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Four Fictions |
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We Live Here Now
I don't know if my talents, of which you said I have many, will help
me dismiss the graffiti of tenant ghosts, the initials along the
floorboards, notes left to suck and blow and die. It is hard enough
without you here. The cat doesn't know where he lives anymore, but he
recognizes the slick sill of the tub, the familiar humidity of a long
shower. It doesn't matter who it is under the flow. I think he is
drawn to the scent of the eucalyptus rinse. I towel off and we leave
our prints in the hall, his and mine. Come and find us. If you would
just look for us, we have left the light on. We are the bloat under
the covers.
All day I went blind, snowshoeing our boyhood trail. The snow was hard
and bright. The sky was blue alive. Night came and we camped by the
lake, hot slivers of wind whipping in through the flap. My brother
heated Minestrone on a Sterno, pre-slicing butter and bread. We
unlaced our boots and lined them up by the flap, identical pair. He
told me to take off my socks and check for bruises. I told him I paid
for sex not just once. I said our toes are ugly. We are the same all
the way except for the blush that spreads from behind his ears.
I don't look at the needle or the vials, but at your feet squeaking on
the tiles. My veins can't be in protest, thin blue passages that
anatomy dictates should be there, but you say are not. One thing I did
was give up alcohol and caffeine as instructed, so, no, I don't have
any advice. My doctors never took blood regularly, maybe because where
I lived they wouldn't like to borrow trouble. Your sneakers are black,
which must mean you are the odd sheep of the laboratory, that you are
a dark one. I wonder what you would look like smoking a bong, alone,
or with people who aren't your friends. I'm not asking which tests you
are running. My husband says I never ask the right questions, that I'm
so anxious to be discharged I turn into a horse in blinders, a doodle
on the page, a woman leaving. After the intervention, she goes with him for a walk by the waterfront. They pass a baseball field where he says he used to play. She tells him she never knew. He says his girlfriend at the time never went to the games so it must be something psychological that he never mentioned it. She lights a cigarette and pulls a straw for him from her purse. He chews it a little before folding it into his pocket and holds his hand out for the real thing, always with the preference for the real thing. The beach is wet and cool. He drifts off the path to walk out on the jetty while she hangs back, finishing her cigarette. She rounds the path to the playground, remembering the time a lightning storm came through and they hid under the slide, the strikes taking her apart. He finishes by the water and follows her to the play area, climbing the wooden structure to lay on the rope mesh bridge, his legs too long to fit its kid-sized-span. She begins to sense her pain return, the bleeding a symptom of her body's health even though it doesn't feel that way. She goes to rest on the tire swing, already swaying, another imperceptible earthquake that only she is sensitive enough to notice. |
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