“If it ain’t broke don’t fix it”, she says, while beating eggs in the kitchen. She’s referring to my idea to paint the coffee table blue.
“So you like the coffee table as it is?”
“Well, I think it’s fine. No reason to paint it”
To break eye contact with her I look at her nose. It is a small nose with a little bump in the middle. I move my attention around her face and look at her ears. She’s wearing earrings that look like tusks.
I love this woman but she doesn’t understand me. She doesn’t understand why I need to do things like this. Painting the coffee table. Cause living in this city is killing me. Not having a job. Wasting away my afternoons on the porch with stolen cigarettes and tap water and stray cats for company. We’ve been here for 3 months and I have yet to even get an interview. Restaurants, movie theatres, coffee shops. All have turned me down. This is why I like making things, painting things. To feel productive. To feel useful.
She repeats “no reason to paint it” like a mantra. We said a city would never break us but I don’t know how much more of this I can take.
All we ever do is fight. All we ever seem to do is say “I’m sorry”. This doesn’t feel like home.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
The Last Words You Said to Me
Sometimes to make time pass quicker I imagine what you’ll look like pregnant. I picture you with a round belly and holding your back and shuffling around and breathing funny. This thought makes me smile.
Sometimes, too, I think about my lips pressed against the top of your head and your head pressed against my chest. And in this moment I am scared of this intimacy and you say, “Sometimes you just have to let go, Henry”. You say this with a Southern accent even though you’ve never been to the South.
Every once in a while if I shut my eyes I see you running at me, angry and beating your fists against my chest. And in this imaginary moment you say, “Sometimes you just have to let go, Henry”. But it’s hard to hear the accent because you’re yelling.
Once I had this dream where we ate ice cream cones in the winter on a snow covered hill. You turned to me and told me about a hypothetical bank robbery we could commit if we had tear gas and Doctor’s scrubs.
When I’m waiting for a bus or in a long line I picture us at my Mother’s funeral. And you’re standing next to me in a very elegant black dress. The mood is very somber and a fog creeps in. I start crying and you put your arm around me and pull me towards you and whisper, “Sometimes you just have to let go, Henry”.
The last words you said to me echo through my head like “Hello!” into a canyon.
Sometimes, too, I think about my lips pressed against the top of your head and your head pressed against my chest. And in this moment I am scared of this intimacy and you say, “Sometimes you just have to let go, Henry”. You say this with a Southern accent even though you’ve never been to the South.
Every once in a while if I shut my eyes I see you running at me, angry and beating your fists against my chest. And in this imaginary moment you say, “Sometimes you just have to let go, Henry”. But it’s hard to hear the accent because you’re yelling.
Once I had this dream where we ate ice cream cones in the winter on a snow covered hill. You turned to me and told me about a hypothetical bank robbery we could commit if we had tear gas and Doctor’s scrubs.
When I’m waiting for a bus or in a long line I picture us at my Mother’s funeral. And you’re standing next to me in a very elegant black dress. The mood is very somber and a fog creeps in. I start crying and you put your arm around me and pull me towards you and whisper, “Sometimes you just have to let go, Henry”.
The last words you said to me echo through my head like “Hello!” into a canyon.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Judy
Her name was Judy. She was once a cold woman. A widow. Then she saw this Indian guru on public television and started doing yoga and became a vegetarian. She also started doing things like making her family come on retreats with her to the woods.
They all piled in to her 2004 Jetta and left the city on Friday night at 7:30pm. Among them was her son, Kenneth. He was a small man in his early thirties. He had been divorced once and was on his second marriage to a woman named Susan who was also accompanying them on the trip. Her young daughter, Amy, was also there, in the backseat.
"O.k. Does anybody need to use the bathroom? There's a rest stop coming up?"
"No, Mom. Let's just try and get there tonight"
"I do! I need to go potty!" yelled Amy.
"Ken, Amy needs to go. I could stand to stretch my legs. 5 minutes won't kill us" Susan said this while putting her hands on his shoulder from the backseat.
"Alright, alright"
Kenneth was frustrated. Not just with the situation but with life in general. He hated his job, his house, his family. He knew all this made him an asshole but he couldn't help it. He missed his glory days of sleeping until noon and catching a double feature at the run down movie house down the street from his tiny studio apartment. The key word being "his". It was his apartment, his neighborhood. His bottles of beer on the kitchen counter. His one night stands. His cigarettes on the porch that he didn't have to hide from anybody or pretend he was giving up.
