The Unsaid

The Unsaid

By

Vincent E. Monroe

 

Off they went to stroll amongst their verdant remembrances, laughing along the way. But laughter got misconstrued, as usual, and so yet again they stranded themselves in that brown realm of the-never-truly-forgiven.

Strangely satiated, they stopped screaming at each other. They looked at Daniel as if they suddenly realized he had been sitting there, and then his mother looked at his father and said, “We were happier when we didn’t have a lot of money,” and his father nodded, and there was nothing for any of them to say. Daniel got up from the table and poured them all more coffee. They drank their coffee and smoked cigarettes, the three of them silent for the longest while.

It was time for her pills and his eye-drops. Daniel got a glass of water for his mother and she took her pills. He put the drops in his father’s eyes.

“Good night, son.”

“Good night, son.”

They went down the hall to their French Provincial bedroom with its separate beds and the vanity table arrayed with perfumes she no longer wore. He would immediately fall asleep facing away from her and she would sit up and remain awake in the dark until two or three o’clock in the morning smoking cigarettes and watching television and thinking, thinking, thinking.

Daniel got up and cleared off the table of dinner dishes and washed and dried them at the sink and put them away and wiped down the table and the counters and the stove and the top of the refrigerator and swept the floor and put out the garbage. He wondered what to do next. He made more coffee. He poured two cups, and brought one to his mother.

His mother sipped her coffee, lighted a cigarette. His father was snoring.

“Why did you marry him?” said Daniel.

“I needed to be needed,” she said.

He kissed her goodnight, and left her there in her clouds of cigarette smoke and sitcom laughter.

 

Alone in the kitchen, Daniel sifted once more through the shoebox and dug up another photograph: in a dark-paneled room festooned with paper lanterns, his mother and father, she in a shimmery, silver cocktail dress that showed off her legs, he in a coat and tie that accentuated his baldness, were dancing cheek to cheek and smiling. The inscription on the back of the photograph, written in blue ink in his mother’s swirling handwriting, read, Bess and Tom’s Anniversary, (that would have been the McMartins; Daniel remembered he had always liked them), and the date was a day in November twenty-two years ago; his mother was fifty-four years old then but did not look it while his father, though nine years younger, looked older than her. Daniel, eight years old, would have been at home with his sisters and maybe that had been the night they let him stay up a whole hour past his bedtime because he had killed the spider in the bathtub.

He tossed the photograph aside, drank down his cup of coffee and put out his cigarette and turned out the light and went down the hall to his bedroom and lay in bed and tried to force himself to think about nothing.

THE END

Right To Work

Right To Work

By

Vincent E. Monroe

 

The chair he sat on was hard and the glare from the window was killing him and the office walls were peach-hued and so, naturally, Timothy purred.

“What was that?” said Diane.

“You must like cats,” said Timothy, pointing at the photographs on her desk.

“These are kittens. I loathe cats. Perhaps you’d rather seek employment elsewhere?”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

Why were men with fleshy lips and small eyes always impertinent? But Diane was required to hire someone for the position and hardly anyone had applied.

“Well, then. It says on your application that you are a veteran.”

“Of what?”

“You were in the military, weren’t you?”

“Oh, that.” So she was not referring to his father’s unbridled apathy toward him. “Yes. I was a Marine.” He had been a Mess Cook. Nobody had liked his cooking.

“Please, allow me to thank you for your service.”

“You’re allowed. But I wish you’d get it over with.”

“Excuse me?”

“I assume you’re sincere. I’m obligated to, I guess. But that kind of sincerity I can do without. I hope you can understand.”

“I’ll try.”

They meandered through to near the end of the interview while their stomachs growled.

“Lastly,” said Diane, “Tell me, why do you want to work here?”

“I heard this is a great place to work,” said Timothy.

“Oh?”

“Actually, I heard no such thing. Sure, I buy my groceries here, I have a loyalty card, and nobody seems grumpy, but I haven’t seen anybody burst into song either. Do you burst into song?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you burst into song?”

“No, I can’t say I have. Why? Do you?”

“I imagine I do but my imagination only goes so far.”

“Hmmm.”

Timothy stood up, and paced. After a moment, he just stood there staring at her. “Don’t you feel foolish asking such an asinine question?”

“What?”

“I don’t live in a magical world where steaks and houses float down from the sky. I don’t have a degree in microbiology. I’m not in the habit of composing hit songs. You’re two blocks from my apartment. When my car breaks down I can walk here and still make it on time. I’d prefer having a job over robbing people. Or do you want me to say, It’s always been my life’s dream to stack cans of lima beans on the graveyard shift?”

Diane stood up and ungracefully stepped away from her desk and veering into a wall she sank sobbing to her knees. She sobbed and sobbed, and then she was through.

“If you only knew how much I hate this job” she said, staring down at the commercial grade carpet. “I’m not one of the world’s gregarious people, and so it’s this or work in an insurance office. I can’t draw, I can’t paint, I took ballet lessons but it crushed my toes. I could never be an architect because I’d have nightmares about isosceles triangles.”

All of a sudden intrigued by what possibly lay beneath her fluffy sweater, Timothy went over to her and lifted her up.

“You know,” he said, “I still haven’t cashed my unemployment check.”

“What?” she said, pulling away from him.

“You look hungry. I know I am.”

“I always eat my lunch at my desk.” She showed him the contents of a brown paper bag she got from a drawer: a bologna and cheese sandwich and an orange.

“Throw it away, for once.”

They went to a happily nondescript fast food restaurant and ate something that promised to be indigestible. Afterwards, they ended up in his bed where they rolled around until they thudded into an unsatisfactory conclusion.

“I can’t hire you,” said Diane, looking out a window at the parking lot and garbage cans. “You’re probably a troublemaker.”

“I figured as much,” said Timothy, dragging on a cigarette he would not share with her.

