I met a guy who lived on the street.
It was the first day of summer, that’s what the calendar said. This guy I met said summer started four months ago.
It was still snowing four months ago, I said.
He said summer started four months ago in a bowl of soup.
I thought this guy was crazy.
I had my tie undone and my shirt out, walking home from work in shoes that gave me blisters because I can’t stand the bus and I can’t afford the gas to drive.
I work hard and I get by. There’s some kind of injustice to walk across the city after all day at work because you still don’t make enough to buy gas.
This guy with wild eyes came up to me and shook my hand.
Beautiful day to you, he said.
I don’t have any change, I said.
I tried to get away. He smelled like the river, like he jumped in and swam in three million toilets and then let himself ferment in the sun.
Can’t go walking without a hat, he said. And he took off his own hat and put it on my head.
I went home to my condo and my TV. I washed the hat in the sink because it would fall apart if I put it in the machine. Here I thought I was doing this guy a favor; I told myself I’d give it back to him all nice and clean.
I take the same way to work the next morning so I could give the guy his hat back.
I looked for him, but I didn’t see the guy until he steps out and goes, Summer sure has been nice this year. He’s missing one of his bottom teeth in his smile.
I brought you your hat back.
Keep it, he says. Too nice to be hiding under a hat.
Well I don’t want it.
That’s when he says the bowl of soup thing.
I thought he was crazy, so I laughed and walked on. The torn hat, I left next to him.
I took some extra hours at work and could drive for a while. Then they switched my shifts and cut my hours so now I’m walking home at night and it’s raining. There’s nothing worse than being wet in the dark in the city.
I’m walking and I see this crazy guy, and he sees me and holds something out to me. It’s an umbrella, some old one without any springs. He doesn’t say anything, just holds it out to me.
Why do you give me stuff, I said.
He looks me up and down and says, Couldn’t you use it?
Sure, but so could you.
Oh this? he says. This isn’t too bad.
Now, I’m tired, and I’m soaked. So what’s bad, buddy?
He says that six months ago he didn’t have a hat or shoes or food. That’s bad, he says. He sits down against a guardrail and looks at me with these deep eyes. There’s something about those eyes just now, and I have to squat down to hear him over the rain.
I was under a bridge some few blocks up, he says. My toes were blue and the one was going black at the tip. Couldn’t walk much so I didn’t eat much.
My stomach growls and I get a little embarrassed.
He says he thought he would die there, under that bridge. He says he was sleeping on a newspaper that had an article about the cops finding a vagrant frozen to death, the nineteenth this year. He figured being number twenty was worth something, at any rate.
I saw this woman and she was pushing a cart of clothes and things, he says. The wind blew this hat (and here he taps his hat) off her cart and down by the bridge. She followed it and saw me and put it on my head.
Some people are walking near us and they’re looking at this guy and looking at me and then when I look back, they quickly see something interesting somewhere else. This guy goes on.
She brought her cart down to me, he says. She said how she got put out after her husband died and that cart was all she had left of him. Her husband was some outdoors guy, but not like me, he says. When he laughs its loud and short. More people look at us and then look away.
It’s still raining on me. The umbrella is small and I try to get my head and his head under it, but he smells even worse than the last time I saw him, so I don’t want to get too close.
He says, she made up a little gas stove under the bridge and cooked some soup out of a can and with some river water. She had some cans in her cart.
Her husband was in the cans? I joke.
He just looks at me.
She got my feet into boots and we ate soup under the bridge, he says. It was the best meal I ever had. She opened up some beans and I tell you, it was like she opened up summer under that bridge, the way those beans smelled.
It’s like he’s preaching a religion, the way this guy is talking about some beans and dirty soup. And in the rain, smelling this guy and crouching under an umbrella, I just about believe him.
It’s been summer ever since, he goes. Every time I get some money I try to give something to someone who needs it. And I just get better and better. I got a tent even, and a sleeping bag.
So why are you out in the rain?
Gave them away. He gets closer to me now and whispers, I got a whole case of Spam down there. Been eating great. Meat keeps a man going, he says.
Sure it does. Listen, take this money. Buy another tent.
He laughs and it echoes off the river. They don’t let you in stores, especially tent stores, like this. He says they think he’ll steal something.
You show them this money; tell them you’re buying a tent.
Yeah, he says, looking at me sideways. They understand money.
I understand money too. I leave my money with the guy who thinks summer is a can of soup and a can of beans over a stove that warms his toes.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
A Father and a Daughter
Brad Verne glanced over the Tribune headlines as he walked past the cappuccino machines inside the 7-11. A page of advertisements fell out of the folds of the paper, and he bent to pick it up. His baseball cap, which had been perched atop his puffy wool hat, fell next to the ads. Fuckin’ thing, he thought. He scooped his cap off the floor and went to pay for the paper, leaving the Sears section where it lay.
“Just that?” the clerk asked.
“Yeah, pal. Just that,” Brad said. He scoffed quietly. I don’t need some kid half my age trying to guilt me into picking up a fuckin’ donut. Too early for this shit.
“Fifty cents.”
Brad pulled out his wallet and flicked a tattered $1 bill on the counter. The clerk punched a button and the cash drawer slid open with a screeching chirp. Brad felt the screech in his feet, over the jingle of coins in the register. He looked to his left, out the store’s glass door.
A silver convertible fishtailed around the corner across from the store, much too fast after a night of freezing rain. The car clipped the 7-11 signpost with its back bumper. The driver overcorrected, swerved the T-top to the other side of the street, and slammed into a streetlight on the sidewalk. Brad watched the lamppost lean from the impact and buckle back. The heavy glass bulb shivered from its seat and fell, exploding like a bomb on the overhead crossbar.
The car that was now wrapped around a lamppost, horn blaring, had been sitting in his driveway the night before.
The previous morning, Brad had walked barefoot through the dining room, wearing an open robe and a pair of gray sweatpants. His daughter, Ashley, sat over a steaming bowl of oatmeal, her modest makeup and long black hair contrasting half-shut eyes and a teenaged scowl.
“ ’i, Da,” she mumbled as he walked past her into the kitchen. He grunted.
His wife, Jen, smelled like hairspray. She stood next to the stove arranging sheets of paper in a binder. She wore a white blouse and gold earrings he had given her years ago; for what he couldn’t remember.
He opened the cupboard next to her and got out a box of Pop-Tarts. He put two in the toaster and reached an arm around Jen.
“Excuse me,” he said. He lifted the pot and poured himself a cup of coffee.
“Morning,” she said. She snapped the last of the papers into the binder and sat next to Ashley.
Brad stayed in the kitchen, waiting for the toaster. He heard them talking in the next room, but couldn’t make out the words. He sipped his coffee and sucked on his teeth. The toaster popped. He brought breakfast to the table and sat opposite Ashley.
“What time are you getting home today?” he asked Jen. Four-thirty, he thought to himself.
“Four-thirty,” she said. Every fuckin’ day.
They ate in silence for a while. At 7:20, Ashley got up, kissed her mother goodbye, and went down the street to wait for the bus. Every day.
“What are your plans?” Jen asked him.
“I, um, I was going to get the paper. You know, look through that,” he said. He cleared his throat. She didn’t respond.
Fifteen minutes later, Jen left. She taught music at a private school. A big black grand piano took up most of their living room. Jen played sometimes.
Brad went upstairs and changed into a white shirt with blue dress pants. He didn’t bother with a tie anymore. On his way outside he put on a heavy coat, a green wool hat, and a black Bulls cap.
His car was a full-size red Ford from the late 80’s. It looked and steered like a galley; the lanes never looked wide enough from behind the wheel. It runs well, he thought as the twenty-year-old engine turned over on the first try. The suspension creaked as he backed down the driveway. It’s just the rest of it is a piece of shit.
He could drive to the 7-11 in his sleep. The sky was a solid blanket of gray. He turned on the talk station on the radio and half-listened to the predictions of sleet later in the day. He parked in front of the store a few minutes later and bought the Tribune. A younger man standing in line looked at Brad and suppressed a smile as he left.
When Brad got home, he dropped the Tribune on the computer desk and opened it to the classifieds. Who was hiring accountants these days? Plenty of places, the paper retorted. Ok, fucker, who’s hiring fifty-one year-old accountants who’re two years unemployed? The paper didn’t answer immediately. Fuck it. He turned on the computer.
The phone rang. It was the nurse from Ashley’s high school. Ashley had a fever, needed to be picked up. Brad hung up. Figures. Back in the goddamned car; it’s always something.
