Though standing in place, he beats his feet at an even pace, lifting and dropping his toes, dancing with only his ankles. A full brown bag—supported by both hands, squeezed between his forearms—brims with groceries that nearly tickle the whiskers of his protruding chin. Looking up, he squints, gazing intently at his favorite cottonwood. Today, the space between the poplar’s leaves forms a bunny, divine; the glowing shape has two ears: one neatly folded behind, and slightly shorter than, the other.
Beneath the burning sun, cars continue to pass by; their hoods sizzle like pans over a roaring flame; their yellow spots of glare are rounded like yolks frying. A pale, itchy elbow—reddening as it peeks from out the open window—is coated in a delicious, ultraviolet salve that remedies one unfortunate driver’s rather nasty case of psoriasis.
But this moment is his own—he does not hear the birds’ chattering their avian flirtation, nor the children’s harsh, high-pitched indictments against each other, as both sides attempt to cheat their way to glory (as much as one can in basketball, where physics remains indifferent to one’s lies). Instead, in his ears there is a single note, which stretches across several measures—soft and motherly, warm and fatherly. (In the song’s live version, which is on his other playlist, the feat is accompanied by a slow crescendo of applause).
Here and now—and sometime in the early 80s, in a shag-carpeted, wood-paneled studio—the singer finally takes a breath. After the rest, the melody returns, like upturned hands, blooming and swooning through the empty, orchestral space that the vocalist has wrought; its chords perforate the silence, and cross-stitch knit loose strata of rhythm and harmony. About his ears, soft ringlets, like dangling rivulets, sway—so, too, do his hips, as he walks in uneven steps, regulated by the song’s tempo—and so, too, does the ponytail tip of the loaf’s plastic covering, as the bread rocks from one side of the bag to the other like a helpless ragdoll.
As he descends the hill, gravity pulls longingly on his legs, driving him more quickly home. His feet seem to be falling, as if their movements were not regulated by him, but were simply happening to him. Still, there is grace to the madness. The steps stop suddenly, but always at the same spot—the line between concrete tiles coinciding perfectly with the heel of his boot. As he accelerates along the street’s convex curve, the apartments seem to collapse, like hallucinations loosely floating, converging into the kaleidoscope’s center, falling into the afternoon halo at the end of the street.
As he nears the turn, as he has done every day, he begins to angle his feet, ready to take the bend like a drifting racecar—his body swinging slightly as his torque hugs the curve tightly.
Suddenly, seeing her coming, seeing her
—from above—
walking up the street,
with her head down,
as she gazes at her feet,
he stops short.
Caught by his momentum, his hair briefly covers his eyes, and his chest rocks quickly; he lands on his toes, then rolls back to his heels.
Once she nears the turn, just a silhouette with the sun bright behind her, he moves again. Albeit a bit forced, he still swings his bum with great aplomb. His hips collide with hers; she staggers forward and to the side, leaving the sidewalk and stepping onto the grass. Startled, she grabs the cord of her headphones, ripping them from her ears, and turns to face her assailant. He precedes her; his headphones are already off, and he laughs before she can. Her giggle is contained, and her lips tremble in that awkward kind of way that lips wiggle when one doesn’t want to laugh nor cry. The blow to his stomach is as forceful as it is deserved, and his grunt morphs a chuckle into a guffaw—as his spine lurches forward, and maw falls open.
Once recovered, he takes a few rapid steps, rushing to walk alongside her—he knows she forgot her keys this morning.
“So, besides being accosted, how was your day?”
There is no response, save the quickening of her gait, as she attempts to elongate the distance between them. His hair and the bag’s contents bounce, and his apology gets a sotto voce staccato, as his lungs struggle to get enough oxygen: “Hey, I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to scare you.”
She lowers her head; he moves to put his palm upon her shoulder, but his touch is left suspended in the space behind her, as she again speeds up—nearly running now.
“C’mon, what’s bugging you? Was that really it?”
Unsure of what precisely is bothering her, and perturbed by his request to prove the merits of her moodiness, she is rather frustrated to find that she had broken her earplugs in her fist; the crumpled speaker dangles from a loose wire. She slows down, fidgeting with the pieces in her hand, pulling on the cord and pushing the parts together. He starts to catch his breath. The two walk in silence for a bit, until she—exasperated because the speakers won’t click back into their sockets—throws the cord down, and turns to face him. His eyes widen; the plastic shatters on the concrete.
