This story was originally published in Skylark, 1996 (Purdue University, Hammond, IN). It's a going-home-again story about a guy named Jeffrey, his parents, his wife, and a dog named Cinders.
SLOPE-CEILINGED ROOM a short story by Michael Beres Have you ever stood in the dark on a drizzly autumn night out front of your childhood home? Not on the porch or sidewalk. Out in the street like the stranger you once saw from inside when you were a kid, the stranger you insisted had been there a moment earlier before you ran to fetch your mother or father, or both. Have you ever grown up to become the stranger with coat collar high and head low? |
He stands there now, an inside-out man in a leather coat--skin of an animal--looking in, wondering why Cinders is not at the window barking, wondering why the living room light is already out even though it is only ten and they should be watching the news, keeping up with world events instead of playing this nightly rehearsal for death. He has parked his car across the street, not wanting to drive up the hump of the driveway, flash headlights at the living room window, thump tires on the depression where the sidewalk crosses, awaken Cinders. Yes, Cinders is not at the window because Cinders listens for cars that come up the drive or for car doors that slam out at the curb or for newspapers that slide across the stoop. Parking across the street has fooled Cinders, and now, when he rings the doorbell--if he rings the doorbell--all hell will break loose, Cinders running through the house, sliding on the throw rug across the tiled vestibule, crashing like a base runner into a front door that has suddenly appeared on the field of play.
Two decades earlier, during long afternoons between his having arrived home from school and his father's arrival from work, Middle Eastern terrorists threatening to take over the neighborhood had cowered outside this same door, hiding behind bushes and street trees while, at the living room window adjacent to the door, was poised a brave little boy named Jeffrey who would turn the tide with his GI Joe automatic weapon. A decade earlier, on other autumn nights, he and his leather-jacketed friends had loitered here, leaning against big-block-powered behemoths with raised rear ends and hood scoops. A half-decade earlier, on another drizzly autumn night, he and Julie had parked here, petting and kissing open-mouthed, then Julie re-applying lipstick using a battery-powered, lighted compact while he combed his hair in preparation for the introduction of his "steady" to parents who must have guessed that tucked into a corner of his wallet was the condom that would be used later under the auspices of the Surgeon General.
Now, as he stands in the rain with the smell of his wet leather coat lifting across his face, he feels as he had after the first time he and Julie had done it. He feels as if he should do something to prove that he did not mean to become, for that brief instant, like the animal that he is. He feels as if he should be tender. But here, alone in the street in the drizzle, there is no way to be tender.
As he makes his way up the driveway he recalls a plywood skateboard ramp against which Joe Smetana leaned while the paramedics attached the temporary leg cast. As he turns onto the sidewalk that leads to the front steps he recalls the post-skateboard teenage years and especially bouncing a tennis ball off the steps for what seemed an entire summer. As he stands on the stoop he looks up toward the two dormers sticking out of the Cape Cod's roof like frog's eyes and remembers the time when, a few weeks before their marriage, he and Julie, along with Cinders, spent the night up there while his parents were away on vacation.
He takes his hands from the pockets of his leather coat, brushes at the shoulders of it to remove droplets of drizzle. The motion reminds him of a tuxedo, a wedding morning, his mother brushing the shoulders while he stands at the vestibule mirror.
The plastic surrounding the door chime button is illuminated in dull orange. The button itself is missing, the corroded copper spring of the movable contact exposed. He thinks of electrocution but knows that the current supplied to the door chime circuit comes through a step-down transformer. He pushes on the spring and hears the double chime, but he does not hear Cinders and this worries him.
***
In the kitchen Mom makes tea without asking if he or Dad want it. The "Jeffrey, what are you doing out alone on a night like this?" and the "Where's Julie?" have already been asked and answered. She is alone back in the apartment. He has walked out. And so, with aging Cinders lying heavily against his ankle beneath the table, hot tea is served as it has always been served whenever Mom decides that tragedy-sorrow-grief are at hand. The last time they drank tea together at night at this table, his grandfather--Dad's father--had died. Julie had been here then. They had been married a year. And now, two years later, tea again, warming him as he clutches the cup and bends over it.