Brad drove the same route he did seven years ago, when his older daughter, Cheryl, started going to high school, before the bus stopped by the Verne house. The streets were residential, lined with skeletal trees. Brad hadn’t seen Cheryl in months; he forgot how many. The community pool wasn’t far from the high school; it was closed and dry now, but was packed in the summer. Cheryl lived with some guy, Mark Daniels, who worked… somewhere. Does some shit. Cheryl and Mark were engaged to be married in the summer.
Ashley stood with her backpack at her feet, leaning against a large, graffiti-covered rock in front of the high school’s main doors. Brad drove through the bus lane and stopped near her. She came to the car and got in. She doesn’t look sick, he thought.
“Hi, kid,” he said. “How’re you feeling?”
“Headache.”
He pulled away. “Are you gonna puke?”
“No, it’s my head, not my stomach.”
He flicked the turn signal.
“I think I just need to lie down,” she said, rubbing her nose.
“You’re not just goldbrickin’, are you?”
“No.” She looked out the window and was silent for the rest of the drive.
She got out of the car before he even shut the engine off and let herself inside the house. He followed her inside and heard her footsteps climbing the stairs. He shut the door and sat in front of the computer to open his resume` file. The house was quiet except for the sounds of Ashley in her room, opening and closing drawers. Brad deleted a word, retyped it. He changed the order of his references, changed them back. Presently, Ashley’s room was quiet.
Probably just tired, wants to sleep the day away, he thought. Maybe not. He got up and went to the fridge and poured a glass of orange juice. He went upstairs as quietly as he could, glancing at the pictures of Ashley, Jen, Cheryl and himself framed on the wall. The picture at the top of the stairs must have been fifteen years old— almost as old as my fuckin’ car. Jen’s hair was long in that picture; she cradled baby Ashley in one arm and was reading to Cheryl on the couch. It wasn’t a formal portrait; Brad remembered snapping it himself. He slowly turned the knob on Ashley’s door. She lay in her bed with her back to him, covered past her ear with a quilt. He cleared a space on her cluttered brown desk and left the glass of juice for her to find when she got up.
As Brad was walking downstairs he saw, through the tan-curtained window, a silver Honda slow in front of the house. It turned into the driveway and parked behind his car; a tiny silver stopper blocking in his red hunk of metal. Sonuvabitch, what now?
The front door opened. A short woman, a head shorter than he, kicked off her black shoes next to the coat rack and flicked her dark brown hair over her ear. She looked at him with bloodshot eyes.
“Hi, Dad. Is Mom home?” she asked.
“No, she’s at work. Hi yourself.”
She crossed the room and hugged him tightly. He put one arm around her and patted her on the back. Cheryl always was overboard with hello, goodbye, he thought. He had been about to shake her hand, but she was too quick.
“Mark yelled at me,” she said into his shoulder. He could feel his shirt getting wet.
“Hm? Wh-”
“This morning-- He—he--” she said. She went on, but Brad couldn’t make out the words. So he stroked her head and made shushing noises.
“Here, sit down,” he said, leading her to the couch.
“I don’t know why I’m crying!” she said. Her mascara was running. “I just had to get out; Mom would understand.”
“Do you want some orange juice?” he asked, already standing up. Cheryl chuckled through her tears and nodded. He went to the fridge and poured a glass. He looked at the magnetic calendar on the door and sucked at his teeth. He brought a roll of paper towels to the couch along with the juice; his shirt was wet enough already. There goes the afternoon.
Cheryl spent the rest of the day and night. That evening, Brad went upstairs to tidy Cheryl’s old room. As he was moving a box of back issues of Sports Illustrated under the bed, Jen tapped on the door. When he looked up, she shook her head and led him down the hall to Ashley’s room. They peered into the dark room together, and Brad could see the outline of his oldest daughter lying on piled blankets on Ashley’s floor. I bought her a nice mattress, good pillows, and five months later she leaves them here to live with that Daniels guy, he thought, shaking his head. Then when she visits, she doesn’t even use them. He sighed. Jen smiled and shut the door wordlessly. Standing in the hall, Brad swore to himself. Motherfu-, she’s still blocking me in.
Cheryl had taken her Honda to drive back to Mark’s place the next morning. Brad thought the car looked like a smashed pop can, dented in the side, with the top crushed in. The horn sounded like an air-raid siren.
“Jesus Christ, you see that?” said the clerk.
Brad shouldered the door open and ran across the parking lot, leaving his copy of the Tribune on the store counter. Cheryl slumped against her seatbelt behind a spider webbed window. Bits of glass from the fallen lamp light had sprayed all the way to the opposite sidewalk. He ran across the street, forcing a passing pickup to brake. The driver pulled to the curb and said something. Brad shouted his daughter’s name through the broken window. She didn’t move. Her face shone crystal-white and bright red. Her hair, he noticed, was as prim as it was when she left the house. Her nose was flatter than it should be. A pillow slowly deflated in her lap. He tried the car door, but it didn’t open. The canvas roof stretched over the T-frame was shredded; bits of it hung near Cheryl’s face like streamers. He shouted her name again.
The pickup driver, a big man with ham hands, appeared next to him. He put a boot against the Honda’s back wheel and wrenched the door open. Brad heard excited talking far in the distance; the world had gone quiet for him. He knelt next to Cheryl and touched her limp arm. She’s so small, he thought. She’s not old enough to drive, why’d she do this? He held her shoulder with one hand and cradled her head with the other, gently putting her head against the headrest. Leaning forward like that will cramp your neck, baby. She had a nosebleed. Kids’ makeup, these red jewels they put on their eyes, is really getting out of hand. Take those crystals off your eyes, kid. He moved a shaky hand toward her face. A thick, flannel-wrapped arm stopped his hand.
“The ambulance is on its way,” said a set of coffee-stained teeth.
But she’s my kid. I can take care of my own daughter, asshole. Brad nodded. “I’m staying with her,” he said.
“Don’t move her. Sit here. Hold her hand.”
Brad did. The pavement was damp and soaked through the seat of his pants.
The paramedics arrived in a circus of flashing lights and wailing sounds. They wore blue shirts and looked quite calm. One of them lifted Brad to his feet and walked with him to the curb next to the Honda while others huddled around the car. I’m glad you’re here, he thought. She’s not faking today; she really needs help, I think.
A crowd had gathered around the wreck. Police cars parked crossways on the street to block off traffic. The clerk from inside, the one who’d called 911, brought Brad a cup of something warm. He didn’t drink it, but held it in both hands. The paramedics had Cheryl on a stretcher with a clear plastic mask over her face and a plastic tube in her arm.
“I-- want to go with,” Brad said. “I’m her dad. I want to ride with her,” he told the men in blue. They let him climb into the back of the ambulance, and lifted Cheryl’s stretcher in after him. Then they drove.
Brad held his daughter’s hand while the paramedics fussed over her. They took her blood pressure, Brad knew what that looked like, and attached beeping machines to her arms and face. Her face. Her face was red and swollen on one side, where those stupid looking jewels were. The men in blue used scissors to cut open her shirt when one of the machines started whining instead of beeping. Brad watched the men’s eyes.
He didn’t know how long they drove. When the ambulance stopped, the paramedics threw the doors open and wheeled Cheryl’s stretcher through several pairs of automatic doors. A wooly-haired nurse stopped him at the third set of doors.
“You can’t go in there, sir. Patients and doctors only,” she said.
“That’s my daughter!”
“I know. But she needs you to wait here so the doctors can fix her up,” the nurse said. She took Brad’s elbow with a soft hand and led him to a chair in an adjacent room. Brad looked around the room. It had soft lighting, unlike the fluorescent glare of the hospital hallway. There was a television hanging from the ceiling, tuned to a news channel. In the center of the room was a short table with some wood-and-plastic toys for little kids. The chairs were big and soft and lined the room’s walls. A beige-upholstered couch sat opposite the muted TV. It was a room made for long waits.
“Is there anyone you need to call?” the nurse asked. Brad noticed he was the only one without a hospital tag in the room.
“My, uh, my wife. Jen. She’s at-- I need to tell her,” he said.
“Ok, hun. Ok, here, come with me; we’ll give her a call.”
Jen and Ashley arrived some time later. They were both in tears. The wooly-haired nurse, Toni, put them in the same room as Brad. Brad held them on the couch as they cried into his shoulders, and he looked at the TV. His mind was blank. Jen paced the room, whispering prayers to herself. Occasionally she went to the nurse’s desk, and came back each time with fresh tears in her eyes. They have a never-ending supply of those, Brad thought. No news. None for hours.
Late in the afternoon, a bald doctor with rimless glasses introduced himself as Timothy Fischer. “Cheryl is stable. We're still working, but she’ll pull through,” she said.
“Thank God!” said Jen.
“So she’s ok?” asked Ashley.
