by Will Searcy
Part of me is happy. Happy that Daffney is flying instead of hiding. Another part of me is sad. I know the park is different now. She will not come back to her bush in the shadow of the tree. The space will be empty. Empty until something replaces her.
Work is boring. After a few hours, I have opened the bridge to let a few ships through. It is reassuring that the exchanges were uneventful, but I see the green and copper burn marks and remember.
I want to read something. Dante’s Inferno is still in my drawer, but his words, while beautiful, are devoid of hope, and hope is what I need. I search the computer for an appropriate book, and nothing strikes my fancy. I know no book will make me smarter. I am not even smart enough to know which book to read. Maybe I will stumble into it.
My night drags. In spite of days without much sleep, I do not doze off. My eyes are dry and itchy, like each blood vessel in the whites of my eyes is a vine of poison ivy. I want to scratch them out, but I do not want to sleep. It is an odd anxiety, but I do not wish to sleep.
When I feel I cannot take any more, I cave and decide to read Inferno. Maybe I can hope Dante is wrong. I open the drawer where I keep my book and freeze. There is another book in the drawer. I do not know who placed it there, but it feels like the sort of coincidence that is too convenient to be chance. The book lacks any flashy cover art. This book is solid and full, plain in color and design. The power is in the words, not the marketing. The book is stout and immovable, like the marble quarries in a far away mountain.
At first, I feel nothing. It is just a moment. Then, I feel a twinge deep inside my gut. It is so deep that my brain cannot place where it is in my body. It is farther down than my gut goes, than any part of my body goes. It is an instinct. An urge. It tells me to grab that book. It tells me to read that book.
I take its black leather in my hands and feel reverence. The book has weight. It has substance. I hope it has answers. I hope to believe it.
I consider that thought. I hope to believe. It strikes me that belief is impossible without hope. Belief is a combination of both hope and knowledge. It occurs when someone hopes for something so much that they take the things for which they hope as truth. That seems impossible to me, but I hope to believe some day.
The first chapter of my book is familiar. Many of the stories from my childhood are in it. The first man. The first murder. The flood and the ark. For such a long book, I find it covers a lot of ground in the first chapter. There are no epiphanies in it, but I find the story interesting. I can see how people believe it. It all seems very well researched and documented. Each new character is traced through his or her lineage to a previous character. The way everyone and everything fits together seems plausible. I hope I can believe it. Maybe I can try.
My first night of reading is long and uneventful, and I return home with my brain feeling languid. It is Saturday, so my wife does not have to work. When I enter, I see her eating pickles. She has gone through half a jar. A bowl of Cheerios with chocolate milk rests next to her jar of pickles on the kitchen table. She has strange cravings when she is pregnant.
“Hello,” I say as I open the cupboard and grab the box of Cheerios. My wife does not respond. She takes a bite of cereal instead. “What are you up to today?” I ask.
My wife sighs and stares at her cereal. She appears to be reading, but she has no newspaper, book, or tablet. She just stares at her bowl. I take my bowl and join her at the table. She looks worn.
“How’s work been?” I ask.
She shrugs and mopes in her cereal instead of responding. I snicker.
“Who’s the one not talking now?”
She frowns. Then, she stands, takes her jar of pickles, leaves her Cheerios, and walks back towards our bedroom.
I take a deep breath, and then a bite of Cheerios. I remember its flavor. It no longer seems so stale and old, but something about the flavor has changed even though the Cheerios are the same. I taste them anew and I am not sure I like it yet.
After I eat, I drop off my wife and I’s bowls in the kitchen sink and walk to my bedroom. She is sprawled across the bed. I remove my shirt and pants and peel back the covers.
“I’m tired,” she says.
“Me too,” I reply and try to slip into bed.
“There’s no room,” she says.
I pause.
“You don’t want me to sleep here?” I ask. She rolls over and takes the covers with her.
I stand from the bed and consider her response, but there is nothing to debate. My wife does not want me, so I retrieve athletic shorts from my drawer, put them on, and walk to the couch. I will nap before my father comes.