THE END

Funny

Funny

By

Vincent E. Monroe

 

Green, speckled white, the hummingbird partaking of the trellis roses bountiful in their yellow; and, at last, the cardinals arrived and were poking about the hydrangeas. How odd, the hydrangeas were not quite the same blue they were last year.

“Beverly, stop ignoring me.”

Another silly squirrel bounced on the branches of a struggling elm. The tree needed to be cut down. And the grass, the green grass yesterday had enticed her to take a shoeless stroll.

“Damn you. Stop ignoring me!”

Slowly, Beverly turned her head.

“All right, Mom. You have my attention. Now, what?”

Her mother ran, sobbing, down the deck steps and across the yard and through the gate to the driveway. Beverly waited a moment, and went after her.

“Mom.”

“I hate you! I wish you had never been born!”

“Hate me all you want to, but that’s my car you’re sitting in.”

“See? This is what being around you does to me!”

“I didn’t ask you to come here!”

Her mother got out of the car, and stared, blankly, as if she were watching all her thoughts stumble blindly into a plate glass window.

Beverly shrugged, with a sigh, and discarded mockery. Instead, she chose to endure the dull ache of being charitable.

“Mom. Let’s go in the house.”

* * *

Beverly’s mother could not help herself; she glanced around the kitchen, dismissively. Beverly took note of this, but not as meticulously as she might have.

“I’ll make us coffee. Mom, would you like to have a cup of coffee?”

“Yes, Beverly, that would be nice, if you can remember to make it the way I like it.”

“I know how to remember.”

“I know you do. But you forget.”

They had their coffee at the counter, looking out the window.

“It felt warmer than normal when we were sitting outside.”

“I know, Mom. I saw bumblebees in February, and I thought, Why are you so early?”

“Beverly, I cannot go home.”

“Why not?”

“I cannot go home to your father.”

“Why not?”

“Your father now tells jokes.”

“Dad is telling jokes?”

“Yes, the most despicable kind, aimed particularly, exclusively at me. I asked him why and he said, ‘I have come to realize it’s my only means of survival.’ He said it with a straight face.”

“Hmmm. Mom, you’re tired. Why don’t you lie down in the guest room and take a long nap?”

“Yes. You’re right. I ought to.”

* * *

Beverly strode the three blocks to her parents’ house. Her father came to the door. He stood there, perturbed by her presence. For the first time ever in her life, she shoved her way past him inside. He followed her into the living room. She turned and faced him.

“Dad, I want to know what it is you think you’re trying to accomplish.”

“You’ve been talking to your mother.”

“Of course I have. She’s in my house. Besides, why wouldn’t I? Well?”

“You don’t come here making demands, young lady. I’ll smack you!”

“You do, and I will rip your eyes out.”

He saw crouched in her eyes a hitherto unknown quality baring sharp teeth, ready to pounce. He sat down on a chair, unsteadily. She exhaled, serenely, and she sat down on the sofa just so and crossed her legs just so and lighted and held a cigarette just so and she spoke to him as if she were engaged in delightful cocktail party chatter.

“Well, Dad, the thing is, you simply have never bothered to notice that things have changed since I was seventeen. Now, then. You are going to knock it off. She has been good to you. Maybe not in the ways you would have preferred and maybe not often enough. Nevertheless, she’s been good to you, much to my detriment, in fact, which, in order for me to keep my sanity I keep telling myself, Well, it couldn’t all have been on purpose, and remember the good things, remember the good things. Sort of puts a damper on a person’s sense of life.  Anyway, knock it off. And lose some weight. You look like a hippo.”

She left, shutting the door quietly.

*  * *

Beverly’s mother awoke, and she looked out the bedroom window. The world appeared not to have come to an end. She wished it had, for now she was still stuck with having to think about things. She went downstairs and looked for her daughter. Beverly was in the backyard on her knees pulling weeds.

“Beverly, would you like my help?”

“Okay. Don’t go over there, though, that’s where all the poison ivy is. Stay near me.”

They worked silently, neither believing that they would ever again kid around with each other like they sometimes used to.

THE END

Letter to all the small town newspapers in the United States

Dear Editors,

By now, you should be terrified.

If you haven’t noticed, Trump and his minions are pugnacious when it comes to the press.

You might think to yourselves, “None of that applies to us; we are not a bunch of elitist, Ivy League snobs and these are not an apoplectic left-wing magazines. We don’t even bother to chuckle over the cartoons in The New Yorker.  We run responsible, respectable, hometown newspapers.”

All well and good.

However, when they drag the First Amendment’s strangled, dead body through the offices of The New York Times, The Atlantic and all other such publications (just to show them who’s boss) and said publications are reduced to reporting on nothing but new home sales and lost puppies and robberies gone awry, by then it will be too late for you to speak up in defense of your brethren and, by extension, we the people, because you will be next.

Vincent E. Monroe

Thanks, Groucho

Thanks, Groucho

By

Vincent E. Monroe

 

“Donald, look at the people whooshing along to wherever it is they’re going.”

“Which people, Elizabeth?’

“All those people on the other side of the freeway.”

“It might have something to do with the fact that they’re traveling in the opposite direction.”

“I realize that. Meanwhile, I don’t think we’ve moved five feet in the past twenty minutes.”

“I’s not my fault traffic’s all jammed up.”

“Did I say it was? I don’t want to miss my flight, that’s all. I must close this deal I’ve been working on, you know that. The company expects me to. I should have taken the train like I had planned.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because you said you wanted to drive me to the airport. Would you rather be doing something else?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Evidently, you don’t have to.”

“What’s eating you?”

“I’ll tell you what’s eating me. What’s eating me is that something’s eating you, Donald. I just know it.”

“Elizabeth. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“No, lately you’ve been irritable and oftentimes sarcastic and…and there’s been something else about you which I haven’t been able yet to put my finger on. You’ve become puzzling to me. I hate puzzles.”

Disheveled, more than a bit disgruntled, Donald’s conscience made a sudden appearance. What a mush-mouthed performance it was. Elizabeth remained very still throughout, and when it was over she smiled at Donald for he had the gall to look downtrodden.

