What Happened Here?

My father coughs and opens his eyes. “How do you want to remember me?” he asks. He has a tube in vein in his neck, a tube in his nose. These are just the tubes I can see. Others are hidden by the bed sheet. The last few strands of what he once called his Donny Osmond hair fall over his forehead, and I move them away from his eyes.

“How do I want to remember you?” 

“Yeah. Do you want to remember the jerk, or the days when I was a decent man?”

“Dad,” I say. But I can tell from his breathing that he has drifted off.

Later, at home, my wife Cindy asks how things went at the hospital. “He seemed to be comfortable,” I told her. She hugs me, and pressure of her hands on my back feels nice.

We sit down for supper, and Cindy hands me a plate. “Could he talk?”

“A little,” I tell her. I compare the hot roast beef on my plate to the sandwich I’d had at the hospital cafeteria that afternoon, when I’d left my father’s room when my father’s bed and dressings were being changed. “He asked me how I want to remember him.”

“I think that’s sweet,” Cindy says. 

“I didn’t know how to answer.” The kitchen and the food are warm.

“Did he want an answer?” Cindy passes the salt for my green beans.

“He fell asleep before I could say anything,” I tell her. “He was still sleeping when Phil showed up.” Phil is my older brother.

“How nice of him to visit,” Cindy says.

“He’s been pretty good, Cindy.”

“And he makes sure that everyone knows he’s going out of his way to go see his own father,” Cindy says.

“Well,” I say. Phil has never been reliable, but has been trying lately—trying to stay sober, trying to do what he can. My family story is that our men cannot hold their liquor. My father and I learned that early in life, but Phil seems to be more like our grandfathers and uncles, men who drank and didn’t care. They are legendary for how effectively and efficiently they abused anyone who crossed them. Phil and I got lucky in one way because by the time we got to junior high our father had gone sober. Some of our cousins, though, didn’t fare as well.

“When are you going back?” Cindy asks.

“Tomorrow, I think. After work. Phil told me that he’d go again in the morning.”

“You sure he’ll be there?”

“I have to be sure, don’t I? Don’t beat Phil up too much. He’s trying.” I know that Cindy never really liked Phil, and there are good reasons for that. Still, there were a lot of times when I could count on him when I couldn’t count on my father.

“So, what did you tell him?” Cindy asks.

“Phil?”

“Your father. How would you answer?”

“I don’t know,” I told her.

At work the morning Susan, my boss, calls me into her office. “How are you doing with all of this, with your father?”

“Pretty well. I’m headed back to the hospital after work.”

“You can leave early if you need to.”

Years earlier, when Susan was going through a divorce and Cindy and I were having a rough time, we’d gone to the brink of an affair. One day we were in her office, and we decided that we couldn’t go any further. We stepped back from that brink and felt good about it afterward. Susan had let her hair grow out since then, and now was letting it go gray as if challenging the aging process to take its best shot. I liked her confidence.

“Phil should be there now,” I tell her.

“Okay,” Susan says. “I just thought I’d check in with you. I know this is hard. How’s your wife?” Susan had never been able to say “Cindy,” even when their paths crossed.

“She’s fine,” I say. “Helping me get through this.”

Traffic is heavy on the way to the hospital after I leave work, and the fifteen-minute drive turns into thirty. I walk through the lobby and take the elevator to the third floor. I sign in at the counter and get a visitor’s badge. I don’t recognize the young man—maybe a nurse—behind the counter. Over the last few weeks I’ve grown accustomed to the same faces, mostly young women.

The man checks to see whom I’m visiting. “Oh,” he says, looking at me.

I can’t tell if he wants to say anything more, so I walk to my father’s room. Phil’s there, sitting in the vinyl chair that is set too close to the ground. Something’s different in the room.

“Stan,” Phil says, and he stands up and hugs me. He has always been taller.

When Phil lets go, I look at the bed. My father’s eyes are closed, but his mouth is opened slightly. The tubes are gone from his face. “Dad?” I say.

“It happened before I got here today,” Phil says. “Just a little while ago. I told the nurses you were on your way, so they said they’d be back in just a bit.”

“What happened, Phil? What happened here?” I edge by Phil and get closer to the bed so I can touch my father’s face. It is barely warm.

“Look, Stan…”

“Phil? What happened?”

“He did it himself. Pulled the tubes out right before I got here.”

What? Why didn’t somebody stop him?”

Phil points to the sign above the bed. “DNR. You knew about that. And the advance directive. Nobody was supposed to stop him.” Phil had inherited my father’s hair, and he used both hands to pull it away from his face.

I sit in one chair, and Phil sits in the other. I want to cry, but I can’t.

“He was always tough,” Phil says. “I couldn’t do that—take those tubes out of myself.” He sighs. “I wished he’d talked to me, you know? Every day I’ve been here for the past week, he hasn’t said a word.”

I can’t think of a thing to say to Phil. I slide back in the chair and stare at the bed and think about my father’s last question.

Phil sighs again. “He was tough when we were kids, too. Remember the time when we were kids, before junior high, when he chased us out of the house and told us never to come back? He was drunk and pissed.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell,” I say.

“What? How can you not remember that? It was winter, and we were running away. Dad had a baseball bat, or something, and Mom was yelling at him from the front door. We didn’t even have boots on, and my feet were freezing in the snow. You were bawling and wouldn’t stop.”

I look at my father’s body, at its diminished form. I look at Phil, at how unkempt his hair is. “I have to say that I don’t remember anything like that,” I tell him.

Phil looks at me and seems like he wants to ask me a question.

Call and Response: Viewpoints in 100 Words (#14)

His skin was thin, translucent, like ancient parchment under which blue ink was imprinted. When he sat next to me; sunlight through the window made the blue ink beneath his cheek even brighter. As two large women forced their heavy bags into the overhead bins, he seemed amused. Nobody was between us. Later, he declined snacks and beverages, but when the flight attendant brought my ginger ale, he smiled and passed the cup to me, and I felt how cold his hands were. He never spoke. When he slept, his eyebrows lifted slightly, as if he was savoring each breath.

_____

I was used to people staring. I know how I look--fragile, as though something isn't quite right. And things aren't quite right: that nagging pain in my side had quickly turned bad. I knew that the woman sitting in the window seat sensed something. I'd seen her in the airport, how her toenails were painted so beautifully. I'd come to notice such things more over the last ten months of the approximate year they'd given me. I wanted to tell her how wonderful they looked, and to thank her for not pulling away when she felt my cold hands.