By Monday, things have not changed. I am still trying. I cling to hope like a toddler clings to his father’s hand while crossing a busy intersection. My wife is aloof. Pop tries to cheer her up, but he finds the task difficult. He does not encourage me to apologize as much as before. Maybe he finally sees that I am right and my wife is the one at fault.
I continue reading my book at work. It takes a tedious turn in the third chapter. There are so many rules and regulations. I cannot help but think that men took something beautiful and suffocated it with rules. They used words to grapple the unbridled truth and bring it down to Earth so simple-minded people like me could wrestle it into our caves and try to understand it. I do not need to understand, though. I just need to know it is there. I hope it is.
Only once do I look up from reading. It is when I hear a noise outside my perch over the bridge. A young couple has clamored under the stairwell. They kiss in the moonlight. I watch them a moment and think of my wife. It has been a long time since she surprised me where I sit. I should have treated her better for it. I did not, though, and I should not spy on these young people in love. A bed only has so much room.
After a few more days of reading, I feel different. I do not feel better. I do not feel worse. My frontal lobe is numb and quiet. It no longer tries to be smarter than it is. My mind rests and accepts that there are questions it simply cannot answer. It is an odd feeling. Instinctively, I want to fight it, but my spirit is at peace, and my brain is processing. At least, I hope it is.
We go to church again on Sunday. It is the same. None of my reading has changed church. In fact, I still have not heard any of what I have read. There is no clarity. Only words. So, I pray. I do not ask for Sam back, although that is all I really want. Instead, I ask for perspective. I ask for clarity. I want to understand. I want to know.
As we leave the church, I subdue my old friend. He has been a nuisance of late. He bothers me more and more. My book is supposed to send my old friend packing. It has not. It has invited him back like an estranged son.
We return home from church, and before the door to our house closes, my wife retrieves her pickles and walks to the bedroom. Pop makes for the couch to watch his game. I have a moment. There are three things I can do. What I want to do – which is to sit with my father and try to hope for a hopeless outcome. There is what is easy - which is to waste the day away watching the ducks at the park. Now, I consider a third option I have not weighed in a while. What I should do.
I see that the kitchen is a mess. Fortunately, my wife has only eaten pickles and cereal all week, but the counters are dirty and the dishes are piled in the sink. She has enough on her plate without having to deal with this, so I go to the kitchen and wash dishes.
The chore is slow at first. Some of the dishes have grime stuck to them from ages ago. I must scrub thoroughly. The dishes need to be clean and ready to be used fresh. My acuity increases with time, and the dishes pile up on the drying rack. I dip the last dish under the flowing water, and my body preempts my mind. In retrospect, my mind agrees with my body as I turn on the stove and place a frying pan on it. I scramble some eggs and pour them on the pan with a loud hissssss.
“Eggs?”
Pop calls from the family room. “Count me in.”
I scramble three extra eggs for my father. Then, I pour them onto the pan with the others. The pale liquid turns gold and softens. I scoop them onto three plates in equal amounts. Then, I deliver Pop his plate.
“Thanks, son. These smell fantastic!” he says with his open-mouthed smile.
I return to the kitchen, grab the other two plates, and walk to the back bedroom where my wife eats pickles in bed. I give her a plate of eggs and a fork. She says nothing. I sit on the end of the bed with my plate. I eat and say nothing.
After a moment, I hear the scrape of my wife’s fork on her plate. She is eating. That is good. A mother and child need strength.
I finish my eggs and wait for the scrape of her fork to stop. A moment after it does, I stand, retrieve her empty plate, and walk back to the kitchen where I hand wash both our plates and forks. I return to our bedroom and find my wife asleep. The pickle jar is open on the nightstand. I secure its lid and take it to the kitchen so my wife can rest.
The next morning, I wake up and find my wife juggling tasks in the kitchen. She moves quickly and with purpose. Her clothes are neat and ironed. She has done her makeup, and her shoes are on her feet.
“I made a grocery list. You mind picking it up?” she asks like she used to ask before, when she would call me on