1 Day
Page 4
Jane stops by. Jane teaches English. Jane talks about something. Jane speaks English. Jane’s words are not hard to understand. Jane is trying to say something besides what Jane is saying.
That’s so English, she thinks. She laughs at a weird pause in the conversation. Jane leaves.
Time – killed dead. Time for class.
***
She spells out the Hamlet performance project again, though it turns out somewhat different with different people.
***
The din of adolescence thumping in her ears, she locks her office door and takes her clothes off. She puts on tighter, thinner, more comfortable attire. She stalls for 15 minutes to let the hallways clear and the parking lot empty. On the way out, she drops her bags in the car, does some cursory stretches, hamstrings, thighs, calves, and groin, and runs away from campus.
She runs along the road, to the water.
The clouds spit, but sucker holes open to the blue beyond the gray ceiling. Occasionally, the clouds break enough to admit the sun. She feels good. She feels bad leaving Max at daycare an extra hour, but he’s better off with her better balanced, and she is pretty sure he has more fun at daycare than at home anyhow.
She cuts through the cemetery, where there’s no traffic and no eyes and lots of worms. Chunks of cement and granite and marble and spreading oaks and sky-scraping firs and red-peeling madronas, and now crocuses – purple, yellow, white; daffodils – yellow, white; and bluebells – a color she’ll call purple, for rhythm. Too early yet for tulips. Tulips would break the rhythm. Two lips would be two too many. Two lips would break her rhythym like a second y, like an ax to the face, like a kiss.
And there, a groundskeeper – old, bearded, overalled, perennial-planting. Maybe in her next life she’ll be a groundskeeper in a graveyard. She passes the thought with an exercise of speed.
Through the cemetery, across the street, the path on the bluff overlooking the water. She stops and breathes heavily and looks at the former industrial site below, a quarry become golf course, at the bay, at a ferry crawling to the island sheltering the penitentiary, at the Olympic Mountains minus their peaks closeted in cloud, at the blue patches of sky through the worn quilt of gray.
She turns around and runs back.
Ten years ago she would’ve run and run along the path to encounter as much as she could. She would have slipped through a chained gate, snuck through the abandoned quarry and its relics of industry, hopped multiple fences and crossed railroad tracks and ignored “No Trespassing” signs and slid down to where water meets land. She would have disrobed and jumped in the water and thrashed for a good 15 seconds and that would’ve been enough. She would’ve reemerged blue. She would’ve found a patch of sun to stand in, and turned pink. She would close her eyes, lift her face, and let herself be warmed. Her skin would tighten, her hairs drip, her nipples stand at attention. She would dream of a man who would do the same with her. They would talk about the mountains, then climb them. They would talk about children, then have them. They would talk about the sun, then find a patch of it and settle down.
She contents herself with what she has. A 30-minute run, slick sweat, heavy breathing.
“I feel better for it,” she says to no one.
***
Max puts his head down and runs full tilt from the swingset to the gate and crashes into her arms. He hugs her. She wraps around him, ties her hands behind his back, and pulls him in, in, and in. She guzzles. She wishes this to be the last thing she feels, her boy in her arms, her son, squeezing and squeezed with unqualified love.
He wears different pants. He wet himself again. “He was too busy playing,” says the daycare lady.
“Yes,” she swallows, “You have to force him to use the pot. Wring it out of him.”
She is supposed to take something from him, something he wants, a toy, a ball, a car. That was the deal, pee your pants and lose an object you covet. He has to learn; he’s four years old; he goes to school next year.
She doesn’t have the heart to teach him a lesson.
She is tired of telling kids to stop leaning back in their chairs when she leaned back in her chair, of chastising them to pay attention when she can’t pay attention, of teaching them to build logical, incisive arguments when logic undercuts relationships, of caring about things she doesn’t care about because it’s her job. Let him pee himself. Let him drown the world. Fuck it. Dostoyevsky was an epileptic. He had a gambling addiction. He suffered in Siberia. He wrote a book or two that have an element of truth to them and that she identifies with on some level, and so she seizes herself by the hair and drags herself out of bed to clench a pen between her teeth and spasm on a table and teach Dostoyevsky and try to bluff that feeling of reading him, of writing in the black morning, of fondling words, into a job. It is a moral hazard to work to be a feeling. She risks her savings for some unwordable feeling. She tries to bring a feeling to life with an ax.