Call and Response: Viewpoints in 100 Words (#13)

She was a harpist, and she wore a harpist's clothes. At least, she wore them for her "appointments," as she called them. Not "gigs" or "performances," but appointments. "I have an appointment this Friday," she might say. When it was time to go she'd put on her long black dress and the delicate pearl necklace and earrings. She was gifted, but one poor performance kept her out of Juilliard when she was still in high school. She never let me touch the harp itself. "It's all I've got, really," she once said in a way I knew she didn't mean.

-----

We doted on her and grew to enjoy her music. We even added a room so she could practice. She hardly came out of that room during high school. Frank, her father but no longer my husband, said she was the best he'd ever heard. I told him, If your kid's the only one in the neighborhood who plays, she's bound to be the best. We were happy when she got married, but we worried, too: She loves that instrument more than anything. I still go watch her when I can, but Billy, her husband, never seems to show up.

Call and Response: Viewpoints in 100 Words (#12)

When our daughter was born, I moved my office paraphernalia from her room to the master bedroom. At night, the Moloch of a computer taunted me. When my husband and I made time for sex, if I wasn't distracted by the thought of our daughter waking up, I was distracted by the computer, by the fact that I should be sitting in front of it, writing every night. When I should've been thinking about sex, I thought about writing. Worse, when I did manage to write, I thought about sex. I finally reached a point where I did neither well.

----

She's been distracted for years, and I've always felt that only part of her was with me. "I'm a writer," she explained. "I pay attention to everything. And at some point I'll use it. I remember women's shoes and the color of their toenails, and I notice how people move during their conversations. I can't help it. Everything's fair game." Often, I know she isn't really with me--she's using whatever we're doing for a plot line or a segment of dialog. To her, everyone and everything are pretend. I'd complain, but who wants to read that in a novel?

Call and Response: Viewpoints in 100 Words (#11)

"What is it you want?" she asked in her best monotone. It wasn't a new question. I'd come home from work, dropped my computer bag to the floor, and gone straight to the patio. I hadn't meant to ignore her as I passed through the living room, but what I'd meant to do didn't matter. She stood in the doorway when she asked, and I didn't look back toward her when I answered. "I'm not sure," I said. "I've got nothing to do at work, and that usually means they'll be getting rid of me soon." "Then quit," she said.

----

Every few months it happens: He comes home, sits morosely on the patio, starts to complain but then stops. I can see his father in him when he's like that, how his parents danced the same way sometimes. The old man, when he came home sometimes, stopped himself whenever my mother-in-law sighed at his complaints. I think it must be a German thing, that tendency to dwell silently in those little pools of self-pity but then refuse help or advice from anyone. I was serious the other night when I told him to quit. Christ, one of us has to.

Call and Response: Viewpoints in 100 Words (#10)

It was the first night of autumn. I was half-way home when I finally understood that my marriage had gone from failing to failed. I'd been told that things were over, but like learning about a fatal illness, I'd denied it. At a rest stop, I parked among the diesel rigs. There, I sat and sifted through the cabinets full of stored petty annoyances, frustrating habits, unintentional slights. When they were separated into piles, I tried to assign ownership, but the piles kept falling into each other, and I knew then that there would never be enough highway or darkness.

----

I'm not one for quantification. What's the point? Sometimes--and I said this often--things simply just are. I see everything as organic; everything lives and dies. Frankly, I don't blame either of us--first one stopped trying, then the other one followed suit. And, yes, there's too much blood and time between us to make this easy. When I found the car gone yesterday, I thought things were finished, especially after what I'd said. But after the phone call, I'm not sure of what will happen next. I just sit  watching TV, listening for the garage door to open.

Call and Response: Viewpoints in 100 Words (#9)

It's all about synergy, about realigning our priorities to movements in the marketplace, about adapting as quickly as we can. Now that the teams have merged, we can reassess our respective strengths and find ways to bring them together. Leadership knows that this is a difficult time, but we have to re-focus ourselves and to align our core values--as a corporation, as a team, as individual contributors--and embrace the future. We can't afford to wait, to let the competition pass us. We want to set the trends, not follow them. The next fiscal quarter is crucial to everyone.

-----

We read the memo. Well, we don't get memos anymore; we read the communication. I'm 62. Except for Marie, the people on our team are young, in their 20s and 30s. Marie and I skipped a required meeting and went for drinks that afternoon. We compared our corporate lives, and Marie quoted Neil Diamond: "Except for the names and a few other changes, the story's the same one." We want to tell the kids that they shouldn't be afraid, that no fiscal quarter is more crucial than any other. But we know our fiscal future, so we drank a lot.

Call and Response: Viewpoints in 100 Words (#8)

He said, "I'm a writer." So, because I'd never met a writer, I married him. "You've done some dumb things," my mother said when I called her that night. "You said that when I got a tattoo, Mom. You and Dad made me feel like I'd committed a mortal sin. When I don't do what you and Dad did when you were young, you make me feel terrible." Steve, the man I'd married, was in the other room calling his own parents. I wondered what they were saying. "Has he published?" my mother sighed. "He's working on that," I said.

-----

My wife and I run a small wedding chapel in Las Vegas. We've seen drunks, old people, and high school kids. We don't judge them. People leave here married, but there are no guarantees. Some come back years later to renew their vows.  It's romantic. Steve and Marie were young and had to rent a witness. "Can I make a call?" Marie asked. I let her use my phone. She seemed so happy. She and Steve ran out, though, and Marie hadn't hung up the phone. On the other end I heard a man and woman yelling at each other.

Call and Response: Viewpoints in 100 Words (#2)

Larry Hamlin walked like a duck, and was fat. At least, he was fat when he arrived in California from Texas and an apparent shopping trip to Sears. Larry was crude in a down-home sort of way, a characteristic he never lost even after learning to dress as sharply as the rest of the executive staff, who helped him lose weight. But he brought with him professional connections to an entire grid of electric utilities, a collection of clients the firm would provide consulting services to for many years. And, in the pejorative sense, Larry Hamlin was also a prick.

----

I met Hamlin in Austin. The consulting firm I'd started was growing, and he knew the electric utility business in the South and Southwest as well as anyone. And though he sweated a lot and dressed like an idiot, I hired him anyway. I learned later that he'd walk around the office every afternoon to see who'd left early, and he'd berate his underlings in ways even I hadn't thought of. The engineers who reported to him were unhappy because they worked sixty hours a week, but I didn't care. Hamlin brought in the business, and that's all that mattered.

