All Back Full

by Robert Lopez

  The state Georgia was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. Named after King George II of Great Britain, Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788. It declared its secession from the Union on January 19, 1861, and was one of the original seven Confederate states. It was the last state to be restored to the Union, on July 15, 1870.

  The man and woman have been to neither Georgia nor Georgia.

  The woman says, This morning I was in bed….

  The man says, I’m sorry…

  The woman says, I said this morning I was in bed.

  The man says, Weren’t we discussing something?

  The woman says, When?

  The man says, Just now.

  The woman says, I thought we were finished.

  The man says, Were we?

  The woman says, I think so.

  The man says, You are probably right.

  It is quiet. Neither sips at coffee or bites into a pastry.

  They look at each other, past or through.

  The man says, So, this morning you were in bed….

  She says, That’s right. This morning I was in bed and I saw seagulls flying aimlessly out the window. Against the blue backdrop of the sky. It was nice.

  He says, Was I still sleeping?

  She says, I think you were downstairs already.

  He says, Okay. So it was nice…

  She says, It was nice. Every few seconds I’d lose sight of them—they were flying in and out of sight. Sometimes they were flying…I mean, I saw them flapping their wings…and sometimes they floated.

  He says, They are nasty creatures. Filthy.

  She says, What were you waiting for?

  He says, When?

  She says, When you were waiting for the mail. Were you expecting a package, a letter, a check?

  He says, That’s a good question. Perhaps it was a letter. Perhaps I was waiting for a letter from you. Maybe you were overseas and I was pining.

  It should come as no surprise that the man didn’t adjust to having a dog in the house. The dog displayed any number of peculiar behaviors, not the least of which was extraordinary hyperactivity. The man speculated that along with being traumatized from whatever abuse she’d suffered, the dog had some kind of glandular issue, something hormonal. The dog couldn’t seem to calm down at all.

  The dog was always running around and barking and clawing and biting and chewing on everything in the house. The dog was manic, troubled.

  Finally the man couldn’t take it anymore.

  He said to his wife, I can’t take this dog anymore.

  The woman said, I know.

  The truth is the woman didn’t adjust well to the dog, either. She had more patience for the dog than the man, understood what the dog had been through, but she also understood that there was something very wrong with this dog.

  She said, I don’t think this is the kind of dog that people who’ve never had a dog should have for their first dog.

  He said, Let’s get rid of her.

  They discussed how they should get rid of the dog.

  The man didn’t say out loud that he could drive the dog over to the woods and turn her loose. He knew this wouldn’t be received well. He knew it would make him sound cruel and inhumane.

  It was decided they would find someone to readopt the dog.

  They decided in conjunction with this first decision that they couldn’t return the dog to the shelter. They couldn’t say there was something wrong with the dog, that they’d changed their minds.

  The woman is the one who made these decisions. The man indicated his approval by saying yes from time to time and nodding his head.

  The woman decided to bequeath the dog to a colleague. The woman was both frank and forthright about the dog’s behavioral issues, but the colleague told her it shouldn’t be a problem.

  Shortly thereafter the colleague found another job and was no longer a colleague. They never heard about Georgia again.

  Maybe once or twice the woman said out loud that she wondered whatever became of Georgia.

  The man never once wondered this.

  The woman has never been overseas and the man was never pining for her.

  The woman has never left the continent.

  She has a passport but has never used it. The passport is now expired and sits under other documents and papers in a file cabinet.

  Still, she’d like to travel someday. There is a host of countries she’d like to visit.

  Europe she’s especially interested in.

  Particularly Italy, Spain, Portugal, England, France.

  She has no interest, however, in visiting Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and the whole of Eastern Europe, Georgia included.

  Nor is she interested in Asia or South America.

  There are reasons for this, having to do with history and art and architecture and language and culture.

  The reasons have nothing to do with heritage or ethnicity. There is no personal history, prompting these interests. The woman does have a history with seagulls.

  Once she found an injured seagull on the street. The seagull’s left leg had been damaged. It looked like the seagull had gotten into a street fight and lost, like another animal had taken umbrage, liberties.

  She collected the seagull and placed it in a box and brought it home with her.

  This was before she met the man, before the going away party, before all of it.

  She crumbled some white bread and dropped it into the box that night to feed the seagull.

  She didn’t know what seagulls ate, but she’d seen them eat white bread on beaches.

  She’d seen people throw pieces of white bread at the seagulls.

  She suspected they ate fish, but she didn’t have any fish, not even a can of tuna. And she was too tired to go out to buy a can of tuna for a seagull.

  The next day she brought the seagull to an animal hospital. She asked them what they were going to do for the seagull and they said they’d take care of it.

  She understood what this meant, the subtext.

