I pick the flowers off of the grave. Maybe if I get these, maybe everything will get better. They’re fresh. My footprint makes an impression in the earth still loose from being just opened. Fresh roses still smelling of the sweet cling of death, in their clean plastic wrapping, a perfect dozen.

She’ll be happy. Fresh flowers, can’t beat it. I wonder if she’s finished dinner by now. Maybe she’ll be chopping veges with that pissed off I hate you look on her face. I love that one. It drives me nearly to that scary blurred edge of insanity. But at the brink, every time I peer over it, I realize I can’t do it. I have to keep going. Every time I know things will get better. It’s tough sometimes dealing with her after work, but I guess that’s why they call it marriage.

 

 

The faces of the gravestones surround Jim watching in an estranged silence. Somehow, he feels he’s outworn his welcome. The thought annoys him though; so he boots the wrought iron gate on his way out with a pathetic laugh. His car is still running. A gargoyle perched on the wall seems to mock his antics. Cold, angry cold outside, raps him hard harsh against his nostrils.

 

 

 

My escort’s red paint, although flaking, stands out - like the roses did in the snowy whiteness. 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, offending me, and I blanch before I get used to it. I try adjust the radio but the knob fell off a long time ago. It’s playing Last Kiss by Pearl Jam. I hate that song. Each station prompts me to flip to the next, 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 down the street from the graveyard. It creeps him out. She loves the house though, even though it’s way above their income range. He gets out of the car. The neighbor’s dog is in the middle of taking a shit in his lawn again. The large brown mess in the middle of the perfect snow. The tracks leading up to it from his neighbor’s yard. He smiles on seeing it. It’s a sick smile of a lost man. He hates that dog.

He slams his car door shut. The thud of the noise causes the animal, still on the scene of the crime, to leap to action, a strangled yelp as if ashamed at being caught with its proverbial pants down. The dog eyes the intruder, this vague wisp of a man. No longer interested the dog runs off in a twisted circle, and he’s back in the same spot, shitting again. Jim pretends the exchange 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 crap 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,” I forces myself to call as I open the screen-porch door. It falls shut slowly slowly, repeatedly slapping the wood. Already I can feel her eyes. Those invisible eyes watching for any evidence, any hint of an imagined crime. A bit of dirt on my pant leg, she takes it as exhibit one. She smiles at me, apathetically, as if too bored with me to even bother mentioning the pants, too bored to do anything about me, 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 me. I don’t respond, but tiredly hold out the flowers to her instead. She coos mockingly delighted and tries to toss her arms around me playfully, just for a moment, as if forgetting everything. I flinch at her touch. The flowers wilting slightly, look to her like they’re at least a day old. I can see her thought - “He’s a cheap bastard” - but she says nothing, and plops them on the counter, resuming her kitchenly tasks as if programmed.

Ignoring her indifference, momentarily too defeated to notice, I slide a couple of beers out of the fridge. The ice cold miller lite drips its luscious sweat on my hand. I almost want to lick it. I wish I could climb inside one and hang out for a while. Instead, I plunk one down in front of her chopping block as if she’s really going to drink with me. Then I surprise both of us, and decide to say something,

“Damndest thing happened today at work. There we were, me and Tom in an intense discussion…” I break 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.’” My attempt at Bob’s accent is terrible, but I try anyways. I switch back to my own voice and say, “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,” I make a grotesque flopping gesture with my free hand and then take another swig.

Then I say, “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,” I reply weakly.

“Aww honey, you know I’ll do anything for my bearr,” she turns playful and pats my arm.

I continue 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.” My 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 but is cut off by the smoke detector’s scream.

Sighing, I snap, “Damn it all, can’t you do a damn thing right?” And she says nothing but grabs a towel to fan the smoke. My sudden snap might have been a mark of my exhaustion, but she glowers at me.

“Sorry sweetie, I’m real sorry if I distracted you with all my talk.” She still ignores me. I pause considering her for a moment, and say,

“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.

We eat the meal in silence, each a fixture on our imaginary walls erected and dismantled in the minutes between dinner and desert. Wet tastes, more beers, and soon the night’s done. An illusory fog wipes my mind falsely clean in thick forgiving strokes. And then I’m passed out in my favorite chair, a real beater of a green chair in the lounge. I vaguely remember muttering,

“Don’t say that Tom, that’s God awful, ya don’t say that Tom,”

 

 

 

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. I have to just keep going. The shower is cold at first, but I’m glad. We haven’t screwed 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. Sick to death with no end in sight. 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.

 

 

 

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. He’s so different from the non-existent passion her husband gives her; he has fire. Her breathe quickens at his very glance.

 

 

 

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 it comes out half wrong, so I ask him if he wants some breakfast. He says as its nearly eleven, isn’t it brunch? I nod, and as I’m doing this, he accepts my offer. I bound 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 top of 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 whoever it was to go away long ago. She hastily pulls on her clothes, egg on her shirt from being pushed on top of his half finished food. She’s surprised by the caller, 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 as if from an awkward shared memory.

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 damn near stinking of blood, but it’s green - so clean and so green. The smiles of dollar signs dance hypnotically in her eyes. She almost remembers the last things Jim ever said to her, but they’re only fleeting thoughts. A day soon after, the man with the house in the Alps moves in with her, or perhaps she moves in with him, their union paid for in part by the insurance. With the last of the blood 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 old 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.

A little while later, one sunny day later that summer, she gets in her car 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 – out and away, lost in the wind somewhere behind her hair streaming in the sun, the car top down, the wind forgiving.