Tenth of December

Author: George Saunders
URL: = this.url

Thoughts

Highlights

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VICTORY LAP 🔗

• [N] 4/5 - great story, funny, about a kid that saves the neighbor girl from a kidnapping, told through each characters perspective (girl, neighbor kid, kidnapper), each with unique voices, lives, thoughts.

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Mom and Dad would be heartsick if they could hear the swearing he sometimes did in his head, such as crap-cunt shit-turd dick-in-the-ear butt-creamery. Why couldn’t he stop doing that? They thought so highly of him, sending weekly braggy emails to both sets of grandparents, such as: Kyle’s been super-busy keeping up his grades while running varsity cross-country though still a sophomore, while setting aside a little time each day to manufacture such humdingers as cunt-swoggle rear-fuck—
What was wrong with him? Why couldn’t he be grateful for all that Mom and Dad did for him, instead of—
Cornhole the ear-cunt.
Flake-fuck the pale vestige with a proddering dick-knee. 🔗

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He scrambled up the hood of the van, retrieved the geode.
Really? Really? You were going to ruin her life, ruin my life, you cunt-probe dick-munch ass-gashing Animal? Who’s bossing who now? Gash-ass, jizz-lips, turd-munch—
He’d never felt so strong/angry/wild. Who’s the man? Who’s your daddy? What else must he do? To ensure that Animal did no further harm? You still moving, freak? Got a plan, stroke-dick? Want a skull gash on top of your existing skull gash, big man? You think I won’t? You think I—
Easy, Scout, you’re out of control.
Slow your motor down, Beloved Only.
Quiet. I’m the boss of me. 🔗

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STICKS 🔗

• [N] 2/5 - Sad story about an angry dad hoping his kids love and forgive him.

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PUPPY 🔗

• [N] 3/5 - disturbing as hell, two moms (one rich, one poor) trying to care for their children, the poor mom Callie sells animals (which often need to be killed if they go unsold) and has kid tied to a tree out back.

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ESCAPE FROM SPIDERHEAD 🔗

• [N] 3.75/5 A dark, fun story, nothing too impressive but a unique ride nonetheless. Accessible, funny, great satire.

Jeff is in jail, but in this jail he's the subject of drug experiments. Currently they're testing the new "love drug" with some awful side experiments involving the miserable drug "Darkfloxxin."

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II 🔗

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Can we stop war? We can sure as heck slow it down! Suddenly the soldiers on both sides start fucking. Or, at low dosage, feeling superfond. Or say we have two rival dictators in a death grudge. Assuming ED289/290 develops nicely in pill form, allow me to slip each dictator a mickey. Soon their tongues are down each other’s throats and doves of peace are pooping on their epaulets. Or, depending on the dosage, they may just be hugging. 🔗

• [N] The love pill lol

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My mind was like reeling. Rachel had fucked me plus Rogan? Heather had fucked me plus Rogan? And everyone who had fucked anyone had fallen in love with that person, then out of it? 🔗

• [N] Lol

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Back in my Domain, I constructed a who-had-fucked-whom chart, which went like this: 🔗

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🔗

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Everything in my drip felt Grade A. Suddenly I was waxing poetic. I was waxing poetic re what Heather was doing, and waxing poetic re my feelings about what Heather was doing. Basically, what I was feeling was: Every human is born of man and woman. Every human, at birth, is, or at least has the potential to be, beloved of his/her mother/father. Thus every human is worthy of love. As I watched Heather suffer, a great tenderness suffused my body, a tenderness hard to distinguish from a sort of vast existential nausea; to wit, why are such beautiful beloved vessels made slaves to so much pain? Heather presented as a bundle of pain receptors. Heather’s mind was fluid, and could be ruined (by pain, by sadness). Why? Why was she made this way? Why so fragile? 🔗

• [N] Jeff contemplating out loud the nature of love nd sadness. "Why are such beautiful humans slaves to so much pain"

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It was sad. It gave me a sad, defeated feeling to think that soon they’d be back and would Docilryde™ me, and I’d say “Acknowledge,” smiling agreeably the way a person smiles on Docilryde™, and then the Darkenfloxx™ would flow, into Rachel, and I would begin describing, in that rapid, robotic way one describes on Verbaluce™/VeriTalk™/ChatEase™, the things Rachel would, at that time, begin doing to herself. 🔗

