The room had always been dark. She noticed it the first day that they moved in. Looking back on it, John had been ill from day one. He felt heavy, as if the flu was working on him. The darkness was unsettling. The other two bedrooms faced the same direction and they were filled with sunlight. Not that room. John became sicker. The heaviness was always there and he said that it felt more and more intense. The doctor found nothing.
Every day Luisa left a new piece of art at the foot of his bed. They were washcloths shaped like animals, a different one each day. She was very talented.
He knew it was Luisa because she signed her work. She left a card that said Your Room Was Cleaned By ____________. It’s my pleasure, and Luisa wrote her name on the line. He suspected she left those cards in all the rooms she cleaned, but maybe she was reaching out. She’d written her name there, by hand, just for him. She dotted the i with a circle.
The delivery guy from Arturo’s Italian Restaurant had a sixth finger. It waved about like a little pink antenna. Horace always gave him a big tip and tried not to stare at it. They would link eyes and smile at each other. There was a tacit agreement not to stare at the unusual little digit —and to tip big…and move on. Every time that Horace ordered from Arturo’s he forgot about the delivery guy. The chicken parmesan was so outstanding that the gross-out factor at the door was but a minor inconvenience.
Within the breath of the hospital door click, he was both alive and dead. A Schrodinger’s situation. He insisted on the glass of water and I had not wanted to go. But I did. He didn’t like me seeing him in that state–which seemed so unlike everyone’s perception of him, he was not the regular vain sort of actor one would think of. Or at least I never saw him that way.
I’m driving west into the setting sun on streets I’ve known for over 50 years in a car I bought brand new seven years ago. I’ve been driving for fifty-eight of my seventy-three years.
I don’t really know Carson. I mean I know him, everybody knows him but he’s not my friend. It used to be that I wouldn’t be caught dead spending time with him. Now… I dunno, I wonder if he’d take me.
Carson is one of just three retarded kids at Robert F. Kennedy High School. The rest are too retarded for public school; they go to Strathmore Academy which is a “Special School” just up the street from where I live.
We move forward, dragging our punished, callous-covered feet in the vague direction of a hypothetical salvation. It is freezing cold, and this spiteful European wind spits rain into our faces. The storm strengthens, and the droplets turn to hail stones, which sting our cheeks like the words of the people who line the roads to curse us as our pathetic procession shuffles through their towns. “Stay Out!” and “We Don’t Want Your Problems!” scream the placards. “Stay Away Terrorists!” reads another forceful imperative. I look at the scholarly looking woman in wire-framed spectacles holding the sign, and wonder if I should stop and offer her advice in how to recognise real jihadists, since she’s clearly a novice.
Melanie’s boyfriend Ray began drinking as soon as he moved in. At first it was just a few after work. Then it was four, maybe six. She liked to cook, but he always wanted to go out. She was tired of every restaurant within 10 miles, but whatever, he paid. He always made a big deal of paying. Pulled out his worn brown wallet, the one he said was “top of the line.” He always said that. His things were “professional grade” and “top of the line.” He “spared no expense.”
In a Tel-Aviv writing workshop I became friendly with another aspiring writer who, it turned out, lived two streets away from mine. Proximity and vocation synergized to cement our friendship. We commented – politely—on each other’s work, as well as that of the others in the group. We both were practioners of the soft criticism school, as opposed to some in the group who favored a hard-line approach to stimulate writing improvement.
“Your face looks ugly when you’re thinking, Haverson, so knock that shit off.” Flo eyed him as she angled and exhumed a Hell Energy from the small fridge, then she and her implied neglect left the finished basement, climbing the carpeted stairs with such pomp that the two men looked away and shook their heads.
Joel Haverson leaned over Flo’s handcrafted bar and whispered to Earl, “She’s going through some things.”
Continue reading “We Love You, Flo Haverson by Jeff Blechle”
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