More than ten years ago, I published a short story collection called Evolvement. I’m going to republish the stories from the collection here. The book is available at all ebook retailers and the paperback version is available at Amazon.
“A Prayer, An Answer”
now
She had been watching television. The remote rested on her chest, her glasses on her nose. She had propped her head up with pillows. They must have said all this, but I didn’t hear much after “Mr. Stevens, your wife is dead.”
My wife sold industrial water filters and spent much of the week away from home in hotel rooms. Sometimes, it just happens. Sometimes, people just choke on a piece of shrimp peel, or they catch an overnight fever, or they sleep face down and suffocate. I heard about it every week at church, when the priest read the list of members who had died. It just happens. No one knew, yet, how my wife died. It was Saturday night and I hadn’t heard from her since Thursday. I had called the hotel to check on her, giving management permission to enter the room. Someone had called back and told me that my wife died around 7:30 Friday night. She missed “Jeopardy,” I thought.
My dog poked me in the leg when I hung up the phone after the news, her round eyes wide with excitement, her white-tipped tail wagging spastically.
“Just you and me now, Jess” I said.
Jess spun in circles as fast as she could, which, in her language, meant she had to pee, so we went for a stroll down the unlit neighborhood sidewalk.
***
then
I had met Loretta in college, six years before her death, where I had promised her great riches. It was the same old love story: graduate in May, marry in June, get by with low-paying jobs that neither of you want to work. She took the position selling industrial water filters. I embarked on a career in restaurant management. One day, early on in our marriage, I quit my job to start my own business. My mother always told me that I had an entrepreneurial spirit. Loretta, who usually spent Monday evenings at home while I worked, came home to find me on the couch watching television in my striped pajamas.
“Get off early?” she asked.
“I quit today.”
She laughed.
“It’s no joke.”
She stopped laughing and gave me an unusual gaze – half amazement, half pissed off. Her filter catalogue fell from her hand and unfolded on the floor.
“I’m going to start my own business,” I told her. “Pet supplies. I want to sell pet supplies. Mama says I have an entrepreneurial spirit.”
“Mama doesn’t have to live here and pay the bills.” Her gaze lost its amazement; now it was one of totally pissed off.
“There are some empty spaces down at the shopping center on the corner of Main Street,” I told her. “I thought I could rent one of those and start from there.”
Loretta stomped into the kitchen and filled a glass with water. I followed her. After taking a sip, she said quietly, still facing the sink, “I’m going to ask you this next question very calmly. I pray to God you have a good answer. How are you going to fund this project?”
“I hadn’t thought of that, I guess.” I put my hands in my pajama pockets and looked at the floor. “Loans, maybe?”
She dropped her glass in the sink. I heard it break. She turned back around and hurried toward me, where she shook her finger in my face. “Am I a goddamned babysitter? You think I’m gonna sit around here while you chase some crazy dreams you have? No sir, god dammit. We have to pay rent and my ten percent won’t cut it alone. Industrial water filters are not the hottest commodity these days.”
“I know,” I said, “but if you don’t try new things, you…”
“Shut the hell up. You better throw away this crazy shit of an idea and find a job tomorrow. Loans. How are you gonna get a loan without a job anyway?”
“I thought your credit record could help me out.”
“Oh, I see. You want me to help fund your stupid dream while we’re living out of a brown box. It’s not gonna happen.”
That was the first night I slept on the couch.
***
now
Jess and I walked. It was not too dark; the near-full moon shined its weak rays as best it could. Jess went potty in the yard on the corner, beside the big oak tree, which looked larger than usual in the night light. I walked slowly, in no hurry to get home. I had to make some phone calls. I really just wanted to lie on the couch with Jess. If I made the calls, people would want to come over to help. They would want to be there for me. They would want to talk and talk and talk. I just wanted to walk Jess home in the quiet evening before retiring for the night, alone.
***
then
I begged the restaurant for my job back the next day. I got lucky, my wife would say.
Restaurant work was dirty work – soaking up grease, mopping floors, vacuuming, spraying dirty dishes, cleaning bathrooms, unclogging toilets – all while trying to avoid serious burns and testy waitresses. On the day after my pet supply store idea – the idea that was going to bring me all the riches and happiness I had always wanted – I found myself in a bathroom stall mopping up after a boy who ate too much and blew chunks just beside the toilet. Someone knocked on the closed bathroom stall.
“Out of order,” I said without using my nostrils to breathe.
“Wife’s on the phone,” the person said in a voice similar to mine, and a hand carrying a telephone reached over the stall door.
I answered it.
“What are you doing?” Loretta said.
“Picking up puke.”
“Good.”
I accidentally breathed in through my nose and gagged in her ear. “Is there something you wanted?” I said.
“Pick up dinner, would ya? I’ll be home for a while, but I have to leave soon after to catch my flight.”
The last thing I wanted to hear about was food.
“I was thinking about fried chicken tonight.”