• [N] Ok this story is pretty wild, would make a good short film, a very dark one

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In the end, here’s how bad it got: I used a corner of the desk.
What’s death like?
You’re briefly unlimited.
I sailed right out through the roof.
And hovered above it, looking down. Here was Rogan, checking his neck tattoo in the mirror. Here was Keith, squat-thrusting in his underwear. Here was Ned Riley, here was B. Troper, here was Gail Orley, Stefan DeWitt, killers all, all bad, I guess, although, in that instant, I saw it differently. At birth, they’d been charged by God with the responsibility of growing into total fuckups. Had they chosen this? Was it their fault, as they tumbled out of the womb? Had they aspired, covered in placental blood, to grow into harmers, dark forces, life enders? In that first holy instant of breath/awareness (tiny hands clutching and unclutching), had it been their fondest hope to render (via gun, knife, or brick) some innocent family bereft? No; and yet their crooked destinies had lain dormant within them, seeds awaiting water and light to bring forth the most violent, life-poisoning flowers, said water/light actually being the requisite combination of neurological tendency and environmental activation that would transform them (transform us!) into earth’s offal, murderers, and foul us with the ultimate, unwashable transgression. 🔗

• [N] Death

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Night was falling. Birds were singing. Birds were, it occurred to me to say, enacting a frantic celebration of day’s end. They were manifesting as the earth’s bright-colored nerve endings, the sun’s descent urging them into activity, filling them individually with life nectar, the life nectar then being passed into the world, out of each beak, in the form of that bird’s distinctive song, which was, in turn, an accident of beak shape, throat shape, breast configuration, brain chemistry: some birds blessed in voice, others cursed; some squawking, others rapturous. 🔗

• [N] Birds are earths nerve endings

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EXHORTATION 🔗

• [N] 2.5/5 what happens in room 6? Whatever it is can't be good, but it needs to be done and we gotta pump those numbers fellas! And do it with a smile on your ensure maximum efficient. Fine super short, we get it, work sucks.

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So the point of this memo is: Positive. The positive mental state will help you clean that shelf well and quickly, thus accomplishing your purpose of getting paid. 🔗

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AL ROOSTEN 🔗

• [N] 3/5 - Depressing Americana. The chubby Al Roosten lives a pretty sad life, gets laughed at, has envious thoughts of doing harm to those more (and less) fortunate, owns an unsuccessful shop, but his late mom always told him he had "moral courage"

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There had been that period in junior high, yes, when he had been somewhat worried that he might perhaps like guys, and had constantly lost in wrestling because, instead of concentrating on his holds he was always mentally assessing whether his thing was hurting inside his cup because he was popping a mild pre-bone or because the tip was sticking out an airhole, and once he was almost sure he’d popped a mild pre-bone when he found his face pressed against Tom Reed’s hard abs, which smelled of coconut, but, after practice, obsessing about this in the woods, he realized that he sometimes popped a similar mild pre-bone when the cat sat on his groin in a beam of sun, which proved he didn’t have sexual feelings for Tom Reed, since he knew for sure he didn’t have sexual feelings for the cat, since he’d never even heard that described as being possible. And from that day on, whenever he found himself wondering whether he liked guys, he always remembered walking exultantly in the woods after the liberating realization that he was no more attracted to guys than to cats, just happily kicking the tops off mushrooms in a spirit of tremendous relief. 🔗

• [N] lol, middle school gay anxieties

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Donfrey’s wife had been beautiful: nice legs, slim back, long hair. You looked at her and couldn’t look away. Donfrey’s kids had also seemed great, two elflike androgynes politely debating something, possibly the history of the Supreme Court? 🔗

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And Donfrey’s wife wasn’t beautiful, Roosten suddenly honestly admitted; she was pale. A pale, haughty waif. As far as Donfrey’s kids—if those kids belonged to him? He’d scruff them up a bit. Try and de-elfify them. Were they girls or boys? You honestly couldn’t tell. 🔗

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THE SEMPLICA GIRL DIARIES 🔗

• [N] 3.75/5 interesting story and form, written as journal entries of a very American middle class family, but in a world where girls from poor countries are put on display in "affluent" families yards.

