Does Not Love

A NOVEL

D O E S JAMES TNAOD TD

L O V E ADCOX

" J a m e s Ta d d A d c o x i s a c u r ato r o f t h e c u r i o u s a n d t h e i nt i m at e , the real and the surreal. More t h a n a ny t h i n g , A d c o x i s a w r i t e r w h o k n ows h ow to m a k e t h e reader believe the impossible, i n h i s c a p a b l e h a n d s , i s a lw a y s p o s s i b l e , a n d t h e o r d i n a ry , i n h i s e l e g a nt w o r d s , i s t r u ly  e x t r a o r d i n a r y . "

— R o x a n e G ay , n e w y o r k t i m e s b e st s e l l i n g a ut h o r o f B a d F e m i n i st a n d A n U nta m e d S tat e

" I N J A M E S TA D D A D C O X ’ S F I R ST N O V E L , D O E S N OT LO V E , M A R I TA L LO V E D I S I N T E G R AT E S F O R C O M P L E X T I M E - T E ST E D R E AS O N S — B U T T H IS R E E L I N G C O U P L E I S PA C K A G E D I N A GRITTY CONTEMPORARY MILIEU WITH PHARMACEUTICAL HUMAN GUINEA PIGS RUN AMOK UNDERGROUND, AND A N F B I A G E N T B OT H C R E AT I N G A N D PA R T I C I PAT I N G I N S & M S E X TA P E S W I T H A L I B R A R I A N STA G G E R I N G IN GRIEF OVER HER NUMEROUS M I S C A R R I A G E S . A S W I R L O F C U LT U R A L S AT I R E A N D PA L PA B L E PAT H O S . "

— C R I S M A Z Z A , A U T H O R O F VA R I O U S M E N WH O KNE W US AS GIRLS AND IS I T SE XUAL HARASSMENT YET?

"this is a brisk and biting novel, i t s h o r r o r s r o i l i n g b e n e at h a p h a r m a c e ut i c a l to n e . A d c o x d e f t ly s i t u a t e s m a r i t a l t u r m o i l w i t h i n t h e c o n t e x t o f c u lt u r a l tu r moil, m a k ing Does Not Love a d o m e st i c n o v e l f o r o u r t i m e s . "

— C h r i sto p h e r B a c h e l d e r , AUTHOR OF U.S.!

"Not s ince Don DeLillo's Whi te Noise h as a novel m a de me feel a s t h o u g h t h e E a rt h ' s a x i s h a s t i lt e d a h a i r t h e w r o n g w a y .

T h i s n o v e l i s b o t h d e a d p a n f u n ny a n d s i n i st e r , w r i t t e n i n p r o s e t h at ' s c o o l a n d c r i s p : a s m a rt page-tu r ner. I t's as tho ugh R e v o l ut i o n a ry R o a d h a d b e e n written by Denis Johnson, and t h e n s o m e m e n a c i n g F B I a g e nt s were thrown in. Three wor ds of a dv ice: Rea d this book."

— j o h n m c n a l ly , A U T H O R O F af ter the wor ks ho p

A NOVEL

D J AOM EE S S TNAOD TD AL DOCVOEX

CURBSIDE SPLENDOR PUBLISHING

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of short passages quoted in reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All incidents, situations, institutions, governments, and people are fictional and any similarity to characters or persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

Published by Curbside Splendor Publishing, Inc. , Chicago, Illinois in 2014.

First Edition Copyright Š 2014 by James Tadd Adcox Library of Congress Control Number: 2014948798 ISBN 978-1-940430-23-2 Edited by Jacob S. Knabb Designed by Alban Fischer Manufactured in the United States of America.

www.curbsidesplendor.com

DOES NOT LOVE

I

DOES NOT LOVE

V iol a is s i t t ing

on the examination table at

the doctor’s office in a green dress with an empire waist and sky-blue shoes. She is thinking about floating up through the ceiling of the doctor’s office. She is thinking about passing through the clouds then coming to the edge of the earth’s atmosphere and then continuing onward, past the rim of debris caught in the earth’s gravitational pull, past the meteors and the asteroids and so forth, she’s not picturing the details too clearly now, past the moon and the earth-like planets, past the unearth-like planets, out of the solar system. Her husband Robert is holding her hand.

