The Trouble with Bliss

by Douglas Light

Stefani never showed. Morris was thankful. He couldn’t shake Jetski, and if Jetski saw him with Stefani, if he knew what had happened between the two, he’d be infuriated. Most likely violent.

  At home, Morris finds Seymour watching TV. He hasn’t seen him all day. “What happened with that job talking on phones?” his father asks, his voice aggressive. “You need to get a job, get some money going.”

  “I visited Mr. Sofar today, Daddy,” Morris says.

  “Why?”

  “I wanted to ask him about mom,” he says, then, “Why did she leave us?”

  “You know why she left,” Seymour says, immediately subdued. He doesn’t cherish the topic. “She was sick.”

  “That’s not a reason. Why’d she leave?” he asks again, intent on an answer.

  “You were there,” Seymour says, tersely.

  “I was twelve.”

  Seymour’s mouth works like he is chewing a fistful of twigs. “She left ’cause she left,” he finally says, then falls silent, a look of discomfort settling over him.

  Morris knows that his father believes that what’s done is done, and all that can be affected is now and what happens after now.

  Seymour won’t look his son in the face, his eyes wandering. “You never explained the woman’s underwear,” he says, shifting topics. “You aren’t wearing them, are you?”

  “You haven’t answered me about mom,” Morris replies.

  “What’d Sofar tell you?”

  “He didn’t answer the door,” Morris says, then, “Why’d mom leave?”

  “She left ’cause she left,” he says again.

  “But why?”

  Seymour turns from Morris. He looks at his hands like they hold the answer. “To see her father and mother, your grandfolks. She tried to see them and make them accept us. Accept me.”

  “For three months?” Morris asks. The fact that Seymour was once Morris’s age snaps into his thoughts. The idea strikes him as odd, like when first realizing that the sun is stationary. It is us who move around it. “Three months is awful long for a visit,” Morris says, continuing his questions. “Why didn’t she come home? Why didn’t she take me? What was she doing that entire time?” His mother’s mother and father; these are people he knows of but has never met, people that exist as words. Grandpa, grandma. He had no family beyond his father. His paternal grandparents had passed away before he was born. It should all seem sad and strange to him, but it isn’t. It’s something he’s never had, never known. The ghost of something missing.

  “She was doing nothing there,” Seymour says. “Or everything. They refused to see her,” he says. “Wouldn’t even acknowledge her. So she”—he pauses, swallows—“she followed them around for three months, went everywhere they went, trying to get them to understand, to accept her back. To accept her family, you and me.”

  “She stalked them?”

  “I’m to blame,” Seymour says. “They disowned her because of me.” He turns his attention back to the TV, like the conversation is over, or never even started.

  Morris turns the TV off. “What’d you do?”

  “Nothing. I didn’t do nothing.”

  “You must’ve done something.”

  “I loved her,” Seymour says, his tone edged with hurt. “That’s what I did.”

  “They disowned her because—”

  “Mors,” he says, “there’s things I can tell you because I know them. Then there’s things I can’t tell you ’cause I don’t know. Your granddad didn’t like me,” he says. “I don’t know why.”

  “Have you tried to talk to them lately?”

  “They’re dead,” Seymour says. “Died soon after your mom did.”

  “I—” Morris breaks off, realizing he doesn’t know what to say.

  “What I know,” Seymour says, speaking loudly, steadying his voice, “is I loved your mother more than anything. And even when I didn’t, when she’d get all moody and crablike and angry at me, even then, I loved her. I loved her,” he says.

  Morris is silent a moment, then nods. “Okay,” he says.

  Seymour looks to him. “Okay what? What’s okay?”

  “Just…okay. You, us. Mom,” Morris says. “Okay.”

  Chapter 32