I came home smelling like the restaurant: a strange mixture of burnt bacon and old bread. I carried a bucket of chicken and the box of biscuits that came with them. Loretta waited for me at the table and I set the bucket in front of her before reaching in the cabinet for some plates.
“Where’s the Cole slaw?” she asked.
I found plates and put them on the counter slowly and gently, putting off what I knew was coming.
“You didn’t get any Cole slaw?” she asked.
“You didn’t say Cole slaw. You said chicken. I got chicken.” I tried to speak with a smile – a blow-softening technique that always backfired.
“I don’t think this is funny.”
“Me neither,” I said.
“You’ve known me for a long time and you know that I can’t eat fried chicken without Cole slaw. I never have and I never want to.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry. I can run back out and get some.”
“No! You’re not using gas to get Cole slaw. That’s a waste of money. I guess I just won’t eat.”
“Isn’t that a waste of money?”
“It’s not a waste if you’re going to eat.” Loretta stood up and put one of the plates away. “Sit down,” she told me.
I did it, fast. She plunked an empty plate in front of me and placed a steaming chicken leg and two buttered biscuits on it. She then sat across from me and stared.
My plate looked like an inviting smiley face, with biscuit eyes and a chicken leg mouth. I looked at my wife through the steam that must have been happily dancing on my nostrils. She just stared. I began to speak: “I’m not that hung…”
“If you let this go to waste, then I’ll really be mad.” She was serious.
I ate it all, fast.
***
now
The phone had become heavy in my hand and hot against my ear. “I appreciate your offer, but I’m fine for now. I don’t need anything.”
It was the last call I needed to make that night. I had heavy eyes and a dry throat. My tongue felt like a fat man who had just run a marathon. Jess had been asleep on the couch for hours, waiting for me to keep her company. I lay on my side and she curled up by my chest. The house was dark and quiet. They say marriage is a series of routines and I soon realized that I had forgotten to eat dinner. I stretched my head back on the couch’s arm, closed my eyes, and rubbed my forehead hard with my hand.
***
then
A few years of my marriage to Loretta passed. Every once in a while, when I slept in bed, my toe would touch the back of her heel and she would jerk her foot away. Sometimes, I rested my hand on her hip; she would scoot close to the edge of the bed so that I could not rest my hand there comfortably. I couldn’t sleep anymore. One night, I roamed downstairs and saw Jess, then just a pup, curled up on the couch beside a throw fleece. She was using one paw to keep her nose warm. I joined her and slept well for the first time in a long time.
The next day at the restaurant, my boss pulled me from beneath the large dishwasher, where I was scraping away dirt that was stuck on the floor. He told me that I wasn’t pulling my weight anymore. He told me that I seemed tired all the time, that I hardly talked to the customers, or the staff, or to anyone. He assured me that he was worried about me, but I guess he was worried more about his business. He fired me.
I was fixing myself dinner – a cheeseburger – when Loretta got home.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I got fired.”
“Figures.”
I walked past her and sat on the couch with my burger. Jess was beside me. I turned on the television and began eating.
Loretta came in and stood in front of the TV. “What do you think we’re going to do for money?”
“I’ll find another job,” I said, a chunk of burger in my cheek.
“What are you gonna do, be a professional couch potato?” She turned the TV off. “You’re no good.”
I put down my burger when she went upstairs. She had told me I was no good many times. Through the years, I had come to learn that she was right. The only thing I was remotely good at was failure, and I wasn’t even good at that. I couldn’t even keep my mediocre job.
***
now
Jess woke me in the middle of the night, kicking me, trying to get comfortable. The only light was a blue tint that came from the oven in the kitchen. It seemed like such an insignificant light most of the time, but now its blue traveled throughout the house, blanketing the shadows. A comfortable world is one where the shadows have blankets, I thought. Jess and I settled down: me on my back, her head on my chest. It was just us now. We were comfortable together, and I fell back to sleep.
***
then
The day before Loretta’s death, I went to church for the baptism of my brother’s baby. My mother had dragged me to this same church as a young boy. It still had those massive ceilings and a large crucifix behind the cloth-covered altar. A colorful sun lit the stained glass in the back of the church, where I sat in a pew alone, my usual spot. The priest seemed far away as he poured water onto the baby’s head. The baby didn’t cry, which must have been unusual because everyone in front of me smiled. I looked down when they did. When I looked up again, my brother and his wife were hugging, their baby between them; it was still not crying. I went outside. During a service, outside the church doors is near silence. It would have been total silence if not for the collective “Amen” that penetrated the white walls now and then. I wondered, then and there, if silence really existed. Even monks have footsteps, I thought. I sat in the grass, leaned my back against the wall, and closed my eyes to see what I could hear. For a second, as I held my breath, I heard my heart beat, quickly interrupted by the penetrating, collective “Amen.”
More than ten years ago, I published a short story collection called Evolvement. I’m going to republish the stories from the collection here. The book is available at all ebook retailers and the paperback version is available at Amazon.
writealreadycom.wordpress.com 