Dad--hair disheveled, eyes red, robe blue--turns toward the hallway. "Cinders?"
"He's under the table," says Mom.
"Oh," says Dad, leaning to look.
Mom puts out a plate of oatmeal cookies--Jeffrey's favorite--and he realizes how serious Mom considers the situation. She sits opposite him, her back to the fridge. His back is to the wall while Dad's is to the hallway and he realizes they are all three sitting in the same positions they always occupied at the kitchen table.
Mom's hair is brushed straight, grey hairs longer than black ones. She is wearing a red terry cloth robe with padded shoulders. She stirs a half-packet of artificial sweetener into her tea--folding the packet to save the rest--and tests its sweetness. Then she puts down the spoon, takes several sips of tea, stares across at him, smiles forlornly.
"I never thought it would come to this, Jeffrey. And especially so close to your anniversary."
"It has, Mom."
"How did it start?"
"A trivial thing as usual."
"You've argued before?"
"Yes, but never as violently as tonight."
She raises her eyebrows. "Violent?"
"I meant to describe the extent of our argument, Mom. We didn't come to blows."
"What was the trivial thing that started it?"
"The charge card bill."
"Yes, that does seem trivial."
"Apparently we both charged a few things that the other didn't count on. That new leather coat of mine was one thing. I'd forgotten how expensive the damn thing was until the bill came in. She brought it up after I complained about a few hundred dollars for clothes and the round-trip ticket for her sister to fly out and visit us. She said I bought the coat to get even."
"Did you?"
"I'm not sure. I guess in a way I wanted it, but now I'm not sure."
"Did you tell her that?"
"No. I said I'd always wanted a leather coat."
"You lied."
"Yes, I lied. We've both been lying."
"In what way?"
"We've both been telling one other and ourselves that everything will work out fine eventually when, in reality, we've got separate friends, separate interests."
True to his character, Dad breaks in with a statement meant to shock. "Lying dog." Then, immediately afterward, he qualifies it. "Cinders has been lying around a lot lately. I think he's near the end. Thirteen years old next month."
"Your attempt at a double entendre comes late and fails as usual," says Mom, shaking her head. Then, looking back to him, she says, "Jeffrey, separate friends and separate interests have saved a lot of marriages."
"I know, but we've only been married two years. At this stage aren't we supposed to be sharing things with one another?"
"I suppose so."
"Good, you finally agree with something."
Mom stares at him. Tea, oatmeal cookies, a late night discussion--all the earmarks of confession and humility.
"Sorry," he says.
"It's all right," she says. "Sleep on it tonight. Try to remember if you gave enough slack or if your pride got in the way. Maybe you'll feel differently in the morning."
Dad stands up suddenly. "Damn!"
"What is it?" asks Mom.
"I should have opened the heating registers upstairs. You'll be able to see your breath up there."
And so, after scratching Cinders' ears for a while and kissing Mom goodnight, he follows Dad up to his slope-ceilinged boyhood room to open registers, to get bed linen out of the cedar chest, to make the bed. As Dad helps him with the fitted sheet, he realizes he and Dad have never done this before and it makes the night even more surreal. On his way down the stairs Dad says he will leave the stairway door open so more heat will come up the stairwell.
"What about Cinders?"
"Don't worry," shouts Dad from the first floor. "He doesn't climb stairs anymore."
***
Before going to bed he stands at one of the dormer windows looking down. He imagines himself standing there an hour earlier, an animal skin draped over him. He would have been unrecognizable because the only light comes from the streetlight on the corner. He would have been the stranger he insisted to his parents had been out there.
He turns back into the room. To fit into the long, slope-ceilinged room with its short knee walls, everything except the bed is miniaturized. Desk, dresser, bookcase--all of them homemade by Dad out of pine boards left over from the finishing of this attic room. He feels as if he has just taken one of Alice's "Eat Me" pills, as if both sides of the sloping ceiling are descending.
