C27
Public Record
Excerpt from novel: Best Cellar

So what's the solution, Rose?

What's your goddam fix, huh?
Is it Accidental Death and Dismemberment Insurance?
Seems to be. Carrie and I got to talking ten days ago about some of this —
a good life and fulfillment and all that.
I was talking about how I always wished
I could be that guy in the room with all the good stories.
The cops or the Seals or the musicians
who can just go on and on about this or that in their lives.
But I was the guy with the wrench.
That guy you rang up when the gutters were clogged
or the washing machine took a dump on the hardwood
and now you've got dry-rot in your floorboards.
She said we have lived a wonderful life,
and had a beautiful son who was taken too soon.
Don't say taken, don't force some goddamned omnipotence on our dead son, I said.
She teared up and I didn't feel bad about it.
That's when you know the situation's going nowhere you want it to go,
when she’s tearing up and you don’t feel bad about it.

I said other things too, like we only stayed together
because she got pregnant and I wanted to be the good guy,
things like I don't remember ever loving her,
things like I wished our lives had turned out different.
You think after a certain point that no matter what you say,
the two of you are just the two of you.
When you both know what's for dinner
and what the other person thinks of
when you go over that new speed bump a block from the house.
You are one person and that's that.
Losing the other person would be like losing your arm in a cardboard bailer.
But my right arm stormed off in the good car.

Thresher Charles