Call and Response: Viewpoints in 100 Words (#1)

When she was asleep, he would stare at the soft spot just above her left clavicle and watch the pulse. Now and then he would touch the soft skin there and let his forefinger rise and fall with her skin. One night she sat up and turned toward him, but he lay there motionless. "You must have had a bad dream," he said the next morning when she told him she'd looked down at him and for a moment he was someone else. "Someone else?" he asked. "What does that mean?" He could not say anything for hours after that.

----

The apartment had been his before it became theirs, and even after six months she still was not used to the sounds. She was not sure why she woke up that night. There was something there--not quite a dream, not quite a memory. She'd looked at him, how the alarm clock's glow made him appear different. When she told him about it the next morning, she found something else she was not used to: silence. She had always told him everything she felt and thought, but this time she knew that, somehow, she would have to be more careful.

Words Like Love

Something old until something new comes along (fiction)

After six hours of what started out to be aimless driving, I ended up in Bridgeport in front of a combination café and bar called Little Clancey’s, though I was probably headed there the moment I left home. The “Little” on the hand-painted sign had faded, but “Clancey’s” in red letters was bright in a sunrise diffused by thin clouds. I’d traveled through California’s dry central valley, then turned east through Yosemite and finally north on Highway 395, just like we sometimes do when we visit our daughter Becky and her husband Ron in Carson City. By the time I reached Mono Lake, the eastern sky was crimson and I knew that Bridgeport was just north and would be the place to stop.

All four windows of the Impala were open when I rolled onto the gravel in front of Clancy’s, and a cool breeze brushed gently against my bare arms. I used to drink a lot, and when I did every window in the house or car would be shut tightly. The voices, the ceaseless wind, the smells—everything used to bother me. Now, though, working my way through sobriety, I welcome the fresh air and keep at least one window open wherever I happen to be.

“You’ll catch cold,” Nora, my wife of twenty-five years, says when I keep both bedroom windows open all night even in winter.

“Viruses cause colds,” I say as she pulls the heavy quilt closer to her wide chin, “not open windows or even getting your feet wet.” But after awhile she gets up and shuts the windows, caught up in one of my old habits.

I sat in the Impala and thought that Nora would be wondering where I had gone. She’d given up actually worrying years earlier, when I was drunk most of the time and hardly found my way home anyway.

“You could call me if you’re not coming home,” she would plead. “A little respect is all I ask. Just the smallest bit of consideration. Is that too much?”

It was too much, as far as I was concerned at that point in my life, in our marriage. “I’m an adult,” I’d tell her. “I don’t have to check in with you.”

We went on like that until one day Nora quit asking questions. But she would always wonder, even when I left the house last night with her yelling at me. We’d been watching television and a beer commercial came on. I told her that a beer would taste good, a nice cold beer in chilled mug, just like on television.

“A what?” Nora said very quietly. “God damn you, Brian. You go this long without a drink and after all that’s happened and you can still say it so easily, as if it meant nothing to either one of us?”

“I didn’t say I wanted one,” I said loudly. “I just said it would taste good.” I looked down at the worn carpeting in front of the couch, where our feet spend so much time.

And then she yelled about how my father had been drunk for so long that nearly his whole liver was eaten away by the time he died. About how close my drinking had come to killing both her and me, that if she hadn’t been in the car on my last birthday I surely would have died. She stopped yelling when she ran out of breath. Her chest was heaving beneath her lightweight pink blouse. Nora’s eyes were dark with disappointment like they were after Sam Tinker threw me the surprise birthday party, when she came to see me at the hospital. It was two days after I’d lost control of the Ford wagon we owned and Nora and I went bouncing into a large stand of aspens.

“Jesus Christ,” Nora had said after pulling me from the car and cradling my face in her hands. She got only a few scratches across her chin, but I caught the steering wheel with my sternum and then the dashboard with my forehead. For months afterward it hurt even to breathe.

Lying on the grass, I’d looked up at her, feeling her kiss my mouth time after time. Everything was confused, but I didn’t know if it was because of the accident or the pitcher of martinis I’d helped Sam drink earlier that night. It was raining, and drops of cool water were falling from Nora’s hair onto my face. Then everything turned a dark purple and I shut my eyes as Nora’s voice disappeared.

After Nora finally got her breath back last night, she stood from the couch and started in on me again, using words like responsibility and trust and love. So I took my keys from their hook beneath the phone in the kitchen, and I walked out the front door, letting her yell from the front porch as I started the car and left. At the Shell station I filled the Impala and got a cup of coffee, then drove away.

When I stepped into Clancey’s, Maureen was doing the beer orders for the week; I was the only one in the place. I’d met her years earlier, one of the times I’d driven alone to see Becky. Nora travels on her job selling pharmaceuticals to hospitals, so sometimes when she is away I wander. This morning I asked Maureen if she remembered me, but when she said she wasn’t sure, I told her that it made no difference.

Maureen had dark, curly hair and the smooth facial features—thick cheekbones and a mouth burned down at the edges—that I’d found myself falling love with for as long as I could remember. She reminded me of a waitress, a good dancer, that I’d known when I was in the Navy. But then, it seems every woman I’ve either had or desired has reminded me of someone else or the lover before.

“Why’d you come back?” Maureen asked when she filled our mugs with coffee. One coffee pot had DECAFFEINATED stenciled on it in bright orange letters. Some of the letters were partially scratched away, as if the pot had been in use for a long time.

“Restlessness,” I said, wondering if I should say that maybe it was because of her that I’d stopped there.

“How does your wife feel about that?” She gestured with her mug toward my ring finger.

“She understands.” I looked at the ring and tried to think of the last time I’d taken it off.

“You mean, she puts up with it.” She looked at me as if she’d heard lies from men for a long time.

I left the bar after two mugs of coffee, after Maureen got busy with other customers. Wandering around town until lunchtime, I finally stopped at Cleo’s Drive-In, where I ate a chicken-breast sandwich at one of the redwood picnic tables. I watched Maureen come out of the bar across the street, walking toward Cleo’s. She smiled when she noticed me.

“Still restless?” She said after ordering at the walk-up window. Her hair was neat and her legs thin, and I knew that she was the type of woman who took care of herself.

