by Robert Lopez
The one that left did fulfill certain dreams but never could shake a feeling of restlessness, a feeling that something was left undone.
The one that stayed behind barely noticed a change in his or her life. There was the continuing struggle to pay bills and the subsequent career changes, five times in four years.
The one that left died years later in a train accident somewhere in South America. The one that stayed behind learned about this through an old friend one night over dinner at this very same restaurant. They were there for the seafood, especially the mussels, which were supposed to be outstanding.
The mussels were from Prince Edward Island, a province of Canada.
The province currently accounts for a third of Canada’s total potato production, producing approximately 1.3 billion kilograms annually.
Comparatively, the state of Idaho produces approximately 6.2 billion kilograms annually, with a population approximately 9.5 times greater.
This math doesn’t seem to add up, either.
This night both the man and woman ordered the mussels and enjoyed them.
The one that stayed behind tried to feel something upon hearing this news, but couldn’t summon any kind of reaction.
At the table next to this couple, a man said, I would like to compare this experience to some other experience, something I’ve done before, some common human endeavor to provide context or perspective, if only for myself, so I can better understand why I subjected myself to this, but I seem incapable of such things. I’ve given it an honest effort, I have, but I think it’s beyond me.
His companion looked broken, done in. It was like her face and the rest of her body were paralyzed.
A woman sitting at the bar said, Inside the house I never make coffee, let alone drink it.
The man and woman didn’t hear any of this and have never nor will ever be in the same room with these people again.
The man says, Do you talk to them?
The friend says, Talk to who?
The man says, The people on the bus.
The friend says, Hell no.
The man says, Not even once? As an experiment?
The friend says, I never talk to them and never will. I try to think about what’s happened to my life and why it’s happened. I’m afraid I can’t account for any of it.
The man says, That’s probably a good thing.
The friend says, How do you figure?
The man says, Suppose something happened because some other thing happened before that. Say that everything is causal or contingent upon sequence. Say you are determined to learn from these prior experiences so as not to repeat the same mistakes over again, the same patterns. But you are going to repeat the same mistake again. It’s inevitable. We’re all doomed in this regard.
The friend says, You’re probably right.
The man says, So this happened and then that happened as a result, and where the hell are you?
The friend says, Nowhere.
The man says, Exactly.
The fly has not had the strength to venture out from behind the curtain today. It buzzes frantically every few minutes, knocking against the glass.
The friend says, What time is it?
The man looks at his watch.
Both men could look over to the stove, which features a clock, but neither does.
The man says, It’s four thirty.
The friend says, Are we still having dinner later?
The man says, I do believe.
The friend says, Your wife hasn’t changed her mind?
The man says, I don’t think so, no.
The friend says, If it’s going to be a problem….
The man says, I think it’ll be fine.
The man told his friend that the woman is looking forward to having him for dinner, though everyone knows this isn’t true.
The friend removes a toothpick from his mouth and rolls it between his fingers. He then places it on the table in front of him.
Both the man and woman refer to the stove as a stove. Neither knows the difference between stove and oven. Neither calls it a range.
The friend says, Where is she now?
The man says, I don’t know.
There is quiet. Both men are thinking.
They take drinks from beer and whiskey.
The man says, No, I remember now. She is at an engagement party, I think. Someone she used to work with. A woman.
The friend says, I think they call it a shower.
The man says, I thought that was for babies. The friend says, I think it’s for both.
The man says, It’s all the same.
The friend says, Everything spills all over everything.
The man says, You shaved your beard.
The friend says, I shaved it a couple of days ago.
The man says, You look clean.
The friend says, I feel clean.
The man says, You’re a handsome man either way.
The woman is at an engagement party. In fact, she is at the engagement party of the former colleague who adopted their first dog, Georgia.
The woman was surprised to be invited. She was under the impression her former colleague had moved away.
Indeed, her former colleague had moved to the Pacific Northwest and lived there for years.
Apparently things didn’t work out, and she moved back two years ago, unbeknownst to the woman.
It turns out Georgia contracted distemper while out in the Pacific Northwest and had to be put down.
Distemper is a viral disease that affects various animals. It is a single-stranded RNA virus of the family paramyxoviridae, and thus a close relative of measles and rinderpest. Despite extensive vaccination in many regions, it remains a major disease of dogs.
Distemper isn’t generally fatal, at least not in the early stages, but her former colleague was looking for an excuse to put the dog down and did so two days after the diagnosis.
The friend says, Usually I let my beard grow from Thanksgiving through Christmas.
The man says, I know this.
The friend says, Almost no one likes me with a beard, including Janice.
The man says, That’s surprising to me.
The friend says, How so?
The man says, Women like beards.
The friend says, Not all of them.