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When will I have sufficient leisure/wealth to sit on hay-bale watching moon rise, while in luxurious mansion family sleeps? At that time, will have chance to reflect deeply on meaning of life etc., etc. Have a feeling and have always had a feeling that this and other good things will happen for us! 🔗

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Just then father (Emmett) appears, holding freshly painted leg from merry-go-round horse, says time for dinner, hopes we like sailfish flown in fresh from Guatemala, prepared with a rare spice found only in one tiny region of Burma, which had to be bribed out, and also he had to design and build a special freshness-ensuring container for the sailfish. 🔗

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Did not totally follow. Asked about my work, I told. He said well, huh, amazing the strange arcane things our culture requires some of us to do, degrading things, things that offer no tangible benefit to anyone, how do they expect people to continue to even hold their heads up?
Could not think of response. Note to self: Think up response, send on card, thus striking up friendship with Emmett? 🔗

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Do not really like rich people, as they make us poor people feel dopey and inadequate. Not that we are poor. I would say we are middle. We are very very lucky. I know that. But still, it is not right that rich people make us middle people feel dopey and inadequate.
Am writing this still drunk and it is getting late and tomorrow is Monday, which means work.
Work work work. Stupid work. Am so tired of work.
Goodnight.
(Sept. 7)
Just reread that last entry and should clarify.
Am not tired of work. It is a privilege to work. I do not hate the rich. I aspire to be rich myself. And when we finally do get our own bridge, trout, treehouse, SGs, etc., at least will know we really earned them, unlike, say, the Torrinis, who, I feel, must have family money. 🔗

• [N] Same homie, and it's Sunday night here too

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But in sketchpad: crayon pic of row of sad SGs. Could tell were meant to be sad due to frowns went down off faces like Fu Manchus and tears were dropping in arcs, flowers springing up where tears hit ground. 🔗

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Still, must fight good fight! Think of Dad. When Mom left Dad, Dad kept going to job. When laid off from job, got paper route. When laid off paper route, got lesser paper route. In time, got better route back. By time Dad died, had job almost as good as original job he had lost. And had paid off most debt incurred after demotion to lesser route. 🔗

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Note to future generations: Happiness possible. And when happy, so much better than opposite, i.e., sad. Hopefully you know! I knew, but forgot. Got used to being slightly sad! Slightly sad, due to stress, due to worry vis-a-vis limitations. But now, wow, no: happy! 🔗

• [N] Only because he won the $10k on a scratch off, this won't end well I feel

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Me: So can we have a look?
Him: Totally.
We step out. SGs up now, approx. three feet off ground, smiling, swaying in slight breeze. Order, left to right: Tami (Laos), Gwen (Moldova), Lisa (Somalia), Betty (Philippines). Effect amazing. Having so often seen similar configuration in yards of others more affluent, makes own yard seem suddenly affluent, you feel different about self, as if at last you are in step with peers and time in which living. 🔗

• [N] Oh god, what are SGs...

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Am so happy. Feel so lucky. What did we do to deserve? In part, yes: luck. Scratch-Off win = luck. But as saying goes, luck = ninety percent skill. Or preparation? Preparation = ninety percent skill? Skill = ninety percent luck? Cannot exactly remember saying. Anyway, to our credit, managed our good luck well. Did not go nuts, buy boat, buy drugs (!), fly off handle, become discontent, seek lovers, get cocky. Just took good hard look at family, discerned what family member (Lilly) needed, quietly/humbly made sure she got.
Note to self: Try to extend positive feelings associated with Scratch-Off win into all areas of life. Be bigger presence at work. Race up ladder (joyfully, w/smile on face), get raise. Get in best shape of life, start dressing nicer. Learn guitar? Make point of noticing beauty of world? Why not educate self re. birds, flowers, trees, constellations, become true citizen of natural world, walk around neighborhood w/kids, patiently teaching kids names of birds, flowers, etc. etc.? Why not take kids to Europe? Kids have never been. Have never, in Alps, had hot chocolate in mountain café, served by kindly white-haired innkeeper, who finds them so sophisticated/friendly relative to usual snotty/rich American kids (who always ignore his pretty but crippled daughter w/braids) that he shows them secret hiking path to incredible glade, kids frolic in glade, sit with crippled pretty girl on grass, later say it was most beautiful day of their lives, keep in touch with crippled girl via email, we arrange surgery here for her, surgeon so touched he agrees to do surgery for free, she is on front page of our paper, we are on front page of their paper in Alps?
Ha ha.
Just happy. 🔗

• [N] Story of surgery for European innkeepers crippled daughter...