The skin on her face seems to loosen—her lips pout, and her eyebrows droop. Her upper vertebra wilt; she smacks her thighs with the backs of her hands. The words run out of her mouth at the speed of misery; she forgets grammar and syntax, making the sentences impossible to understand; she wants her listener to feel as confused and helpless as she does; under the pressure, she conglomerates her sentiments like sediments: all her troubles become one, inseparable and irreconcilable stone.
“There’s an error in my code and it’s due tomorrow and it’s for a really big client and I need to present the final batch of data to my boss tonight and right now none of the numbers are coming out right and I don’t know why and I have been working on this project for weeks and all of a sudden everything is coming out fucked but I don’t know what the fuck happened and my boss is going to be pissed and I’m going to be fired and the client’s going to be pissed and people are going to lose their money because it’s an important client and a lot of people are involved and it’s all my fault and everyone’s going to hate me and they’re going to be right to hate me cause I messed everything up and”—pausing, finally, to inhale, she finishes rather calmly—“everything is just fucked.”
“Oh, I’m sorry—well, I can cook tonight; you don’t have to worry about anything else. I’m sure you’ll figure it out once you get a break.”
“That’s just it—I was going through the code in my head while I was walking, and I thought I finally figured it out when…”
Having spoken just a tad condescendingly, not quite credulous to her feelings of overwhelming guilt, he now hyperventilates at the prospect of being at fault. “Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God…”
Silently, she smiles, letting him spiral down that special spell of madness; his guilt eats at his brain, and he mutters the same few words—“Oh my God, Oh my God…”—until the disbelief wanes. When he verges on the point of total despair, looking at her, with an open mouth, waiting for the words to come, she ends his suffering.
“I’m just kidding.”
“What?” He scoffs, and squirms like a worm avoiding the hook, angling his body away from hers, twisting to see her face.
“It was just a joke. There’s no bug in my code—I’m just tired after a long day and don’t very much like being harassed on my way home from work.”
“Oh. I thought…Oh wow, I really thought I fucked up your work.”
“Nope.” She smiles politely; her lips shift only a few steps from their normal position—as if all were normal—as if he were overreacting, and she had to ease him back into normalcy.
He is quite startled, and, though his surprise frightened her for only a second, hers continues to leave him a bit rattled—like a gumball swirling through a machine, not yet settled.
Pleased with her prank, she hums a happy tune; the last two notes always rise sharply: “how sweet it is — to be loved by you.”
Recognizing the song, he wraps an arm round her shoulder and their heads collide—the gumball plops to the bottom, and the impatient child seizes its sweetness. After this tender touch, she breaks away, rummaging through the bag with an eagerness that borders on precarious, as the brown, paper bag begins to bulge at its folded seams.
“What’d you get?” she asks, but—continuing her search—does not look to him for an answer.
Knowing what she’s looking for, he replies. “They’re there. But they’re probably at the bottom of the bag; you’re going to have to wait.”
As if in defiance of his challenge, her hands emerge from the bag triumphant. Her gleaming eyes devour their prize, even within its packaging. She holds the plastic between her teeth and tears it; the rapturous rupture sends a few scattered pieces to the ground.
For perhaps the thousandth time, he tells her that he cannot understand why she loves those candies so much. She ignores his half-hearted admonition—as she has for what feels like a million times already—and holds the disemboweled package in one hand, as she unwraps the citrus sweet with the other.
He places the bag on the doorsill; and, reaching into his pocket, mocks her. “You know, I really should stop getting you those things; they’re gonna rot your teeth.”
With her lips closed—puckered about her sour, dewy drop—she parrots him: “mmnhm mmot mmmr mmmmth.”
He laughs and pulls out a jingling ring; as he singles out the right key, she waits at the bottom of the stairs, wrapping her arms about his waist, leaning her cheek against his back, closing her eyes for a brief repose. When her second’s rest is broken, when he has to go through the now open door, she enacts a playful, childish fury. After some lukewarm persuasion—he pats her head gently, and motions towards the door—she relinquishes her grip. He picks up the bag, then leaves it on the bannister inside.