Her son is in her arms, and she is frowning at his pants.
***
Pills. She’s thought about pills. Doctors and pills. She’s talked to psychiatrists, counselors. She used to talk to her husband. She talks to herself. Her question for all of them is, Why are they so privy? She has friends. She talks to them. They wrote books and they died. This conversation is old as words. She asks the analysts, What do you want from your life? They say, To be happy. She agrees, but they mean different things. When their meanings converge, then they can talk. Otherwise it’s words; it’s talking to yourself; it’s emotional manipulation. She doesn’t need to talk to someone to be made aware of her issues. Pills. Maybe her chemicals are unbalanced. Maybe she reuptakes serotonin quicker than experts recommend. What fun is balance? A world of happy people; a world without joy. She runs and reads and laughs and cries. The problem is, though she often doesn’t like who she is, she’d rather be herself than someone she likes. Perhaps one day, if she gets ugly enough, she’ll find some pills and they’ll make everything in the mirror better. She can’t believe existence would be as sweet without it verging on rot. No mountains without valleys, and all those other sayings she can’t bring herself to say. No belief without doubt. She cringes at her unspoken words, but it’s better than a flatline.
***
“Fuck it,” she breathes. Why not? Nobody waits for them at home.
“Fox,” Max says, which is what she’s taught him to say. He’s a good kid. She turns red, then laughs and hunts him up in the rearview mirror, strapped three ways to Sunday in his seat.
“I’m really screwing you up, eh kiddo?”
“Are you okay, Mommy? It’s okay. It’s okay. Are you tired? Are you hungry? Did you hurt yourself? It’s okay.”
“I’m just a little giddy, but that’s not the point, I am so sad, so sad …”
“Oh, you’re sad, Mommy?”
“Yes, I’m sad. I’m Dostoyevsky.”
“It’s okay. It’s okay.”
“I’m Raskolnikov doing a hatchet job.”
“You’re not Roscoecof, you’re Mommy!” He giggles behind her at the 4-year running joke. She pretends she’s something she’s not and he calls her out, or she pretends he is something he’s not, an eagle, a dinosaur, Pablo Neruda, and he calls her out. His imagination has yet to outlast hers. She’s teaching him solid grounding.
“You want to go to the water?”
“I want to go to park.”
“Yeah, we’ll go to the park on the water.”
“I want to spin.”
“You’re already spinning. We’re on a planet.”
“I want to spin!”
“We’re not going to spin. You fell and about bashed your head in last time you got off that thing. We’re going to a different park, the one on the water. With boats and dogs and mountains and sand. You’ll throw rocks at the ocean.”
That is what they do. The tide is in, though on its way out. They don’t have much beach, but it’s growing and all theirs. No dogs, no people, no san
dcastles. A weekday, nearing dinnertime. There’s a lot of sky now between the peaks of the Olympics and the lee edge of the clouds sweeping east. A colder night tonight for the roofless, but drier. And starred. They search for sharks, dolphins, octopi, killer whales, giant squid, flying fish, scrabbling crabs, starfish, sea horses, geoducks. They see nothing. They see waves. They throw rocks at the Sound, their corner of the ocean. Max wants to run into the water, but she convinces him he’ll be cold and miserable. He chases receding waves and flees approaching ones. He wets his feet, and that’s enough of that.
They straddle a big length of driftwood, a toppled trunk. Their feet dangle as they ride a horse, now an alligator, now a whale, a giant white whale out past the yacht, out past the container barge, under the bridge and around the islands and past the mountains and beyond the peninsula, to where they can’t see, to the open ocean, violent and big, she tells him as she holds him tight so he won’t fall overboard, very big, bigger than we can see.