“Elizabeth?”

“Silence, Donald. I want silence for the next few minutes, if you please.”

He looked out his window. She smoked a cigarette, and another.

“Donald.”

“I’ll give her up, Elizabeth, if that’s what you want!”

Well, of course she puked on him. She puked all over him. She got her suitcase and got out of the car and started walking.

* * *

The night had been cold and rainy. Well, maybe it had not been all that cold but Jonathan remembered the rain. And that party, it had given him a headache. He stopped at a drug store to buy aspirins. The place was cheerful in a way that made him think he might get mugged at any moment.

“You look awful,” said the woman behind the counter. Her hair was insane and her eyes appeared to have been smashed open.

“I do?” said Jonathan.

“Not in the aesthetic sense. You just look as if you’ve been bored out of your mind.”

“Where are the aspirins?”

She pointed toward the third aisle. He found them, paid for them and turned to leave but she came around and went over to him and grabbed his pants legs and pulled them up.

“I figured as much,” she said, and slugged him with her smile. “You wear your socks inside out.”

“Not intentionally,” he said.

She laughed, and went back behind the counter. “By the way, I’m not doing anything later.”

“Huh?”

“By later I mean next Tuesday night, say around eight o’clock. You can meet me at the bowling alley.”

“The bowling alley?”

“Yes. It’s that place where people bowl.”

“I know what it is.”

“Don’t get testy. Do you want to go bowling with me or not?”

So he went bowling with her. He was terrible at it. She was superb. He bought a pitcher of beer. They drank, talked, and drank some more. After a while, it dawned on him that he had no idea what her name was.

“Bertha,” she said.

“No way,” he said, laughing. “Not in a million years.”

“Well, what name would you choose for me?”

“Is this your way of being coy, or playing cat and mouse?”

“It’s my way of discerning things. Why? Aren’t you enjoying yourself?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Don’t take forever figuring it out. Anyway, you owe me a kiss.”

He kissed her; what with his sticky, clown-like lips his kiss was like being engulfed by marshmallows; she sputtered through it, and finally, finally made her way to where she could breathe again. Laughing, she ran to the ladies restroom to pee. When she returned she sat next to him, ran a hand through his hair, slapped him lightly on the cheek and said, “Okay, wiseass, you win. My name is Charlotte.”

Succinctly, and with a flair for orange, they came together. Time stuck its foot out and they both tripped. On an unremarkable afternoon at work, just as he was about to bite into a pastrami sandwich, Jonathan realized he loved her. On a windswept evening, walking hand in hand with her after a movie, he asked her to marry him. She let go of his hand, and stood staring at him as if she were taking inventory of his nose hairs.

“But that would mean I’d spend the rest of my life feeling lopsided,” said Charlotte.

“Oh,” said Jonathan.

“I didn’t say I couldn’t get used to it.”

* * *

Elizabeth’s feet were tired. She stopped walking, and shut her eyes.

“You belong in a New Yorker cartoon.”

It was a woman in a green sedan stuffed with luggage.

“I do not!” said Elizabeth. “I have a plane to catch!”

The woman lowered her sunglasses. “Get in,” she said. “Put your suitcase with my stuff.”

Elizabeth got in the car.

“Too bad you’re not going where I’m going,” the woman said. “I don’t know where you’re going, but too bad. Where I’m going I shall lie on the sand in the sun for days on end and I’ll take long, leisurely lunches at all the fancy restaurants. I might go out of my way to get fat. That will irritate some people I have in mind.”

“What about the people you don’t have in mind?” said Elizabeth.

“Hmm. You’re one of the smart ones. You think I’ve been put on this earth to be funny for you.”

“No.”

“Yes, you do. You know what? You can get out.”

“But you just let me in.”

“So?”

“Who do you think you are?”

“Somebody who understands plenty. Now, get out of my goddamn car. Hitch a ride with that character in the pickup truck.”

Elizabeth looked at the pickup truck idling beside them. The driver was a man with long hair and lascivious eyes. He was grinning at her. She got out of the woman’s car and got her suitcase. The man’s grin grew wider as she approached.

“That guy way back there has been screaming his head off and I bet it’s because of you,” the man said. “Who is he?”

Elizabeth looked back, and there was Donald standing beside the car screaming and shaking his fist at the sky. “A stranger I’ve been sharing toothpaste with all these years,” she said.

“Even from here he looks like a louse. Want me to beat him up?”

“You don’t find it disheartening at all.”

The man laughed.

* * *

Darling,

I can see your eyes rolling while you tell me nobody uses that word anymore but can I help it if that’s what you are?

I’m sitting here laughing at my disbelief that almost twenty-three years have flown by.

We’ve had a good run, and now it’s time I say goodbye. Do not look for me. I do not want to be found. I refuse, I absolutely refuse to be a burden.

I meant it long ago when I said I would love you forever.

He put the note next to the coffee maker; Charlotte always desperately needed a cup of coffee when she arrived home from work. He left the house and walked to the park and there he sat at a picnic table watching the ducks in the pond and breathing in the twilight. Then he stood up, winked at the moon and went in search of someplace where the beds were clean and there was nothing worth seeing out the windows.

* * *

Elizabeth saw a taxi and went over to it.

“You’re a big shot in a hurry, but today is Thursday,” said the taxi driver, disgusted with himself and the world.

“That has nothing to do with anything!” said Elizabeth.

“Yes, it does. It’s my day off.”

“But this exit is to the train station. It’s right over there.” She pointed toward a vast conglomeration of bestial architecture.

The man looked, shrugged his shoulders. “And so it is,” he said.

“Well?”

“Well, what?”

“If you took me to the station, I  could take the train to the airport. I really need to get to the airport.”

“Lady, you’re boring me. You have a pair of legs. You might as well use them.”

* * *

The town, located slightly to the left of nowhere, had a new hotel.

“I’ve heard it’s gorgeous,” said the waitress as she poured Elizabeth a second cup of coffee. “Is it gorgeous?”

