How Best to Avoid Dying

by Owen Egerton

  “Yes.”

  Maybe Arnie could just move the bendy thing, just bend it a little, so the door would close. But Arnie pressed a little too hard and the bendy plastic thing snapped. But, hey, voila, the door closed. Add Peg A into Slot A. Only now it didn’t stay closed. It just flopped open each time he let it go. He checked the instructions for any information on a latch. Yes, there it is, small print at the bottom of the page. “The safety latch, which keeps the oven door closed, is a small, plastic, bendable piece…”

  Arnie wanted to die. He wanted to put his head in the little, yellow, Who’s-A-Housewife oven and die.

  “The oven door is on backward. I can see that from here.”

  He wished the roof would collapse, so he wouldn’t have to show his wife how he had screwed up, so his daughter wouldn’t cry in the morning, so he wouldn’t have to go back to his shitty job on Monday, so he wouldn’t have to find Interstate Hotel matches in his wife’s purse, so he wouldn’t have to stare each morning at a body growing older and think with a brain that was making no kind of progress. Wasn’t there supposed to be wisdom? Wasn’t that the promise? You get older, your body gets weaker, but you become wise. Life teaches you things. Life gives you things. Wasn’t that the promise? He stood up and kicked the oven. His foot bounced off the plexiglass.

  “What are you doing?”

  He kicked it again. The door fell off.

  “Stupid, stupid, stupid oven. It doesn’t look like the one on TV, doesn’t look like the box.” Another kick, the yellow handle went flying. “And the eggs taste like shit. You know it. Shitty yellow.”

  “You’re breaking it!”

  Arnie picked up the oven over his head and prepared to smash it to the floor. This felt good. This was a strong man, this was a man taking action, like Atlas. He caught his wife’s eyes. She looked frightened. That was good, too. Then he turned and caught his daughter’s eyes. She had come downstairs, wearing her pink footie pajamas. Her eyes looked frightened, too. That was not good.

  “Daddy?” she said. Oh, little girl. He wanted to hug her, to hold her, to kiss the scar on her chin and tell her not to be frightened, tell her everything in her life would be happy. There was a crack in the back of his head and Arnie fell to the floor. The oven rolled away.

  “Willa, dial 911,” his wife yelled. She was standing above him gripping the Baby Real. He could feel something wet on the back of his head and he wondered if it was blood or synthetic spit-up. Arnie tried to stand and she whacked him again.

  “Was Daddy going to hurt me?” Willa asked.

  “Yes, baby. Now get the phone.”

  He tried to say he wasn’t going to hurt her, that he would never hurt her, but Arnie couldn’t quite make his mouth make words. Instead he grunted loudly and Willa yelped. He tried to reach out to her and comfort her, but she jumped back.

  “He’s trying to get me, Mommy.”

  Bash. Right over the head. Baby Real split and spit covered Arnie. When he opened his eyes again his wife was in the next room on the phone.

  Something in Arnie clicked, some animal instinct of self-preservation, and he ran. He stumbled out the back door into the falling snow and looked for a place to hide. In the rear of the back yard was a pine doghouse he had made for the puppy. It had never been used. Arnie scrambled inside, pulling his knees to his chest in the darkness.

  Arnie did his best to slow his breathing and not make a sound. The synthetic spit started to freeze, making his pajamas and hair crunchy. After nearly an hour, Arnie poked his head out of the doghouse. He expected to see flashing reds and blues in his driveway, but instead it was just a Honda Acura that he did not recognize. He crept up to the house and peeked through the window. There in his living room knelt Peter Wicks putting the finishing repairs on the Who’s-A-Housewife Egg Scrambler. His wife and daughter looked on with admiration, both cradling mugs of some steamy beverage. Arnie started to cry.

  His feet were stinging from the snow, but he hardly noticed. He did notice how his wife smiled as Peter Wicks refilled her mug and how safe and happy his daughter looked. His daughter was yawning, her eyes closing, her body curled on the couch. He watched Peter Wicks lifting her tiny body and carrying her up the stairs, his wife following, reaching out and touching Peter’s back. He had seen this before, this family, on television or in a film, with the red and gold tree lights on, and the hot mugs still on the coffee table. Arnie waited, but no one came back down.