***
They stop at a grocery store to get food. That’s what you do at a grocery store, get food. Stop being redundant. Stop being so intellectually obnoxious, she tells herself. A grocery, not a grocery store. Anymore, you can buy anything you want at a grocery. All goods have become as necessary as food. A portable DVD player, a flat screen, a G-string, a bouquet of whatever color you like, a coffee maker, whichever you want, one that can turn itself on at 4:30 in the morning, it’s the best part of waking up, or perhaps you want a percolator, or a French press, personal and family size, or an espresso machine and don’t forget the coffee grinder along with filters and cheap coffee and shade-grown coffee – rainforest in your cup – and buy a plot of equatorial forest to save it with your replacement pot for when yours cracks, or perhaps if you’re looking to be economical in these hard times you can fill the crack with your glass G-string. Things are getting better; it’ll all work out. You’re too smart for that, she tells herself. Yes, that’s one of your problems, she sasses back.
Max is whining because he wants it all. Cookies, chips, bananas, grapes, yogurt, cottage cheese, beer – put a name to it and he wants it. Or don’t and he does. She tries for sympathy; it’s her fault after all that he’s hungry. It’s her fault they had to go have fun at the ocean. It’s her fault they had to ride a log on a long journey, unprepared with snacks.
But she could do without the histrionics. Whining and over-dramatizing are not clever ways to get what he wants.
She opens a box of crackers he blubbers about and hands it to him and he throws it to the ground, spilling crackers like milk because now he wants the grapes and she wants to throw him up and over the canned goods into the next aisle and walk away and let him fend.
She explains in a calm voice drowned by his screams about how eating grapes before they pay is stealing because they pay by weight, as if she believes it matters, as if she feels some societal obligation to not shortchange this huge chain grocery store, as if she doesn’t feel she has a right to steal a few cents to make her son shut up and be happy when it’s this store’s purpose – with its economy of scale and coupons and advertising – to capitalize on her, to make money off her, as if stealing a few grapes will trickle down to negatively effect the grape pickers and growers in Chile (paid in dimes and happy, they have to be happy) the only people in the chain of supply she feels allegiance to, other than perhaps the truckers and the truck loaders and the shelf stockers and the old man pushing the broom and the teenage check stand girl. As if she feels like she owes it to the economy. Some theoretical economy, when her son is bawling right here, grapeshot oozing from his eyes.
But that’s just what a mother does – she doesn’t steal grapes, and she makes her son cry in grocery stores.
She doesn’t want to be such a mother.
She gives him a grape or two or 12. She feeds him some crackers off the ground. She peels him a banana and plants the peel behind a 2-liter of Coke Zero. When she pays, she forgets to take the box of saved crackers from Max to be scanned. The cashier doesn’t care and she doesn’t care, so it’s all right.
***
Mac-and-cheese, because what she doesn’t need now is another fight about food. And because it has to be fast. She has a beer because. She wonders if Emerson had days like this. Everyday is like this. Dostoyevsky surely did, the epileptic. Raskolnikov did; he told her, even put it in writing, drew up a prenup.
She beers herself because a beer makes it fun. A touch of ferment makes cooking an act to enjoy, not just to be done. She boils water; Max plays his trumpet.
Max says dinner is very very very very very very good. He says, “I’m a lion,” and buries his face in the bowl like it’s an elephant carcass and, like any spiritually minded hunter, he wants to eat the heart first. He comes up for air, cheeks and forehead and hair macaronied. “Thank you, Mommy,” he says.
“Anytime, bucko, anytime.”
***
Time for bed. Past time. They played in the sea. No bath tonight. She doesn’t believe in daily baths. He smells like the ocean. Teeth, books, songs. Another song, because he asked. She doesn’t want to say no. Lights out.
“Good night, Max. I love you. Good night.”
***
She steps outside for the mail. She inhales outside air, exhales inside air. She looks for stars and finds a few. Not many in the city. She likes the cold air, the being outside, the not being inside. She wants to stay out longer, but has no reason to. For not the first time, she wishes she smoked. She’s a teacher, a mother, and never liked the smoke taste or the lung ache, but still, a cigarette is a reason to pause and stand outside and do nothing but inhale, exhale, enjoy two minutes of relief.