The look on Timathy’s face dried Brad’s mouth. He sucked on his teeth as she spoke. “She has shards of glass in both eyes. They’re not terminal, but there may be permanent damage to her vision."
Ashley started crying again. Jen put a hand to her chest and head like she had been stabbed.
Timothy continued in a soft voice. “We're doing the best we can. Cheryl needs you folks to be strong for her right now. Get some food. Keep your strength up.
Toni appeared at Timothy's side. "I promise I’ll call as soon as I hear anything new. Ashley, honey, you have a cell phone right? Let me have the number so I can call,” she said.
“Thank you,” Jen said. Ashley wrote her cell phone number on a piece of yellow prescription paper and handed it to Toni.
The Verne’s climbed in Jen’s blue sedan and drove to a Wendy’s. None of them ate much. Brad always thought Wendy’s French fries tasted like eggs. They probably use the same oil all day, he thought. Cheryl had noticed the taste the first time Brad took her to Wendy’s. Daddy, she said in her four-year-old voice, what are fries made from? Potatoes, kid. This one’s egg, she held out a half eaten fry, bigger than any of her fingers. He remembered that. Wendy’s fries always tasted like eggs to him after that.
Brad and Jen held hands in the front seat on the way back to the hospital. Ashley took her cell phone outside while Brad and his wife waited on the waiting room couch. They waited a long time. Ashley came back inside, hair wetted down from the drizzle that had started at sundown. She had been crying, Brad could tell, and when she sat next to her mother, she cried again. An endless supply, he thought.
Eventually, his wife and daughter fell asleep in each others arms on the couch. Brad couldn’t sleep. He watched Toni gather a bag and a coat from behind the nurse’s desk. She poked her head in the room where Brad waited and whispered, “I’ll pray for her,” and then left. A different nurse, younger, and not as kind looking, replaced her.
The hospital didn’t sleep. People came in on stretchers a few times, attended by a swarm of paramedics and doctors with charts. Brad shook his head. Doctors don’t fall asleep during procedures, he assured himself. Not when you’re working on someone’s eyes. They train them for that sort of thing, staying awake, he thought.
He must have dozed though. Timothy touched his shoulder in the early hours of the morning. The doctor had shopping bags under his eyes.
“Brad, we have your daughter stable, and she’s resting now,” he said. “We- is that your family? You should wake them.”
Brad touched Jen’s face lightly and her eyes opened instantly. She whispered Ashley’s name, and his daughter started and was alert.
Timothy took a deep breath. “We’ve done all we can for Cheryl’s eyes. The glass penetrated deeply, and there’s severe damage to both her corneas. Damage that is, I’m sorry, irreparable.”
Ashley sat up straight. “Wait, wait- what’s that mean. Cheryl’s- that means she’s-“
“Blind. Yes,” said Timothy. He sat on the table next to the couch and leaned his elbows on his knees. “Now, we’ve already put her on the donor list. The optic nerve is uninjured, and there’s a good possibility that once we find a donor, she’ll be able to see again.”
“How, uh, how long will that be?” Brad asked.
“Well, it’s hard to tell, exactly,” said Timothy. “Five, maybe seven years?”
Jen let out one choking sob.
Cheryl had said she wanted lavender flowers at her wedding. Lavender is like purple, thought Brad. Pretty purple flowers, all over the churchyard in summer. It would be beautiful. They would dance, the two of them, and then he’d give her away to that Daniels guy.
Brad started to say something, but his throat was tight. Timothy was talking now to Jen, and Jen was saying something back. Brad was looking at the rainbow colored beads in a wood and wire maze on the floor.
He tried to imagine what it would be like for Mark Daniels, with a bright new bride, knowing she’d never know what he looked like in a wedding tuxedo. He couldn’t do it, not really. He imagined Cheryl walking down the aisle, holding his, Brad’s, arm. Walking in darkness, with only the hushed whispers of her father describing how gorgeous her wedding day was.
Brad cleared his throat. “What-” his voice cracked. He saw Ashley looking at him. Ashley with her long black hair, mussed on one side from sleeping on the couch. He cleared his throat again. “What if- what does it take to be a donor?” he asked Timothy.
Timothy looked through his glasses for a long time into Brad’s eyes. He nodded, once, and almost imperceptibly. “Basically… just matching blood and protein types,” he said.
Brad looked at Ashley again. She understood. She caught onto things quickly. Jen still looked perplexed. Brad coughed twice and sucked on his teeth. “So, um, would- would I pretty much, uh, match?”
Jen wasn’t confused anymore.
Timothy covered his nose and mouth with his hands. He looked straight at Brad and blew out a breath. He dropped his hands to his knees and said, “Most likely.”
Brad put his hand on his wife’s leg and felt it trembling. He looked into her eyes, brimming with fresh tears. Where do they get so many? he thought. He looked past Jen, at Ashley, whose hair was still sticking out to one side. He smiled a half-smile. I saw them grow up. I saw my wedding. She should too, he thought. He stood up. Timothy stood with him.
“Alright, Doc. Where do I sign up?”
“Just that?” the clerk asked.
“Yeah, pal. Just that,” Brad said. He scoffed quietly. I don’t need some kid half my age trying to guilt me into picking up a fuckin’ donut. Too early for this shit.
“Fifty cents.”
Brad pulled out his wallet and flicked a tattered $1 bill on the counter. The clerk punched a button and the cash drawer slid open with a screeching chirp. Brad felt the screech in his feet, over the jingle of coins in the register. He looked to his left, out the store’s glass door.
A silver convertible fishtailed around the corner across from the store, much too fast after a night of freezing rain. The car clipped the 7-11 signpost with its back bumper. The driver overcorrected, swerved the T-top to the other side of the street, and slammed into a streetlight on the sidewalk. Brad watched the lamppost lean from the impact and buckle back. The heavy glass bulb shivered from its seat and fell, exploding like a bomb on the overhead crossbar.
The car that was now wrapped around a lamppost, horn blaring, had been sitting in his driveway the night before.
The previous morning, Brad had walked barefoot through the dining room, wearing an open robe and a pair of gray sweatpants. His daughter, Ashley, sat over a steaming bowl of oatmeal, her modest makeup and long black hair contrasting half-shut eyes and a teenaged scowl.
“ ’i, Da,” she mumbled as he walked past her into the kitchen. He grunted.
His wife, Jen, smelled like hairspray. She stood next to the stove arranging sheets of paper in a binder. She wore a white blouse and gold earrings he had given her years ago; for what he couldn’t remember.
He opened the cupboard next to her and got out a box of Pop-Tarts. He put two in the toaster and reached an arm around Jen.
“Excuse me,” he said. He lifted the pot and poured himself a cup of coffee.
“Morning,” she said. She snapped the last of the papers into the binder and sat next to Ashley.
Brad stayed in the kitchen, waiting for the toaster. He heard them talking in the next room, but couldn’t make out the words. He sipped his coffee and sucked on his teeth. The toaster popped. He brought breakfast to the table and sat opposite Ashley.
“What time are you getting home today?” he asked Jen. Four-thirty, he thought to himself.
“Four-thirty,” she said. Every fuckin’ day.
They ate in silence for a while. At 7:20, Ashley got up, kissed her mother goodbye, and went down the street to wait for the bus. Every day.
“What are your plans?” Jen asked him.
“I, um, I was going to get the paper. You know, look through that,” he said. He cleared his throat. She didn’t respond.
Fifteen minutes later, Jen left. She taught music at a private school. A big black grand piano took up most of their living room. Jen played sometimes.
Brad went upstairs and changed into a white shirt with blue dress pants. He didn’t bother with a tie anymore. On his way outside he put on a heavy coat, a green wool hat, and a black Bulls cap.
His car was a full-size red Ford from the late 80’s. It looked and steered like a galley; the lanes never looked wide enough from behind the wheel. It runs well, he thought as the twenty-year-old engine turned over on the first try. The suspension creaked as he backed down the driveway. It’s just the rest of it is a piece of shit.
He could drive to the 7-11 in his sleep. The sky was a solid blanket of gray. He turned on the talk station on the radio and half-listened to the predictions of sleet later in the day. He parked in front of the store a few minutes later and bought the Tribune. A younger man standing in line looked at Brad and suppressed a smile as he left.
When Brad got home, he dropped the Tribune on the computer desk and opened it to the classifieds. Who was hiring accountants these days? Plenty of places, the paper retorted. Ok, fucker, who’s hiring fifty-one year-old accountants who’re two years unemployed? The paper didn’t answer immediately. Fuck it. He turned on the computer.
The phone rang. It was the nurse from Ashley’s high school. Ashley had a fever, needed to be picked up. Brad hung up. Figures. Back in the goddamned car; it’s always something.