The man says, I suppose that’s true.
The friend says, It’s my once-a-year protest.
The man says, What are you protesting?
The friend says, You name it.
The man says, My wife protests certain outrages.
The friend says, It’s what I like most about her.
The man says, But you, my friend.
The friend says, I do what I can.
The man says, That’s all you can do.
The friend says, They say with a beard I look like my father.
The man says, Your father is still alive?
The friend says, I think so. He’s old, nearly dead.
The man says, So is mine.
The friend says, He used to do what he could but he can’t anymore. His life is such that each day seems entirely uncalled for, a blow below the belt.
The man says, I thought your father was dead.
The friend says, His beard is always well groomed, whereas mine is scraggly and unkempt.
The man says, Even still.
The friend says, At Christmas, I refuse to accept or distribute gifts of any sort, even cards. I got this from him.
The man says, It’s a sound practice.
The friend says, To family functions I wear the same flannel shirts, blue work pants tied with a rope around the waist, black shoes and white socks. I think of it as an homage and my father always gets a kick out of it. The others, though, they think I do it to mock him.
The man says, Homage is a great word. O mahhzzzzzhe. It’s probably Latin or Greek.
The friend says, Jesus, his face looks like a cauliflower, it looks like it
will slide clear off his skull. But his silver beard is still handsome. He is dignified.
The friend does resemble his father. People have commented on this resemblance his whole life. However, he’s never worn flannel shirts and blue work pants to a family function.
The men toast dignity. They raise their glasses and say dignity out loud.
The friend says, When my father sees me, he pats my head, then cups my hairy chin with both hands. He has old man’s hands. Do you remember those?
The man says, No.
The friend says, When you were a kid and you stayed in the bath too long and your hands got wrinkled.
The man says, Yes.
The friend says, The people in the family rarely have anything to say to either of us. One of the ancients, an aunt, sister to my father, she says I look like a terrorist. To my father and me, it is no such matter.
The man says, I can never grow a beard. It itches.
The friend says, You wouldn’t look good with a beard.
The man says, That’s what my wife says, too.
The friend says, There’s no point arguing.
The man says, There is no point arguing. This is what I base my life on. I don’t have a philosophy, but if I did it would be this.
The friend says, A life spent not bothering anyone is a life well spent. That is my philosophy, if I had one.
In addition to flies, they also have a problem with mosquitoes.
Both the man and woman have woken to find bites on their arms, heads, necks, faces, back and shoulders, feet and legs.
They sometimes try to lure mosquitoes into certain areas to kill them. They lie back on a sofa and exhale.
The woman is the one who told the man this, that mosquitoes are attracted to carbon dioxide.
He always thought it was blood.
The man and woman sometimes wear repellent to bed. They’ve also burned citronella candles.
Someone suggested mosquito netting to hang over the bed. The person said, It’s not only for the Third World.
It’s unclear if this was supposed to be funny.
The man has killed dozens of mosquitoes in the past several years and there are still bloodstains on certain walls.
The man says, I don’t approve of the word philosophy when people say, in my philosophy. People don’t have their own philosophies. They have everyone else’s.
The friend says, There’s no point arguing.
The man says, Except to say, you are full of shit, my friend.
The friend says, How do you figure?
The man says, You bother everyone.
The friend says, I can’t help it sometimes.
The man says, You’re human.
The friend says, There is that, after all.
The car parked outside resembles the first car the man ever owned, right down to the crack on the windshield. The crack looked like an intricate spider web with berserk lines going this way and that.
The man’s first car would shake while in reverse. The man didn’t realize this when he bought the car and reasoned that reverse was only important in certain situations and could be avoided to a large degree. One could not keep the car in reverse for long, though. Also, reverse was difficult to negotiate due to the car’s poor handling. One could turn the steering wheel forty-five degrees without the tires reacting.
The brake pedal had to be depressed fully for the brakes to be activated. One did not necessarily have to slam the brakes to stop the car but one did have to apply a certain pressure. The braking distance was likewise appalling.
The man can’t tell if this car has had similar problems, but it certainly looks like it.
The brakes squeaked when applied and his car made a knocking sound when turning right, which turned out to be the axle. There were holes in it. A mechanic informed the man of this. He has never known anything about cars and has no interest in cars.
The mechanic pointed out the holes while the car was on the lift in his shop. The man couldn’t tell where the mechanic was pointing, couldn’t identify the axle itself, let alone any holes in it. He asked if the holes would hinder the car’s performance and the mechanic said the axle could hold out a while longer but would eventually need replacing. At some point, the car would become dangerous to drive.
This never happened.
The car died on its own before it had a chance to become dangerous.
Which isn’t to say the man ever felt entirely safe driving the car.
