I pick up the flowers off of the grave. Maybe if I get these, maybe everything will get better. They’re still fresh, much like their owner’s home, the earth loose from being just dug from the ground. The fresh roses still smelling of the sweet cling of death, still sitting in their clean plastic wrapping, a dozen in a bouquet, and out of their clear glass vase and into my eager hand they go. Fresh free flowers, can’t beat it. I wonder if she’s finished dinner by now. Maybe she’ll be all pissy again. It drives me nearly to the blurred edge of insanity. But every time as I peer over it, I realize I can’t do that. I have to keep going. Every time I know it’ll get better. I guess she’s just been like that a lot lately. It’s tough sometimes dealing with it after work, but I guess that’s why they call it marriage.
The faces of the gravestones surrounding Jim watched in an estranged silence. Somehow, he feels he’s outworn his welcome. The thought annoys him though; so he scuffs the wrought iron gate with his boot on his way out. His car’s motor is still running. A gargoyle perched on the wall laughs mockingly at his antics. Cold, angry cold outside, raps harshly against his nostrils.
My escort’s red paint, although flaking, stands out like the roses did in the whiteness of the snow. Inside my car, it smells like rotting milk, probably because I spilled some two weeks ago. All the same, it greets me like a ball-peen hammer, knocking my senses, my eyes, to tears before I can move past it. I try to forget about it enough to adjust the radio. Now it’s playing Last Kiss by Pearl Jam. I hate that song. I begin to flip stations with my right index finger, punching the buttons, a worker on the line. Each station prompts me to my next task, exactly the same as the last. Nothing seems to make a difference.
Jim’s house is up ahead, another two hundred yards and he’s there. He told his wife he didn’t want to live next to the graveyard. He thinks it’s creepy. She loves the house though, even though it’s way above their income range. Their marriage wasn’t always like this was it? He wonders this to himself as he gets out of the car. The neighbor’s dog looks to have taken a shit in his lawn again. He notes it as he closes his car door. The thud of the noise causes the animal, still on the scene of the crime, to leap to action, a strange strangled yelp as if ashamed at being caught off guard by this vague wisp of a man. No longer interested the dog falls a twisted circle, and he’s lying back in the same spot as a moment before. The man can nearly pretend it never happened.
When is he getting home? If he’s late again because he’s been workin’ late I’m gonna be just so damn mad, he’ll see. He wasn’t always such a damn jerk. He wasn’t always like this. He used to give a shit about what I thought, about what I wanted. Are the potatoes done? The chicken? I grab my mittens and check the oven. He used to give a shit about me.
“Hi honey,” he forces himself to call as he opens the screen-porch door, letting it shut slowly as it repeatedly slaps the wood. Already her senses watch for any evidence that he’s been dillydallying. A bit of dirt on his pant leg, she takes it as exhibit one. Something seems different today, and she nearly comments. But then forgets him in other thoughts of , she smiles at him, apathetically, as if too bored with him to even bother mentioning her thoughts, the pants, too bored to do anything about him, even to just end it.
“Hiya sweetie, How’s my Big Bear? Grrrrumpy? Grrrreat? Did you have a good day my shnuuugums?” Despite the words she uses, she could have been talking to a wall – a white wall in an insane asylum – instead of him. He doesn’t respond, but tiredly holds out the flowers to her instead. She coos mockingly delighted and tries to toss her arms around him playfully, just for a moment, as if forgetting everything. The flowers wilting slightly, look to her like they’re at least a day old. “He’s a cheap bastard,” she thinks but says nothing, and plops them on the counter, resuming her kitchenly tasks as if an at-will-automaton.