Brad drove the same route he did seven years ago, when his older daughter, Cheryl, started going to high school, before the bus stopped by the Verne house. The streets were residential, lined with skeletal trees. Brad hadn’t seen Cheryl in months; he forgot how many. The community pool wasn’t far from the high school; it was closed and dry now, but was packed in the summer. Cheryl lived with some guy, Mark Daniels, who worked… somewhere. Does some shit. Cheryl and Mark were engaged to be married in the summer.
Ashley stood with her backpack at her feet, leaning against a large, graffiti-covered rock in front of the high school’s main doors. Brad drove through the bus lane and stopped near her. She came to the car and got in. She doesn’t look sick, he thought.
“Hi, kid,” he said. “How’re you feeling?”
“Headache.”
He pulled away. “Are you gonna puke?”
“No, it’s my head, not my stomach.”
He flicked the turn signal.
“I think I just need to lie down,” she said, rubbing her nose.
“You’re not just goldbrickin’, are you?”
“No.” She looked out the window and was silent for the rest of the drive.
She got out of the car before he even shut the engine off and let herself inside the house. He followed her inside and heard her footsteps climbing the stairs. He shut the door and sat in front of the computer to open his resume` file. The house was quiet except for the sounds of Ashley in her room, opening and closing drawers. Brad deleted a word, retyped it. He changed the order of his references, changed them back. Presently, Ashley’s room was quiet.
Probably just tired, wants to sleep the day away, he thought. Maybe not. He got up and went to the fridge and poured a glass of orange juice. He went upstairs as quietly as he could, glancing at the pictures of Ashley, Jen, Cheryl and himself framed on the wall. The picture at the top of the stairs must have been fifteen years old— almost as old as my fuckin’ car. Jen’s hair was long in that picture; she cradled baby Ashley in one arm and was reading to Cheryl on the couch. It wasn’t a formal portrait; Brad remembered snapping it himself. He slowly turned the knob on Ashley’s door. She lay in her bed with her back to him, covered past her ear with a quilt. He cleared a space on her cluttered brown desk and left the glass of juice for her to find when she got up.
As Brad was walking downstairs he saw, through the tan-curtained window, a silver Honda slow in front of the house. It turned into the driveway and parked behind his car; a tiny silver stopper blocking in his red hunk of metal. Sonuvabitch, what now?
The front door opened. A short woman, a head shorter than he, kicked off her black shoes next to the coat rack and flicked her dark brown hair over her ear. She looked at him with bloodshot eyes.
“Hi, Dad. Is Mom home?” she asked.
“No, she’s at work. Hi yourself.”
She crossed the room and hugged him tightly. He put one arm around her and patted her on the back. Cheryl always was overboard with hello, goodbye, he thought. He had been about to shake her hand, but she was too quick.
“Mark yelled at me,” she said into his shoulder. He could feel his shirt getting wet.
“Hm? Wh-”
“This morning-- He—he--” she said. She went on, but Brad couldn’t make out the words. So he stroked her head and made shushing noises.
“Here, sit down,” he said, leading her to the couch.
“I don’t know why I’m crying!” she said. Her mascara was running. “I just had to get out; Mom would understand.”
“Do you want some orange juice?” he asked, already standing up. Cheryl chuckled through her tears and nodded. He went to the fridge and poured a glass. He looked at the magnetic calendar on the door and sucked at his teeth. He brought a roll of paper towels to the couch along with the juice; his shirt was wet enough already. There goes the afternoon.
Cheryl spent the rest of the day and night. That evening, Brad went upstairs to tidy Cheryl’s old room. As he was moving a box of back issues of Sports Illustrated under the bed, Jen tapped on the door. When he looked up, she shook her head and led him down the hall to Ashley’s room. They peered into the dark room together, and Brad could see the outline of his oldest daughter lying on piled blankets on Ashley’s floor. I bought her a nice mattress, good pillows, and five months later she leaves them here to live with that Daniels guy, he thought, shaking his head. Then when she visits, she doesn’t even use them. He sighed. Jen smiled and shut the door wordlessly. Standing in the hall, Brad swore to himself. Motherfu-, she’s still blocking me in.
Cheryl had taken her Honda to drive back to Mark’s place the next morning. Brad thought the car looked like a smashed pop can, dented in the side, with the top crushed in. The horn sounded like an air-raid siren.
“Jesus Christ, you see that?” said the clerk.
Brad shouldered the door open and ran across the parking lot, leaving his copy of the Tribune on the store counter. Cheryl slumped against her seatbelt behind a spider webbed window. Bits of glass from the fallen lamp light had sprayed all the way to the opposite sidewalk. He ran across the street, forcing a passing pickup to brake. The driver pulled to the curb and said something. Brad shouted his daughter’s name through the broken window. She didn’t move. Her face shone crystal-white and bright red. Her hair, he noticed, was as prim as it was when she left the house. Her nose was flatter than it should be. A pillow slowly deflated in her lap. He tried the car door, but it didn’t open. The canvas roof stretched over the T-frame was shredded; bits of it hung near Cheryl’s face like streamers. He shouted her name again.
The pickup driver, a big man with ham hands, appeared next to him. He put a boot against the Honda’s back wheel and wrenched the door open. Brad heard excited talking far in the distance; the world had gone quiet for him. He knelt next to Cheryl and touched her limp arm. She’s so small, he thought. She’s not old enough to drive, why’d she do this? He held her shoulder with one hand and cradled her head with the other, gently putting her head against the headrest. Leaning forward like that will cramp your neck, baby. She had a nosebleed. Kids’ makeup, these red jewels they put on their eyes, is really getting out of hand. Take those crystals off your eyes, kid. He moved a shaky hand toward her face. A thick, flannel-wrapped arm stopped his hand.
“The ambulance is on its way,” said a set of coffee-stained teeth.
But she’s my kid. I can take care of my own daughter, asshole. Brad nodded. “I’m staying with her,” he said.
“Don’t move her. Sit here. Hold her hand.”
Brad did. The pavement was damp and soaked through the seat of his pants.
The paramedics arrived in a circus of flashing lights and wailing sounds. They wore blue shirts and looked quite calm. One of them lifted Brad to his feet and walked with him to the curb next to the Honda while others huddled around the car. I’m glad you’re here, he thought. She’s not faking today; she really needs help, I think.
A crowd had gathered around the wreck. Police cars parked crossways on the street to block off traffic. The clerk from inside, the one who’d called 911, brought Brad a cup of something warm. He didn’t drink it, but held it in both hands. The paramedics had Cheryl on a stretcher with a clear plastic mask over her face and a plastic tube in her arm.
“I-- want to go with,” Brad said. “I’m her dad. I want to ride with her,” he told the men in blue. They let him climb into the back of the ambulance, and lifted Cheryl’s stretcher in after him. Then they drove.
Brad held his daughter’s hand while the paramedics fussed over her. They took her blood pressure, Brad knew what that looked like, and attached beeping machines to her arms and face. Her face. Her face was red and swollen on one side, where those stupid looking jewels were. The men in blue used scissors to cut open her shirt when one of the machines started whining instead of beeping. Brad watched the men’s eyes.
He didn’t know how long they drove. When the ambulance stopped, the paramedics threw the doors open and wheeled Cheryl’s stretcher through several pairs of automatic doors. A wooly-haired nurse stopped him at the third set of doors.
“You can’t go in there, sir. Patients and doctors only,” she said.
“That’s my daughter!”
“I know. But she needs you to wait here so the doctors can fix her up,” the nurse said. She took Brad’s elbow with a soft hand and led him to a chair in an adjacent room. Brad looked around the room. It had soft lighting, unlike the fluorescent glare of the hospital hallway. There was a television hanging from the ceiling, tuned to a news channel. In the center of the room was a short table with some wood-and-plastic toys for little kids. The chairs were big and soft and lined the room’s walls. A beige-upholstered couch sat opposite the muted TV. It was a room made for long waits.
“Is there anyone you need to call?” the nurse asked. Brad noticed he was the only one without a hospital tag in the room.
“My, uh, my wife. Jen. She’s at-- I need to tell her,” he said.
“Ok, hun. Ok, here, come with me; we’ll give her a call.”
Jen and Ashley arrived some time later. They were both in tears. The wooly-haired nurse, Toni, put them in the same room as Brad. Brad held them on the couch as they cried into his shoulders, and he looked at the TV. His mind was blank. Jen paced the room, whispering prayers to herself. Occasionally she went to the nurse’s desk, and came back each time with fresh tears in her eyes. They have a never-ending supply of those, Brad thought. No news. None for hours.