He strips to his underwear and gets into bed. He turns out the lamp and now, finally, with the light out, he thinks of Julie. Not Julie kissing him open-mouthed in the car out front, not Julie in bed--in this very bed--with him and Cinders, but Julie back at the apartment spitting nickels because she is so angry at him.
"You're right, Jeff! I love the coat! It makes you look so sexy! And in a pinch, if you're ever with that girl from the office again, you can always cut off a few strands and make her a harness or something so you two can get it off!"
"That's a idiotic thing to say!"
"Why? You're always talking about her as if she's some kind of femme fatale!"
"Bullshit!"
"Not bullshit, Jeff! Every other day you're telling me about her latest leather miniskirt or bracelet or boots and how she's lured yet another of your innocent coworkers to her lair!"
"It's just office gossip!"
"Not when I get all these damn hints!"
"What hints?"
"Catalogs open to negligees, hurrying me along when we're going out so I don't have time to put on a bra, making me watch those inane X-rated videos! Face it, Jeff! I'm not a damn exhibitionist!"
"Maybe I just want to demonstrate my damn love for you by showing you off to the rest of the world once in a while!"
"Maybe you never grew up!"
As he lies in bed trying to see if the sloping ceiling has moved lower, he remembers how, at that moment of the argument, he had held up the back of his hand to her. He had not lied to his mother, there had been no blows. But he had held up his hand and now, on the black ceiling, he can see Julie's face, that look of utter disgust before she turned and left him standing alone in the living room with the phone ringing and her cheery voice on the answering machine saying to whoever had called, "Hi. We're not here right now, but if you leave your name and number--"
He hears a noise in the stairwell, a sound like fingers drumming on a hard surface. He gets up, goes to the top of the stairs and turns on the stairwell light.
Cinders is at the bottom, front paws up on the first step. He goes to Cinders, tiptoeing down the stairs which crackle dryly from lack of use. At the bottom he sees Dad standing in the hallway, also in his underwear.
"Should I take Cinders up with me?"
"No," says Dad. "If he tries to come down he'll fall. He's fallen down the back porch steps several times. Luckily it isn't a full flight like these."
He stands there for a moment looking down at Cinders' forlorn brown eyes, eyes which say, I'll do anything you ask and require very little in return.
Dad bends into the shaft of light from the stairwell and lifts Cinders into his arms. "Is it warm enough up there?"
"Yes, it's fine."
"Can I close the door now so he won't try to climb?"
"Sure."
Before the door closes, Dad says, "Goodnight," but he cannot see Dad's eyes in the dark hallway. And he cannot see Cinders' eyes. The final image he remembers is the pear-shaped white spot on Cinders' belly and the white, triangular shape of Dad's briefs sagging below his belly.
Back upstairs he turns on the lamp. He can find nothing to read in the bookcase except his grammar school textbooks but remembers, years earlier, having hidden men's magazines behind the trap door in the knee wall. He slides the bookcase quietly to the side and opens the trap door. This space, shaped like a triangular prism, has a familiar odor, the smells of dust and construction trapped decades earlier. He gropes beneath the fiberglass insulation between two joists. He finds four magazines and shakes the fiberglass insulation and dust from them. He closes the trap door and gets back into bed.
He looks at the photographs in all of the magazines wondering where the models are now, twenty years later. He begins reading one of those first-person articles--supposedly true--about a husband who gets "turned-on" when his wife is admired or touched in any way by other men. The article is long and drawn out and ends with the husband revealing a final "turn-on."
It seems the husband has encouraged his wife to not only let other men see her in intimate ways, but has finally convinced her to have encounters with other men. His only condition is that she not remove visible, tactile or olfactory evidence of said encounters.
The description of the husband's obsession with "evidence of another man's spoor on his turf" is disgusting. Jeffrey closes the magazine and drops it to the floor with the others. He shuts off the light and closes his eyes, trying to remember what he thought of the filthy story when he was a boy.