DOES

This is their third miscarriage. Robert is wearing

NOT

wrinkle-free gray slacks and a wrinkle-free white

LOVE

shirt. The doctor is telling them about how it is possible to have a healthy child even after multiple miscarriages.

13

“Spontaneously abort,” is the term for what Viola’s body does and has done with the pregnancies.

There is not always a good explanation for it, the JAMES TA D D ADCOX 14

doctor explains.

They are cursed, Viola thinks, Viola and Robert and the doctor, to repeat this scene over and over, like ghosts replaying the circumstances of their untimely deaths.

Viola and Robert have a fight in the parking lot of the doctor’s office, except that it’s not a fight, because Robert is being too reasonable. That’s how Robert gets when he’s upset: too reasonable. “It would make me feel a hell of a lot better if just for once you’d raise your voice,” Viola says.

“I’m not going to raise my voice,” says Robert.

Viola wants to go back inside and tell the doctor to get the damn thing out of her. “Then we should go back inside and talk with the doctor,” Robert says. “We should discuss our options.”

“It doesn’t make any sense to have the doctor get it out of me,” Viola says. “It’s an unnecessary procedure and potentially damaging to my health.”

“That’s true,” Robert says. “I mean that may be true. The part about it being potentially damaging to your—” “I don’t have diabetes,” Viola says. “I don’t have heart disease, or kidney disease, or high blood

pressure or lupus. My uterus contains neither too much nor too little amniotic acid. I don’t have an imbalance of my progesterone nor a so-called incompetent cervix. I have had ultrasounds and sonograms and hysteroscopys and hysterosalpingographys and pelvic exams. I have eaten healthy.

I have exercised. I have refrained from tobacco and alcohol and caffeine. I have taken folic acid and aspirin and—” Viola starts crying, standing there in the parking lot.

“You’ve done everything exactly right,” Robert says.

“I know that,” Viola says. “That is what I am trying to tell you.”

During the drive home, news helicopters fly overhead. On the radio there’s a story about another shooting downtown. Outside their windows, rough parts of Indianapolis stream by.

DOES NOT LOVE 15

JAMES TA D D ADCOX 16

O n t h e m i d d ay n e w s

the governor of the state

of Indiana discusses the downtown shootings. “We will not stand for them,” the governor says. “These shootings. They will not be stood for.”

“Is it true that all of the victims have been associated with the pharmaceutical industry?” asks a reporter.

“I didn’t say it was time for questions,” says the governor.

“Is it true that the shooter was dressed in what appeared to be a fake fur coat and black goggles, brandishing two silver pistols that glowed in the moonlight?”

“No questions,” the governor says.

The governor and his retinue fold themselves back into the governor-van, and they remove themselves from the press conference.

“Was that ‘no questions’ or ‘no question’?” the anchor asks, from his desk at the studio.

“I believe it was the former, Bill.”

The wind picks up throughout the city, a great whistling through trees and between buildings.

DOES NOT LOVE 17

JAMES TA D D ADCOX 18

V i o l a ’ s a u nt a n d u n c l e

arrive from North

Carolina. They are prepared to do whatever they can to help. What is there to do? Viola presses her face into her aunt’s bony shoulder. Viola’s huge uncle walks around the house, testing the structural integrity of the walls. Robert returns from the grocery store.

“I bought a baked chicken,” Robert says. “It’s . . .

I don’t know. Normally I would cook something but . . . ” Robert removes the baked chicken from its plastic container and puts it on a serving dish, which he places on the carved walnut dining table.

He adjusts it. “There,” he says.

Viola’s aunt and uncle encourage her to eat.

“Eat, baby, eat,” they say, rubbing her back, stroking her hair. Viola looks down at the baked chicken.

Viola’s uncle asks Robert what he thinks about

the secret law. “I’m in favor of it,” Viola’s uncle explains. “I might not be in favor of it under other circumstances, but these are difficult times.”