Ignoring her indifference, momentarily too defeated to notice, he slides a couple of beers out of the fridge. They’re ice cold. He wishes he could climb inside one and hang out for a while. Instead, he plunks one down in front of her chopping block as if she’s really going to drink with him. Then he surprises them both, and decides to say something,
“Damndest thing happened today at work. There we were, me and Tom in an intense discussion…” he breaks off for a second, “we were talking about things, and the boys on the floor are still working, when in runs Bob all out of breath. The fat bastard reallys gotta shape it up, but yeah, anyways he tells us, ‘you’s guys ain’t gonna believe dis, but Jake’s dead.’” His attempt at Bob’s accent is terrible, but he tries anyways. He switches back to his own voice and says, “Accident on the job. Sawed his whole damn side off on the floor, arm and everythin’, blood sprayed all over the place like some punk kid had used it for spray paint. A damn shame. I nearly lost it at work today.”
“Oh my, that is just awful! I just cannot believe that, how did it happen?” She responds, feigning disbelief, but more concerned with Tom than anything else.
“Baby, you know how it is down there, one wrong step and well. That’s it. Pshooey,” he makes a grotesque flopping gesture with his free hand and then takes another swig.
Then he says, “Know I don’t wanna die, and I ain’t saying nothing like that or anything… like I’m gonna… but if I did. I’d want one thing. Ya know? Like a request or something. But some things are just important. Some things a man just needs to keep going. Promise me just this one some thing and all I’ve done, all of this will be worth it.”
“What do you mean by all of that?” her tone turning dangerous.
“Just that all this work will be worth it. Sorry I didn’t mean anything,” he replies weakly.
“Aww honey, you know I’ll do anything for my bearr,” she turns playful and pats his arm.
He continues full serious, “I want a great funeral. It’d be a shame to leave this world without nobody marking me out as something a bit great. I’ve just worked so hard for this house baby, so hard to make it good for us here. I just want people to remember that I did all this.” His fear of becoming another piece of decaying matter is more real to her for a mere moment before the chicken burning in the oven, forgotten in the midst of his tale, causes her to jump up.
“Oh sugar! I burnt the chicken. Here let me just cut off the skin a little,” she starts cut off by the smoke detector’s scream.
Sighing, he thinks, “Damn it all, can’t you do a damn thing right?” And says nothing but grabs a towel to fan the smoke. His sudden snap might have been a mark of his exhaustion, but she glowers at him.
“Sorry sweetie, I’m real sorry if I distracted you with all my talk.” She still ignores him. He pauses considering her for a moment, and says,
“Baby, I just don’t know what came over me. I think I’m too tired lately. It’s the work, you know, it’s the work. Sometimes I feel like it’s killing me.”
She keeps her eyes on her cooking and doesn’t look up.
They eat their meal in silence, each absorbed in imaginary walls erected and dismantled in the minutes between dinner and desert. Wet tastes, more beers, and soon the night’s end overcomes his eyes. An illusory fog wipes his mind falsely clean in thick forgiving white strokes. And then he’s passed out in his favorite chair, a real beater of a green chair in the lounge, muttering,
“Don’t say that Tom, that’s God awful, ya don’t say that Tom,” his lamentations unknown to him, and not understood, let alone by her.
Dawn’s sweet splash of relief hasn’t yet colored her room, but Jim’s already gone. Squeals of his tires pierced the night’s calm long before this moment. She looks around in silent apprehension, but to her happy amazement, she’s alone. Lying back down for a couple more hours, she soaks in sleep like a dry sponge.
A paper smacks the front door. Cars roll down the street in their ugly morning procession. Not one inhabitant pleased at his or her final destination. Well maybe that Smith guy, but he’s a prick, she mutters to herself. Kids sleepy-eyes waiting for the bus, and then an hour later when she wakes they’ve all disappeared, the neighborhood picked clean empty like a robber at a cash register.
The alarm’s beeping at me. I don’t even remember going to sleep. It’s like I have to just keep going. The shower is cold at first, but I’m glad for it. We haven’t made love in a long time. Afterwards I want to shave, but can’t find my shaving cream. Must’ve run out of it. I’m tired this morning. Tired of driving to work, wondering what Kathy is doing at home while I’m gone. Wondering why I kept doing this every day even though it makes me sick to my stomach. Sick to death with no near end in sight. But it’s a job. It’s letting us keep the house, letting me keep Kathy. I have to wonder if these things I tell myself are true, but barely have time to think about them before getting in the car.