He remembers imagining that he was grown up and that the woman from the story was his wife. He remembers imagining further that this so-called "wife willing to do anything for her husband" was in this very room. It had been an elegant, slop-ceilinged loft apartment then. His wife had arrived home with the evidence of lovemaking as requested. Wordlessly, she did anything he asked and required very little in return. Based on the distorted imaginings of an adolescent, she was a dream wife. Yes, the men's magazines--and even movies and television--had conjured up a great hoax aimed at his youthfulness. That hoax being that the perfect wife should be like a family dog willing to live out its life in total devotion to its owners.
He thinks of Julie, sees once again the look in her eyes at the moment he raised his hand. Although her movements, her sneer, her turning-her-back-on-him had suggested defiance, the look in her eyes at that instant was one of fear.
He turns over on his stomach, hugs the lumpy pillow the way he hugged it so many times in the past when it became a woman from a men's magazine. He grips the pillow tightly with the hand that had been raised and weeps.
***
In the morning when he goes downstairs, the kitchen is empty even though he heard kitchen sounds earlier. He remembers Mom telling him recently that she sometimes sleeps late and lets Dad get himself off to work. He goes into the bathroom and combs his hair, washes his hands and face. As he does this he is aware of the stings of several unseen filaments of fiberglass insulation imbedded in his fingertips.
Back in the kitchen he looks out the window and sees that the day is sunny. He sees a movement in the yard and goes closer to the window. He sees that Dad is out in the yard with Cinders. At first he thinks Dad is playing with Cinders, stooping down to give Cinders a whiff of a ball he will throw across the yard for Cinders to fetch. But then he sees that Cinders is defecating while Dad--his hands beneath Cinder's belly--holds him up.
"He can't stand for long periods, especially in the morning."
Jeffrey turns and sees Mom's hair cowlicked from sleep, her eyes tired. She yawns and goes to the sink where she begins filling the coffee pot while looking out the window.
"If your father doesn't hold him up, he messes himself. We discussed having him put away but your father says he doesn't mind helping him. Are you going to work from here?"
"Yes."
"And Julie?"
"I'll call her from work and we'll go from there."
"Oatmeal and fruit okay?"
"Sure."
***
In the car on the way to work he cannot get his mind off the image of his father holding Cinders up in the yard. It seems the most touching thing he has ever seen. It blocks out many other images and remembrances he had during the previous night in the slope-ceilinged room of his youth. He decides that when he gets to work and calls Julie he will tell her about his father and Cinders and about the crazy lies he told his mother when she asked about their argument.
At a stoplight he unbuckles his seatbelt and struggles to remove his leather coat because the sun is out and it is much warmer than the previous day. He gets the coat off, throws it into the back seat and re-fastens his seatbelt just as the light goes green.
Copyright 2009 Michael Beres
Two decades earlier, during long afternoons between his having arrived home from school and his father's arrival from work, Middle Eastern terrorists threatening to take over the neighborhood had cowered outside this same door, hiding behind bushes and street trees while, at the living room window adjacent to the door, was poised a brave little boy named Jeffrey who would turn the tide with his GI Joe automatic weapon. A decade earlier, on other autumn nights, he and his leather-jacketed friends had loitered here, leaning against big-block-powered behemoths with raised rear ends and hood scoops. A half-decade earlier, on another drizzly autumn night, he and Julie had parked here, petting and kissing open-mouthed, then Julie re-applying lipstick using a battery-powered, lighted compact while he combed his hair in preparation for the introduction of his "steady" to parents who must have guessed that tucked into a corner of his wallet was the condom that would be used later under the auspices of the Surgeon General.
Now, as he stands in the rain with the smell of his wet leather coat lifting across his face, he feels as he had after the first time he and Julie had done it. He feels as if he should do something to prove that he did not mean to become, for that brief instant, like the animal that he is. He feels as if he should be tender. But here, alone in the street in the drizzle, there is no way to be tender.
