Sound Track
By Julie Benesh
After we got married at the end of our sophomore year at Northwestern, my grades, went up but Arnold’s went down. I majored in communications, and minored in English and he typed my papers, and edited as he went, probing my dreamy discursions for logic, consistency and depth, like the scientist he was. We’d met as work-study students at the library — I noticed him when I overheard a coworker loudly exclaiming that the only thing that kept her from getting depressed was Arnold. He noticed me noticing.
Every morning Arnold would play a little Mozart, a little Bach, and a little ELO on the stereo; it reminded me of how my mother would always sing random songs as she swept or made pancakes in the morning while I was growing up — half a decade or less before. What never varied in Arnold’s selection was Mr. Blue Sky, that exultant, synthesized power ballad; deceptive becase when you really listened to the lyrics the message was something like a dirge, a momento mori, hangover or an antidepressant with serious side effects. I didn’t comment on his choices, or Mom’s because music always felt private to me — I myself never listened to my own selections without headphones.
Our block in Rogers Park was what they called bohemian. Mature trees, dark brick buildings with flat roofs, lots of neighborly diversity. A Pulitzer Prize-winning poet lived unostentatiously around the corner. He walked around with a dreamy smile — high on life, natural herbs, or pharmaceuticals?, we’d joke — and we referred to him as our Uncle Oscar, considering him our good luck charm.
Our apartment, in a 100 year old building, was more shabby than chic, and I kept my three pairs of jeans, seven T-shirts and four sweaters in a cardboard wardrobe; Arnold just kept his array of blue and gray plaid flannel shirts on a hanger on a hook on the wall and his three pairs of Levis and rainbow of polo shirts folded on the floor. There was a coin operated washer and dryer in the basement. I told Arnold sincerely that it was the nicest place I had ever lived, and overheard him repeating that to his parents on the phone, probably because by Lake County standards they thought we were flopping in a crack house, although god knows what my guileless remark made them think about me and my (lack of) pedigree, despite the fact that I’d somehow gotten into such a good school.
We had no air-conditioning and kept the windows open all the time in the summer. A little boy of about three or four who lived in the building next door would ride his Big Wheel down the sidewalk for hours, and around the paved path between our buildings, then down the alley and back around. The rattle provided a lulling white noise as we ate our nightly dinners off the folding card table — Campbell’s Chunky Soup six times a week, takeout on Sundays. Its hypnotic effect was amplified by what happened before dinner; while the soup was on low we would strip down and hop into bed for dreamy discursions; logic, consistency and depth. It was the best part of both our days. We called it “making soup.”
Big Wheel boy looked like a miniature man and one evening as I was walking by he hopped off kicking at me and flailing his tiny fists yelling, “Bitch! Slut! Ho!” I whirled around and gasped, not knowing whether to laugh, cry or run. He hesitated a moment but did not retreat, and I hurried up the stoop and stumbled in the door, locking it behind me. I ran a plastic tumbler of water, my hands shaking, and drank it down.
When Arnold got home less than an hour later I told him what happened. “Is that how his Dad talks to his mother?”
“Maybe it’s how his mother talks. We don’t know.” He stroked my arm. “But you have that magic ring to protect you.” He patted my nested golden bands, one with miniscule diamond chip that we’d bought with our pooled together work-study money. “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure it never happens again.” He pulled me in for a hug.
After a moment he got up to put on some music — Dire Straits’ “Why Worry,” a kind of lullaby he always played when I was upset, and he pulled me up to we dance me around the room until it was time to make soup.
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The next day when I got to our block Big Wheel was doing his circuit, but when he caught sight of me he pedaled off in the opposite direction. I let myself in where Arnold was studying at the card table. “Are you ok?” He sounded both concerned and confident, and I wondered if he’d been looking out the window.
“Fine. Big Wheel avoided me.”
Arnold looked smug but remained silent.
“Did you say something to him?”
“I asked him if he chased anyone yesterday and he said yes. I asked him if it was a girl and he said yes. I said that boys were supposed to respect girls and also that girl was my wife and ‘if you ever go near her again, I’ll have to hurt you… really bad. Do you understand?’”
“Jesus!”
“Well, you gotta be firm! Now, shall we make us some… soup?”
Pulling off my clothes I suddenly remembered the time I saw Antidepressant Arnold laughing, chasing a squirrel through the Quad, as if it were an understanding pet, and then some coed yelling at him like he was a terrorist, and my mingled feelings of shame and shocked, vicarious defensiveness, like he was my innocent child. I shook my head.
Big Wheel never bothered me again.
We’d live in nicer and nicer places. I don’t eat soup anymore. I still dream of Uncle Oscar and I listen to the music in my head; no need for headphones.
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Julie Benesh’s writing has been published in Tin House Magazine, Bestial Noise: A Tin House Fiction Reader, Crab Orchard Review, Florida Review, Gulf Stream, Berkeley Fiction Review, Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Bridge, and other places. She earned an MFA in fiction from Warren Wilson College, lives in Chicago and is a professor and program director at a school of professional psychology.