He finds the other key, and unlocks their mailbox. He pulls out a parcel; she pretends to have another tantrum. “If you tasted one, you’d be hooked too!”
“Not so sure about that…not that I’d want to try one…”
She approaches him, with a threatening look, and what feels like minutes between each, poised, step. “What? Ya scared? Think ya might get addicted?”
“No.” Not quite a stammer, the sound is much less forceful, and much less confident, than he had intended it to be. Proud of her victory, she pulls him down for an impassioned kiss. His hands tighten on her shoulders, drawing her even closer to him.
She breaks away, grabs the groceries off the railing, and hurries up the stairs. As she flees, the hem of her skirt bounces like a rabbit’s coquettish tail. He swishes the candy from one cheek to the other, then—gripping the rail, pausing for a moment to watch her run, before swinging himself around—chases after her.
The stairwell is bathed in warm sunlight; the expansive window—which stretches from the landing to several stories above, with crosshatched beams that meet at diagonals, patterned like diamonds and dressing the sky like a plaid sport coat—reveals a joyful world beyond. Tall and narrow, the stairs form a sunflower; like jack, he races up its stalk. The hall is submerged in a sunny splendor; like divers underwater, they race up to the surface, through shifting patches of light. At the top, he finds her crouched on the floor, plucking the spilled remains of her candy bag from the carpet. She blushes and smiles, presenting a lemon drop between her teeth.
A convict caught with no escape plan, she is dependent on him to open the door anyway. He puts the bag down, which plops against the wall as it lands, then crouches to help her while keeping the pleats of his khakis crisp and clean along his bent, bowed-out knees. More than a bit embarrassed, she hands him the bag of candies—letting him finish cleaning the rest—and finagles the keychain from his hands. Before getting up, she scoops up the grocery bag; then, angling her body so the bag rests against her left inner thigh, she opens the door with her right-hand (locks always favor righties, she realizes, as she attempts to complete her cumbersome feat); and, as if nothing had happened, she asks: “Do you want a happy hour? We have leftover limes in the fridge.”
Knowing fully well that she is only asking because she wants some booze and wants to make her choice appear less solitary and more magnanimous, he replies, in a upwardly lilting, slightly mocking tone: “Only if you’re having one.”
“Great, ‘cause you know I am. Had a two-hour meeting with Bridget from HR today. Some mandatory event for everyone now that Todd is leaving.”
As he retrieves the last lemon drop, he looks up to see the swaying hem of her dark-green skirt, which is patterned with purple lizards that crawl at curvilinear zig-zags along her back. She tosses the bag onto the wooden, atrium-slash-living-room table on the right of the doorway, and heads directly to the white linoleum of the kitchen. She props the refrigerator door open with her elbow resting atop it. As her free arm dangles over the edge of the door, her left hand (guess lefties get a win every now and then) scavenges and scrounges: a tentacular appendage loosely grazing against an odd assortment of surfaces, as she forgets what exactly she is looking for.
He leaves the groceries on the counter, and adds her candies to the pile, while shifting his newly arrived parcel from between his ribs and forearm to his now free hands. He slides the letter-opener across the table, and it scratches a smooth, pleasant tone that resonates within the wood. The handle is shaped like a hummingbird, and its blade doubles as its long, tapered beak; the faux metallic feathers of its plump rump fit neatly into the hollow of his palm. As he slices at the backside corner, the blade gets stuck, then budges all at once. Digging into his flesh, the paper slits his skin; a rupture forms, grows pale, and begins to ooze its treacle. A photo falls out, over the parcel’s brim, and lands amidst the fuzzy red petals of the carpet’s decorative fringes.
As he bends down, a muddled patch of glare glides down the lustrous patina of the photo’s film; his gaze reveals a startling diptych: twin images of a child, smiling—with red, open mouths. For a second he pauses, and the children, like two globular cells undergoing mitosis, appear to split and reform before him—de-multiplying, transforming back into separate visages.
“Oh, hey…I got a letter from my sister. She sent photos of Adam. Also some of my baby pictures. Guess she must have been cleaning out the attic for her move. Oh my God. You’re going to want to see them. He looks just like me; I used to be so chubby as a baby.”
