Chapter 3: Sardines

A look at the first meeting between Eli and Mel

A guy like me has to be in a very particular place in his life to meet a girl like Melancholy.  I was 23 years old and staying on the sofa at my friend Don’s house. I’d been kicked out by my longtime girlfriend, Eliza.  She said she felt a lapse in our communication when I failed to ask her whether or not she was cheating on me with the neighbours.  It was agreed that we needed some time apart.

The problem with Don’s place was that he kept some fairly questionable company.  He had a hobby that made him very popular with a certain section of the population that I didn’t prefer to associate with myself.  He liked to plan these parties and invite lots of guys.  Some of these guys were around my age.  Some were much older.  Some of them made financial donations to Don’s pocket.  Here were also females at the party: young females.  High school-aged females, females who would be interested in meeting older, sophisticated men.  Of course, they would meet older men here, but not men who were by any definition sophisticated.  Just creepy older dudes.  I was in a bind between my moral objections to the sexual appetites of my fellow dudes, and the desire not to alienate literally the only guy in town who would take me in.  What’s a guy to do?

Being that I had nowhere else to stay that night, Don convinced me that my being there for the party didn’t amount to any sort of guilt by association, a fact I’ve never been able to convince myself is true.  He reasoned that, so long as I kept to myself, I would remain guilt free.  But if I left for the party, I wouldn’t be let back in.

I spent the night hiding behind the couch sighing quietly to myself into a glass of scotch and feeling like I didn’t belong.  I must’ve sighed too loudly though because before long, a pale little face peeked out from the other side of the couch and sang quietly, “Foundjah.  What do I win?”

“Free advice,” I huffed, “You should leave.  Right now.”

“Oh, I know,” she sighed and poured herself over to my side, sitting on the floor next to me, “These guys are so lame and obvious.”

“And creepy.”

“Hey, I go to high school.  All the guys there are creepy, but at least some of them have the decency to be shy and awkward.”

I took a moment and surmised, “You don’t belong here, do you?”

“Nope.”

“So what are you doing here?”

“I’m supporting a friend.”  She gestured toward the kitchenette where a perky but slight-looking blonde teen girl was listening intently as Duane Hoffmeister, 29, went on about the shocks in his truck as if she were bound to be charmed by them.

“That’s Val,” she said, “Valleigh Frobisher.  And as much as I hate her for making me come here, she’s my best friend, so if she want to get slobbered on by a bunch of drunken reprobates so be it, I’m just glad to be out of the house.”  I asked her whether she knew what a reprobate was, and she said she didn’t know.  “So what’s your story?” she asked me, “Why the game of Sardines?”

“I’m stuck here,” I admitted, “And I just want to be left alone.”

“Don’t we all.”  She hoisted her glass for a cheers.  I clinked mine to hers and she gulped her entire drink in one sip.  The aura of vodka clung to her breath as she exhaled.  For the rest of the night we sat in silence and I wondered the entire time if there was something she really wanted to say.  She cast her glance, at one point, over to the doorway where three 18-year-old boys congregated, as if having a bead on the escape route would save them if the police arrived.  They were the ones who had brought the schoolgirls, in exchange for access to Don’s alcohol.  In the livingroom, Duane Hoffmeister attempted a rumba with an unbalanced Valleigh Frobisher, steadying her with his hands on her hips.  She turned away from the scene and asked what made me different from all these other guys.

I told her, “I don’t really want anything to do with you.”

Her left eye twinkled as she said, “I knew there was some reason I found you.  I’m Melancholy.”

Excuse me?

“Melancholy,” she said, “That’s my name.  You call me Mel.”  I didn’t think I would be calling her.  Melancholy Catatonia: one of the all time great accurate names.  Not one for fury or passion, just for quiet, passive disappointment.  “If you don’t want to tell me your name, that’s fine, but if I want it, I’ll get it anyway, so you might as well be polite about it.”

I groaned, “My name’s Eli.  Eli Blightenfeld.”

The silence went crisp again and she stared intently at the wall, most likely, I thought, in her own world.  So much the better, anyplace was better than this party.  I was stuck here though, forced to overhear scraps of conversation, “Oh no kidding, I was a senior there five years ago, is the gym teacher still around?”  “Tell me about your stuffed animal collection.”  “Ever seen a real Camaro?”  I felt an agonizing migraine while the petite girl with dark hair next to me seemed to have escaped to another dimension.  At the time I probably would’ve given anything to crawl in there with her, but now I know that is the last place I’d want to be.  At the end of the night, she shook my hand and told me she’d see me again.  I just nodded and said “sure,” hoping this wasn’t the case, that this truly bizarre encounter was a never-to-be-repeated experience.  That was a year before the DMV and in that time, I learned the entire story of Melancholy.

 

“Eli, I need you.”

It wasn’t a statement I was used to hearing, and not one I knew how to interpret.  Sitting on Don’s couch reading Mrs. Dalloway late one Sunday night several weeks later my cell phone rang with an unidentified number and, not thinking, I answered it to hear that statement.  So I asked, “Who is this?”

“It’s Mel, from the party.  I need your help.”

The party, now a distant, suppressed memory, came crashing back to my memory, the girl behind the couch staring off into space.  “How’d you get this number?”

“I got it by getting it.”  Pause.  “Hello, Eli?  Eli Blightenfield?”