Late in the afternoon, a bald doctor with rimless glasses introduced himself as Timothy Fischer. “Cheryl is stable. We're still working, but she’ll pull through,” she said.
“Thank God!” said Jen.
“So she’s ok?” asked Ashley.
The look on Timathy’s face dried Brad’s mouth. He sucked on his teeth as she spoke. “She has shards of glass in both eyes. They’re not terminal, but there may be permanent damage to her vision."
Ashley started crying again. Jen put a hand to her chest and head like she had been stabbed.
Timothy continued in a soft voice. “We're doing the best we can. Cheryl needs you folks to be strong for her right now. Get some food. Keep your strength up.
Toni appeared at Timothy's side. "I promise I’ll call as soon as I hear anything new. Ashley, honey, you have a cell phone right? Let me have the number so I can call,” she said.
“Thank you,” Jen said. Ashley wrote her cell phone number on a piece of yellow prescription paper and handed it to Toni.
The Verne’s climbed in Jen’s blue sedan and drove to a Wendy’s. None of them ate much. Brad always thought Wendy’s French fries tasted like eggs. They probably use the same oil all day, he thought. Cheryl had noticed the taste the first time Brad took her to Wendy’s. Daddy, she said in her four-year-old voice, what are fries made from? Potatoes, kid. This one’s egg, she held out a half eaten fry, bigger than any of her fingers. He remembered that. Wendy’s fries always tasted like eggs to him after that.
Brad and Jen held hands in the front seat on the way back to the hospital. Ashley took her cell phone outside while Brad and his wife waited on the waiting room couch. They waited a long time. Ashley came back inside, hair wetted down from the drizzle that had started at sundown. She had been crying, Brad could tell, and when she sat next to her mother, she cried again. An endless supply, he thought.
Eventually, his wife and daughter fell asleep in each others arms on the couch. Brad couldn’t sleep. He watched Toni gather a bag and a coat from behind the nurse’s desk. She poked her head in the room where Brad waited and whispered, “I’ll pray for her,” and then left. A different nurse, younger, and not as kind looking, replaced her.
The hospital didn’t sleep. People came in on stretchers a few times, attended by a swarm of paramedics and doctors with charts. Brad shook his head. Doctors don’t fall asleep during procedures, he assured himself. Not when you’re working on someone’s eyes. They train them for that sort of thing, staying awake, he thought.
He must have dozed though. Timothy touched his shoulder in the early hours of the morning. The doctor had shopping bags under his eyes.
“Brad, we have your daughter stable, and she’s resting now,” he said. “We- is that your family? You should wake them.”
Brad touched Jen’s face lightly and her eyes opened instantly. She whispered Ashley’s name, and his daughter started and was alert.
Timothy took a deep breath. “We’ve done all we can for Cheryl’s eyes. The glass penetrated deeply, and there’s severe damage to both her corneas. Damage that is, I’m sorry, irreparable.”
Ashley sat up straight. “Wait, wait- what’s that mean. Cheryl’s- that means she’s-“
“Blind. Yes,” said Timothy. He sat on the table next to the couch and leaned his elbows on his knees. “Now, we’ve already put her on the donor list. The optic nerve is uninjured, and there’s a good possibility that once we find a donor, she’ll be able to see again.”
“How, uh, how long will that be?” Brad asked.
“Well, it’s hard to tell, exactly,” said Timothy. “Five, maybe seven years?”
Jen let out one choking sob.
Cheryl had said she wanted lavender flowers at her wedding. Lavender is like purple, thought Brad. Pretty purple flowers, all over the churchyard in summer. It would be beautiful. They would dance, the two of them, and then he’d give her away to that Daniels guy.
Brad started to say something, but his throat was tight. Timothy was talking now to Jen, and Jen was saying something back. Brad was looking at the rainbow colored beads in a wood and wire maze on the floor.
He tried to imagine what it would be like for Mark Daniels, with a bright new bride, knowing she’d never know what he looked like in a wedding tuxedo. He couldn’t do it, not really. He imagined Cheryl walking down the aisle, holding his, Brad’s, arm. Walking in darkness, with only the hushed whispers of her father describing how gorgeous her wedding day was.
Brad cleared his throat. “What-” his voice cracked. He saw Ashley looking at him. Ashley with her long black hair, mussed on one side from sleeping on the couch. He cleared his throat again. “What if- what does it take to be a donor?” he asked Timothy.
Timothy looked through his glasses for a long time into Brad’s eyes. He nodded, once, and almost imperceptibly. “Basically… just matching blood and protein types,” he said.
Brad looked at Ashley again. She understood. She caught onto things quickly. Jen still looked perplexed. Brad coughed twice and sucked on his teeth. “So, um, would- would I pretty much, uh, match?”
Jen wasn’t confused anymore.
Timothy covered his nose and mouth with his hands. He looked straight at Brad and blew out a breath. He dropped his hands to his knees and said, “Most likely.”
Brad put his hand on his wife’s leg and felt it trembling. He looked into her eyes, brimming with fresh tears. Where do they get so many? he thought. He looked past Jen, at Ashley, whose hair was still sticking out to one side. He smiled a half-smile. I saw them grow up. I saw my wedding. She should too, he thought. He stood up. Timothy stood with him.
“Alright, Doc. Where do I sign up?”
Listening to a Rose
I got back from the doctor after he said one month.
Got an email my first day back from Bill T. Everyone has to work overtime for the rest of the month to meet the quarter numbers.
Great.
I'm at my desk and I want to quit. What's the point of all this? This number goes here, but not there. This number is worth so many dollars; this number needs so many man-hours.
I don't tell anyone, so they come up to me and sit in the chair at the end of my desk and make small talk. Kyle W. always smirks when he comes over and I can never tell why.
"So…" he says, smirking, "did you see the Cardinals last night?"
"No." I'm a Cubs fan, and I don't watch TV. He knows this.
"They won."
"Oh." His left eye is a little smaller than his right. When he smiles it shrinks, and it makes me uncomfortable to look at him. I look at my screen and click my mouse.
"Yeah, by two runs." He's grinning now. "It was funny. Yeah."
I glance over my shoulder and twitch a smile. He sits for a moment longer before leaving.
This place sucks.
Then I think, What would I do otherwise? Sit at home and read stories. People I'd never meet doing things I'd never do. Maybe I'd go for a walk. Down the same streets I've memorized, getting looks from people who wonder if I've run out of gas. Because that's the only reason to walk nowadays. Right.
I go out into the shop with a clipboard in my hand. It makes me look busy. The welder's arc throws shadows on the far wall. Machines that sound like overgrown staplers stamp shapes out of sheet metal. Fans as tall as I am suck paint fumes outside. One of the technicians curses the copper out of a wire. These are the sights and sounds of commerce.
There's a reason they have to pay people to come in to work.
Eventually the shift bell rings, and people look at the clock. They got the email. I walk to my car alone.
At home I drink a beer and eat a pork chop. I'm zoned out in my chair. On my way back from the bathroom I go to grab another beer, and I find my empty bottle, my plate, my fork, and my napkin at the bottom of the fridge. I don't remember putting them there.
It's things like that that made me see the doctor in the first place. I'd be looking for my keys for ten minutes before realizing I was holding them. Or I'd start dinner and the smoke alarm would go off because I'd put a towel in a frying pan. Little things.
Nothing to do about it now. I put the dishes in the sink and pop my beer.
I put on some music and look at the wall. I wish I could think of something profound. Something to prove to myself that I've gotten something out of life. I wish I had an enemy to fight. Someone who would kill me on my feet. I want to go out with guns blazing. I want to go out with God, Woman, and Country on my lips.
Between songs my apartment is dead silent. Some birds chirp in the gloaming outside.
The doctor said it would progress quickly. I probably won't even notice when it happens. He did say it was best to give notice at work soon, though. I might be fine wearing lettuce as a hat at home, but at work people might notice those things. I won't. They will. That's what gets me.
He showed me a cat when he was testing me. A tabby. It meowed at me.
I said, "Cat."
He said, "Hmm."
It wasn't a cat. It was a soccer ball. The rose wasn't a rose, either. The rose was a pair of headphones. I swear I could smell it. But later he showed me a tape.
I called a pair of headphones a rose.
Friday. Joanna calls while I'm playing with the margins on my resignation letter. She wants to meet at a bar after work. All right. Fine. At six; we can order food there. She doesn't know either. No need for it. The last thing I need is feigned sympathy. I hate that. You tell someone bad news, and they become upset. Then you have to comfort them. There's some kind of humor there, I'm sure.
Bill T. is busting someone's balls for botching a wiring diagram. The phone guys are talking to customers, who they hate, in their most pleasant voices. Allison, the woman who sits next to me, apologizes for the delay in a voice so saccharine I need an insulin shot. I'm keeping busy looking busy.