He met Susan when they were both young. He had just gotten divorced from his high school sweetheart. Susan was a waitress at a restaurant he frequented. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, with long red hair and perfect skin. He barely spoke to her when she waited on him because he was so nervous around her. One night she was getting off her shift when he was leaving. He was tipsy and decided to walk her home even though she only lived 4 blocks away. She thought it was sweet and they started seeing each other. They broke up 3 times within the first year of their relationship. She had an affair with another man, which is where Amy came from. Their relationship hasn't really ever been stable and they both knew it. Kenneth only proposed marriage after he had gotten her pregnant. She had a miscarriage but he couldn't call off the wedding after that. What would his family say? What kind of man would he be?
"Poppa! Poppa! Look, a cow!"
"Oh! I see that, Amy. Good spotting" Kenneth was tired.
"And what sound does a cow make, honey?", Judy added.
"Mooooooooo!"
They family continued their drive to the woods. Kenneth only agreed to go to keep his Mother company. He worried about her after his Father died. He didn't want her to get into accident or get lost in the woods or bamboozled by some fly-by-night self-help author. But in the back of his mind he hoped that the stress relief seminars and the peace and quiet and the meditation classes would help him. He needed to relax, get used to the idea of being a man and not a boy anymore. He was turning 32 in a month. Susan was only 28. Amy continued to yell about the cows as the family pulled into the rest stop.
They all piled in to her 2004 Jetta and left the city on Friday night at 7:30pm. Among them was her son, Kenneth. He was a small man in his early thirties. He had been divorced once and was on his second marriage to a woman named Susan who was also accompanying them on the trip. Her young daughter, Amy, was also there, in the backseat.
"O.k. Does anybody need to use the bathroom? There's a rest stop coming up?"
"No, Mom. Let's just try and get there tonight"
"I do! I need to go potty!" yelled Amy.
"Ken, Amy needs to go. I could stand to stretch my legs. 5 minutes won't kill us" Susan said this while putting her hands on his shoulder from the backseat.
"Alright, alright"
Kenneth was frustrated. Not just with the situation but with life in general. He hated his job, his house, his family. He knew all this made him an asshole but he couldn't help it. He missed his glory days of sleeping until noon and catching a double feature at the run down movie house down the street from his tiny studio apartment. The key word being "his". It was his apartment, his neighborhood. His bottles of beer on the kitchen counter. His one night stands. His cigarettes on the porch that he didn't have to hide from anybody or pretend he was giving up.
He met Susan when they were both young. He had just gotten divorced from his high school sweetheart. Susan was a waitress at a restaurant he frequented. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, with long red hair and perfect skin. He barely spoke to her when she waited on him because he was so nervous around her. One night she was getting off her shift when he was leaving. He was tipsy and decided to walk her home even though she only lived 4 blocks away. She thought it was sweet and they started seeing each other. They broke up 3 times within the first year of their relationship. She had an affair with another man, which is where Amy came from. Their relationship hasn't really ever been stable and they both knew it. Kenneth only proposed marriage after he had gotten her pregnant. She had a miscarriage but he couldn't call off the wedding after that. What would his family say? What kind of man would he be?
"Poppa! Poppa! Look, a cow!"
"Oh! I see that, Amy. Good spotting" Kenneth was tired.
"And what sound does a cow make, honey?", Judy added.
"Mooooooooo!"
They family continued their drive to the woods. Kenneth only agreed to go to keep his Mother company. He worried about her after his Father died. He didn't want her to get into accident or get lost in the woods or bamboozled by some fly-by-night self-help author. But in the back of his mind he hoped that the stress relief seminars and the peace and quiet and the meditation classes would help him. He needed to relax, get used to the idea of being a man and not a boy anymore. He was turning 32 in a month. Susan was only 28. Amy continued to yell about the cows as the family pulled into the rest stop.
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
The Couple, The Restaurant
The young couple eat alone in a nearly empty restaurant. Their candle is the lone lit one in the old Italian place. Their breath smells of red wine and garlic.
She ordered the fettuccini alfredo, he ordered the veal parmesan. She normally wouldn’t let him eat something as barbaric as veal but it was a special occasion. It was the 2nd anniversary of their first date. Suddenly, there's a buzzing sound.
“Oh, great! Uh, would you excuse me? I have to take this phone call” he says to her, clearly annoyed.
“Oh, sure”
He runs out into the cold night air, pressing his cell phone against his ear, shouting to be heard over the traffic noise. She waits patiently inside, making a game of how long she can leave her napkin over the candle on the table before the flame dies out. After a couple of minutes, he returns.
“I’m sorry. It was my Mom”
“Oh. Is everything o.k?”