“I suppose so,” said Elizabeth. “But there aren’t any vacancies.”

“They tore down the old hardware store and a big chunk of Main Street to make room for it. I’m just glad they didn’t tear down the bowling alley. It’s dilapidated, true, but still. I had my first date with my husband there. The poor guy, he threw nothing but gutter balls. So what kind of a company do you work for that doesn’t set you up with a place to stay?”

“The kind that’s absentminded,” said Elizabeth.

“Well, there is a motel a few miles away from here. It’s old, but it’s kept up.”

* * *

Jonathan felt a presence beyond the door. Someone was standing there. He went to the door and opened it.

They each were startled by how tired the other looked.

“I’ve been wandering through town,” said Elizabeth.

“You have?” said Jonathan.

“I was returning to my room. I heard the radio.”

“I knew I shouldn’t be playing it so loud.”

“It’s Coltrane, isn’t it?”

“And Milt Jackson.”

Jonathan opened the door wider and motioned Elizabeth inside. She came inside, he shut the door, he pointed at one of two sturdy, uninviting chairs, she sat down and he sat in the other chair and they listened  to the music. Near the end of The Late Late Blues, he turned off the radio.

“You have a lot on your mind,” said Jonathan.

“Hmmm?” said Elizabeth.

“It’s the only conclusion I can come to. Why else would you be completely unaware that you’ve been staring at me?”

“Oh!”

“I’ll put your curiosity at ease. It’s cancer.”

“I’m so sorry!”

“Well, I’ll tell you. Like my conniving brother-in-law, it arrived unannounced and uninvited. My brother-in-law, him I could get rid of. I could always tell him to get lost or, better yet, throw bodily off the front porch which, I’m proud to say, I always managed to do without damaging the hydrangeas. But this, what can one do? What about you?”

“Me?”

“What brings you to our little wonderful town?”

“I’m here on business.”

“What do you do for a living?”

She told him.

He looked at her, blinked several times, and said, “I don’t believe you. It’s impossible.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“You don’t strike me as being dry as all that.”

“No?”

“No. Something about you says you’re the life of the party.”

“I have been.”

“I wish I could have seen it. I mean, I know we are just two people in a room talking and, just think, if it hadn’t been for somebody, somewhere dreaming up geometry and architecture we’d otherwise be talking to each other inside a cave, but I wish I could have seen you. Everybody ought to be allowed to be the life of the party at least once in their lives and…..what’s so funny?”

“I know I shouldn’t be laughing, but I can’t help picturing some wisecracking serial killer having a couple of his neighbors over for a little get together in the basement.”

“Serves me right. Charlotte is always telling me I tangle myself up in my own musings, and anybody who’s unlucky enough to be around me.”

“Charlotte?”

“My wife.”

“You’re married.”

“To the most wonderful woman on the face of the earth.”

Elizabeth thought she heard the blaring of distant trumpets, but it was the luminous gladness on his face that scraped her eyes. “If your wife is so wonderful, what are you doing here?”

Jonathan stood up, went into the kitchenette. “Do you like milk and sugar in your coffee?”

“What?”

“Do you like milk and sugar in your coffee?”

“Yes.”

He came back with two cups of coffee and handed her one and sat back down in his chair. “You need a cigarette,” he said.

“I didn’t think I should,” said Elizabeth.

“No bother. I’ll have one, too. My doctor would kill me if he knew. Isn’t that funny?”

They drank their coffee and smoked their cigarettes.

“You know,” said Jonathan, “I can withstand your sarcasm.”

“Yes,” said Elizabeth. “I shouldn’t have said what I said. I’m sorry.” She stood up. “May I use the bathroom?”

He nodded. She went into the bathroom. She was in there a long time. When she came out she saw the look on his face. The look on his face told her that he had been calmly listening to her refusal to cry.

“It’s just that I’m supposed to close on a deal,” she said.

“With those semi-illustrious personages at the factory? You should have no problem with them. If push ever came to shove, they’d be easy to pick off.”

“You seem to know a lot about them.”

“I ought to. I used to work there.”

“But I don’t know that I’ll be able to. I don’t know that I’ll be able to concentrate. I don’t know that I should want to anymore.” And then she told him about Donald.

“But you’ve worked too hard and come too far,” said Jonathan. “Besides, there really isn’t much left you can tell yourself.”

“No, there isn’t.”

“I have an idea. Let’s watch some television.”

“I should get back to my room.”

“What will you do except sit and stare at the walls and think too much? Let me find us something funny to watch.”

They watched Duck Soup.

“This is the first time in my life I’ve found the Marx Brothers tolerable,” said Elizabeth. “I guess I ought to thank you but I wouldn’t know what I’d be thanking you for.” She stood up to leave.

“Don’t go,” said Jonathan. I need your advice.” He went over to the end table by the bed and opened a drawer and took out a little packet of sleeping pills and held it up. “How many of these should I take?”

“What?”

“Well, you see, my problem is I don’t own a gun. So, how many should I take? I don’t want to hours from now wake up groggy and I don’t want that the only thing I accomplish is I get my stomach pumped. I have to take the right amount.”

“You should go home to your wife.”

“No.”

It was such a tiny word, and he spoke it in the tone of a boulder. He shrugged, tossed the packet of sleeping pills aside and took off his shoes and got into bed under the covers. He lay there staring at the ceiling and then he looked at her and said, “Not knowing each other’s names is what matters,” and he closed his eyes.

“I can’t,” said Elizabeth, for she understood what he expected of her.

“Yes, you can. Have a cigarette first, to make it easier for you.”

She had her cigarette, mashed it out, and as she approached him with a pillow held tightly in her hands she felt as if she were watching herself strangle all of her daydreams.

* * *

Elizabeth stood in the foyer. The house was a mess. She went upstairs and unpacked. She came down and went into the kitchen. Donald sat at the table.

“How did it go?” said Donald.

“Well, I was able to concentrate, after all,” said Elizabeth, staring at the dirty dishes in the sink. She went over and started to wash them.