  This living room. Paintings and candlesticks. Furniture and glassware. Framed figures he couldn’t quite make out. These had all meant something, he was sure. He was no longer crying, but he was sleepy and cold. He could knock. Ask to come in. He would sleep on the couch, he didn’t mind. In the morning he would lend Peter a robe and they would laugh about the previous night as Willa prepared scrambled eggs for all of them.

  But that might ruin the gift.

  Arnie looked up and saw that the stars were unreal. The night was still. He had forgotten. He had forgotten that smells and sounds change by the hour and that there is a silent center to a twenty-four-hour day. A silent moment around which the other hours spin. The one moment is still. He was still, too still to breathe. The stars, the moment, and Arnie.

  He would give them a night. Give them a morning and then come home. Arnie walked back to the doghouse and crawled in. He lay on his back in the dark and listened to hear if snow was falling.

  Sometimes puppies just die, you know. Sometimes that happens. Things break, sometimes. That’s okay.

  He couldn’t hear the snow, but he knew it was falling. Falling slowly. It was very cold now and everything felt strange and heavy. Arnie watched as the roof above him disappeared and the snow fell upon his face. The rising sun made the air gold and the falling flakes shine. The house disappeared as well. Wall by wall. He and his wife and his daughter and Peter stood together in the snow, naked now, all smiling at how silly it was they had ever worn clothes, ever built walls, ever wrapped gifts. Skin disappeared, muscle, bone, finally blood.

  HEART THONGS FOR JESUS

  Hey! Hey! St. Matthew’s Youth Group! We’re in hour twenty-eight of the lock-in and we’re still going strong. We are rockin’ the lock-in! I haven’t slept, have you? Anybody? Susie, I saw you dozing during the movie. How anyone can sleep through The Passion of the Christ, I don’t know.

  I’ve ordered the pizza, and we’ve got more Red Bull chillin’ in the cooler! And upstairs in about ten minutes, St. Matthew’s very own music pastor, Pastor Tim, will be running the karaoke machine! Yeah! Now, Pastor Tim has asked that we keep the song choices a little more edifying than last year. So none of that hip hop. Bradley, I’m looking at you.

  Now, there’s something kind of serious I want to rap on you about. I warned you we’d be doing a bunk check and, well, we did. And we found something. We found a BeDazzler. And it had been used…on the bottom region of a pair of blue jeans.

  I don’t want to say whose they are. It doesn’t matter. This is an issue that affects all of us.

  Girls, when you put shiny things on your bottom, or you get those little tattoos right above your bottom, you’re saying: “Hey look at my bottom. Stare at my bottom. Maybe even touch my bottom.”

  I’ve seen you girls with your gym shorts with “juicy” or “hot” written on the backside. I don’t want to read that. I don’t. Unless your bottom says “Property of Jesus,” it shouldn’t say a thing. I’m serious. Your body is a temple of God’s and your heart is the entrance. But you girls are putting up a big neon sign saying, “Hey, forget the front entrance, I’ve left the back door wide open. Come on in.”

  And guys, you are just as bad with your cologne and Axe body spray. You know what that is? Pheromones. You are chemically convincing someone to want to fornicate with you.

  You think that makes Jesus happy? It does not.

  It’s like that song Pastor Tim is teaching us.

  Oh those things that please us…

  Sure don’t please Lord Jesus.<
br />
  I’m not much of singer, but you get the sentiment.

  Now look, I don’t want be harsh. It’s natural to have these feelings. I’m not that much older than you. I have feelings. You see someone and think what does he...or she…look like working out or swimming. And sure, you want to be noticed, you want to catch someone’s eye. “Look at me,” you know, “Just once. I’m alive, here. Just look at me for a while.”

  But there’s a right way and a wrong way to get attention. Why not wear a funny T-shirt or do something nice with your hair? Like Pastor Tim’s hair, kind of long and soft…it looks soft. I’ve never touched it. Point is Pastor Tim doesn’t have to BeDazzle his bottom to get attention. He certainly doesn’t need one of those little thongs you girls wear. Yes! I see them, creeping up like a forbidden tree blooming from your sin swamp.