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Family life of our time sometimes seems like game of Whac-a-Mole, future reader. Future generations still have? Plastic mole emerges, you whack with hammer, he dies, falls, another emerges, you whack, kill? Perhaps may seem like strange/violent game to you, future reader? Who no longer even need to eat to live? Just levitate all day, smiling warmly at one another? Sometimes seems that, as soon as one kid happy, another kid “pops up,” i.e., registers complaint, requiring parent to “whack” kid, i.e., address complaint. 🔗

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Drew human head on napkin, explained: Lawrence Semplica = doctor + smart cookie. Found way to route microline through brain that does no damage, causes no pain. Technique uses lasers to make pilot route. Microline then threaded through w/silk leader. Microline goes in here (touched Eva’s temple), comes out here (touched other). Is very gentle, does not hurt, SGs out during whole deal. 🔗

• [N] SGs

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Scary guy. Very intense. Sermon: Why this surprising? Did you think you were going to live forever? Only difference between you, sitting there anticipating rest of your day, and Todd, in coffin, bound for eternal home in cold earth? Is heartbeat. Feel that, people? In your chests? That is thin line between you and grave. So why do you live like you are eternal? That foolish, you are fools. This scary? This not scary! This truth, this reality!
Shouts: Shall we wake up? Shall we?
Everyone staring big-eyed at priest. 🔗

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If/when I die, do not want Pam lonely. Want her to remarry, have full life. As long as new husband is nice guy. Gentle guy. Religious guy. Very caring + good to kids. But kids not fooled. Kids prefer dead dad (i.e., me) to religious guy. Pale, boring, religious guy, with no oomph, who wears weird sweaters and is always a little sad, due to, cannot get boner, due to physical ailment.
Ha ha.
Death very much on my mind tonight, future reader. Can it be true? That I will die? That Pam, kids will die? Is awful. Why were we put here, so inclined to love, when end of our story = death? That harsh. That cruel. Do not like.
Note to self: try harder, in all things, to be better person. 🔗

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Note to future generations: sometimes, in our time, families get into dark place. Family feels: we are losers, everything we do is wrong. Parents fight at high volume, blaming one another for disastrous situation. Dad kicks wall, puts hole in wall near fridge, family skips lunch. Tension too high for all to sit at same table. This unbearable. This makes person (father) doubt value of whole enterprise, i.e., makes father (me) wonder if humans would not be better off living alone, individually, in woods, minding own beeswax, not loving anyone.
Today like that for us. 🔗

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God.
Household in freefall, future reader. Everything chaotic. Kids, feeling tension, fighting all day. After dinner, Pam caught kids watching “I, Gropius,” (forbidden) = show where guy decides which girl to date based on feeling girls’ breasts through screen with two holes. (Do not actually show breasts. Just guy’s expressions as he feels them and girl’s expression as he feels them and girl’s expression as guy announces his rating. Still: bad show.) Pam blew up at kids: We are in most difficult period ever for family, this how they behave? 🔗

• [N] Eva freed the SGs and police are investigating

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On Lilly’s desk: poster Lilly was working on for “Favorite Things Day” at school. Poster = photo of each SG, plus map of home country, plus stories Lilly apparently got during interview (!) with each: Gwen (Moldova) = very tough, due to Moldovian youth: used bloody sheets found in trash + duct tape to make soccer ball, then, after much practice with bloody-sheet ball, nearly made Olympic team (!). Betty (Philippines) has daughter who, when swimming, will sometimes hitch ride on shell of sea turtle. Lisa (Somalia) once saw lion on roof of her uncle’s “mini-lorry.” Tami (Laos) had pet water buffalo, water buffalo stepped on her foot, now Tami must wear special shoe. “Fun Fact”: their names (Betty, Tami, et al.) not their real names. These = SG names, given by Greenway at time of arrival. “Tami” = Januka = “happy ray of sun.” “Betty” = Nenita = “blessed-beloved.” “Gwen” = Evgenia. (Does not know what her name means.) “Lisa” = Ayan = “happy traveler.”
SGs very much on my mind tonight, future reader.
Where are they now? Why did they go? 🔗