“I was going to do those later.”

She finished the dishes. They went to bed.

“Donald.”

“Yes, Elizabeth?”

“When you married me you probably never imagined that years later you and I would be together in bed on a night not unlike tonight and that I would be telling you I almost killed a man and that it was easy because all I had to do was pretend he was you.”

 

THE END

The Impractical Joker

The Impractical Joker

by

Vincent E. Monroe

 

Mildred called the police.

“Don’t expect me to tell them that I had no idea what came over me,” said Edgar. He had just got done doing that which he had deemed necessary, and he stood there surprised at himself for having done it quickly and efficiently.

She lighted a cigarette, her hand trembling.

“Besides, you’ve always been the one to tell me that actions speak louder than words.”

Mildred had no wings, angel or otherwise, so she did not swoop upon him and shred him to pieces. No, as preposterous and sadly funny as it was, she cleared off some of the table and went into the kitchen. Edgar helped. After all, for the next few moments at least, now he could afford to be condescending.

In the kitchen, she watched him haphazardly opening drawers.

“Edgar, you still don’t know where anything belongs.”

“What makes you so sure, Mildred, what makes you so sure?”

They went back into the dining room and they both almost stumbled, for there he was, Larry, stiff in his chair, neck snapped, face-down in vichyssoise.

“First time ever in his life the son-of-a-bitch got a sense of humor,” said Edgar.

“When did you know?” said Mildred.

“Mildred, I hadn’t known. Someday, I’ll allow myself to feel that that’s the saddest part.”

Mildred laughed, laughed in a way she had never allowed herself to, and, laughing, she went over and knelt by Larry, and she started to cry.

Edgar left her there, for he had heard the sirens through the open window, and he went out the front door and walked to the end of driveway and waited.

THE END

Mysterious Ways

Mysterious Ways

By

Vincent E. Monroe

 

The look on Troy’s face told Allison that he had presumed she would return.

“I’ll wait here while you get my suitcase,” she said, really wanting to slap him. But her flight had been long and she was tired.

He went and got it and carried it to the car.

Traffic on the freeway crawled. Billboards screamed at them.

“How is your sister?” said Troy.

“Fine,” said Allison.

“And the kids?”

“They’re brats.”

Unable to think of anything else to say, Troy turned on the radio.

* * *

When they arrived home Allison went into their bedroom and shut the door. She came out, after a while, and though she believed she was not looking for him she found Troy in the kitchen sweeping the floor.

“Are you hungry?” said Troy. “If you are, I can heat up something.”

“No,” said Allison. “I would like a cup of coffee.”

He put the broom and dustpan away, brewed a pot of coffee and poured them each a cup. They went out onto the deck. The twilight sky clouded up. The clouds sneezed on them. They went back into the kitchen. He sat down at the table. She did not.

“Troy, you stained the deck.”

“Yes. I also replaced the rotted siding by the bay window. And the dryer, I fixed the dryer. It doesn’t make that strange noise, anymore.”

“Hmmm. Well, I’m still tired. I’m going back to bed.”

“Allison.”

“What?”

“Tomorrow is Sunday.”

“I know.”

“Are we going to church?”

“Like we always had?”

* * *

Somewhere near two o’clock in the morning, a little off to the side of Troy’s dream-mumbles, Allison found herself ravenous and thinking of nothing but grilled cheese sandwiches. She got out of bed and went into the kitchen. Yellow roses startled her. They were in a green vase in the center of the table. They were fragrant, lovely, and she resisted a desire to smash them. She forgot about her hunger and poured herself a cup of leftover coffee and went out onto the deck. Drinking her coffee, smoking a cigarette, she heard the moonlight tell her to stop thinking.

* * *

At church, Allison felt unnerved and clumsy and when the collection basket was handed to her it seemed as if her pocketbook fumbled all on its own. Everything inside it tumbled out. Eyes set upon her, eyes attached to dismayed faces, the pews were full of them, and it was the pair which belonged to a woman wearing too much hat that got to her.

“You want to know something?” said Allison, standing up. “You really want to know something? You’d feel a lot better if you took a shit.” And then she walked out.

* * *

“Allison!”

She was pacing the parking lot.

“Nothing can go back to the way it was, Troy, nothing!”

Her words threw him. He caught himself, dug into his pants pocket and got the car keys and thrust them and her pocketbook into her hands. Then he walked away. She watched as he crossed the street, paused, looked at the sky, looked around, stepped one way then another and turned and walked down the sidewalk to a bus stop and sat on the bench. She smoked a cigarette while she contemplated him sitting there and then with a shrug she gave feet permission to take her over to him.

As he watched Allison approach, Troy did not attempt nonchalance; he was not about to give himself a hernia for her sake.

“Troy.”

“Go home, Allison.”

“Go home. Go home? Troy, what are you doing?”

“I am waiting for a bus.”

She had seen him get drunk; she had seen him devour steak; she had seen him knock down sheetrock walls; she had seen him pray and she had seen him laugh at dismal jokes at dismal parties and she had seen him come home unexpectedly for lunch when lunch had been the furthest thing from his mind. Never, however, had she seen him this ludicrously determined. All right. Fine. She would wait with him. She sat down on the bench.

They were not people who rode the bus. They did not know that in their town buses did not run on Sundays. No matter, though. Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday came and went and so did buses but none was the right bus and in the intervening years until their flesh rotted they could have stood up and marched themselves into the concentration camp of resentment which had been built to their specifications or they could have stepped into that realm where everything tasted and smelled like the slight whimsy of a drugstore greeting card but they did not, they did not, they remained seated on the bus stop bench and when they crossed over to the other side of that real or imagined other side they…;..

“Wait a minute!”

Did you hear someone speak just now?

“Don’t pretend you can’t hear me! Troy, speak up, say something.”

“What is it you expect me to say, Allison?”

“You could explain that this is unfair.”

“It is? Well, I suppose it is. My wife is right. This is very unfair!”