One of the younger techs comes over in a huff, his face red, his safety glasses pushed back on his head. He's Jason T., not to be confused with Ponytail Jason, Big Jason, or New Jason. We have a lot of techs named Jason. Jason T., has worked sixty-eight hours this week and is planning on staying until ten tonight. I heard him arguing with his girlfriend on the phone the other day. He's a dedicated employee.
Jason T. nods to me and grabs an instrument out of a cabinet by his desk. I furrow my brow and click some keys on my keyboard. I send my letter to the printer as Jason T. heads back to the shop. I get it and go stand near Bill T.
"Hey, Bill, got a minute?" I ask.
This is my big exit. We go to the small conference room. He asks if it's the money. I say, "No, personal reasons." He can't argue with that. He asks if I can stay long enough to train my replacement. I say, "I don't think so." He shakes my hand and wishes me luck.
And that's that.
At five forty-five I stop at a quick-stop oil change and try to order a beer. The attendant looks at me like I'm crazy. He gets on the phone as I leave and takes down my license plate number. It used to embarrass me, but now I take it in stride. I won't remember it in a few weeks anyway.
I still manage to beat Joanna to the bar. She shows up in low heels and a low blouse. Wisps of hair blow around her head as she walks. She sits next to me and orders a drink before saying hi.
"One of those weeks," she says.
"Tell me about it."
"So it's been forever since we've seen each other! Where have you been keeping yourself?"
She's smiling. I smile back. "I don't know," I say, truthfully. "Here, you've had a rough week? Hey! Can I get two shots of Red Label? Here, cheers. To the weekend."
"To the weekend. Cheers! Wow!"
"Good, right?"
"I don't know how you sip that stuff. I'll get next."
"In a minute. Been crazy at work?"
She chases the shot with her beer. "You know how some people are so incompetent you wonder how they can feed themselves? They all work at HBC."
I laugh and forget for a while. We talk about work and football and sex.
A few drinks later Joanna says, "So we set got a gig for the CD release party!"
"Sweet!" I say. Joanna's band, KOE, started out playing coffee houses and open mikes. They moved on to bars and band battles. Now they're opening for other bands at music clubs weekly. They're going places. "Where at?"
She smiles and looks at me sideways through her hair. "House of Blues."
"Nuh-uh!"
She nods and does a dance with her shoulders. "Yep. Mike's been making the rounds and talked us in."
"Babe, that's awesome!" I hug her. She smells like vanilla. "Congratulations! When is it?"
"November thirtieth. We're on nine to ten-thirty, and three-dollar you-call-it all night."
"Oh. Yeah. Man, House of Blues, that's huge, Jo."
She cocks an eyebrow. "So are you coming?"
"If I can."
"Have other plans?"
"No. I'll make it if I can." Halloween isn't until next week.
"You should. The S.L. Tees are opening for us; it's going to rock."
"Sounds like it. I'll do everything I can to make it."
"OK. If you need a ride or anything, you can chill with us before the show."
"We'll see."
"OK," she says, and looks at the TV. The Cubs shortstop bobbles a grounder and she yells at the TV. Joanna's good like that. She won't even ask if I don't say something's wrong. She knows, but she won't press it. When I do say something, she'll be there, no ifs, ands, or buts.
We've been friends for more than a decade now. We've never dated. We tell other people and each other that we never will. But, God, if I had more time, I'd marry that girl.
On Sunday I push my bed into the closet and sleep on the balcony. It was comfortable until I woke up. My computer tower and a dry mop are in an air conditioning box in the sink. I guess I felt like cleaning up before the work week.
I'm a half-hour late to work, and it's the same old shit. Kyle W. saunters over, grinning, and says he heard I'm quitting.
"I am."
"But why?" He chuckles.
"I have my reasons."
"Like?" His face is turning red. I want to hit him.
"Like my own."
"Yeah? Well, I'll let you—get back to—work, then."
I turn around and rub my eyebrows. Another headache is coming on. They come and go. I see things right when I have them, but they're so bad that sometimes all I see is the inside of the toilet bowl.
A few more people come by to ask why I'm quitting. I let some of the headache show, and I say, "Personal reasons." It starts the whispers rolling, and I take off after lunch.
Wednesday I don't make it in at all because I spent all day sitting on a chair on the balcony rubbing leaves on the railing. Thought I was putting together a sales document for our new controller. Had it all nice looking too, and I got up to go to the bathroom and realized I was at home.
Bill T. chews me out the next morning. I really did have to put together a sales document, and now one of our customers is grumbling that our company never gets anything done on time.
I get it done. Terribly boring work; it was like making a duplicate of one I already did. My chair didn't feel right either, so I put my monitor on it and sat on my desk. I knew I did this, it wasn't an illusion. The chair was just uncomfortable, and that's what I said when people whispered and asked if everything was okay.
On Friday I decide to retroactively make my two-week notice a one-week notice, because, fuck, what are they going to do about it?
Another headache hits me over the weekend, and it's all I can do to make a doctor appointment for Monday. I spend most of the weekend hiding under a blanket in my room with the shades drawn, drinking water through a straw.
I lose it a few times. On Sunday I'm over the toilet, and the seat came down, bang, on the back of my head. You talk about kicking someone when they're down, try getting smacked with a toilet seat while you're heaving up your guts through a headache that blinds you purple. Had me in tears. I'm crying and puking into the toilet, and I know when the headache stops I'll start seeing illusions again. Really got me down for a while.
I clean up and get some more water and put my alarm clock on to get me up for my doctor appointment. I cry myself to sleep under my blanket.
I found a banana, and I slit the top with a knife to get it started. It started bleeding. A squirrel crawled out the peel. Its throat was cut, and it stared with big bulging black eyes. I shut myself in the bathroom, and I could hear it scrabbling at the door. After a while it stopped.
There were a few days in a row I got headaches in the morning that were gone by the time it was dark. I sat in my chair then. I didn’t read. Don’t know how many days or hours I have where things are clear like that, so I just sat in my chair. I say it’s safer to stay in, to stay still. That’s what I think about. A couple weeks, at most, and I stay in and drink coffee so I don’t get hurt. Figure that one out.
I had dreams. Things I wanted to do. When I was a kid I wanted to be a pilot. I wanted to fly airliners. Launch two hundred tons of metal through the clouds. Carry hundreds of people from one pinpoint on the map to another. That’s power. I wanted that, once. Looking back and I can’t help but think. Maybe if I had partied a little less, maybe if I hadn’t gotten crushed by one chick after another, maybe if I had moved away from home a few years earlier, maybe if I had done this thing instead of that thing, or maybe if I had done this thing differently, maybe I could’ve flown planes.
But what good are dreams? What difference would it make? I’d be thirty-thousand feet over South Dakota and I’d think I was home in the tub. My dreams would make headlines then.
It’s safe in my chair. Sometimes, though, I wish I could scream— climb up on the tallest building and throw my jacket to the wind and scream—and have someone hear me. That’s all I really want. I don’t want anyone to listen. But when I really toss back I wish someone could hear it.
The days blend into each other. I ate a magazine and a sandwich from the deli down the street. My phone rang as it was getting dark, and I answered. There was a dog on the other end, barking. I asked who it was, but I started speaking French, and I couldn’t understand myself. The dog got louder on the other end.
I checked the display and it didn’t make sense. I knew there were numbers there, the number of the call and the time. They looked like bugs under glass. The dog started whining. Something clicked and I went from confused to panicked; I was really losing it. I hung up and didn’t answer when the phone rang back.
The headaches returned that night and went on through the week. They’d let up long enough to eat a bit, and then hit me again before the food could do any good. Every time, I tried to get my shit together. Focus. Touch my chair and talk to myself, describe it and get it right; call it a chair. Hit the voice mail and listen to the words, repeat them and put them together to understand. Joanna called. Wanted to know if I was okay, and to say her concert got pushed up. I wrote down the time and place, and then spent two days with a map and a pencil trying to figure out how to get there.
I was going to make it, one way or another.
A headache hit before sunrise that morning and kept me in bed until afternoon. As soon as I could stand I got my things and headed out. No way I was going to drive at this point, and it would be a long walk even if I didn’t get lost.
I’d been in my apartment for so long I didn’t notice how things had changed. My head was still ringing and there are clowns running through alleys in my peripheral vision. The streetsigns are stapled to trees coming out of the concrete, and I walk faster. I spent an hour in an outdoor mall thinking I was following the map. Nothing serious.
Inside the House of Blues they were just setting up for the night. I go straight to the bathroom, throw up in the urinal, and try to order a drink from the mirror. After a minute I got cleaned up and went to the bar.