“Is it about to come back up for a vote?” Robert asks.

“It is unclear whether the secret law requires a vote, constitutionally speaking. Or whether the secret law can be said to be governed by the constitution at all. There is, perhaps, a secret constitution, corresponding to the secret law. One might go so far as to suppose the secret law’s existence to create a secret constitution, through the rules of logical implication. Though I’d expect you know more about that than me . . . ” “I don’t work in secret law,” Robert says. “I do corporate litigation.”

“How is the corporate litigation world these days?”

“Complicated.”

Viola stays in bed for an entire day. She looks at the blinds. I’ve never liked these blinds, she thinks.

Bamboo. They don’t go with anything else. Why do

DOES

we have these damn blinds.

NOT LOVE 19

JAMES TA D D ADCOX 20

V i o l a a n d h e r a u nt

get drinks at a coun-

try-western themed bar in a strip mall near the actual mall. There are cactus-shaped strings of lights hung from the ceiling and the servers are dressed in cowboy boots and western-wear shirts with name tags on them. Stuffed vultures perch atop plastic tombstones lining the wall.

Viola still looks pregnant. The blond waitress who comes to their table stares at her belly, dubious. According to the doctor, Viola’s body should expel the child naturally in several weeks. “I don’t want to expel the child naturally,” Viola says, slightly drunk. “I want it out of me.”

Several nearby patrons glance over. “My womb is become a grave,” drunk Viola says, trying to be quieter.

“What?” says her aunt.

“My womb is become a grave.”

Viola’s aunt, who never had kids of her own, helps Viola into the car.

“My womb is become a grave,” Viola, still a little drunk, whispers to Robert in bed that night.

“Stop it,” Robert says. “Your womb is become no such thing.”

The next day Viola heroically cleans the bathroom.

Every night for a week after that Viola dreams about giving birth to her dead child. Or, it appears dead, at first, but after a moment it coughs, rubs its eyes, and crawls from the doctor’s hands up onto her belly.

“I thought you were dead,” Viola says.

“Oh sure,” says her son. “I was. But according to the ancient laws of pregnancy, after three times, something is born. You can’t expect to give birth three times without something being born.”

“I suppose not,” Viola says. Sometimes, in the dream, she’s back in North Carolina, on the coast, where she lived as a girl with her aunt and uncle, and everything around her has once more been

DOES

flattened by Hurricane Diana. Other times she’s

NOT

walking through downtown Indianapolis late

LOVE

at night when the first contractions hit, and she gives birth surrounded by empty corporate towers and closed restaurants, terrified that some-

21

thing or someone will swoop down on her and steal her child before it has the chance to speak.

JAMES TA D D ADCOX 22

The chief of pol ice

says, “This is my good

friend John T. Rockefeller, from the FBI. He’s here to tell us what the FBI is going to do.”

A clean-cut man in a dark suit approaches the microphone. He smiles at the representatives of the media, then assumes a serious expression.

“Primarily, the FBI is going to investigate. That’s something that the FBI is very good about. The FBI has labs like you wouldn’t believe, full of technologies so new they don’t even have names yet, and we bring the full weight of this technology to bear on investigating. Plus, the FBI can fit into very tight spaces. Any space large enough for the FBI to get

DOES

its head into, it can fit into that space. You might

NOT

think that you have hidden something very well—

LOVE

someplace that you feel no one in a hundred years would think to look—underneath a floorboard, or sewn into the bottom of your mattress, or inside

23

a crack in the wall of your house leading, so far as you know, only to the terrifying emptiness beyond.

In all likelihood, the FBI has already found it. The FBI JAMES TA D D ADCOX 24

will squirm into those spaces you thought forever hidden, and we will find what you have put there.

And then we will test those things, in our labs.

“Of course we welcome and even expect the good-faith efforts of local and state police to assist us in these endeavors, keeping always in mind that, no matter how crude their efforts may appear in comparison, we think of them nonetheless as our ‘brothers in enforcement’ and fellow upholders of the Law . . . ”

“ I wa nt to b e k i n d

towards you,” Viola says to

Robert. Robert is cutting up a tomato for a tomato sandwich. “Ultimately this is your loss, as well as mine. But I’m not sure if I have enough kindness right now to show towards both of us.”