“Yes, you can’t have us end up like that!”

* * *

Troy prodded Allison awake. She opened one eye, then the other.

“Allison, I’m hungry. Aren’t you hungry?”

“It’s practically two o’clock in the morn…..come to think of it, I am. I really am.”

They got out of bed and went into the kitchen. Troy got a frying pan and butter and bread and cheese and started to cook.

“You’re making grilled cheese sandwiches?” said Allison.

“I’m starving for one,” said Troy. “You know, I had a dream about us.”

“Since when do you dream?”

“That’s what I’d like to know.”

“Well?”

“Well, you had returned. You had returned but of course I knew you would and you want a slice of tomato on yours?”

“No. Returned? Returned from where, the grocery store, the bank, what do you mean?”

Yellow roses startled her. They were in a green vase in the center of the table. They were fragrant, lovely, and she…..

* * *

“Allison, why are you looking at me strangely? I told you to go home.”

“Try harder to make me laugh, Troy. For once in your life, try harder.”

He took off his wedding ring and flung it into the street. She stood up and stepped into the street and got the ring.

The bus that did not hit her was the bus he had always been meant to get on.

You may look away; the not grisly is worse, isn’t it?  No, no, no, you are under every obligation to acknowledge her laughter. As for him, he will soon grow tired of stomping his feet.

THE END

Confluence

Confluence

By

Vincent E. Monroe

 

The buyers perusing showroom wares with whom Ellen pleasantly exchanged pleasant pleasantries as she wrote up their orders could not have imagined she had stranded herself in her mind with her mother on that one Saturday afternoon in the forbidding restaurant where the waiters had been as stiff as the tablecloths.

“Mom, order anything you like. It’s on me,” said Ellen.

Ellen’s mother laid aside her menu and said, “You finally land a job and all of a sudden you’re a big shot.”

“Please, please just…..”

“Shut up? I will not shut up. You don’t dare tell me to shut up.”

The little flowers in the little vase in the center of the table were pretty, but nothing had changed.

“Stop sniveling, Ellen. It’s nauseating.”

To anybody who might have deigned to acknowledge his existence as he went through the building cleaning the restrooms, Timothy offered up a hearty smile. But inside his head he was stomping away from his brother.

“What’s the matter, Timothy? Can’t you take a joke?” said his brother, laughing.

It came time to go home.

In the parking garage, walking towards her car, Ellen paused to get her keys out of her pocketbook.

“Would you mind getting out of the way?”

She looked around, and there was Timothy standing near his car where he had been for the last ten minutes or so staring off at yet more of his redundantly resentful thoughts.

“Get out of the way of what?” said Ellen. “And what are you looking at?”

“Not at you. Why would I bother?”

His disdain of her chewed her stomach and hers of him was like a fist rammed down his throat; and so they each asked themselves their own particular version of, What, is everybody out to reduce me to insignificance? The answer, utterly bored and annoyed with them both, shrugged contemptuously, and, upon hearing it, Ellen strode over to Timothy and slapped his face and he shoved her, slamming her against a pillar.

Too aghast to even look past each other, it was as if they danced to Schoenberg, she rubbing her eyes and twisting her hair, he scratching his armpits and squeezing his elbows, both of them swaying elliptically.

“I wish I had a swimming pool,” said Ellen, not knowing why; she just blurted it out.

“Huh?” said Timothy.

“A swimming pool.”

She expected mockery, but complete understanding was scrawled haphazardly all over his face.

“Well, there’s a swimming pool in my neighborhood.”

“What?”

“My neighborhood has a swimming pool.”

“Just what do you mean by that?”

“I don’t mean anything by it. I’m saying there’s a pool and you could come over later and use it.” He told her where his neighborhood was and how to get there. “Come around ten o’clock. Park in the little parking lot and I’ll meet you at the gate to let you in.”

“Why so late?”

“I don’t want to have to put up with you until then.”

He was waiting for her when she arrived.

“It’s Friday night,” she said. “Where is everyone?”

“Mostly old people live in this neighborhood,” he said.

“Oh.”

“You can change in the bathroom.”

She came out after a while. “There are two dead cockroaches and a spider in there,” she said. “Is that a book in your hand?”

“Yes,” he said. “It’s a murder mystery. I’m on the last chapter and I want to see how it ends. I think I know who did it but I’m probably wrong.”

She got into the pool. He sat on a chair. She swam. He read, and every once in a while he looked away from his book and watched her and he saw her go under the water and sit at the bottom of the deep end. Bubbles rose up, and he knew that she was screaming. She popped up, after a while, and came out.

“You can go home now,” said Timothy.

“I’m dripping wet,” said Ellen. “I can’t get in my car and drive home dripping wet.”

“You didn’t bring a towel.”

“I hadn’t thought of it.”

“Come with me, then.”

“Where?”

“My house.”

“Your house?”

“I’m not about to walk all the way and walk back just to hand you a towel. So, come on.”

They walked to his house, she trailing slightly behind him. Even in the dark she could see that all the houses were small and built the same and that the sidewalks were cracked.

“You can dry yourself off and change in there,” said Timothy, pointing toward the bathroom, when they came inside.

Ellen came out shortly and winced at the cheap furniture and the nothing on the walls.

“I don’t own the place,” said Timothy. “I rent.”

She followed him into the kitchen. He sat down at the table. Silence squatted on their heads, leaving them only enough room to twiddle with their thoughts.

After a span of a few yawns, Ellen rummaged through herself, threw on her mothballed enthusiasm, and said, “Let me do something for you.”

“Like, what?” said Timothy.”

“I could cook for you. You look like you haven’t eaten.”

He pointed at the sink. She looked, saw the dirty pot and bowl and spoon and empty can of soup, and sagged against the refrigerator.

“I never slapped anybody before in my life,” she said.

“How do you think I feel?” he said. “You think I go around shoving people?”

She chuckled, mirthlessly.

THE END

Resignation

Resignation

By

Vincent E. Monroe

 

Oh, Susan, come on, let him stay here and sleep it off, their friends implored her.