“Yeah,” I said. The Sawtooth Ridge was visible over her shoulder.

“At least you’re eating,” Maureen said. “I haven’t had a customer so early on a Saturday for quite some time.”

“I like coffee after a long drive,” I told her.

She took a bag from the girl at the window just as I finished my sandwich. “You feel better, now that you’ve eaten?”

“I feel good,” I said. “I feel almost....” I paused and looked up at the gray, ragged Sawtooth, trying to think of the right word, the right feeling.

“Almost what?”

“Almost human,” is what I told her. It was the most fitting word I could think of.

She nodded slowly, then followed my gaze up to the Sawtooth. “It’s going to rain. Come over later and I’ll buy you a beer.”

“Thanks,” I said, again thinking that a beer would taste good.

Maureen smiled as she turned and walked back to Clancey’s. I sat at the table and stared at the mountains. The ridge was high, nearly eleven-thousand feet, and I had spent a lot of time hiking in the area when I was younger. Below the ridge itself was Matterhorn Canyon, where a combination of ignorance and exhaustion almost killed me and Sam Tinker both. Just as after the car wreck, it was an experience that left me changed, though it changed me into someone who drank heavily. Though I never figured out why, it was after that when I started believing that nothing I did in life mattered. Most people would have reacted differently, but I just stopped caring about a lot of things.

After Maureen left, I decided to drive to Carson City after all. Becky always appreciates it when her mom and I visit, since she’s so far away from us. She and Ron have a small hardware store, and more than once I’ve helped them stock conduit or boxes and bins of nails.

“Oh, Daddy,” Becky said when I called her from a payphone at Cleo’s. “We’re just on our way out. We need some stuff from a warehouse in Reno, so we’re making a long weekend of it.”

“That’s fine, Becky,” I said, and it really was. “Enjoy the weekend. Maybe Mom and I will drive up next month.” If I had told her how far I had driven that morning, she might have changed her mind.

“Give her my love,” Becky said, and I told her I would.

I hung up the phone and looked at clouds covering the Sawtooth and thought back to when Sam and I got caught in the autumn snowstorm and nearly didn’t make it out. We were carrying neither a tent nor warm clothing, and for a full day we huddled around a small fire and waited for the storm to pass. We never told anyone about it, either, because we knew we’d been fools for being so unprepared. But several times in the years that followed, when Nora and I weren’t even talking to each other, I thought that the mountains might have been the place to die when I had
the chance.

The wind had grown colder, and the clouds had dropped over Bridgeport. I smelled rain as I pulled my windbreaker from the Impala’s trunk. When I got back to Clancey’s for the last mug of coffee, Maureen wasn’t surprised when I said I was leaving.

“I had a feeling you would be,” she said. Her hands were wet from washing glasses in the small sink behind the bar. “I could still buy you a beer.”

“I have a long drive,” I told her. “But I might be back, if you want to save it for me.”

She smiled, showing teeth that were white and straight. “You’ll be back,” she said, though I wasn’t sure how she meant it. I stared at her, but she turned away before I could tell her that she probably was right.

I got home late that night after driving slowly through rain most of the way. The weather didn’t break until I stopped at a mini-mart to buy cherry Lifesavers. Outside the store I saw stars winking through small gaps between clouds sliding across the sky. As I parked the Chevy in the driveway, I slipped a Lifesaver beneath my tongue. Candy had once been a way to hide the smell of what I’d been drinking, but now it just tasted good. When I stepped quietly into the house, I let the last sliver of a Lifesaver drop down my throat. Nora was watching television, and I smelled her lilac perfume, my favorite, as soon as I shut the door behind me.

“You came home.” She didn’t look up. Her feet were propped up on the large footstool we’d bought just a week earlier.

“Yeah. I had some things to work out.” I took off my shoes and wiggled my toes on the carpet.

“We were supposed to go to dinner,” she said, and I noticed then how she was dressed up, still expecting to go out. That was why she was wearing perfume. “We were supposed to eat at someplace nice, and that’s all I’ve been waiting for. I thought you’d be home, so I never cancelled the reservation.”

I didn’t remember anything about dinner, but I didn’t doubt her. “Tomorrow,” I told her. “I forgot. I’m sorry. We’ll do it tomorrow and make it special.”

“Have you been drinking? You’re eating candy.” It was the first time she looked at me since I’d come into the house, and her stare was cold.

“I’ve been driving,” I said, fingering the single remaining Lifesaver in my pocket, wondering how she had noticed the candy from twelve feet away. I thought that even after twenty-five years of marriage it would be nice to have at least one secret, to have something that Nora did not know.

“Nice way for you to show your love for me,” she said plainly. “Skipping dinner for getting drunk. You could have called and then at least I could have eaten here. I could have fixed something instead of sitting here and waiting.”

“I do love you,” I told her. “And I’m not drunk.” But she’d been drinking—a half-full bottle of gin and a glass with ice were on the floor beside the couch. I wondered about the Sawthooth, about whether the ridge was now covered with snow. And I wondered about Maureen and her beer orders, even about what she’d bought for lunch at Cleo’s.

Nora had tried to hide the gin, and I wanted to say that it didn’t matter to me what she did or whether she believed that I was sober. I didn’t care if she was drunk then or drunk for the rest of her life.

“You do love me?” she asked. “You do?” She wasn’t convinced. But she was drunk and nothing would matter by morning. Her perfume was strong, and I wanted it to be stronger yet, to envelope me and the house and all that I knew in its silky embrace.

“I do,” I said, “I really do. You’re a princess.” I thought then that one day soon I would tell her about nearly being frozen in the mountains, about what that experience had done to me.

“Yeah?” She came over to me and took my hand, holding it to the side of her face.

“Yeah,” I said, and I sat down beside her to watch television.

Things We Didn't Say Yesterday #13

In the end, not everything stops

He thought Brussels would be a good place to start--a city more ambiguous than London, not a place where people hide. Years ago in New York City Chris had met Sharon, a Canadian who worked her way through and around Europe sometimes as a waitress but usually as a busker who specialized in juggling and magic. "You learn to work the crowds in one place, you can do it anywhere," she had said. She had told him that the trick was to get the crowd involved physically and engaged mentally. "You get a couple of men in the show," she'd said. "You have them hold something or help in a magic trick. Sometimes I do some stand on their shoulders and juggle, and I try to get them to look up at me. The smart ones, they noticed that I'm wearing a short skirt, and if they look up, they might see something. Sometimes the husbands and fathers look up and I can tell by how they suddenly drop their eyes and look into the audience that they think they'll be in trouble with their girlfriends or wives later, just because they looked. Once when I was drunk during a show--I was a lot younger then--I wasn't wearing anything. It was a stupid thing to do. I'm not afraid to show a little tit now just to keep the guys looking, but I'm not over the top about it. I mean, I am Canadian."