As he makes his way up the driveway he recalls a plywood skateboard ramp against which Joe Smetana leaned while the paramedics attached the temporary leg cast. As he turns onto the sidewalk that leads to the front steps he recalls the post-skateboard teenage years and especially bouncing a tennis ball off the steps for what seemed an entire summer. As he stands on the stoop he looks up toward the two dormers sticking out of the Cape Cod's roof like frog's eyes and remembers the time when, a few weeks before their marriage, he and Julie, along with Cinders, spent the night up there while his parents were away on vacation.
He takes his hands from the pockets of his leather coat, brushes at the shoulders of it to remove droplets of drizzle. The motion reminds him of a tuxedo, a wedding morning, his mother brushing the shoulders while he stands at the vestibule mirror.
The plastic surrounding the door chime button is illuminated in dull orange. The button itself is missing, the corroded copper spring of the movable contact exposed. He thinks of electrocution but knows that the current supplied to the door chime circuit comes through a step-down transformer. He pushes on the spring and hears the double chime, but he does not hear Cinders and this worries him.
***
In the kitchen Mom makes tea without asking if he or Dad want it. The "Jeffrey, what are you doing out alone on a night like this?" and the "Where's Julie?" have already been asked and answered. She is alone back in the apartment. He has walked out. And so, with aging Cinders lying heavily against his ankle beneath the table, hot tea is served as it has always been served whenever Mom decides that tragedy-sorrow-grief are at hand. The last time they drank tea together at night at this table, his grandfather--Dad's father--had died. Julie had been here then. They had been married a year. And now, two years later, tea again, warming him as he clutches the cup and bends over it.
Dad--hair disheveled, eyes red, robe blue--turns toward the hallway. "Cinders?"
"He's under the table," says Mom.
"Oh," says Dad, leaning to look.
Mom puts out a plate of oatmeal cookies--Jeffrey's favorite--and he realizes how serious Mom considers the situation. She sits opposite him, her back to the fridge. His back is to the wall while Dad's is to the hallway and he realizes they are all three sitting in the same positions they always occupied at the kitchen table.
Mom's hair is brushed straight, grey hairs longer than black ones. She is wearing a red terry cloth robe with padded shoulders. She stirs a half-packet of artificial sweetener into her tea--folding the packet to save the rest--and tests its sweetness. Then she puts down the spoon, takes several sips of tea, stares across at him, smiles forlornly.
"I never thought it would come to this, Jeffrey. And especially so close to your anniversary."
"It has, Mom."
"How did it start?"
"A trivial thing as usual."
"You've argued before?"
"Yes, but never as violently as tonight."
She raises her eyebrows. "Violent?"
"I meant to describe the extent of our argument, Mom. We didn't come to blows."
"What was the trivial thing that started it?"
"The charge card bill."
"Yes, that does seem trivial."
"Apparently we both charged a few things that the other didn't count on. That new leather coat of mine was one thing. I'd forgotten how expensive the damn thing was until the bill came in. She brought it up after I complained about a few hundred dollars for clothes and the round-trip ticket for her sister to fly out and visit us. She said I bought the coat to get even."
"Did you?"
"I'm not sure. I guess in a way I wanted it, but now I'm not sure."
"Did you tell her that?"
"No. I said I'd always wanted a leather coat."
"You lied."
"Yes, I lied. We've both been lying."
"In what way?"
"We've both been telling one other and ourselves that everything will work out fine eventually when, in reality, we've got separate friends, separate interests."
True to his character, Dad breaks in with a statement meant to shock. "Lying dog." Then, immediately afterward, he qualifies it. "Cinders has been lying around a lot lately. I think he's near the end. Thirteen years old next month."
"Your attempt at a double entendre comes late and fails as usual," says Mom, shaking her head. Then, looking back to him, she says, "Jeffrey, separate friends and separate interests have saved a lot of marriages."
"I know, but we've only been married two years. At this stage aren't we supposed to be sharing things with one another?"
"I suppose so."
"Good, you finally agree with something."
Mom stares at him. Tea, oatmeal cookies, a late night discussion--all the earmarks of confession and humility.
"Sorry," he says.