Grim and silent, she ignored them and loaded Donald into the car.

A little while later, Donald awoke to the smell of cheeseburgers and garlic fries. He un-slouched and saw that they were parked in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant. “What are we doing here?” he said.

“Do you mind?” said Susan, annoyed. “I’m hungry. Arlene always serves up such awful, miniscule hors d’oeuvres.”

“I heard you talking about me.”

“Donald, how could you possibly when I was the furthest thing from your mind all night?”

“But I heard you. I heard you talking to Jack and Kristin as I was on my way to the bathroom.”

“Speaking of which, one of the things I’ll now never hear the end of is how you kept hogging it.”

“So I had to go. I guess I had to go a lot. What was I supposed to do, piss in the swimming pool?”

“Must you be so vulg…oh for Christ’s sake!”

“What? Susan, what?”

“There’s ketchup on my dress. There’s ketchup on my dress. I love this dress and now there’s ketchup on it.”

“It’s not a four-alarm fire.”

“Shut up. I didn’t want to go to the goddamn party.”

Donald got out of the car and smoked a cigarette. He smoked another, Susan finished eating, and then he got back into the car and they went home.

* * *

Saturday morning arrived, as gray and disheveled as they were, and told them that they might as well get out of bed.

In the afternoon, Donald got rained on as he was mowing the lawn. He stopped and went inside the house to find Susan. She was in the basement taking the fourth, but not last, load of laundry of the day out of the dryer.

“I just had to listen to you,” said Donald. He took a clean towel, wiped his head and face, and tossed it onto the washing machine. “But of course you had to insist.”

“The book I started reading, I cannot remember any of it,” said Susan, not looking at him.

“Huh?”

“I almost got a hernia last night.”

* * *

Although the moon all evening had been eluding all sonatas, Donald found himself admiring Susan’s profile. She took notice of this, assiduously, and ran upstairs  crying. He went after her. Without remorse or apology he pried open her arms and commenced to exert himself much too much. No round of applause accompanied her guffaws.

* * *

Church had let out, finally, and what remained of Sunday had sprawled before them. They could have gone somewhere else besides straight home, such as that restaurant on Main Street they had liked going to for brunch.

Donald laid aside his fingernail clippers and looked out the living room window.

“It’s a nice day to walk to the park,” he said.

“I suppose it is,” said Susan, absently, not looking up from her book.

Twenty minutes or so later she realized he was gone. She went out and caught up with him.

“Donald.”

“Well, Susan, I told you it was a nice day for it.”

She sat down on a bench by a magnolia tree and he sat down on a bench way, way over by roses. Every once in a while, they looked at each other. A fat cloud parked in front of the sun and the wind tossed leaves at their hair.

* * *

In the middle of dinner the children called: their youngest son to tell them lies, their eldest daughter to berate them, their eldest son to ask them for money, and their youngest daughter to berate herself.

Afterwards, because it would have been redundant of them to wail at the wallpapered kitchen walls, they mashed out their cigarettes in their mashed potatoes and got out the deck of cards.

“I wish I could hate them,” said Susan.

“Whose fault is that?” said Donald.

* * *

In a conference room designed and furnished to induce and enforce uniformity of thought, a meeting was held, the obscure purpose of which had been lost, and during a lull in the discussion about the scheduling of further meetings a young man slouched in his chair and extolled the wonders of matrimony. Listening to him, Donald felt itchy but he was too aghast to scratch himself, and so he stared out the window and discovered that Monday still looked positively jaunty.

* * *

Mr. Hatcher breezed into the kitchen and nuzzled the nape of his wife’s neck.

“What are you doing, honey?” he said.

“Susan brought tile for us to look at,” said Mrs. Hatcher.

“For what?”

“The backsplash,” said Susan.

“What do you think?” said Mrs. Hatcher, purring at her husband.

He laughed, and she kissed him, and for what seemed to Susan the longest while they appeared to forget that she was sitting there on a stool at the butcher block counter she hoped to persuade them to change to granite.

* * *

Done brushing her hair, Susan got into bed. Donald propped up his pillow and turned on the television. They fell asleep waiting for the late night talk show host to finish airing out his monologue.

An hour or so passed and they awoke hungry to smoke but they were out of cigarettes.

“I’m in less of a mood than you are to go out and get some,” said Susan in answer to Donald’s frown.

He got out of bed and put on some clothes and went to the convenience store and when he returned the kitchen light was on. Susan was sitting at the table sipping a cup of coffee. He poured himself a cup and stood leaning against the sink. He tossed a pack of cigarettes at her.

“Why didn’t you get a carton, or at least a couple of packs?” she said.

“That was all they had,” he said.

The coffee pot was three-fourths empty and the ashtray was half full when they happened to realize that they were cold.

“What temperature did you leave the thermostat at?” said Susan.

“Sixty eight,” said Donald.

“No wonder.”

They trudged upstairs and got into bed.

“It’s almost three o’clock in the morning,” said Susan. “I won’t be able to go back to sleep.”

“Hmmm,” said Donald, and he turned away from her and shut his eyes.

Near dawn, Donald awoke having to pee. Susan was sitting up staring out the window. He got up and went into the bathroom. When he came out the alarm clock went off. He went downstairs into the kitchen and brought up two cups of reheated coffee and gave one to Susan and then he sat at the edge of the bed.

“There’s a young man at the office I want to smack upside the head,” he said, sighing.

“Really,” said Susan, lighting a cigarette. “The Hatchers disgust me.”

* * *

After dinner on Thursday, Susan was putting dishes in the dishwasher when Donald came into the kitchen.

“Did you remember to put the lid on the garbage can?” she said.

He sat down at the table without answering.

“Well, Donald, did you?”

“No kidding,” he said, and lighted a cigarette.

* * *

In the following days time was a thing they stubbed their toes on.