People make me nervous, to be honest. A few words with the bartender and I take a drink to a table by the edge of the curtain that wraps around the back of the stage. My hands shake, so I draw in the condensation my glass makes for a while. I remember not being like this. Being sick and being alone got to me I guess. It must happen to everybody eventually; might as well be soon. I want to go home, but I don’t.
The place fills up with all sorts of people. A chick wears a snake around her neck and talks with someone wearing a mask that makes him look like he has lizard eyes. There are fairies flitting around the lights, and Jason T. is hanging from the ceiling scaffolding rigging bug zappers to catch them.
She leads her band onto the stage from behind the curtain. The room dims and the music starts. My table vibrated, and I grabbed it to keep it from bouncing away. I look up and there she is.
The lights make her hair a rainbow. Behind her, a cat bangs on the drums. She’s at center stage with the microphone, plucking at a long-stem rose, singing with her eyes closed. A bass heartbeat throbs just under the surface of her song. I blink the blurriness away and see her smiling at me.
It’s a short set; at the end I stand and clap and whistle. She hadn’t taken her eyes off me the whole time, even as she swayed with the music. Before the applause died, she was with me at the table. The rose, shorter now, twirled in her fingers as she talked. Her words were lost in the applause, but I know what she said. How long have we waited, letting comfortable years past get in the way of those yet to come? So afraid of losing what we had that we stopped every time we approached the place we both wanted to go. We kissed in the glow below the stage.
On through the night music turns our words to whispers. Neither of us leave the table as crowds ebb and swell around us. She laughs at jokes I tell while she draws shapes in my hand with her finger. It’s like any other time we’re together. But there’s something else there now. Something I’ve been looking for my whole life. Something that matters. Something beautiful. I kiss her again. Rose petals glide along my face. Her hand covers mine. She’s wearing a bracelet I got for her years ago, and I gently roll it around her wrist.
Then she puts a hand on my shoulder and says, “Time to go, buddy.”
“What?”
“Night’s over, go home.”
I look up and the music dies. The bartender scoops my glass up and wipes the table with a cloth. Someone carries a clanking garbage bag out a back door. The lights are up, and I’m the only one there.
“Where’d KOE go?” I ask the bartender.
“I don’t keep tabs on them once they leave. Let’s go, we’re closing up.”
In a daze, I head for the door. Outside the night is quiet. I check my phone and listen to Joanna ask where I am, then tell me where KOE is spending after hours, and then assume I’d been busy and halfheartedly asking to call her back when I get free. My throat closes.
I look around and don’t know where I am. My map must have fallen out of my pocket. I feel another headache coming on.
Got an email my first day back from Bill T. Everyone has to work overtime for the rest of the month to meet the quarter numbers.
Great.
I'm at my desk and I want to quit. What's the point of all this? This number goes here, but not there. This number is worth so many dollars; this number needs so many man-hours.
I don't tell anyone, so they come up to me and sit in the chair at the end of my desk and make small talk. Kyle W. always smirks when he comes over and I can never tell why.
"So…" he says, smirking, "did you see the Cardinals last night?"
"No." I'm a Cubs fan, and I don't watch TV. He knows this.
"They won."
"Oh." His left eye is a little smaller than his right. When he smiles it shrinks, and it makes me uncomfortable to look at him. I look at my screen and click my mouse.
"Yeah, by two runs." He's grinning now. "It was funny. Yeah."
I glance over my shoulder and twitch a smile. He sits for a moment longer before leaving.
This place sucks.
Then I think, What would I do otherwise? Sit at home and read stories. People I'd never meet doing things I'd never do. Maybe I'd go for a walk. Down the same streets I've memorized, getting looks from people who wonder if I've run out of gas. Because that's the only reason to walk nowadays. Right.
I go out into the shop with a clipboard in my hand. It makes me look busy. The welder's arc throws shadows on the far wall. Machines that sound like overgrown staplers stamp shapes out of sheet metal. Fans as tall as I am suck paint fumes outside. One of the technicians curses the copper out of a wire. These are the sights and sounds of commerce.
There's a reason they have to pay people to come in to work.
Eventually the shift bell rings, and people look at the clock. They got the email. I walk to my car alone.
At home I drink a beer and eat a pork chop. I'm zoned out in my chair. On my way back from the bathroom I go to grab another beer, and I find my empty bottle, my plate, my fork, and my napkin at the bottom of the fridge. I don't remember putting them there.
It's things like that that made me see the doctor in the first place. I'd be looking for my keys for ten minutes before realizing I was holding them. Or I'd start dinner and the smoke alarm would go off because I'd put a towel in a frying pan. Little things.
Nothing to do about it now. I put the dishes in the sink and pop my beer.
I put on some music and look at the wall. I wish I could think of something profound. Something to prove to myself that I've gotten something out of life. I wish I had an enemy to fight. Someone who would kill me on my feet. I want to go out with guns blazing. I want to go out with God, Woman, and Country on my lips.
Between songs my apartment is dead silent. Some birds chirp in the gloaming outside.
The doctor said it would progress quickly. I probably won't even notice when it happens. He did say it was best to give notice at work soon, though. I might be fine wearing lettuce as a hat at home, but at work people might notice those things. I won't. They will. That's what gets me.
He showed me a cat when he was testing me. A tabby. It meowed at me.
I said, "Cat."
He said, "Hmm."
It wasn't a cat. It was a soccer ball. The rose wasn't a rose, either. The rose was a pair of headphones. I swear I could smell it. But later he showed me a tape.
I called a pair of headphones a rose.
Friday. Joanna calls while I'm playing with the margins on my resignation letter. She wants to meet at a bar after work. All right. Fine. At six; we can order food there. She doesn't know either. No need for it. The last thing I need is feigned sympathy. I hate that. You tell someone bad news, and they become upset. Then you have to comfort them. There's some kind of humor there, I'm sure.
Bill T. is busting someone's balls for botching a wiring diagram. The phone guys are talking to customers, who they hate, in their most pleasant voices. Allison, the woman who sits next to me, apologizes for the delay in a voice so saccharine I need an insulin shot. I'm keeping busy looking busy.
One of the younger techs comes over in a huff, his face red, his safety glasses pushed back on his head. He's Jason T., not to be confused with Ponytail Jason, Big Jason, or New Jason. We have a lot of techs named Jason. Jason T., has worked sixty-eight hours this week and is planning on staying until ten tonight. I heard him arguing with his girlfriend on the phone the other day. He's a dedicated employee.
Jason T. nods to me and grabs an instrument out of a cabinet by his desk. I furrow my brow and click some keys on my keyboard. I send my letter to the printer as Jason T. heads back to the shop. I get it and go stand near Bill T.
"Hey, Bill, got a minute?" I ask.
This is my big exit. We go to the small conference room. He asks if it's the money. I say, "No, personal reasons." He can't argue with that. He asks if I can stay long enough to train my replacement. I say, "I don't think so." He shakes my hand and wishes me luck.
And that's that.
At five forty-five I stop at a quick-stop oil change and try to order a beer. The attendant looks at me like I'm crazy. He gets on the phone as I leave and takes down my license plate number. It used to embarrass me, but now I take it in stride. I won't remember it in a few weeks anyway.
I still manage to beat Joanna to the bar. She shows up in low heels and a low blouse. Wisps of hair blow around her head as she walks. She sits next to me and orders a drink before saying hi.
"One of those weeks," she says.
"Tell me about it."
"So it's been forever since we've seen each other! Where have you been keeping yourself?"
She's smiling. I smile back. "I don't know," I say, truthfully. "Here, you've had a rough week? Hey! Can I get two shots of Red Label? Here, cheers. To the weekend."
"To the weekend. Cheers! Wow!"
"Good, right?"
"I don't know how you sip that stuff. I'll get next."
"In a minute. Been crazy at work?"
She chases the shot with her beer. "You know how some people are so incompetent you wonder how they can feed themselves? They all work at HBC."
I laugh and forget for a while. We talk about work and football and sex.
A few drinks later Joanna says, "So we set got a gig for the CD release party!"
"Sweet!" I say. Joanna's band, KOE, started out playing coffee houses and open mikes. They moved on to bars and band battles. Now they're opening for other bands at music clubs weekly. They're going places. "Where at?"
She smiles and looks at me sideways through her hair. "House of Blues."
"Nuh-uh!"
She nods and does a dance with her shoulders. "Yep. Mike's been making the rounds and talked us in."
"Babe, that's awesome!" I hug her. She smells like vanilla. "Congratulations! When is it?"
"November thirtieth. We're on nine to ten-thirty, and three-dollar you-call-it all night."