“I get that,” Robert says. “That makes sense.”

“In the future I will probably be kinder,” Viola says.

Robert and Viola eat the honestly somewhat disappointing tomato sandwiches that Robert fixed. The tomatoes were beautiful, but not delicious. Later, they drive to a home furnishings store. They wander through aisles full of pepper

DOES

grinders and salt grinders and ironing boards

NOT

and extra-thick “European-style” towels. Viola

LOVE

keeps wanting to buy things that don’t go with anything else in the house. “Where would we put that?” Robert says.

25

“I don’t know, Robert, I don’t know. What difference does it make?”

Robert doesn’t have an answer for this.

JAMES TA D D ADCOX 26

Inevitably they buy something. Viola holds the pillow that doesn’t go with anything else in the house in her lap on the drive back, and she imagines herself slowly, over the course of months or years, replacing everything in the house with something else, even the floorboards, even the walls.

a c k n o w l e d g m e nt s

Selections from this novel, some in altered form, have previously appeared in The Collagist, Atticus Review, and Red Lightbulbs.

DOES NOT LOVE 29

J a m e s T a d d A d c o x ’s work has appeared in

TriQuarterly, The Literary Review, PANK, Barrelhouse, Mid-American Review, and Another Chicago Magazine, among other places. His first book, The Map of the System of Human Knowledge, a collection of linked stories, appeared in 2012 from Tiny Hardcore Press. He lives in Chicago.

THE OLD NEIGHBORHOOD A NOVEL BY BILL HILLMANN

“A raucous but soulful account of growing up on the mean streets of Chicago, and the choices kids are forced to make on a daily basis. This cool, incendiary rites of passage novel is the real deal.” —IR VI NE W ELS H , A U T H O R O F TRAINSPOTTING A bright and sensitive teen, Joe Walsh is the youngest in a big, mixed-race Chicago family. After Joe witnesses his heroin-addicted oldest brother commit a brutal gangland murder, his friends and loved ones systematically drag him deeper into a black pit of violence that reaches a bloody impasse when his eldest sister begins dating a rival gang member.

ZERO FADE

A NOVEL BY CHRIS L. TERRY “Humor, sadness, confusion, joy, revelation. It’s all here in Terry’s first novel, a novel that is practically carbonated, how it sparkles and burns.” —LI N D S AY H U N T ER , A U T H O R O F UGLY GIRLS Thirteen-year-old Kevin Phifer has a lot to worry about. His father figure, Uncle Paul, is coming out as gay; he can’t leave the house without Tyrell throwing a lit Black ‘n’ Mild at him; Demetric at school has the best last-year-fly-gear and the attention of orange-haired Aisha; his mother Sheila and his nerdy best friend David have both found romance; his big sister Laura won’t talk to him now that she’s in high school; and to top it off, he’s grounded.

MEATY

ESSAYS BY SAMANTHA IRBY “Raunchy, funny and vivid . . . Those faint of heart beware . . . strap in and get ready for a roller-coaster ride to remember.”

— KIRKUS REVIEWS

Samantha Irby explodes onto the page with essays about laughing her way through a life of failed relationships, taco feasts, bouts with Crohn’s Disease, and more. Written with the same scathing wit and poignant bluntness readers of her riotous blog have come to expect,

Meaty takes on subjects both high and low—from why she can’t be mad at Lena Dunham, to the anguish of growing up with a sick mother, to why she wants to write your mom’s Match.com profile.

LET GO AND GO ON AND ON A NOVEL BY TIM KINSELLA

“I give Kinsella a five thousand star review for launching me deep into an alternate universe somewhere between fiction of the most intimate and biography of the most compelling.”