Susan had made her decision, and ordering room service, she believed, would make it tolerable, and so she enjoyed immensely her club sandwich. Afterwards, she took a bath and sank into the very comfortable king size bed and went to sleep. Around two o’clock in the morning she woke up wondering why Donald had not been calling her frantically. She called him.

He, lo and behold, had made the same decision.

“You couldn’t have,” said Susan.

“Why not?” said Donald.

His question smacked her throat.

“Susan?”

“Donald, are you home?”

“Actually, no.”

“Where are you?”

He told her.

Yes, she heard him correctly.

“I cannot believe I’m asking you this,” she said, “But, what’s the room number?”

“Susan, why would I tell you?”

“Donald, tell me the goddamn room number!”

She tossed her phone aside and threw on her bathrobe and left her room and took the hotel elevator up and strode down the hall and knocked on the door and the door opened and there Donald stood in his blue boxer shorts and white socks and he shut the door and she pushed him. He fell, laughing, onto the bed.

“Now we think alike?” said Susan.

“I hadn’t known we had,” said Donald, getting off the bed and going over to the bar. He fixed himself a drink and gulped it down.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” said Susan.

“Neither are you,” said Donald.

“No!. I’ve left. You’re supposed to be at home distraught!”

“As you can see, I’m not.”

“But we can’t leave an abandoned house!”

“It’s not abandoned, just empty of us.”

“And so that’s it.”

“I’m not budging, if that’s what you mean. Besides, I like it here.”

“You like it?”

“Sure. Why not?” He went into the bathroom and came out with a bunch of wet towels and threw them all over the room. “Look, I can do this all I want and not have to worry about it.”

“Donald, stop doing that! And how am I to sleep knowing that you are up here?”

“How should I know, Susan?”

Unnerved, she went out onto the balcony and smoked, and while she smoked she watched him, and as she did so she wondered, while thinking how absurd it was that she should be wondering such a thing, had she met him, say, fifty years ago on a playground somewhere or forty years ago in her high school hallways would she have wanted anything at all to do with him. At the end of three cigarettes, she went back into the room.

He was sitting at the edge of the bed munching on a slice of cold pizza. He looked at her, and burped.

* * *

It got to be a strain, ignoring each other in the elevator and pretending to be strangers who had never met whenever they passed each other in the lobby, and the strain showed. Hotel staff and guests thought them the two most unlikeable people on the face of the earth.

Donald’s car was parked at the curb. Susan pulled into the driveway and when she got out of her car she heard the lawn mower running in the backyard. She shrugged, and went inside the house.

Donald came into the kitchen. Susan was sitting at the table smoking a cigarette. They looked past each other.

“I figured I might as well keep the lawn up,” said Donald, pouring himself a glass of sweet tea and gulping it down.

“Your underwear is almost done washing in the washing machine,” said Susan.

“Huh?”

“I assumed you hadn’t packed enough.”

“Oh.”

He went back outside and finished mowing the grass. She put his underwear in the dryer.

THE END

Glass

Glass

By

Vincent E. Monroe

 

Rachel, ever hungry to placate her mother, offered to make more coffee.

Rachel’s mother, forever implacable, did not want any more. “Neither should you,” she said. “It makes you jittery. Richard, look at how jittery Rachel is.”

Richard, washing and drying his hands at the sink, had just come into the kitchen from working in the backyard. He looked at his wife and shrugged; she was no more jittery than usual whenever she was around her mother;. “That tree’s roots are plenty deep,” he said on his way out onto the deck to smoke a cigarette.

“Why can’t you finish the work now?”

“It will be dark soon.”

“Has it gotten late already?” said Rachel.

“Rachel! Sit down! I told you I don’t want any more coffee. I’m not through talking with you.”

“Mom, I’ve asked you,” said Rachel, sitting back down at the table, “Let’s talk about something else. Please.”

“This is my house and I’ll talk about anything I want to.”

“I wish you two wouldn’t fight,” said Richard. He could hear them through the screen door.

“We’re not fighting, honey,” said Rachel, mistaking what she heard in his voice as anguish. “We’re discussing.”

“Shut up, Richard,” said her mother. “She wouldn’t dare fight me because she knows I’d wipe the floor with her.”

The words were rocks pelted at her, the tone of the words was a slug crawling along her nerves, and her mother’s smile was a slap. All of a sudden mesmerized by the contours of her mother’s aged face, Rachel had to shut her eyes. Then, she felt a kiss, a kiss on the top of her head.

“Rachel, go wait for me in the car.”

She opened her eyes. But of course she recognized him, of course she knew who he was, he was her husband, yes, he was her husband, the man nobody had ever approved of. He must have come back inside, quietly, but he always moved quietly, which was a trait of his that she admired, and here he was standing before her and watching her it seemed with intense curiosity, and he was smiling at her.

Richard had many reasons to smile, one of which was that he would never finish working off the debt to his mother-in-law. Another was that his wife’s small hands were clenched.

“All right,” said Rachel, and she stood up and left the kitchen and went out of the house.

* * *

The refrigerator hummed, monotonously.

“I’ll always be better than her,” said Rachel’s mother.

Richard’s only comment was to slouch against the sink.

She glared at him. “And just who the hell do you think you are?” she said.

“Nobody,” said Richard, “Nobody much. But, tell me, when you’re through wiping the floor with her…..”

The front door opened, slowly, and Rachel came in. She strode into the kitchen, paused, looked around and took from off the counter the green glass vase of gold chrysanthemums she had brought for her mother and hurled it. “I realize it’s ridiculous, but I forgot my coat,” she said, and she got her coat from off the back of the chair she had sat in and went over to her mother and kissed her cheek like she always did whenever she said goodbye and out of the house again she went.

* * *

“She’s been too afraid to admit she loves you only out of a sense of obligation,” said Richard as he went out the front door.

Rachel’s mother watched them drive away. She sat on the couch. She pulled a loose thread on her sweater. She picked at a fingernail. She went into the kitchen. She sighed: the shards of glass shone prettily. She went to the closet and got the dustpan and broom.

THE END