"It's all right," she says. "Sleep on it tonight. Try to remember if you gave enough slack or if your pride got in the way. Maybe you'll feel differently in the morning."
Dad stands up suddenly. "Damn!"
"What is it?" asks Mom.
"I should have opened the heating registers upstairs. You'll be able to see your breath up there."
And so, after scratching Cinders' ears for a while and kissing Mom goodnight, he follows Dad up to his slope-ceilinged boyhood room to open registers, to get bed linen out of the cedar chest, to make the bed. As Dad helps him with the fitted sheet, he realizes he and Dad have never done this before and it makes the night even more surreal. On his way down the stairs Dad says he will leave the stairway door open so more heat will come up the stairwell.
"What about Cinders?"
"Don't worry," shouts Dad from the first floor. "He doesn't climb stairs anymore."
***
Before going to bed he stands at one of the dormer windows looking down. He imagines himself standing there an hour earlier, an animal skin draped over him. He would have been unrecognizable because the only light comes from the streetlight on the corner. He would have been the stranger he insisted to his parents had been out there.
He turns back into the room. To fit into the long, slope-ceilinged room with its short knee walls, everything except the bed is miniaturized. Desk, dresser, bookcase--all of them homemade by Dad out of pine boards left over from the finishing of this attic room. He feels as if he has just taken one of Alice's "Eat Me" pills, as if both sides of the sloping ceiling are descending.
He strips to his underwear and gets into bed. He turns out the lamp and now, finally, with the light out, he thinks of Julie. Not Julie kissing him open-mouthed in the car out front, not Julie in bed--in this very bed--with him and Cinders, but Julie back at the apartment spitting nickels because she is so angry at him.
"You're right, Jeff! I love the coat! It makes you look so sexy! And in a pinch, if you're ever with that girl from the office again, you can always cut off a few strands and make her a harness or something so you two can get it off!"
"That's a idiotic thing to say!"
"Why? You're always talking about her as if she's some kind of femme fatale!"
"Bullshit!"
"Not bullshit, Jeff! Every other day you're telling me about her latest leather miniskirt or bracelet or boots and how she's lured yet another of your innocent coworkers to her lair!"
"It's just office gossip!"
"Not when I get all these damn hints!"
"What hints?"
"Catalogs open to negligees, hurrying me along when we're going out so I don't have time to put on a bra, making me watch those inane X-rated videos! Face it, Jeff! I'm not a damn exhibitionist!"
"Maybe I just want to demonstrate my damn love for you by showing you off to the rest of the world once in a while!"
"Maybe you never grew up!"
As he lies in bed trying to see if the sloping ceiling has moved lower, he remembers how, at that moment of the argument, he had held up the back of his hand to her. He had not lied to his mother, there had been no blows. But he had held up his hand and now, on the black ceiling, he can see Julie's face, that look of utter disgust before she turned and left him standing alone in the living room with the phone ringing and her cheery voice on the answering machine saying to whoever had called, "Hi. We're not here right now, but if you leave your name and number--"
He hears a noise in the stairwell, a sound like fingers drumming on a hard surface. He gets up, goes to the top of the stairs and turns on the stairwell light.
Cinders is at the bottom, front paws up on the first step. He goes to Cinders, tiptoeing down the stairs which crackle dryly from lack of use. At the bottom he sees Dad standing in the hallway, also in his underwear.
"Should I take Cinders up with me?"
"No," says Dad. "If he tries to come down he'll fall. He's fallen down the back porch steps several times. Luckily it isn't a full flight like these."
He stands there for a moment looking down at Cinders' forlorn brown eyes, eyes which say, I'll do anything you ask and require very little in return.
Dad bends into the shaft of light from the stairwell and lifts Cinders into his arms. "Is it warm enough up there?"
"Yes, it's fine."
"Can I close the door now so he won't try to climb?"
"Sure."
Before the door closes, Dad says, "Goodnight," but he cannot see Dad's eyes in the dark hallway. And he cannot see Cinders' eyes. The final image he remembers is the pear-shaped white spot on Cinders' belly and the white, triangular shape of Dad's briefs sagging below his belly.