The doorbell rings three or so times before Kathy gets dressed. Her steps are brisk movement echoing in the still hallway. She opens the door to a man her husband has never met before. He’s taller than her husband, he’s leaner, more aristocratic. Perhaps not from his build, but from something about the way he breathes the air, the way his eyes regard her coolly. So different from the dangerous passion her husband gives her, not a hint of his fire, his quickened breathe at her slightest glance. She’s never sure she can have this man, and the very notion makes her heart skip a full count, a record broken by his original beat.
His eyes are always so deep, so hard to read. I just wonder what he’s thinking. Is my hair okay? I hope he doesn’t think I’m too old. His ass is so firm. Delicious. I try to smile at him, but nearly fail, so I ask him if he wants some breakfast instead. He says as its nearly eleven, isn’t it brunch? I nod, and as I’m doing this, he accepts my offer. I bound out of his sight, down the hallway, the door still open with him in it, giddy to perform anything to please him. I can still smell his aftershave lingering around me as I enter the kitchen. I cook, and he talks. I listen, and he tells me sweet nothings about himself, myself, his house in the Alps. I want to tell him how wonderful he is, how I just want him to whisk me away from here, but I don’t. Instead, I tell him about the mundane moments that fill my days, passionless and empty.
They are in the kitchen, sitting on the table, him drawing small patterns on her naked breasts. Still heaving from the exertion, the stink of sex still fresh in the air, the doorbell rings again. The fifth time. They both expected it to stop at the third. She hastily pulls on her clothes, egg on her shirt from being dropped on his finished plate. She’s surprised by the intrusion, and runs to the door, calling backwards to her man that “it’s probably a salesman,” and to wait and to stay naked. To her surprise it’s someone she knows.
“Tom? Hi Tom, what, uhh, what are you doing here?” He looks at her strangely, lost in emotions she once understood intimately.
“It’s nothing like that,” he trails off embarrassed. Then he continues, “Actually I’m here because I’m plant manager. I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, I feel like it’s my fault too. But it’s my job as plant manager.” He clears his throat, “When Jim showed up at work this morning, we thought he was sick or something. I..” his voice faltered, “I don’t know how it happened. But I’m sorry Kathy. He’s gone. We tried to stop it, to save him from the saws, but we weren’t quick enough. I.. I’m so sorry to be the one to tell you Kathy,” but he can tell from her expression, that the news catches her off guard. The gaiety drains from her eyes and cheeks like a sink full of water with the plug suddenly pulled out. Then she falls.
The accident insurance comes through; the money ought to have reeked of blood, but it’s green, clean and green. The smiles of dollar signs dance hypnotically in her eyes wiping away any thoughts except of herself. She almost remembers the last things Jim ever said to her, but they’re only fleeting thoughts. A day soon after, the other guy moves in with her, or perhaps she moves in with him, their union paid for by the insurance. With the last of the insurance money, she buys a new Mercedes Benz.
Sometime a year later or so, she remembers what Jim had said. After a wistful smile, she gets in her car and goes for a drive. She takes her favorite road that runs well above the city. It starts by passing the graveyard down the street from her house. It makes her remember Jim again, and how he hated graveyards. She keeps driving, following the road’s convoluted turns. Near the top, she stops the car to look out over the city. Her face blank of any emotion.
Then, one sunny day later that same summer, she gets in it again, and decides to go for the same drive. She turns past the graveyard, and up the winding road. At the top, her thoughts are quietly numb as if realizing something terribly important for the first time in her entire life. Her car passes off the cliff – clean off of it with no backwards thoughts – no breaking, out and away, lost in the wind somewhere behind her hair streaming in the sun, the car top down, the wind forgiving.