He said he didn’t want anyone to think he was a coward, to think he was weak. He didn’t want anyone to think that he’d backed down from the pain or that he couldn’t face it. It was just the doctors told him that whether he took the treatment or not, he didn’t have much longer. He wanted to make sure everyone understood. It was just time.
They stopped treatment and moved him home so he could be somewhere familiar. They loaned him a hospital bed that was set up in the living room by the patio door, overlooking the river. There were machines; a nurse visited twice a day to check them. His wife read him the paper every morning and watched TV with him in the afternoon.…
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They moved house after she came out of hospital. She thought the neighbours knew. Pregnant again, on a new estate at the edge of fields, she was blank here, tabula rasa as the grey cement pouring over the soil and the fields turning to stone.
She couldn’t remember a thing. Perfectly normal, the doctor said after her procedure: a standard series of electric shock treatments. Her memory was gone; they’d given her Valium.
She set herself to her penance, rearing her last child, preparing to meet the next. Her husband worried; they’d come through a nightmare but where was she?
On the first day she went to her kitchen and stayed there. Its window looked onto a green hill mounting to a cloudy horizon. She sat looking out, cigarettes purling smoke from an ashtray, little bottle of tablets never far away.…
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In terms of an overall number from 1 to 10 on the happiness scale
I’d say that if I went back as far as I can remember up to the present
day, I’d give myself a 4 overall. I’d give myself a 4 because there
were times in my life in which I felt extremely depressed and even
suicidal. Then there were times in which I didn’t think very often
about suicide, yet wasn’t ecstatic about being alive either. The decent
times and the bad times came and went throughout my life, but I’d
have say that if you averaged in a mostly unhappy childhood, young
adulthood, including my twenties, but with considerable improvement
in my thirties, forties, and fifties, you’d have a guy who was a solid 4
overall.…
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Someone has been replacing his wife in pieces. He first notices it when she pulls a spring dress over her head as they prepare for dinner with her parents, the fabric rustling round her bare legs.
Have you always had that mole there?
She’s distracted, checking her makeup in the mirror. Where?
There. Beside your left knee.
She barely glances at it. I think so. Sure.
Then it’s the scar on her shoulder that she’s had since childhood, crawling under the neighbors’ barbwire fence, tearing her jacket, shirt and flesh. Running his finger along her skin as they lie in bed together in the dimness of early evening, he doesn’t feel its familiar traces.
She shrugs. It faded. Scars do that.
It’s smaller things, too, like one earlobe suddenly thicker than the other, or the pinkie finger on her right suddenly longer, thinner.…
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The old man clutched the young man’s arm. He clasped it with both hands as if he were falling off a cliff. In a way he was. In another way, he was burning.
“Every second counts in this life,” he whispered in his hospital gown. He lay in bed, living through machines for too long, long enough to hold on for the young man to get there from miles away.
“What’s that?” the young man said bending over the old man. “I missed it.” The young man could see the mildew growing inside the old man. He could hear the machines pump electric air into him. He saw the old man’s heart skip rocks along the line on a monitor. But he couldn’t concentrate. Why did he take those mushrooms at his buddy’s house an hour ago?…
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No one travels to this part of town anymore,
not since the 5:06 has been rerouted
and the filling station removed its pumps.
The sole radio station plays mostly static
cut with echoes of a distant broadcast,
the excitement of a local sporting contest.
Here it is all phantasmal and bleak.
I clearly hear the double screech overhead
and see proud brown wings flap in aerial attack.
Yet the underbird here, the smaller crow
caws loudly, like a chatty old woman
shouting out feats of raffish grandchildren.
This cackle draws an immediate response.
Black dots appear as if called out of thin air,
flying from distant branches to gather in force.
The twenty birds that populate the branches
of the early spring’s bare maple tree
understand how there is comfort in numbers.…
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I’m trying to explain to Richard why fonts matter. I’m not sure what to call Richard. Is he a blind date? Is that term even in use any longer? I don’t want to call him my internet date. The sound of that phrase is large and echoing, proof that I should just leap off the Coronado Bay Bridge and get it over with. Blind date, though, sounds as though he should have walked into Lestat’s for our coffee date tapping his cane, eyes covered by dark glasses. He didn’t. By his reaction when he saw me, I almost wish he had.
Let’s just call him Richard, then, and hope this is over soon.
“Times New Roman just has something soothing to it,” I say, sipping my soy chai.…
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