Back upstairs he turns on the lamp. He can find nothing to read in the bookcase except his grammar school textbooks but remembers, years earlier, having hidden men's magazines behind the trap door in the knee wall. He slides the bookcase quietly to the side and opens the trap door. This space, shaped like a triangular prism, has a familiar odor, the smells of dust and construction trapped decades earlier. He gropes beneath the fiberglass insulation between two joists. He finds four magazines and shakes the fiberglass insulation and dust from them. He closes the trap door and gets back into bed.
He looks at the photographs in all of the magazines wondering where the models are now, twenty years later. He begins reading one of those first-person articles--supposedly true--about a husband who gets "turned-on" when his wife is admired or touched in any way by other men. The article is long and drawn out and ends with the husband revealing a final "turn-on."
It seems the husband has encouraged his wife to not only let other men see her in intimate ways, but has finally convinced her to have encounters with other men. His only condition is that she not remove visible, tactile or olfactory evidence of said encounters.
The description of the husband's obsession with "evidence of another man's spoor on his turf" is disgusting. Jeffrey closes the magazine and drops it to the floor with the others. He shuts off the light and closes his eyes, trying to remember what he thought of the filthy story when he was a boy.
He remembers imagining that he was grown up and that the woman from the story was his wife. He remembers imagining further that this so-called "wife willing to do anything for her husband" was in this very room. It had been an elegant, slop-ceilinged loft apartment then. His wife had arrived home with the evidence of lovemaking as requested. Wordlessly, she did anything he asked and required very little in return. Based on the distorted imaginings of an adolescent, she was a dream wife. Yes, the men's magazines--and even movies and television--had conjured up a great hoax aimed at his youthfulness. That hoax being that the perfect wife should be like a family dog willing to live out its life in total devotion to its owners.
He thinks of Julie, sees once again the look in her eyes at the moment he raised his hand. Although her movements, her sneer, her turning-her-back-on-him had suggested defiance, the look in her eyes at that instant was one of fear.
He turns over on his stomach, hugs the lumpy pillow the way he hugged it so many times in the past when it became a woman from a men's magazine. He grips the pillow tightly with the hand that had been raised and weeps.
***
In the morning when he goes downstairs, the kitchen is empty even though he heard kitchen sounds earlier. He remembers Mom telling him recently that she sometimes sleeps late and lets Dad get himself off to work. He goes into the bathroom and combs his hair, washes his hands and face. As he does this he is aware of the stings of several unseen filaments of fiberglass insulation imbedded in his fingertips.
Back in the kitchen he looks out the window and sees that the day is sunny. He sees a movement in the yard and goes closer to the window. He sees that Dad is out in the yard with Cinders. At first he thinks Dad is playing with Cinders, stooping down to give Cinders a whiff of a ball he will throw across the yard for Cinders to fetch. But then he sees that Cinders is defecating while Dad--his hands beneath Cinder's belly--holds him up.
"He can't stand for long periods, especially in the morning."
Jeffrey turns and sees Mom's hair cowlicked from sleep, her eyes tired. She yawns and goes to the sink where she begins filling the coffee pot while looking out the window.
"If your father doesn't hold him up, he messes himself. We discussed having him put away but your father says he doesn't mind helping him. Are you going to work from here?"
"Yes."
"And Julie?"
"I'll call her from work and we'll go from there."
"Oatmeal and fruit okay?"
"Sure."
***
In the car on the way to work he cannot get his mind off the image of his father holding Cinders up in the yard. It seems the most touching thing he has ever seen. It blocks out many other images and remembrances he had during the previous night in the slope-ceilinged room of his youth. He decides that when he gets to work and calls Julie he will tell her about his father and Cinders and about the crazy lies he told his mother when she asked about their argument.
At a stoplight he unbuckles his seatbelt and struggles to remove his leather coat because the sun is out and it is much warmer than the previous day. He gets the coat off, throws it into the back seat and re-fastens his seatbelt just as the light goes green.
Copyright 2009 Michael Beres
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