A car crawls by. A neighbor’s door slams and someone comes out. She goes in.
She slits an envelope and disgorges its contents and continues her oversight of the flushing of her retirement. She doesn’t care. The school continues to withdraw the mandatory amount from her check and give it to a professional investment firm that is certified to piss it away. She doesn’t care. What would she use the money for? To buy Max a TV, a cell phone, a handheld gaming device? To buy herself a handle of whiskey? Fly to South America, visit the Andes? They might not come back, and then what? As it is, she’ll still go see a play if she wants. They’ll always have the ocean. Who needs to buy clothes? She has made the discovery that adult clothes last longer than most adults. She doesn’t get why an industrial revolution was woven of textiles, or why when people stop buying crappily stitched cloth their jobs and therefore their worth will be lost like loose change in holey pockets. She doesn’t understand spending to save the economy. Wasn’t the point of the Industrial Revolution a reduction of labor?
What the draining of her funds makes her think is, “Why am I still working?”
She doesn’t do the dishes; she doesn’t grade; she doesn’t prepare for tomorrow.
“I feel stifled,” she narrates to herself passionately.
“Stifled?” she responds inquisitively.
“Unable to do what I want to do,” she clarifies with a plaintive wail.
“What do you want to do?” she inquires responsively, sympathetically, and analytically.
“I don’t know,” she elucidates desperately.
Maybe she’ll sell the house for dirt and buy an old truck and a camper and they’ll move to the desert, to the middle of nowhere, and live on nothing. Do people really live like that? Or is it a thing of the past, of Kerouac and Moses and Christian eremites? Maybe instead she’ll buy a boat even though she knows nothing about boats except what Melville confided to her, and Melville is dead, killed by Moby Dick. There is always someone to pay, she thinks, someone with an open hand. Blowholes. Your choice comes down to what tricks you want to subject yourself to.
The problem is, she has this soul that just isn’t worth anything.
She collapses on the couch, a shot star, a burst cloud, a fallen market, an axed angel, a whored heart. She tries not to be a teary eye
. No one is starving, no one is homeless, no one is diseased, no one is dying, no one is in Siberia, no one married her husband’s brother. Her husband went away, but she’s always been alone. She has a son, and he rides whales. She has a good life, which is a stupid thing to cry about, and a cliché. It’s okay to be smart and cringe at clichés, but it’s such a waste to cry about them.
How much joy does one person need? “How addicted you are to your greed,” she screams to herself so no one else hears.
She will not take these thoughts to bed. If the thoughts will take her, let them do it on the couch. She won’t spill their spelling on the sheets.
She will go to bed, she will, but not for some time. She fights tears. She loses. She fights her desire to fight the tears. She fights dirty, with nails and teeth, pulling hair and gouging eyes, drawing tears and scrawling blood. She doesn’t care if she’s expelled; she has to fight. If she doesn’t risk it, there will be no rising tomorrow to teach and mother. She is nothing without a fight. She fights.
***
END
About Nick Stokes
Nick Stokes writes novels, plays, fictions, nothings, arrangements, pieces of prose, and other undefinables. He lives mostly or mostly lives in Washington; he packs mules in the backcountry of Montana; he's been elsewhere. Among other explorations, circa 2014, he's working on an immersive (anti)-choose-your-own-adventure novel. His novel AFFAIR was recently serialized and released as an ebook by The Seattle Star. He's been a finalist for many awards; he's received a few. His other writings can be found in dark crannies, in magazines sometimes known as journals, and around the web for dirt cheap or less. For dissemination, refer to https://www.nickstokes.net.
Other Titles by Nick Stokes
Novels:
Affair
You Choose ... (forthcoming)
Novelette:
1 Day
Stories:
An End
Rise, then Descend
What Never Happened, an Observation
(others forthcoming)
Short, Flash, or Nothing Prose:
(numerous but for the moment you must search the web and on occasion read paper)
Connect with Nick Stokes