He almost got into several accidents and always felt as if it were only a matter of time.
He once narrowly avoided a major accident by slamming on the brakes and making a hard right turn in the middle of a busy intersection.
Mary Ward, a scientist, was the first person killed by a motor vehicle. The accident occurred in Ireland in 1869, when she fell under the wheels of an experimental steam car built by her cousins.
Bridget Driscoll was the first pedestrian victim of an automobile collision, which occurred in 1896 in Great Britain. As she and her teenage daughter May and her friend Elizabeth Murphy crossed Dolphin Terrace in the grounds of Crystal Palace in London, Driscoll was struck by an automobile, belonging to the Anglo-French Motor Company, that was being used to give demonstration rides. One witness, a bystander, described the car as traveling at “a reckless pace, in fact, like a fire engine.”
On September 13, 1899, Henry Bliss was the first American killed in a car accident. He was disembarking from a streetcar at West 74th Street and Central Park West in New York City when an electric-powered taxicab struck him and crushed his head and chest. He died from his injuries the next morning.
Arthur Smith, the driver of the taxicab, was arrested and charged with manslaughter but was acquitted on multiple grounds, including the absence of malice and negligence.
The man imagines himself getting hit by car whenever he crosses a street. He cannot tell if this is some kind of premonition or if it speaks to some sort of psychological issue.
The man says, And your father has been dead for years.
The friend says, He was a bastard, a good-for-nothing.
The man says, When my wife’s angry that’s what she calls me, a good-for-nothing.
The friend says, I’m sure she says the same about me.
The man says, Worse. She says worse about you.
The friend says, I am worse.
The man says, Well, some people are only good for one thing.
The friend says, Some even less.
The man says, You can’t argue.
The friend says, She’s not wrong.
The man says, Should we have another? Get a jump on the evening?
The friend says, I won’t stop you.
The man walks over to the refrigerator to retrieve the soda, opens the freezer door and pulls out a bucket of ice, which he carries to the table.
The friend removes a toothpick from his mouth and places it on the table.
The friend says, I think Janice is getting worse.
The man says, We’re all getting worse.
The friend says, Three times I’ve heard Janice talking to herself. Once during the news, once during a baseball game, and once during something else.
The man says, My wife always talks to herself. Women do this.
The friend says, I was in the den each time looking out the window. From the den, I can look out on that open field where the neighborhood kids play football.
The man says, Any prospects out there?
The friend says, From the den you can hear what’s going on in the bathroom. Water running, cabinets opening and closing, things of this nature. Each time it sounded like mumbling.
The man says, Women mumble.
The friend says, So you don’t think she’s getting worse, then?
The man says, You know my position.
The friend says, Fuck you and your position.
The man says, She’s a free spirit. You knew this about her.
The friend says
, I knew nothing.
The man thinks of his wife as something of a free spirit, but she isn’t.
He thinks of her friends as free spirits, too, but they’re not.
The friend says, Last year at this time we were on our honeymoon in Ireland. She talked about opening a bed and breakfast. She said it would keep us busy. She said I couldn’t go on taking disability and doing nothing for the rest of my life. She wanted us to look into it when we got back home.
The man says, People say things like that on vacation. It means nothing.
The friend says, Now she wants to go to the zoo. She mentioned it at dinner a few nights ago. We were having fish. She calls it brain food.
The man says, I think you’re being too critical, if you ask me.
The friend says, But you understand what I’m talking about.
The man says, I’m afraid I understand very little.
The friend says, She said we haven’t been to the zoo in years.
The man says, Is that true?
The friend says, We’ve never been to the zoo, certainly not together. Not even once. It’s been never since we’ve been to the zoo.
The man says, This is a tough one.
The friend says, I think sometimes she has me confused with someone else.
The man says, That’s possible. You are rather average in most respects.
The friend says, I don’t dispute this.
The man says, It’s indisputable.
The friend says, It’s fucked, is what it is.
The man says, The zoo is fucked?
The friend says, I asked her, what’s at the zoo? You know what she said?
The man says, What?
The friend says, Animals.
The man says, Animals.
The friend says, How do you respond to that?
The man says, She’s a free spirit, you knew this.
There is most definitely something wrong with the friend’s wife, Janice, but it’s unclear what. She is reluctant to visit doctors, as she believes doctors were responsible for her sister’s death. The doctors failed to detect an easily treatable heart condition that led to her sister’s premature demise.
For one thing, Janice cannot sit still. She is forever flexing her arms and legs and cracking her joints. These noises bother the man but he hasn’t pointed this out to his friend.
It seems as if she is aphasic at times. She often struggles for commonplace words and phrases. The man suspects she might suffer from dementia, but he isn’t sure if this is possible in someone as young as Janice.