  Sure, you’re attracting people to your body, but what about your heart? What we need is a thong for our hearts. A heart thong. So we’d attract people to our hearts instead of our genitals.

  Yes. I said genitals. Because I’m serious.

  You have to understand, Jesus loves you, but there are parts of you he hates. And I know, I know, you pray and pray for him to take these wrong feelings away. You pray until it hurts, but the feelings stay. They even get stronger. But remember Jesus praying in the garden? Remember in the movie? (Those of you who stayed awake—Susie.)

  Jesus is in the garden praying and bleeding and crying. Asking God, “Do I have to get nailed to a cross?” And God is like, “Yes. You have to.”

  And you’re like, isn’t God the one making me feel this way? He made me. But He didn’t make that part of me. That wouldn’t make sense. It wouldn’t make sense for Him to give me a body that wants so badly to do things He says not to do. I mean, that would be screwed up, right?

  So we’re all sweating blood in the garden, begging God to change us. But He won’t change us. He won’t change us. That’s our cross. We all have a cross.

  But when you wear these thongs or BeDazzle your bottom you’re part of the problem, you’re helping the Romans and Jews nail you up. You’re stretching your arms out for them! “Go ahead and nail me up! BeDazzle me to the cross, Jews!”

  Remember in the movie? I remember. Watching Jesus get all cut up and sweaty and whipped and I’m thinking, he’s doing that because he loves me. And picking up that heavy cross and walking and getting spit at, and all because he loves me. And how Jesus’ eyes are full of hurt and love, how he’s exhausted but keeps walking, and how Jesus looks like Pastor Tim a little, around the eyes and with the long hair, and what if I were there with Jesus? What would that be like? And I could help him, walk with him to Calvary, help him carry the cross, and touch his arms, and chest and, and, and what would that be like? What does he smell like? And feel like? What does his sweat taste like?

  …

  … And you think these things.

  …

  …And you know Jesus hears what you think and you just want to die. You just want to die.

  …

  That feeling, the wanting to die, that’s what loving God is all about.

  …

  Okay, okay. That’s enough for now. No more BeDazzling, okay?

  Karaoke in five minutes.

  ST. GOBBLER’S DAY

  It’s Valentine’s Day on aisle four, and has been for several weeks. At the Eckerd’s where I work there’s an aisle for tooth care, for greeting cards, for painkillers, for deodorants, for office supplies and one aisle, aisle four, reserved for the holidays. Right now that aisle is drowning in red plastic and cheap chocolate. A dozen flat fat babies with wings and togas dangle under the florescent lights. They’re aiming their cardboard arrows down upon the few roaming customers, all men, buying last minute gifts, heart-shaped shit that we mark down by half first thing tomorrow morning.

  “Doesn’t it feel like it was just Groundhog Day? I swear, how time flies,” Miss Gobbler says to me while retying a pink foil balloon to the arm of a red and white teddy bear. Miss Gobbler is fifty-three, unmarried, and cheerful to a fucking fault. She has the face of a Boston Terrier—eyes like oversized marbles set too far apart and a tiny mouth with narrow little teeth. She does the seasonal redecorating of the Eckerd’s aisle four as if it’s her home. Bunnies and eggs through most of the spring, American flags May through July, pumpkins and scarecrows start on September 1, and she often spends Halloween night pinning up the turkeys and pilgrims. Then Christmas, then Valentine’s.

  “Of course, it’s never too early to start preparing for Saint Patrick’s,” she says and disappears into the storage closet.

  To her these aren’t gimmicks, they are means of celebration. A way to mark the day.

  “I do love Saint Patrick’s, but Easter—hot doggy. That’s a season,” she says, returning from the closet with a large cardboard box.

  Miss Gobbler has been working at this Eckerd’s for eleven years. She has a gold star on her nametag commemorating her dedicated service. I’ve only been here two years.

  “Someday you’ll have a gold star, too, if you try,” she once told me. This made me sneeze.

  Miss Gobbler tells me a story as she digs through the box, sorting different sized green shamrocks. I’m busy restocking the hair gel aisle.

  “I read this in something, I think it was Chicken Soup for the Holiday-Loving Soul….”

