The day after Marvin’s funeral Faith dragged the industrial trash bin from the garage to the middle of the kitchen floor and chucked into it every bit of food in the house: canned peaches in syrup, frozen T-bones, orange soda, garlic bologna, hamburger buns, even butter. For three days she drank water and ate nothing, unplugged the phone and let the doorbell ring. Then, after she could no longer tolerate her hunger headache, she searched the directory for a health food store and slowly traded her grief for carrot fritters and vegan tacos, Tai Chi and yoga.
She’d forgotten about the hives and rashes until Ed entered her life. They had returned with a vengeance when the neighbors stared over fences to watch her offer Ed a bag of homemade granola or to share the health-food-store circular with him, or even when she climbed into her car to drive to the jail, Ed’s money in hand, as if they knew she was going to fetch the man she thought looked like her former husband, one she might save in place of the one she couldn’t.
FAITH HAD DIPPED INTO ED’S bag twice before, both times after Ed had been dragged in for drunk and disorderly after putting up a stink at the Tap Shoe. This time the sheriff told her to bring twice as much bail money, and she figured as she entered the jail that Ed had moved from being a pain in the ass to full-scale criminality.
“Ed,” she called through the thick iron bars on his cell, but Ed remained a snoring, undulating heap. Faith turned to the sheriff.
“Does he have a car to drive?” she asked, having just then understood that it may have been impounded.
“Yep,” said the sheriff, smirking.
“Is he fit to drive?” she asked, and Waldon nodded as he counted out the money, plunking each bill onto his desk.
“Well, then,” said Faith, “let him.” She turned to leave, and Sheriff Waldon tsked.
“What?” said Faith. “What?”
“He’s a lucky man, Faith. Not many women would put up with him … with this.” He glanced around the small jail and his eyes landed on Ed.
Faith was appalled. “I don’t put up with him,” she said, caressing the rash that had suddenly spread across her right shoulder. “He’s my neighbor, that’s all. I’m just being neighborly.”
“Well, sure,” said Sheriff Waldon. “That’s all I’m saying.”
“Who else has he got?” Faith said defensively, knowing those words would make Waldon think she pitied Ed. But how else could she justify her behavior? How else could she explain her trips to the jail, cash in hand, to bail him out for the third time that month? She could say she was a lonely, pathetic widow with nothing else to do, or she could convince him that she was engaged in a humanitarian effort of the highest sort, or she could say that she was fond of Ed, that the fact that he took the circulars and seemed to at least consider the value of tofu bites had awakened something in her. But all of these things were too close to the truth to admit, even to herself. Damn Ed, she thought as she exited the jail. Damn him to hell.
Faith was in her living room in mountain pose an hour later when she heard Ed’s Buick clanging up the street. She was fully prepared to give him the ultimatum: help yourself or I can’t help you. The night before she’d dreamed about Marvin, who turned into Ed and then back into Marvin so gradually that one man’s head topped the other’s body. She would tell him this, all of it, make him see it her way. She exited her house at a good clip, but when Ed pulled into the driveway she noticed it: he had been in an accident. A strange one. The driver’s side door was caved in, the left front quarter panel was missing, and the antenna was bent double. Still, she stalked across the mowed section of Ed’s lawn toward his driveway with resolve, sensing eyes peering at her from behind curtains and hedges, lawn mowers and garages. As Ed struggled toward the passenger door, muttering and cursing all the way, Faith rubbed the dry patch of skin on her left elbow that had suddenly burst into a flaming itch. The curses rose several octaves when Ed couldn’t force open the door, and when he started kicking at it Faith rushed to his aid.
“Keep your shirt on,” she snapped, and when she looked at Ed through the cracked passenger window she saw a little boy; his clothes were rumpled, his hair a mess and—the most shocking of all—he was crying. She opened the door quite easily and noticed then that the inside handle was missing. Ed stared at the dashboard, breathing heavily, but made no effort to get out of the car. He looked defeated, worn down, resigned to spending the rest of his life perched uncomfortably on the cracked vinyl seat. A few of the neighborhood kids gathered at the foot of the driveway, mouths agape and fingers pointing, and Mrs. Bushnell across the street was on tiptoe, leaning against her broom to get a better view of the mangled carcass of Ed’s car.
“Ed,” said Faith quietly, “let’s get you inside.”
Ed turned to her then, his eyes red and swollen, and sighed. “I can’t,” he said.
“Sure, you can,” said Faith, and in one motion her inflamed elbow was hooked under Ed’s bulk and pulling as if her life depended on it. Ed tapped his feet on the passenger-side mat, as if checking to see if they still worked, and slid them slowly toward the door. After rocking to-and-fro several times, he exited the car on shaky legs and the neighborhood kids started cheering.
Once inside, Faith deposited Ed’s mass on the sofa and then, to avoid giving the neighbors an encore, ran to her house via the back door to retrieve two Edamame Rice Bowls, some mango juice and her arnica gel (surely Ed’s muscles were stiff from sleeping on that rack Sheriff Waldon called a bed). But when she returned to Ed’s place she heard the distant buzz of a beehive, a motorboat: he was snoring into a paisley sofa cushion. Just then it started to rain, and as Faith placed the tube of gel on the coffee table beside Ed she felt eyes boring tiny holes into the small of her back. Turning suddenly, her throat seizing up, she saw it there, not six feet away, its scaly feet and long, threadlike-fingers splayed against the aquarium wall. As Faith approached with trepidation, the tiny creature remained still but for its eyes, which followed her as she inspected its scaly green body, its long, narrow tail, the fringe on its oversized head. “Why, you’re a lizard,” she said. “And you must be a hungry one.”
The cupboard beneath the aquarium was empty, so Faith heated one of the rice bowls in Ed’s microwave before searching his cavernous cupboards for a small container. All she found were two cans of Campbell’s Chunky soup, some Hamburger Helper and a bag of cheese popcorn. Processed food, she thought, would drive anyone to drink; she had to stop herself from trashing it all.
“Here you go, darlin’,” she said as she flipped open the aquarium lid and scooped three teaspoonfuls of rice into the creature’s corroded dish. But it remained immobile, its stony silhouette reflected in the wall of