— DE VE NDR A B ANHAR T

In Let Go and Go On and On the story of obscure actress Laurie Bird is told in a second-person narrative, blurring what little is known of her actual biography with her roles as a drifter in Two Lane Blacktop, a champion’s wife in Cockfighter, and an aging rock star’s girlfriend in Annie Hall. Kinsella explores our endless fascination with the Hollywood machine and the weirdness that is celebrity culture.

"Adcox's Does Not Love is a book I d i d n ' t t h i n k wa s p o s s i b l e : a p e r f e c t b a l a n c e o f r e l at i o n s h i p d r a m a , b i t i n g s o c i a l s at i r e , a n d n o i r t h r i l l e r . T h e sto ry m o v e s at a q u i c k c l i p , s k i p p i n g s e a m l e s s ly f r o m m o m e nt to m o m e nt . N o t u nt i l t h e l a st p a g e , d i d I c o m e u p f o r a ir, look behin d me a n d won der, ' H o w d i d h e p u l l t h at o f f ? ' "

— j a c j e m c , A U T H O R O F A D i f f e r e nt B e d E v e r y N i g h t a n d M y O n ly W i f e

" L i k e t h e i n st r u c t i o n a l D V D o n r o u g h s e x wat c h e d b y i t s m a r r i e d p r o ta g o n i st s , J a m e s Ta d d A d c o x ' s D o e s N o t L o v e sta rt s g e nt l e , t h e n b u i l d s to h i g h e r i nt e n s i t i e s . A f u n ny - s a d sto ry o f t h e h e r o i s m o f r e ta i n i n g h u m a n e m o t i o n s i n a s o c i e t y q u i c k to p at h o l o g i z e t h e m , t h i s n o v e l l o o k s h a r d at the possibilities and e m pt i n e s s e s o f l o v e . "

— k at h l e e n r o o n e y , A U T H O R O F O, De mocr acy!

" L i k e o u r b e st c o nt e m p o r a ry w r i t e r s , J a m e s Ta d d A d c o x s e e s t h e p r e va i l i n g g r ay o f t h e a g e , t h e m a p s d r a w n w i t h f u z z y , e va p o r at i n g b o r d e r s , a n d t h e h i l a r i t y t h at r e s u lt s f r o m o u r i n st i t ut i o n a l i z e d ab use of l a ng u age. Lucky for us, h e h as t h e p h i lo so p h ica l c h o ps to c o n f r o nt t h e m . C a n " b e t r aya l " e x i st i n s u c h a r e a l m o f g r ay ? " P lot " ? Y e s , no , i t d e p e n d s . I n D o e s Not Love collus ion is a r egime, sexu a l i t y is v iolence, a n d h u m a n e mot ion lu r ks l ike a da r k-su i ted g o v e r n m e nt a g e nt . B r i l l i a nt , c u m u l at i v e , a n d s u r p r i s i n g , A d c o x ' s d e b ut n o v e l r e p r e s e nt s a r a r e a n d va l u a b l e t h i n g : a l o v e sto ry t h at succeeds in ch a nging yo u r m in d." — k y l e b e a c h y , a ut h o r o f T h e S l i d e

" J a m e s Ta d d A d c o x ' s p r o s e i n D o e s N o t L o v e i s s pa r e , p r e c i s e , a n d e l e g a nt , n o t u n l i k e t h e s u b t l e t i e s i n e m o t i o n a l d i st r e s s t h at h i s c h a r a c t e r s u n d e r g o i n t h i s g r i p p i n g n o v e l . L o st l o v e , l o st a l m o st - l i v e s , p a i n f u l ly l u st y f a nta s i e s , a n d c u lt u r a l c r i t i c i s m a l l p l ay o ut i n t h i s b o o k t h at i s c h a r a c t e r i st i c a l ly f u n ny , i f y o u ' v e a l r e a d y r e a d A d c o x ' s s h o rt f i c t i o n , a n d s u r p r i s i n g ly s o i f y o u h av e n ot . D o yo u r s e l f a favo r a n d g e t sta rt e d h e r e , w i t h t h i s b o o k . " — j a m i e i r e d e l l , a ut h o r o f I Wa s a F at D r u n k C at h o l i c S c h o o l I n s o m n i a c

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NOT

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