“It’s Blightenfeld,” I said exhaustedly, a pronunciation error that had plagued teachers and acquaintances for years.  “I’m here, what do you want?”

“I need you to come bail me out.”

I sprung up, “You’re in jail?!”

She snorted, “No, but good to know you care.  I’m at the library.  The buses stopped running and I live across town.”

I looked at my watch, “The library?  It’s 11:00 at night.”

“I lost track of time.  And I wasn’t at the library, but it’s where I ended up.”

I sunk back down, “Call your mother.  Or Val.”

“Mom’s busy giving one of her stupid parties, and Val’s grounded for getting a stalker.  You’re the only one I trust.”

“You don’t know me.”

“That’s why I trust you!  Now come get me.”

I closed my left eye and attempted to poke it out with my index finger.

After a moment of quiet, she asked, “Is that a yes?”

“Hunnnh, ten minutes.”

“I’ll be here.”

Some force unknown to man " guilt or social responsibility or fear or curiosity " compelled me off the couch and down into my car, my one asset, which was looking like a better and better alternative to Don’s couch.  Before long I pulled up to the dark, locked-up library flanked on one side by a mechanic and the other by a forest.  It was covered in immature suburban graffiti.  Rain bombarded the pavement.  A dark figure tromped from a payphone booth through the puddles to the passenger side door of my rusty old Plymouth.  Prying at it from outside did no good - I had to kick it open.  She swooped in, her black cardigan and brown hair having sponged up a great deal of rainwater.  She shook a droplet from her brow and wheezed, “Hi.”

Keeping my eyes fixated on the road, I pulled back out from the parking lot.  Knowing it would do me no good to ask what exactly she had been doing at the library, or in its general area, so late on a Sunday night, why she was not at this dinner party her mom was throwing, why she called me when she did, I decided not to ask.  She gave directions and then remarked how little fight I’d put up when she asked me to come out.

“I’m a curious type,” I admitted, “But I know when something is beyond my realm of understanding.”

“You don’t understand me?”

“Women like you are not to be understood,” I opined, “They’re forces of nature, to be weathered.”

“Sounds like you understand just fine,” she said, “But there are no women like me.”

“Not around here, maybe,” I told her, “But there’s a whole world out there full of strange, complicated, inexplicable women.”  I was maybe a bit arrogant thinking that, having spent some time in the city, I’d seen plenty enough to have a good handle on the situation, but the truth was a bit more nuanced than I first sensed.  And I don’t want to puff up the legend of Melancholy by saying she was the most remarkable, individual, fascinating human being that ever lived.  Exaggeration does her no good.  Whatever she is, she is just that.

She said, “Every woman I’ve ever met has wanted to train me to be them.  That’s how I know.  Be fashionable, be Goth, be feminist, be smart, whatever their thing is.”  I surmised her thing was being her, and that was a solitary club.

I told her, “You’re finding your own way.  That’s good.”

“It sucks,” she replied, “But it’s better than the alternative.”

I pulled up to her driveway.  She shouldered the passenger’s side door open and stuck a foot out, looking back to me to grin and say “See you real soon, Eli.”

I wanted to tell her no, not likely, but as I moved to form the words it occurred to me that that was in no way under my control.

 

It was the very next Thursday when I saw her again, this time in an arranged meeting.  The sky was grey but at least it wasn’t rainy.  A late summer fog had settled in on the empty playground where she insisted I meet her as she swayed coldly on a swing.  I sat next to her.  There were two cups of coffee on the ground in paper cups.

“I didn’t know how you take yours, so I put sugar and cream in.”

I took a sip and critiques the concoction, “Too sweet,” I choked on the undissolved sugar granules.

She nodded approvingly.  “Good.  Drink up, Eel.”

Feeling like an old sucker on the swing, I mused, “I used to love these things, as a kid.”

“I didn’t,” she moped, “My dad would push me and push me and I’d go higher and higher, it was practically abuse.”

“I guess that’s one way of thinking of it.” 

“I always dreamed of jumping off at the highest point and falling into the sky.”

The conversation lulled as I sipped and she swayed.  So I asked, “So, Catatonia, eh?  Is that... Greek?”

“It’s made up,” she replied, “My grampa came up with it to get away from his past.  I think he wanted his son to be a supervillain.  Dr. Catatonia...”

“That probably didn’t inspire much confidence in his patients.”

Abruptly changing the subject, she asked, “How about that girlfriend of yours?  Still on the outs?”

 I nodded, “It’s sad how it came to this.  I first met her, two years ago, at University, in a city far from here.  I remember the first time I met her, we were sitting next to one another in class.  She had short, spiky neon green hair and sharp eyelashes.  In the middle of the lecture, she dug into her pencil case and popped a birth control pill right in front of me, I’d never seen anyone do such a thing.”

“How classy.”  She bid me to go on and I kept telling the story until eventually I found myself swept away in the story of my relationship with Eliza, and by the point I started describing, to a rapt audience of one teenage girl, the first time she let her pants slip to the floor of my dorm room, I caught a hold of myself and flashed forward to the present, much to her dismay.

“It was this place,” I sighed, “I brought her back here and she started to change immediately.  Grew her hair out, started wearing pink, stopped listening to Slayer.  I didn’t notice until it was too late and by then... we were doomed.”