  Miss Gobbler’s soul is so full of Chicken Soup I’m surprised she doesn’t fart noodles.

  “So this little girl, or boy, no, it’s a girl, well, it doesn’t matter…”

  I should also point out that Miss Gobbler is the worst storyteller the world has ever known. She could witness a four-alarm fire at a baboon farm while being screwed by Mel Gibson and somehow bore you with the story.

  “So this little kid has no friends because she has a cleft lip and so the other kids make fun of her.”

  “Why don’t her parents get it fixed?” I ask.

  “Well, I…mmm…I think they were poor.” She stumbles. “But, anyway, she buys Valentine cards for everyone in her class, even all the mean kids. Her mother is waiting for her to come home crying because her mother knows her daughter didn’t get any cards because of her cleft lip, and the girl bursts into the house and yells, ‘Not one!’ and the mother starts to cry for her daughter, but the daughter completes her sentence. ‘Not one. I didn’t forget not one of the kids.’” Miss Gobbler beams.

  “How did the mother know she didn’t get any cards?”

  “What?” her beam dims.

  “You said the mother knew she didn’t get any cards. How?”

  “The teacher called.”

  “Is that in the story?”

  “It’s implied.”

  “Is the little girl retarded?”

  “No, just a cleft lip.”

  “Then why was she so proud of not forgetting anyone in her class? I think she’s retarded.”

  “You’re missing the point,” she says.

  “Which is?”

  The question rattles Miss Gobbler. When Miss Gobbler is rattled she licks her lips with quick darts of the tongue.

  “The point is to do loving things even if people are mean.”

  “Why? She bought them all cards and didn’t get shit. The point is don’t be stupid, save your money, and fix your fucking mouth.”

  The word fucking always gets Miss Gobbler. It hits her like a slap.

  “But the next year she gets cards from everyone.”

  “Does it say that?”

  “It’s implied.”

  “I’m going on my smoke break.”

  I don’t smoke. When I say smoke break I mean five-minutes-away-from-her break. I grab a Slim Jim and eat it in the parking lot.

  When I come back Miss Gobbler has pulled out a cardboard leprechaun from the box and has it talking with a cupid.

  “Blarney Klarney, are ye having a good holiday?”

  “Yes, sir, lots of love, lots of love.”

  “Good, good, to be su
re. And I’m ready to bring some green luck to the world.”

  When she sees me staring, she giggles.

  I hate it when she giggles. She giggles like a girl, but she’s not a girl, she’s an old woman, or almost old. In fact, it would be better if she were old, cause fuck it, you’re old, go ahead and giggle and wear purple or whatever the fuck old people do. But fifty-three isn’t that old. But it’s not young either. That giggle coming from those wrinkles. The childishness of playing with dolls while she’s wearing the blue and white minimum wage uniform. How sad is that? I’ll answer. It’s very fucking sad.

  Now she’s hanging rosy-cheeked Irish elves from the ceiling of aisle four singing along to the strained music piddling from the speakers.

  “Rocket man, and I…la la la la la.”

  She doesn’t know the words. We only have one tape. It’s on a ninety-minute cycle. We hear “Rocket Man” six times every day. It’s been the same tape since I started here. How the fuck does she not know the words? I know every beat, every note, every breath of that song—as well as songs by Peter Cetera, Carly Simon, and two—yes, two—songs by Michael Bolton.

  I walk away to mop in front of the soft drink coolers.

  My God, my life sucks. A profound, deep running suck. Just shit and time. I have to do something to break out or ten years from now I’ll be breathing this same plastic air with my own gold-starred nametag. Do something extreme. Become a monk or shoot heroin or blow a bridge up. Something so outrageous it would puncture my life.

  I stop mopping and open a Red Bull. Maybe I just want to die.

  I wander back to the register. Miss Gobbler is there. She’s reading ahead in the Joke-of-the-Day desk calendar. She must have been halfway through April when I walked up. She sees me and quickly closes the calendar as if I had caught her with the secret files of the Masons. She’s embarrassed. No, it’s more than that. She’s ashamed. Ashamed of peeking at the jokes for next month. That’s when the tickle clears itself. I don’t want to die. I want her to die.

  “What are you smiling about?” she asks with a giggle.