Imaginary Men by Enid Shomer

said. "Now bugs. So?"
"So I was eighteen, and I had a white robe and a mortarboard with a gold tassel." He hadn't looked fat in the graduation robe. He'd looked massive, imposing, a walking Greek column. The day came back to him clearly. He could see the old-model cars on the street, big and shiny and black. "It was so hot," Harry said. The day had been all green and gold and white. On the bandstand were two hundred white scrolled diplomas tied with gold ribbons. Nearby, a green-and-white striped pavilion shaded long picnic tables full of iced lemonade, the glasses already sweating in the heat. The principal read the long list of names. It was hard to hear over the racket of the cicadas, the fuzzy gold insects that lived underground for seventeen years at a stretch, then emerged for a month to mate. Harry Goldring , the principal said. "Remember how slowly I walked across the platform?" he asked Bella. "I kept thinking, I'm the first person to graduate high school in the whole entire family. Me. Number one."
"Number one," Bella repeated.
"I remember that Polish girl who was the valedictorian," Harry continued. "She wrote the class motto. 'Each of us will go our separate ways, holding high the banner of excellence.'" Separate ways. He had believed it that afternoon. He had pictured himself living in his own small apartment, riding on trains, going to the movies on his

 

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own. He stared at Bella. "Everything was goldthe drinks, the sun, the cicadas sitting in the trees. Singing. That's a love song, that noise they make"
"I'm getting cold," Bella said. "It's nice you graduated. I'm getting cold just thinking how hot it was that day. A person could have passed out"
"Oh God," Harry cried at the sky. "Why are You letting her interrupt me?" He grabbed Bella by the shoulders. "Don't you understand? That day," he said more quietly, tears springing to his eyes. "That day. I'm telling you everything."
She looked at him blankly. "What?" she raised her voice. "What do you want from me?"
She didn't know. None of them knew. There was a fire in him now. The fat man starving, the shoemaker who goes barefoot. I can't get enough, he thought. Why can't I ever get enough?
"Take me home," Bella said. She looked frightened. He let go of her.
They walked back to the car and got in. Florence and the boys seemed to have stopped breathing.
"I'm begging you, Harry," Bella said, pulling out a handkerchief. "Don't make me go to that place."
"I'm not making you go," Harry answered. "Just promise me you'll try it for six months. Just that long."
The idea of a compromise had obviously not occurred to Bella until now. She took a long time to answer. "No," she said.
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On Monday, Harry went for a checkup. His EKG looked good, blood count completely normal. His pressure was a little high, but nothing alarming. Harry described in detail what had happened on Friday afternoon: the vines turning to snakes, the furniture about to topple, the certain knowledge that he would soon be dead. The doctor said it sounded like a panic attack.
"Do these panic attacks cause heart attacks?" Harry asked.
The doctor said they didn't. Judging from Harry's EKG, he wasn't going to have a heart attack any time soon. Harry was not relieved. The doctor suggested he talk to Toland.

 

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On Tuesday afternoon Harry didn't lie on the couch right away. He sat across the desk from Toland. Toland nodded the whole time Harry talked, writing notes occasionally. "I still feel like I'm dying," Harry said as he finished the story.
"Yes," Toland said. "I can see that."
"You can?"
"It's just an expression."
"Oh."
"Let's try some imaging on the couch," Toland said.
Even as he stretched out, Harry saw himself blanched white as an almond, lying dead on a rug somewhere, looking much heavier than he actually was because in that position the fat spread out. He banished the image from his mind, but it hovered at the edge like a page