  She says, I think you are referring to your father’s cabin upstate. I used to go to your father’s cabin upstate sometimes, which isn’t overseas. There I could be alone and enjoy nature.

  He says, Nature can kill you.

  She says, Anything can kill you.

  He says, It’s not safe out there, that much is certain.

  The newspaper today has people being killed in factory fires, explosions, shootouts, car accidents, bicycle accidents, train accidents, other kinds of accidents, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, droughts, domestic disputes, desert warfare, guerrilla warfare, police brutality, acts of genocide, acts of terrorism.

  She says, I almost always enjoyed your father’s cabin upstate, except for that one time when he was there.

  He says, I don’t remember, where was I?

  She says, You were here pining, apparently.

  He says, Yes, while you were overseas at the cabin living it up with Mother Nature.

  She says, I have never been overseas without you. I have never been overseas with you, either. You and I have not left the continent. We are bound to it.

  He says, We are bound to each other.

  She says, Mortally bound.

  He says, What happened with my father and the cabin?

  She says, I saw him there once.

  He says, And?

  She says, after pausing, I wasn’t expecting him.

  He says, And what do you mean with the seagulls?

  She says, I don’t mean anything with the seagulls.

  He says, This is hard to follow.

  She says, Not for the rest of us.

  This is probably not hard to follow, this particular conversation between these particular people.

  A monkey can probably follow this.

  Which isn’t to say that if one cannot follow this particular conversation that one is so
mehow less than a monkey.

  The man wants to reference something called The Seagull, but he isn’t sure what it is, so he says nothing. He thinks it either a movie or play, perhaps one performed in the park. He vaguely remembers the woman suggesting they go see a play in the park, but they’d have to wake up early and wait in line for tickets, which is something the man has no interest in.

  The man has always enjoyed reading into certain parts of conversation, interpreting the subtext. He enjoys trying to read body language. He is not as good at this as he thinks.

  This is why he says this is hard to follow. Sometimes he wants things spelled out plain and to the purpose.

  He says, And all of this means what?

  She says, I don’t know what you’re talking about.

  He says, There isn’t some kind of double meaning here?

  She says, What kind of double meaning? With the seagulls?

  He says, With the seagulls, with my father…

  She says, No.

  He says, Filthy rotten seagulls flying and floating out of view and I’m downstairs all the while. Also out of view.

  She says, You called the seagulls filthy and rotten.

  He says, Everyone knows seagulls are filthy and rotten.

  Most everyone does, in fact, know that seagulls are filthy and rotten.

  Seagulls scavenge and beg for food, like vultures and dogs. They nest in large, densely packed, noisy colonies. The sounds they make, the squawks, are decidedly unpleasant. Some gull colonies display mobbing behavior, attacking and harassing would-be predators or intruders, and even innocent bystanders from time to time. They even kill their own—and for what, is what the man would like to know.

  Monkeys are worse.

  She says, I once rescued a seagull.

  He says, Rescued it from what?

  She says, It was hurt. I came home late one night and saw a seagull limping across the street. I thought a car was going to run him over, so I scooped him up and put him in my bag and took him home.

  He says, Did he sleep with you?

  She says, I put him in a box. He was nice.

  The man decides to say nothing about this. He decides this is none of his business.

  The man cannot understand how a seagull can be nice.

  Sometimes he cannot understand the woman he married.

  The Seagull is a play by Russian dramatist and writer Anton Chekhov, written in 1895 and first produced in 1896.

  The opening night of the first production was an abject failure. Vera Komissarzhevskaya, playing Nina, was so intimidated by the hostility of the audience that she lost her voice.

  Chekhov left his seat in the theater and spent the last two acts behind the scenes.

  However, when Constantin Stanislavski, the seminal Russian theater practitioner of the time, directed it in 1898 for his Moscow Art Theatre, the play was a triumph.

  Stanislavski’s production of The Seagull became one of the greatest events in the history of Russian and world theater.

  The woman didn’t give up on the idea of owning a dog. However many months after they got rid of Georgia, she decided that a purebred dog was a better idea. She said it would be easier to handle than a rescue dog. She said purebreds were less likely to be manic or have glandular issues.

  When she was a child her grandmother had a standard poodle named Blackie. This was the dog she wanted, a black standard poodle.

  The poodle is believed to have originated in Germany, dating back to the fifteenth century. Poodles are retrievers or gun dogs and are still used by hunters in that role. Their coats are moisture-resistant, which helps their swimming.

  The poodle is an active, intelligent, and elegant dog, squarely built and well proportioned. To ensure the desirable squarely built appearance, the length of body measured from the breastbone to the point of the rump approximates the height from the highest point of the shoulders to the ground. The eyes are generally dark, oval in shape, and have an alert and intelligent expression. The ears fold over close to the head, set at, or slightly below, eye level. The coat is a naturally curly texture, dense throughout, although most registered show dogs have a lion cut or other, similarly shaven look.