"Oh. Yeah. Man, House of Blues, that's huge, Jo."
She cocks an eyebrow. "So are you coming?"
"If I can."
"Have other plans?"
"No. I'll make it if I can." Halloween isn't until next week.
"You should. The S.L. Tees are opening for us; it's going to rock."
"Sounds like it. I'll do everything I can to make it."
"OK. If you need a ride or anything, you can chill with us before the show."
"We'll see."
"OK," she says, and looks at the TV. The Cubs shortstop bobbles a grounder and she yells at the TV. Joanna's good like that. She won't even ask if I don't say something's wrong. She knows, but she won't press it. When I do say something, she'll be there, no ifs, ands, or buts.
We've been friends for more than a decade now. We've never dated. We tell other people and each other that we never will. But, God, if I had more time, I'd marry that girl.
On Sunday I push my bed into the closet and sleep on the balcony. It was comfortable until I woke up. My computer tower and a dry mop are in an air conditioning box in the sink. I guess I felt like cleaning up before the work week.
I'm a half-hour late to work, and it's the same old shit. Kyle W. saunters over, grinning, and says he heard I'm quitting.
"I am."
"But why?" He chuckles.
"I have my reasons."
"Like?" His face is turning red. I want to hit him.
"Like my own."
"Yeah? Well, I'll let you—get back to—work, then."
I turn around and rub my eyebrows. Another headache is coming on. They come and go. I see things right when I have them, but they're so bad that sometimes all I see is the inside of the toilet bowl.
A few more people come by to ask why I'm quitting. I let some of the headache show, and I say, "Personal reasons." It starts the whispers rolling, and I take off after lunch.
Wednesday I don't make it in at all because I spent all day sitting on a chair on the balcony rubbing leaves on the railing. Thought I was putting together a sales document for our new controller. Had it all nice looking too, and I got up to go to the bathroom and realized I was at home.
Bill T. chews me out the next morning. I really did have to put together a sales document, and now one of our customers is grumbling that our company never gets anything done on time.
I get it done. Terribly boring work; it was like making a duplicate of one I already did. My chair didn't feel right either, so I put my monitor on it and sat on my desk. I knew I did this, it wasn't an illusion. The chair was just uncomfortable, and that's what I said when people whispered and asked if everything was okay.
On Friday I decide to retroactively make my two-week notice a one-week notice, because, fuck, what are they going to do about it?
Another headache hits me over the weekend, and it's all I can do to make a doctor appointment for Monday. I spend most of the weekend hiding under a blanket in my room with the shades drawn, drinking water through a straw.
I lose it a few times. On Sunday I'm over the toilet, and the seat came down, bang, on the back of my head. You talk about kicking someone when they're down, try getting smacked with a toilet seat while you're heaving up your guts through a headache that blinds you purple. Had me in tears. I'm crying and puking into the toilet, and I know when the headache stops I'll start seeing illusions again. Really got me down for a while.
I clean up and get some more water and put my alarm clock on to get me up for my doctor appointment. I cry myself to sleep under my blanket.
I found a banana, and I slit the top with a knife to get it started. It started bleeding. A squirrel crawled out the peel. Its throat was cut, and it stared with big bulging black eyes. I shut myself in the bathroom, and I could hear it scrabbling at the door. After a while it stopped.
There were a few days in a row I got headaches in the morning that were gone by the time it was dark. I sat in my chair then. I didn’t read. Don’t know how many days or hours I have where things are clear like that, so I just sat in my chair. I say it’s safer to stay in, to stay still. That’s what I think about. A couple weeks, at most, and I stay in and drink coffee so I don’t get hurt. Figure that one out.
I had dreams. Things I wanted to do. When I was a kid I wanted to be a pilot. I wanted to fly airliners. Launch two hundred tons of metal through the clouds. Carry hundreds of people from one pinpoint on the map to another. That’s power. I wanted that, once. Looking back and I can’t help but think. Maybe if I had partied a little less, maybe if I hadn’t gotten crushed by one chick after another, maybe if I had moved away from home a few years earlier, maybe if I had done this thing instead of that thing, or maybe if I had done this thing differently, maybe I could’ve flown planes.
But what good are dreams? What difference would it make? I’d be thirty-thousand feet over South Dakota and I’d think I was home in the tub. My dreams would make headlines then.
It’s safe in my chair. Sometimes, though, I wish I could scream— climb up on the tallest building and throw my jacket to the wind and scream—and have someone hear me. That’s all I really want. I don’t want anyone to listen. But when I really toss back I wish someone could hear it.
The days blend into each other. I ate a magazine and a sandwich from the deli down the street. My phone rang as it was getting dark, and I answered. There was a dog on the other end, barking. I asked who it was, but I started speaking French, and I couldn’t understand myself. The dog got louder on the other end.
I checked the display and it didn’t make sense. I knew there were numbers there, the number of the call and the time. They looked like bugs under glass. The dog started whining. Something clicked and I went from confused to panicked; I was really losing it. I hung up and didn’t answer when the phone rang back.
The headaches returned that night and went on through the week. They’d let up long enough to eat a bit, and then hit me again before the food could do any good. Every time, I tried to get my shit together. Focus. Touch my chair and talk to myself, describe it and get it right; call it a chair. Hit the voice mail and listen to the words, repeat them and put them together to understand. Joanna called. Wanted to know if I was okay, and to say her concert got pushed up. I wrote down the time and place, and then spent two days with a map and a pencil trying to figure out how to get there.
I was going to make it, one way or another.
A headache hit before sunrise that morning and kept me in bed until afternoon. As soon as I could stand I got my things and headed out. No way I was going to drive at this point, and it would be a long walk even if I didn’t get lost.
I’d been in my apartment for so long I didn’t notice how things had changed. My head was still ringing and there are clowns running through alleys in my peripheral vision. The streetsigns are stapled to trees coming out of the concrete, and I walk faster. I spent an hour in an outdoor mall thinking I was following the map. Nothing serious.
Inside the House of Blues they were just setting up for the night. I go straight to the bathroom, throw up in the urinal, and try to order a drink from the mirror. After a minute I got cleaned up and went to the bar.
People make me nervous, to be honest. A few words with the bartender and I take a drink to a table by the edge of the curtain that wraps around the back of the stage. My hands shake, so I draw in the condensation my glass makes for a while. I remember not being like this. Being sick and being alone got to me I guess. It must happen to everybody eventually; might as well be soon. I want to go home, but I don’t.
The place fills up with all sorts of people. A chick wears a snake around her neck and talks with someone wearing a mask that makes him look like he has lizard eyes. There are fairies flitting around the lights, and Jason T. is hanging from the ceiling scaffolding rigging bug zappers to catch them.
She leads her band onto the stage from behind the curtain. The room dims and the music starts. My table vibrated, and I grabbed it to keep it from bouncing away. I look up and there she is.
The lights make her hair a rainbow. Behind her, a cat bangs on the drums. She’s at center stage with the microphone, plucking at a long-stem rose, singing with her eyes closed. A bass heartbeat throbs just under the surface of her song. I blink the blurriness away and see her smiling at me.
It’s a short set; at the end I stand and clap and whistle. She hadn’t taken her eyes off me the whole time, even as she swayed with the music. Before the applause died, she was with me at the table. The rose, shorter now, twirled in her fingers as she talked. Her words were lost in the applause, but I know what she said. How long have we waited, letting comfortable years past get in the way of those yet to come? So afraid of losing what we had that we stopped every time we approached the place we both wanted to go. We kissed in the glow below the stage.
On through the night music turns our words to whispers. Neither of us leave the table as crowds ebb and swell around us. She laughs at jokes I tell while she draws shapes in my hand with her finger. It’s like any other time we’re together. But there’s something else there now. Something I’ve been looking for my whole life. Something that matters. Something beautiful. I kiss her again. Rose petals glide along my face. Her hand covers mine. She’s wearing a bracelet I got for her years ago, and I gently roll it around her wrist.
Then she puts a hand on my shoulder and says, “Time to go, buddy.”
“What?”
“Night’s over, go home.”
I look up and the music dies. The bartender scoops my glass up and wipes the table with a cloth. Someone carries a clanking garbage bag out a back door. The lights are up, and I’m the only one there.
“Where’d KOE go?” I ask the bartender.
“I don’t keep tabs on them once they leave. Let’s go, we’re closing up.”
In a daze, I head for the door. Outside the night is quiet. I check my phone and listen to Joanna ask where I am, then tell me where KOE is spending after hours, and then assume I’d been busy and halfheartedly asking to call her back when I get free. My throat closes.
I look around and don’t know where I am. My map must have fallen out of my pocket. I feel another headache coming on.
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