“Yeah. My Uncle just got a hernia and he’s in the hospital. It’s not that exciting”
“Is he o.k?”
“Oh, yeah. He’s fine. It’s just a hernia”
“That sounds serious to me. A hernia”
He laughs. “Are you kidding? Do you know what a hernia is? I’ve had a hernia and I lived”
She laughs in response. “You? When did you have a hernia?”
“When I was a kid. I’ve never told you the story?”
“I don’t think so”
“Oh, man. Well, when I was a kid…probably like 9 or 10 years old…I did something to piss off my Mom. Talked back to her or refused to eat my vegetables or something, right? And so my punishment was to go to turn off the TV and go to bed. Now, when I was a kid I was obsessed with television, I watched like 6 hours of it a day. So I threw a fit because I was watching a show I liked. So in defiance I decided to take the family TV into my bedroom and watch it. Well, the only problem is that our TV set was huge. One of those big wood paneled deals. It weighed a ton. So there I am, this scrawny little 9 year old trying to lift this like 100 pound TV. And it gave me a hernia. I had to go to the hospital and have surgery and everything. My Mom still teases me about it to this day”
She laughs. “I had no idea”
“And my Aunt Betty, she was worried sick. She sent me comic books and cookies like everyday. It was really sweet.”
“Did I meet her?”
“I don’t think so. Did you go with me to that family reunion last summer?”
“I think I was in Boston”
“Oh, yeah”
“I’m going to go to the restroom. Excuse me”
She gets up and goes into the bathroom, pulling her cell phone out of her purse. Once inside she makes a phone call.
“Hey. Greg? How’s it going?” she laughs at his response and continues, “I see. Well, yeah. We’re still on our big date. But what are you doing tomorrow?” Another pause. “Well, he works all day. I can do whatever. You want to come over at like 2?” Some more laughter “O.k. See you then”
She exits the restroom and returns to the table where a large piece of cheesecake waits for her. She sits down and begins to cry.
She ordered the fettuccini alfredo, he ordered the veal parmesan. She normally wouldn’t let him eat something as barbaric as veal but it was a special occasion. It was the 2nd anniversary of their first date. Suddenly, there's a buzzing sound.
“Oh, great! Uh, would you excuse me? I have to take this phone call” he says to her, clearly annoyed.
“Oh, sure”
He runs out into the cold night air, pressing his cell phone against his ear, shouting to be heard over the traffic noise. She waits patiently inside, making a game of how long she can leave her napkin over the candle on the table before the flame dies out. After a couple of minutes, he returns.
“I’m sorry. It was my Mom”
“Oh. Is everything o.k?”
“Yeah. My Uncle just got a hernia and he’s in the hospital. It’s not that exciting”
“Is he o.k?”
“Oh, yeah. He’s fine. It’s just a hernia”
“That sounds serious to me. A hernia”
He laughs. “Are you kidding? Do you know what a hernia is? I’ve had a hernia and I lived”
She laughs in response. “You? When did you have a hernia?”
“When I was a kid. I’ve never told you the story?”
“I don’t think so”
“Oh, man. Well, when I was a kid…probably like 9 or 10 years old…I did something to piss off my Mom. Talked back to her or refused to eat my vegetables or something, right? And so my punishment was to go to turn off the TV and go to bed. Now, when I was a kid I was obsessed with television, I watched like 6 hours of it a day. So I threw a fit because I was watching a show I liked. So in defiance I decided to take the family TV into my bedroom and watch it. Well, the only problem is that our TV set was huge. One of those big wood paneled deals. It weighed a ton. So there I am, this scrawny little 9 year old trying to lift this like 100 pound TV. And it gave me a hernia. I had to go to the hospital and have surgery and everything. My Mom still teases me about it to this day”
She laughs. “I had no idea”
“And my Aunt Betty, she was worried sick. She sent me comic books and cookies like everyday. It was really sweet.”
“Did I meet her?”
“I don’t think so. Did you go with me to that family reunion last summer?”
“I think I was in Boston”
“Oh, yeah”
“I’m going to go to the restroom. Excuse me”
She gets up and goes into the bathroom, pulling her cell phone out of her purse. Once inside she makes a phone call.
“Hey. Greg? How’s it going?” she laughs at his response and continues, “I see. Well, yeah. We’re still on our big date. But what are you doing tomorrow?” Another pause. “Well, he works all day. I can do whatever. You want to come over at like 2?” Some more laughter “O.k. See you then”
She exits the restroom and returns to the table where a large piece of cheesecake waits for her. She sits down and begins to cry.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)