Everything was packed again, though this time he would be putting the boxes and furniture into a storage unit. When he'd given his notice at work and told everyone how the divorce had shown him how he hadn't been happy in his job for a long time, most people walked away as though he'd said he hadn't been happy with them. Rebecca, who was in the initial throes of divorce herself, said that she didn't blame him at all, that if she wasn't taking care of her invalid mother, she'd join him.

Phillip had seemed exasperated about the whole thing. "This doesn't make a bunch of sense, Chris. Europe? Christ, you're not a kid, you know. You're supposed to be mature, contributing to society. That stuff. What the hell will you do in Europe?"

"I really don't know," Chris had told him. "People have been venturing away from home for a long time, haven't they?"

"What about Cindy--you told her?"

"Yeah."

"What'd she say?"

"She said that I should have fun. She said that in the end, not everything stops."

Phillip at looked at him. "What does that mean?"

"I don't know. But it's all she was going to say, and I really don't need her permission."

Phillip knew that Sharon spent part of the summer in Brussels and France, but he didn't think the odds were good at finding her. "Buskers are like gypsies, but we earn a pretty good living," Sharon had said. "We all stay with friends when we can. When I'm in London, I stay with Mike and Tracy. They're great jugglers, and they do tightrope tricks, too. We all go from festival to festival. Mike's the one who taught me about getting the crowd to get as close to us as possible, so we can see their faces. When everything's over and we ask for money, we want them to feel like they know us. Or, maybe that they owe us."

Chris figured that with his savings and the vacation and sick time he'd cashed in at work--not to mention what he'd gotten for selling Cindy's wedding ring--he could travel for at least a year before having to find real work. If he avoided the expensive cities, a year might even be conservative. Now, he looked at the boxes that held his possessions and wasn't sure if he should feel proud or sad at how little he'd accumulated over his lifetime. He had not yet given up the idea of leaving behind some type of legacy, but for the life of him he couldn't figure out what one might be.

"You hate flying, Chris, and you're headed to Europe," Cindy had said during their last phone conversation. "You hate living without a schedule, and you're doing this."

"I'll be okay, I think," he'd told her. "I really do."

Phillip would be taking the boxes to the storage unit, and he already had a key to the apartment. When the airport shuttle arrived and Chris climbed into the blue van, he tried to imagine what would happen next. The driver had his window cracked open, and the warm July air flowed through the van. He thought about what Cindy had told him, that in the end, not everything stops. He missed her, and he often thought that he still loved her. But as the van passed the park where they'd exchanged wedding rings, he barely noticed. He pulled the small Dutch dictionary out of his rucksack, and he leafed through the pages until he found the instructions for saying "good morning."

Things We Didn't Say Yesterday #12

At some point you have to remember I'm not that kind of person.

Everything--and everyone--was now neatly divided. The objects had been easier than the people, some of whom might have struggled when deciding. Looking over the list of guests who had attended her wedding, Cindy found few surprises among the friends she and Chris had once shared. Her friends, naturally, had swung easily to her side, and Chris' friends had done the same. Their mutual friends seemed to have taken one of two routes: Some abandoned her and Chris all together, while others declared allegiance to one side or another.

She and Chris had not spoken in months; they had not even crossed paths though they still lived near to one another. The morning of his birthday she woke up and, still drowsy, found herself considering what type of cake to make. She wondered if she would ever forget his birthday or their anniversary. But, she was happy that the "daze and malaise" had passed, though with her wedding guest list on the table in front of her, she knew she had not severed everything completely. And in the box at her feet were the wedding pictures, the major part of any archaeological record that she and Chris had been married. He had not asked about them, and she did not know what to do with them.

Their last encounter had been in front of Stiller's Ice Cream Emporium. It was a place they'd both frequented before they'd even met, so she did not find it odd that they would meet there. Chris was sitting at a table on the patio, and she had seen him from inside. It would have been easy for her to leave without talking to him, but she no longer felt that she needed to avoid him.

"Vanilla?" she asked. He seemed neither surprised nor perturbed by her presence. She sat across from him.

"I'm a vanilla kind of guy," he said. "Strawberry?"

"Habitually," she said. "How are things?"

He shrugged. "Things are things. My mom died."

"Oh...Chris! I'm sorry. When?"

"Last month."

"Why didn't you call me?"

"Why should I call you?"

"To be considerate. I loved your mother."

He didn't say anything, and she didn't think he was especially pleased by her presence.

"How's your dad?"

"He's fine," Chris said.

"You sound bitter."

"Bitter?"

"Yeah. Bitter. You finally angry with me?"

"Which do you want me to be--angry, or bitter? Take your pick."

"Can't we be pleasant, at least?"

"We could be. We could be pleasant. But I don't know if I'm ready for that."

"That doesn't make any sense, Chris. You told me a long time ago that you weren't angry, that you were doing fine. Why the change?"

He wiped ice cream from his fingertips. "Maybe you've convinced me that I just need to start being honest."

"With you, or with me?"

"Both."

"It sounds like something that counselor told us."

"It could be. I'm seeing 'that counselor' again."

"Why?"

"Just to talk. To have someone tell me that I'm not the reason for all this. At least, not the only reason."

"I never said that you were. Did I? Did I ever say that?"

"No. But it's what you thought--I could tell. I know I wasn't a good husband in a lot of ways, and maybe now I'd be a better one. Little things don't bother me as much as they used to, and I think I understand you more now than I did when we were married."

"Good lord...you really have been getting counseling, haven't you?"

"Yes."

"I've thought about a lot of things too, Chris. I told you all along that you are not to blame. Why didn't you believe me. Why couldn't you believe what I said?"

She watched his eyes as he seemed to consider several answers. His face had changed.

"You never told me that. You should've told me then. I might've believed you then," he finally said.

"Maybe I didn't use those words, but I said it in different ways. At some point you have to remember I'm not that kind of person.

"Which kind of person?"

"The kind of person who would blame you for everything."