  The woman researched breeders that featured a natural and holistic approach to raising dogs and found one several states away.

  This after investigating countless breeders from all over the country.

  The dog was going to cost over a thousand dollars.

  The dog was going to be an investment.

  But they were desperate and tired of looking and tried to justify this potential expenditure in various ways. One was that it seemed a good investment and that, if worse went down to worst, they could sell the dog on the Internet or the man could drive it to the woods and turn it loose.

  Still, the man was leery of overextending themselves.

  He said, Isn’t that a lot for a dog.

  She said, It’s the going rate.

  Later that night, after dinner, she said, This is what happens when you can’t handle a rescue dog.

  The last thing the man had said concerned the local football team.

  They set out early the next morning. The man is always insistent upon starting trips as early as possible. The man cannot abide traffic.

  The woman had mapped out a route and made reservations for a hotel so they could spend the night, as the breeder was several states away.

  The hotel was just off the interstate, approximately halfway between home and the breeder’s. There were two queen-sized beds in the room and as they got undressed and ready to retire for the evening, the woman asked which bed the man wanted.

  He said, Excuse me?

  She said, Which bed do you want?

  He said, Which bed do you want?

  She said, It doesn’t matter to me.

  He said, We’re not sleeping in the same bed?

  She said, We sleep in the same bed every night.

  That night, while under the covers, the man masturbated in protest.

  He started off doing this quietly but decided not to hold back as he continued. The woman slept through it and the rest of the night without stirring.

  It’s possible she did hear her husband masturbating.

  Sometimes the man starts masturbating when they are in bed with each other. It’s a kind of foreplay.

  He hopes the woman will become aroused and lend aid and comfort.

  He hopes this will provoke her into passion.

  This has happened more than once, actually.

  Most recently, though, she asked, Does that feel good?

  He said, It does.

  She didn’t say anything after that.

  They started off early again the next morning and made it to the breeder’s before noon.

  After the requisite amenities, they were escorted to where the puppies were being held.

  On the way to this room, they walked past any number of dogs behind cages. They looked like prisoners.

  The man and woman moved up and down the room, inspecting the various poodles. They’d been informed six weeks ago that an apricot poodle was about to give birth, so that was the color they were getting.

  The woman had wanted a black standard but settled for apricot. The man actually preferred the apricot, for no particular reason.

  Let’s say for now the dog is apricot, but later he can be black or white or some other color altogether.

  The puppies were all turned loose in a big room. The woman was delighted.

  The man looked over to his wife and saw her delighted. He liked to see her like this.

  After a certain amount of deliberation, they decided on the one that seemed to take to them the most. This puppy immediately ran over to the both of them and acted as all puppies act.

  All of the dogs seemed energetic and this concerned the man. But the woman told him that all puppies are energetic and this will last only a couple of years. She also said they spend most of the day and night sleeping. She said
it was going to be much easier this time around.

  The woman sat in the backseat and cradled their new puppy on the drive back to the hotel. Every so often the man would check the rearview mirror to look at them together.

  That night the man and woman slept in the same bed, along with the dog.

  The man didn’t realize the dog was going to sleep with them.

  The woman said, It will only be for the first few nights, so he doesn’t feel alone.

  After a long pause, the man said, Okay.

  The man is still thinking about the injured seagull. He doesn’t want to but he can’t help himself.

  The woman thinks nothing of it. She doesn’t think it unusual for someone to care about animals, all kinds of animals.

  The man says, I was thinking about dinner last night. At the restaurant.

  The woman says, What about it?

  The man says, It reminded me of something, but I can’t remember what.

  The woman says, Then my guess is it didn’t remind you of anything. It was new.

  The man says, We’ve been there before.

  The woman says, Only once or twice.

  The man says, The food is good.

  The woman says, The service, too.

  The man says, How did we find that restaurant?

  The woman says, My friend recommended it.

  The man says, Your new friend.

  The woman says, That’s right, my new friend.

  The man says, Your friend has good taste.

  The woman says, For certain things, yes.

  Clearly this means something. Clearly there is a double meaning here but the man doesn’t care to get into it.

  He says, I enjoyed the minestrone.

  She says, I thought you would.

  He says, I like to eat food that’s been cooked by an old Italian widow.

  She says, I think the chef is a Frenchman.

  The chef she is referring to is an Algerian who speaks French. Everyone thinks he is French, but he’s not. The chef has done nothing to set the record straight regarding his heritage.

  He says, What about your friend?

  She says, My friend is not an old Italian widow, either.

  He says, Give her time.