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And now?
No money, no papers. Who will remove microline? Who will give her job? When going for job, must fix hair so as to hide scars at Insertion Points. When will she ever see home + family again? Why would she do? Why would she ruin it all, leave our yard? Could have had nice long run w/us. What in the world was she seeking? What could she want so much, that would make her pull such desperate stunt? 🔗

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HOME 🔗

• [N] 3/5 a decent, somewhat funny story about a veteran that comes home from the war, apparently discharged for some war crimes. His family is disconnected and his mom's home is being taken from her, his sister won't accept him, and his ex wife has a new husband. His anger bubbles and he wants his family to just help him out with his return.

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The elf-baby looked at the sky.
“Clouds,” Renee said. “Clouds make rain.”
It was like the baby was demanding, with its eyes: Hurry up, tell me what all this shit is, so I can master it, open a few shops. 🔗

• [N] lol

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Having all these people think I was going to hurt the baby made me imagine hurting the baby. Did imagining hurting the baby mean that I would hurt the baby? Did I want to hurt the baby? No, Jesus. But: Did the fact that I had no intention of hurting the baby mean that I wouldn’t, when push came to shove, hurt the baby? Had I, in the recent past, had the experience of having no intention of doing Activity A, then suddenly finding myself right in the middle of doing Activity A?
“I don’t want to hold the baby,” I said.
“I appreciate that,” Ryan said. “That’s cool of you.”
“I want to hold this pitcher,” I said, and picked up a pitcher and held it like a baby, with the lemonade spilling out of it, and, once the lemonade was pooling nicely on the hardwood floor, spiked the pitcher down.
“You really hurt my feelings!” I said.
Then was out on the sidewalk, walking fast. 🔗

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MY CHIVALRIC FIASCO 🔗

• [N] 4/5 creative story about a guy that witnesses his coworkers having an affair, one of them his boss. The boss promotes him to keep him quiet, but his new job requires him to take drugs to improve his improv. In this state he code switches to Shakespearean dialect and in his chivalrous mood announces the affair, causing his firing and Martha's anger. I particularly enjoyed the use of language to depict the come up and down of the drug, cute and short.

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Oh, man.
What a shit Day.
Taking a Shortcut through the high-school practice Field, where the tackling Dummies, in silhouette, like men who knew the value of holding their Tongues, seemed to Mock at me, I attempted to Comfort myself, saying I had done Right, and served Truth, and shewn good Courage. But ’twas no Comfort in it. It was so weird. Why had I even done That? I felt like a total dickBrain, who should have just left well enough alone, & been more Moderate. I had really screwed the Pooch, no lie. Although, on the other Hand, did not the Devil himself, upon occasion, don the Garb of Moderation, as might befit his Purpose? Was it not Salutary that Events might proceed so as to see Don Murray punish’d? Although, then again, who did I think I was, Mr. Big Shot?
Damn.
Damn it.
What a clusterfuck.
This was going to be Hard to live down.
I was almost completely myself now which, believe me, was no Picnic.
One last bit of Pill got digested by me, seemed like. Producing one last brief but powerful surge of Return. To that former Self. Who, Elevated & Confident to a Fault, had so led me astray.
I took me to the Banks of the River, and tarried there awhile, as the lowering Sun made one with the Water, giving generously of Itself & its Divers Colors, in a Splay of Magnificence that preceded a most wonderful Silence. 🔗

• [N] Coming down off the speed

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TENTH of DECEMBER 🔗

• [N] 4.75/5 only a sliver off for feeling a teeny bit cliche, but wow what a great story. Very emotional. A kid goes into the woods to fight the Nethers and impress a girl from school, at the same time a guy with cancer goes into the woods to freeze to death. The kid goes across the pond to save the guy when he finds his coat, but falls in. The guy hears the kid and rushes to save him. A touching story about the will to live and the scary parts of life.