"You chose to end things."

"Oh, stop."

"And maybe you should go talk to someone."

"I've got friends to talk to."

"So do I, Cindy. But maybe you need someone to tell you things you don't see and don't want to hear."

"It sounds as though you're blaming me for something."

"I'm not."

"I wish that I hadn't come out here to talk to you. I didn't want this. I don't want this again." With that, she finished her ice cream cone and left.


She dropped the guest list into the box that held the wedding album, set the lid in place, slid the box back into the closet. She thought that she would send the entire box to Chris, that he could carry that burden for awhile. Things had to change some more; she saw that now.

Things We Didn't Say Yesterday #11

It's like happiness

But there were good memories, too.

He was driving toward the park--a neutral location--where they'd decided to meet to exchange rings yet again: his to her, hers to him. A simple reversal. They could then do whatever they wished with the rings. Final dusk was just minutes away, and the western horizon was clear so that long lengths of sunlight could enter through the passenger-side window and illuminate the dashboard. The moon roof was open all the way, and the cool air washed across his face and forehead. As he passed the high school, the cadence of a marching band became loud, then faded. He wasn't sure of how to feel as the high school dropped behind him, but he didn't feel anger. It was more of that post-coital feeling of blended contentment and melancholy. It was an odd feeling that soon enough was gone.

Now, driving, he remembered their first meeting, how a mutual but now-dead friend had thought it would be a good idea if they met at a local artist's showing of nature photography. And it was a good idea. Roxie, the friend who also owned the studio, had left them alone for a few minutes not long after the introduction. "Talk about something," she said.

Chris didn't remember what they'd talked about, but he remembered the first time he saw her. She was almost as tall as he was, and blond in a good way. One corner of her mouth turned a bit upward when she smiled, and he'd always found that attractive. Roxie returned soon enough, and she told them both that she hoped they hadn't talked about sports or the weather.

He'd often wondered at how easily the good memories had become subservient to bad experiences. Or, maybe they were simply subsumed.

He saw her as soon as he turned into the park. For most of the day he'd hoped that this exchange would be more difficult than he now realized it would be. She was sitting on top of a picnic table. Across the park a group of young men played soccer. She watched him walk from his car to the table, and he knew her smile was false because the corners of her mouth stayed at the same level.

"Hi," she said. She opened her palm to reveal her silver wedding ring and its single diamond.

"Hi."

"You ready to do this?"

"Yeah, I am. It doesn't seem as bad as signing all the papers, does it?"

She shook her head. "No, it doesn't."

He removed his wedding band from his finger. He looked at it and the indentation that it left behind.

"You never took it off?" she asked.

"A few times. It just seemed easier to keep the thing on my finger, you know? So it didn't get lost."

"A good idea." She stretched her arm and her open palm to him. "Here."

When he pinched the ring between his fingers, he felt the familiar softness of her hand. He dropped his ring into the same palm, and she closed her fingers tightly and withdrew her hand.

"A piece of cake," she said.

"I want to tell you something, Cindy."

"Are you going to yell?"

"No."

"Okay. What?"

"Your smile. I always liked it. It's what attracted me to you."

"You never told me that, did you."

"I don't know. I think I did. If not, I should have. It's like happiness."

She seemed confused. "It's like happiness? A smile is happiness, isn't it?"

"Maybe I didn't think it through, but it's what I was thinking nonetheless."

"That's a strange note to end all of this on, isn't it?

"How can the ending of 'all this' be any stranger than it started?"

She looked across the park to the soccer game. "I've got to go." She got down from the table, looked at the ring in her hand, then pocketed it and strode off.

Things We Didn't Say Yesterday #10

Bop, Bop, Bop

He remembered when they were in North Beach. The next day would be the first day of winter, but the night was warm enough that neither of them needed much more than a light sweatshirt. After dinner they'd wandered into the Tosca Cafe, having a couple of the specials--Ghiradelli Chocolate, steamed milk, brandy--served in small glasses. After a couple of drinks he'd gone to the men's restroom where he'd stood in front of several colorful posters of Marilyn Monroe. It was the only time in his life that he didn't want to leave the smell of urinal cakes behind. From there they'd gone to Vesuvio where they tried to channel Jack Kerouac, but the noise and the crowd became too much after a single drink. Standing on the sidewalk outside, he'd pulled her arm and told her they next had to go to the Condor.

"That's sick," she'd said.

"How do you know?"

"It just is, Chris. Would you want your kids to know you went to a place like that?'

He shook his head. "I don't have kids. And if I did, I don't think I'd be obliged to tell them."

"Pick someplace else."

"Larry Flynt's? The Hungri i?"

"Chris."

"Let's go back to Tosca, then. We can listen to opera."

So they'd gone back and found a booth away from the bar. This was supposed to be an attempt to get some spark back, but Cindy didn't seem eager to be anywhere, and she hadn't even seen that he wasn't serious about the Condor. Dinner at the Cafe' Zoetrope had been good, if quiet. He'd had the Linguine alle Vongole, while she had picked at the Penne all’ Arrabbiata. They'd shared a bottle of Coppola's Pinot Noir.

Chris knew that neither of them really could find that spark, just as he knew they seemed to have lost any sense of humor with each other, that everything had become literal. That's why she couldn't see that his suggestion of the Condor was a joke.

"Stop that," she finally said.

"Stop what?"

"That--that tapping on the table. It's opera--you don't tap your fingers to the beat."

"I didn't know I was doing it."

"I'm tired. I need to get to sleep."

"It's not even ten."

She looked at him, watched an elderly couple get up from their barstools and walk out the door, then looked back to him. "I'm sorry. I'm irritated, that's all."

"I know. We're both irritated. At everything."

"This isn't doing what we'd hoped for, is it."

"It's early. Maybe if we stay out awhile, something will come to us." He looked beyond her to the door to the men's restroom, and he thought maybe he should go see Marilyn Monroe for awhile. He wondered what Cindy would think if he told her about that.

"Chris! You're doing it again. Stop!"

"They're just fingers."

"It's not just fingers, Chris. It's you. It's this bop bop bop and it's driving me crazy. Every day it's like this, one thing after another. Bop bop bop. And if it's not you, it's me. We do these things to drive the other person crazy."

"Do you every wonder why?" he asked. "Why is it? I've been tapping my fingers to music since I was a kid. You used to find it endearing. Why does it bother you now?"

"I never did. I just let it go."