The sound of his voice reawakens her to the world, and she remembers what she was looking for. She secures a lime in her fist, and thumps it onto the table: a green beast against the cutting board’s blank, white canvas. With a knife she etches vertically down the center, scratched like a Lucio Fontana sculpture. As she presses the oblong into the countertop, the golden ring of her middle-finger pierces the zest. She releases the lumpy flesh from her vise, swipes her forefinger across some darkened screen, spins round the axis of the fridge, raises her arms, and closes the refrigerator door with her hip.
“Oh that’s so sweet. Sorry to hear about Adam, but it’s not all that surprising that you were a chubby baby. You weren’t exactly Mr. Fit when I met ya. I’ll be over to check them in a second—is there ice left in the freezer?”
Again, she asks, but looks before he answers. “Yeah, I filled the tray before we left this morning.”
The ice chimes into twin, empty glasses, about which it swirls, slowly, for an instant, then drowns in a sticky brown liquid. Her thumbs gouge the limes, round like eyes; their sweet tears pour over the already-melting ice. The condensation on the glass coats her palms like a dog’s saliva.
He pulls open the sliding door, and she steps through, right beside him. She places her glass on the patio’s rail, then snatches the photos from his fingers; in the same swift movement, she passes his glass to him, already looking down at her stolen prize. In the film, she finds the same eyes, surrounded by dimpled folds of fat and a few tufts of hair. With a blank, thoughtless expression, he is utterly helpless, trapped in a moment; it is strange to imagine the man before her being so weak and frail. The man cannot be the same; she sees in the photo all that never was, all that could have been, all her lost potential, and imagines that it could all be re-molded with those globs of malleable flesh, like a lump of clay wrought from her blood and labor.
As a glossy film begins to form over her eyes, he takes a sip from his glass, wrinkles his lip in tart surprise, supports his weight with a hand upon the railing, and, cocked at an angle, ogles her in silence.
He saw in her flushed cheeks the birth of a new world; he fell through the warmth of her vista-like visage, entered into the tinted, golden-pink skies of an opened window—the world’s colors were finally bequeathed to him, in all their radiance. It was as if a pensive disposition had dispossessed him, depriving him of all life’s luster—only to be dispelled, now, by her soft glow. He imagined days left fluid and circuitous as an aquatic circus: a new realm of such mobility and creative potential as he had never had before—an ease made possible by the certainty of her touch, awakening him in every morn, and cradling him in the anticipatory deaths of every eve.
To be rendered into this world anew is perhaps the blessing for which all pray, and one that perhaps—they each conceded, reluctantly, to their most cynical inner voices—they were finally being granted. But, even if this blessing were not to last, and today’s fading light were to be met by the same tired sun come tomorrow, the courage to dream, to believe—if even for a moment—that such a goal had been achieved, is a blessing in itself not to be remised.
He asks her, before the thought had even come into his head, if she wants to have a baby.
She had taken a sip, from the corner of her mouth, still watching the child; but, now, she spills the drink, and coughs, choking as citrus floods her sinuses. She bends over, shaking, places the glass on the rail, then wraps her arms about his neck. Once she catches her breath, she whispers in his ear: “Yes.”
And with one last citrus kiss, their lips parted to voice an eternal promise; and, just beyond them, the bright sun, bounding past the horizon, in a blip as brief as a bunny’s hop, fell unto greener pastures, to illuminate another’s story.
Several dozen miles away, sweat and matted locks cling to the distended, cream-colored cheeks of a screaming girl—a girl who had toiled for her whole short life, until that very moment, when the hapless newborn granted a power that she could not find anywhere else in the world. Dumb as a stick pulled from the mud, her son had brilliant eyes, unlike the ones who had passed her by, unlike those supposed friends and family, who had seen in her nothing more than their own pain reflected. Unable to hold his head up, her son was prouder than his father, whose muscular arms were only ever strong enough to beat her—his father who, thrashing and thrashing, against any walls his flesh could find, was never able to escape himself.
Having uttered his name with her final breath, having granted to him her only gift, having seen love for the first and last time, she departed.
In her arms, he was Charles.