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Suzanne had the most amazing brown eyes. They were wet now, with fear and sudden reality.
Stop talking to her, mate, the Nether said.
I won’t, he said. And Suzanne? Even if you don’t feel there is something to us, rest assured I will still slay this fellow and return you home. Where do you live again? Over in El Cirro? By the water tower? Those are some nice houses back there.
Yes, Suzanne said. We also have a pool. You should come over this summer. It’s cool if you swim with your shirt on. And also, yes to there being something to us. You are by far the most insightful boy in our class. Even when I take into consideration the boys I knew in Montreal, I am just like: No one can compare.
Well, that’s nice to hear, he said. Thank you for saying that. I know I’m not the thinnest.
The thing about girls? Suzanne said. Is we are more content-driven. 🔗

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What was this strange object? A coat? On the bench? The bench the Nethers used for their human sacrifices?
No accumulated snow on coat. Inside of coat still slightly warm.
Ergo: the recently discarded coat of the Nether.
This was some strange juju. This was an intriguing conundrum, if he had ever encountered one. Which he had. Once, he’d found a bra on the handlebars of a bike. Once, he’d found an entire untouched steak dinner on a plate behind Fresno’s. And hadn’t eaten it. Though it had looked pretty good.
Something was afoot.
Then he beheld, halfway up Lexow Hill, a man.
Coatless bald-headed man. Super-skinny. In what looked like pajamas. Climbing plodfully, with tortoise patience, bare white arms sticking out of his p.j. shirt like two bare white branches sticking out of a p.j. shirt. Or grave.
What kind of person leaves his coat behind on a day like this? The mental kind, that was who. This guy looked sort of mental. Like an Auschwitz dude or sad confused grandpa.
Dad had once said, Trust your mind, Rob. If it smells like shit but has writing across it that says Happy Birthday and a candle stuck down in it, what is it?
Is there icing on it? he’d said.
Dad had done that thing of squinting his eyes when an answer was not quite there yet.
What was his mind telling him now?
Something was wrong here. A person needed a coat. Even if the person was a grown-up. The pond was frozen. The duck thermometer said ten. If the person was mental, all the more reason to come to his aid, as had not Jesus said, Blessed are those who help those who cannot help themselves but are too mental, doddering, or have a disability?
He snagged the coat off the bench.
It was a rescue. A real rescue, at last, sort of. 🔗

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Oh, for shitsake.
Oh, for crying out loud.
Some kid was on the pond.
Chubby kid in white. With a gun. Carrying Eber’s coat.
You little fart, put that coat down, get your ass home, mind your own—
Damn. Damn it.
Kid tapped the ice with the butt of his gun.
You wouldn’t want some kid finding you. That could scar a kid. Although kids found freaky things all the time. Once he’d found a naked photo of Dad and Mrs. Flemish. That had been freaky. Of course, not as freaky as a grimacing cross-legged—
Kid was swimming.
Swimming was not allowed. That was clearly posted. NO SWIMMING.
Kid was a bad swimmer. Real thrashfest down there. Kid was creating with his thrashing a rapidly expanding black pool. With each thrash the kid incrementally expanded the boundary of the black—
He was on his way down before he knew he’d started. Kid in the pond, kid in the pond, ran repetitively through his head as he minced. Progress was tree to tree. Standing there panting, you got to know a tree well. This one had three knots: eye, eye, nose. This started out as one tree and became two.
Suddenly he was not purely the dying guy who woke nights in the med bed thinking, Make this not true make this not true, but again, partly, the guy who used to put bananas in the freezer, then crack them on the counter and pour chocolate over the broken chunks, the guy who’d once stood outside a classroom window in a rainstorm to see how Jodi was faring with that little red-headed shit who wouldn’t give her a chance at the book table, the guy who used to hand-paint birdfeeders in college and sell them on weekends in Boulder, wearing a jester hat and doing a little juggling routine he’d—
He started to fall again, caught himself, froze in a hunched-over position, hurtled forward, fell flat on his face, chucked his chin on a root.
You had to laugh.
You almost had to laugh. 🔗