"You shouldn't have."

"Oh, I know. I know. Look, let's just go back to the hotel, okay? I'm tired. I don't want to end the night like this."

But they had let it end that way, he remembered. They ended the night when she returned alone to the hotel, and he stayed and listened to opera--music he neither enjoyed nor understood. Looking back, he should've told her that. But the next morning, as they were driving home, he kept the radio tuned to any music he could find, griping the steering wheel with both hands and not once letting his fingers keep time.

Things We Didn't Say Yesterday #9

Everything's almost over, isn't it?

Light from the half-moon was bright enough to fill the yard. Movement through the leaves in the trees alongside the house must have been birds because whatever breeze there had been earlier was now gone. The chair she'd dragged from the shed to the patio was less comfortable than she'd remembered, but she had neither reason nor inclination to go back into the house.

She hated insomnia, how after so many nights of fitful sleep every small problem became large, how what seemed to be months' worth of events and conversations replayed and repeated in whichever part of the brain was processing things. Chris had left hours earlier after retrieving a few more boxes, but she still felt something of him nearby. For the most part she had let him work alone. Sequestered in the small room that had once been their shared office, she had watched through the partially opened louvers of the door as he and Phil did what they'd come to do. When the rented truck was finally loaded, Phil had driven away in his own car, leaving Chris to get a few small items. Cindy had watched for a minute as Chris looked around the room, his hands on his hips, and then she'd opened the door and made her way to the sofa that Chris was leaving behind.

"You done?" She had asked.

"I think so. I'm meeting Phil at the apartment. We've got to return the truck by five."

"The house seems so empty now."

"What'd you expect?"

"Don't be snide."

"Kind of late for that, isn't it?"

"And don't be an ass."

"What, exactly, should I be?"

"You could be civil. I wasn't trying to start anything."

"No, I'm sure you weren't."

She hadn't liked the tone in his voice. "Just stop, okay? Just let it go. At least for now."

"Let it go? What the hell does that mean?"

"Don't."

He'd turned to face her directly then, his hands still on his hips but his face full of the type of anger she hadn't seen in a long time. Even when she'd asked for the divorce he hadn't looked like this. "You play these goddamned games as though you know what's going on, that you always know how to win. You started all of this. You handed out the rules you wanted me to follow, and for the most part I've done just what you asked. We're almost at the end of things, aren't we? Everything's almost over. You think the house seems empty now, right? But you know what, it has been empty for a long time. I'm only now starting to realize it. And maybe I'm starting to see how empty you felt before this started. I keep thinking if I'd known, I might've been able to fix things. But I'm angry, too. So when you tell me you're not trying to start something, or when you tell me 'don't,' how do you think I'll react--just shut up and walk away?"

She'd stared at him, but she'd not been able to say anything for several moments. She thought about an earlier argument when she'd suggested the feelings they had for each other had been gone for a long time. This seemed like the same argument all over again. "Are you through?" she'd finally managed.

He'd looked around the house, finally dropped his hands from his hips, and nodded. "I'm through. You can have whatever's left. All of this emptiness is yours." She saw his face relax then, as though all of his anger was gone.

Now, on the patio, she listened again to the leaves moving. The moonlight seemed brighter. She leaned back in the chair, shut her eyes, and for some reason thought of the differences between "empty" and "emptiness."

Things We Didn't Say Yesterday #8

Who said anything about touchy-feely?

He awoke one morning to the realization that she hadn't touched him in a long time. She'd always been the one to touch a shoulder or brush the stray bit of hair that wanted to linger out of place over his forehead. Before breakfast that realization transformed into a thought, one that he carried for several days before bringing it up during the familiar tension that seemed to have become their evening routine.

"I realized something the other day," he said. He knew that this might go a couple of ways: She'd poo-poo the idea and they'd continue on, or the announcement would lead to something more than just tense. Recently, or at least as recently as he could remember, they were each ensconced in their respective singularities, and even the most trite of comments was dangerous. She had once remarked that she thought he needed new shoes, and he'd shouted himself nearly hoarse saying that he certainly did not need her to select his wardrobe. He'd sheepishly told Phil about that one. "Really, Chris?" Phil had said. "She said something about your shoes, and you started toward the deep end?"

To her credit, Chris thought now--and he always gave her credit for many things--she set aside her book of poetry and turned the face of her attention to him. "What did you realize?" She sounded neither uninterested nor perturbed.

"Well, I woke up one morning, and I realized you hadn't touched me in a long time."

"Touched you?"

"Yeah. Simple touches. I always counted on you for them. Just little taps to let me know you were around, maybe even thinking of me."

He thought he saw her hand twitch toward her book, but he could not be sure. She said, "I did that?"

He nodded at her false question, but he also let it fade. "Yes. It was always nice."

"Oh." She seemed to think about it, and he wondered if she was decided whether to stay reasonable or become defensive. "I didn't know I had stopped."

So, he saw, she had known that she "did that." He listened to the traffic passing by in front of the house but refused to let the noise come between them. "I just wanted to let you know that I thought it was nice. I liked it."

She didn't hesitate this time. "But you have to know that you're not exactly touchy-feely, right? There were times I wanted to be touched, but you never seemed to understand that. Maybe I got tired of things being so one-sided."

"Who said anything about touchy-feely? That's not where I was going. I simply wanted to share that realization with you. We can still talk, right? I'm not trying to fight." He didn't like how they were sitting there and simply looking at each other. There was something between them now--not the sound of traffic, but something he couldn't yet identify. He wondered what had happened, how so many good things could vanish so quickly, so quietly. "What are you reading" he asked. She seemed relieved to have his permission to return to the book, which she grasped and opened.

"Emily Dickinson," she said.

"Short poems, right?"

"Mostly, yes."

"Read me one."

"Why?"

"I just want to hear a poem."

"You don't like poetry."

"Maybe I could learn to like it."

She turned her face toward the window, and then to the book. She bit her lower lip. She leafed through some of the pages before stopping. "Here's one," she said.

He watched her read--not listened, watched. For the life of him, he couldn't hear a thing she was saying.

Things We Didn't Say Yesterday #7

Maybe it was gone before it was there.

He knew she had a penchant for blurting off-the-cuff insults. It was a talent, he had often thought, as long as he wasn't on the receiving end. She could cut deeply if she wanted to, though during their arguments she needed awhile to get there.

They'd fought about money only once--not long before they'd both realized how things were pretty much over--and he'd come out shell-shocked and wounded when the battle diverged from simple economics to his own worth. He'd set her up, and he'd known it: "You can't balance on one foot, so how can I expect you to balance a checkbook?" he'd said. Part of him was trying to be funny, but that part didn't often succeed; he'd known that, too. He could tell from the way she dipped her shoulder that she was ready to swing at him. But like any good fighter, she'd considered her position and decided to strike differently.

"You're a shit, Chris," she'd said softly.

"That the best you can do?" he'd asked. "You think I don't know that already? How many times have you said that, anyway?"

"I never thought I'd say I hate you," she'd continued. "I've never said that to anyone."

"Then say it," he'd said, still keeping an eye on the shift in her shoulder.

"No. I won't."

"I'm disappointed," he'd said, but he was wondering how their argument about money had degenerated so quickly. "This is silly. Let's stop."

"Stop what, Chris? Maybe we should just have separate checking accounts, split the expenses, maybe. Then we don't have to worry about balancing anything but ourselves. Would that make you happy, Chris?"

"Maybe we should, I don't know. Everything else about us seems to be separate now, doesn't it?"

"Yes."

He had tried to be funny again. "I get the impression that you've lost that loving feeling."

Her shoulders had straightened, evened out a bit so that she was facing him head-on as though daring him to do something. He knew she hadn't seen his humor. "No, I haven't lost anything. Maybe it was gone before it was even there."

Then she'd walked out of the house and left him standing alone in the living room, the checkbook to their joint account opened wide on the antique table beside the sofa. He'd sat down, looked at the jumble of numbers in the checkbook register, and remembered to his high school boxing class, how he'd felt the time Ricky Parker nailed him in the jaw with a punch that had come out of nowhere.

Things We Didn't Say Yesterday #6

It wasn't a metaphor. It was a bed.

He tried to remember when the bed became a battlefield complete with a demilitarized zone. They'd started the marriage with a hand-me-down double-size bed that sloped from both sides to the middle. It was convenient, though, especially in the first apartment where the heater often didn't heat. She had often remarked--at least back then--that she enjoyed waking in the middle of the night to find her backside pressed against his. It was as though they reinforced each other, and each of them kept watch on one side of the bed.

A warmer apartment and a bit more cash brought a larger, queen-sized bed--this one new, without slopes, expensive, complete with headboard that kept their heads off one or another wall at night. "It's still cozy," she had said, "and I can always find you. It's nice." But though he had wondered openly about the gap between them, he also appreciated the extra open space on warm nights. Or after an argument when they both needed to sleep but didn't want to sleep next to each other. On those nights, in fact, whenever their legs would touch as one of them shifted in bed, she would jerk away as though she'd been shot.

Then, when they had finally come the point of dividing furniture when things were over, they had to consider the king-size bed, something that she had found at a Macy's sale one Friday afternoon not long after they had moved to their suburban house. The next morning he watched with some sadness as the deliverymen removed the queen and set up the king. The bed was immense; it took up nearly half the bedroom. That first night in the bed he had listened to her breath from so far away. Their lives together hadn't been smooth for the past few months, and their legs hadn't touched in a long time.

"You can have the bed," she had said as they listed what they owned, a "his" list and a "hers" list on a legal-sized yellow pad.

"No, it means too much to you," he'd said. "I've always thought that you bought the bed to get away from me at night as much as you did during the day. The space between us in that bed was a metaphor for the space between us in our relationship."

She had looked at him. "You believe that? How do you come up with this stuff, anyway? It's a bed. That's all. It was never a metaphor for anything. Do you want the bed, or not?"

He shook his head. "No. It symbolizes something I don't like."

"Now it's a symbol? Fine." She wrote "bed" on the "hers" side of the legal pad. "God, Chris, you need to grow up."

Things We Didn't Say Yesterday #5

You know how you feel when you've never felt anything quite like what you're feeling?

"You need to relax, Chris," Phil said.

"I don't need to do anything of the sort."

"You're gonna kill yourself, you keep up like this.

Chris thought about it. "We all die at some point."

"What's that, an epiphany?" He put just enough English on the cue ball to make it brush the cushion and slide the eight-ball into the corner pocket.

"Fuck you."

"You saying that because I won?"

"Nope. Rack them up."

"I'm done. You can stay here and lose to someone else, or you can sit down and finish the beer."

"Fine." He took his final quarter off the side of the table and sat next to Phil. He was glad to see that the bartender had saved their spots at the bar.

"So what did she say this time?" Phil asked.

"Nothing that she hasn't said before." That was a lie.

"Right. You need to let her stop getting under your goat."

"Skin."

"Skin?"

"Yeah. She gets under my skin, but she gets my goat."

"Whichever way it goes, you can't let her get to you. Maybe you should start trying to get to her."

"I've tried," Chris said. "She's gotten a lot meaner since the divorce became final."

"Why do you two even stay in touch? Seems like you're both missing the entire meaning of 'divorce'."

Chris shrugged. "Usually one of us finds something that belongs to the other one. We start out with email, move on to phone messages, then finally meet in person. That's when she gets mean."

"Whatever happened to being amicably divorced?" Phil gestured for refills.

"I think that happens only in the movies. You know was Cindy says?"

"Not a clue." He paid for the beers.

"That I'm evil. Not just a shit, which is how she started. But evil."

"That's a bit over the top, isn't it? Even for a divorcee."

"She says I ruined a good portion of her life."

"Did you?"

Chris considered the idea. "I didn't think I did, but who am I to say? Maybe she's right. I wasn't always pleasant."

"Maybe she never gave you a chance."

"She gave me plenty of chances. Last week she said she couldn't even describe how I make her feel, how the thought of me makes her feel. She says she's never felt anything like it, that it's beyond hate for me and misery for herself."

"She has always been fairly dramatic."

"Yeah. She has. But now every time I try to get angry with her, I end up feeling depressed, or angry with myself. She's brainwashed me."

Phil ran his fingertips down the side of the beer bottle and picked at the label with his thumb. "Christ."

"Christ, exactly. I never thought I could have an effect like that on anyone. I once thought I made her feel something she'd never felt because she loved me."

Phil didn't say anything, just picked at the label. Finally, when the label was removed, he stood up. "You're depressing the hell out of me, Chris. Maybe you should get some help."

"I'd rather play pool. I tried 'getting help' once before."

"Your choice."