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Once, he’d done a secret rendezvous of recording Mom’s phone calls, just for the reconnaissance aspect. Mostly they were dull, mundane, not about him at all.
Except for this one with her friend Liz.
I never dreamed I could love someone so much, Mom had said. I just worry I might not be able to live up to him, you know? He’s so good, so grateful. That kid deserves—that kid deserves it all. Better school, which we cannot afford, some trips, like abroad, but that is also, uh, out of our price range. I just don’t want to fail him, you know? That’s all I want from my life, you know? Liz? To feel, at the end, like I did right by that magnificent little dude.
At that point it seemed like Liz had maybe started vacuuming.
Magnificent little dude.
He should probably get going.
Magnificent Little Dude was like his Indian name. 🔗

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Good God, there was so much to do. If he made it. He’d make it. This gal wouldn’t let him not make it. He’d have to try to get Molly to see—see why he’d done it. I was scared, I was scared, Mol. Maybe Molly would agree not to tell Tommy and Jodi. He didn’t like the thought of them knowing he’d been scared. Didn’t like the thought of them knowing what a fool he’d been. Oh, to hell with that! Tell everyone! He’d done it! He’d been driven to do it and he’d done it and that was it. That was him. That was part of who he was. No more lies, no more silence, it was going to be a new and different life, if only he—
They were crossing the soccer field.
Here was the Nissan.
His first thought was: Get in, drive it home.
Oh, no, you don’t, she said with that smoky laugh and guided him into a house. A house on the park. He’d seen it a million times. And now was in it. It smelled of man sweat and spaghetti sauce and old books. Like a library where sweaty men went to cook spaghetti. She sat him in front of a woodstove, brought him a brown blanket that smelled of medicine. Didn’t talk but in directives: Drink this, let me take that, wrap up, what’s your name, what’s your number?
What a thing! To go from dying in your underwear in the snow to this! Warmth, colors, antlers on the walls, an old-time crank phone like you saw in silent movies. It was something. Every second was something. He hadn’t died in his shorts by a pond in the snow. The kid wasn’t dead. He’d killed no one. Ha! Somehow he’d got it all back. Everything was good now, everything was—
The woman reached down, touched his scar.
Oh, wow, ouch, she said. You didn’t do that out there, did you?
At this he remembered that the brown spot was as much in his head as ever.
Oh, Lord, there was still all that to go through.
Did he still want it? Did he still want to live?
Yes, yes, oh, God, yes, please.
Because, okay, the thing was—he saw it now, was starting to see it—if some guy, at the end, fell apart, and said or did bad things, or had to be helped, helped to quite a considerable extent? So what? What of it? Why should he not do or say weird things or look strange or disgusting? Why should the shit not run down his legs? Why should those he loved not lift and bend and feed and wipe him, when he would gladly do the same for them? He’d been afraid to be lessened by the lifting and bending and feeding and wiping, and was still afraid of that, and yet, at the same time, now saw that there could still be many—many drops of goodness, is how it came to him—many drops of happy—of good fellowship—ahead, and those drops of fellowship were not—had never been—his to withheld.
Withhold. 🔗

id904166965

Somehow: Molly.
He heard her in the entryway. Mol, Molly, oh boy. When they were first married they used to fight. Say the most insane things. Afterward, sometimes there would be tears. Tears in bed? And then they would—Molly pressing her hot wet face against his hot wet face. They were sorry, they were saying with their bodies, they were accepting each other back, and that feeling, that feeling of being accepted back again and again, of someone’s affection for you expanding to encompass whatever new flawed thing had just manifested in you, that was the deepest, dearest thing he’d ever—
She came in flustered and apologetic, a touch of anger in her face. He’d embarrassed her. He saw that. He’d embarrassed her by doing something that showed she hadn’t sufficiently noticed him needing her. She’d been too busy nursing him to notice how scared he was. She was angry at him for pulling this stunt and ashamed of herself for feeling angry at him in his hour of need, and was trying to put the shame and anger behind her now so she could do what might be needed.
All of this was in her face. He knew her so well.
Also concern.
Overriding everything else in that lovely face was concern.
She came to him now, stumbling a bit on a swell in the floor of this stranger’s house. 🔗