Status Quo

        She gets into the passenger seat and is driven away. He waves until she turns the corner, then he goes inside. She’ll turn another corner and be seen again, but why wave a second time? Composure is our friend. So he doesn’t wave again, but he watches her from behind the venetian blinds. The van drives out of sight and she is gone.

         It’s early, so he makes a cup of coffee. He boils the water in a kettle and pours it into the French press they bought for their coffee. He adds Vanilla Cream flavored coffee creamer, which is her favorite. By now she is a few miles away.

         The children are awake so he doesn’t need to be quiet anymore. He sits at his desk and turns the computer on without saying a word. He contemplates playing “City of Heroes,” the game they play together. Instead he gets on Facebook to play the apps she showed him. The coffee is cool enough to drink and it’s very good - she makes a blend of three different coffees to get this one just right. It’s a “pick-me-up” blend that makes her teeth vibrate when she drinks two cups. Normally he puts four scoops into the French press; this time he uses five scoops. By now she’s probably on the highway on her way out of town.

         His son stumbles out of bed and comes cart wheeling into the living. Every step is joyous thunder on the ground, and he shakes the house in his wake. He gets into the living room and looks confused.

         “Mama sleeps?” he asks.

         “No,” says his dad. “Mama had to go bye-bye. She’ll be back.”

         “Mama had to go, go, go?” the boy asks.

         “Yeah,” he replies. “She had to go, go, go.”



         It’s the first day of work and he’s thrilled to be back. He sees some people he’s worked with before; there’s one who used to go to karaoke with them. There’s the other one who only showed up at the one karaoke jam where she said “Don’t worry, you drink and I’ll drive. It’s your last time to hang out with everyone.” Here’s another she always calls by his last name.

         Everyone is seated and hew-hire orientation is done. He starts to feel the excitement that comes from being someplace where he is appreciated. He texts her to tell her how excited he is.

         “I’m happy for you, baby,” she texts back.

         Now it’s lunchtime and he’s eating soup. Some people in his class ask if they can join him at the table. He says yes, of course. They’re very nice and they laugh at his jokes and he laughs at theirs. He doesn’t need to sit with the people he worked with before, because he’s always been very good at making new friends. She’s in Texas, with the relatives. They had an accident on the way up, but nobody got hurt.



         It’s just after work and everything must, simply must, blow up at once. Father-in-law (on kid duty, don’t you know) is calling him at work; the school is calling him at work. Writing 101 must be done. Essays must be written. Many pans, many fires, and her hands can’t hold any of them. So he’s juggling.

         “Don’t worry,” he says to dad-in-law. “I’ve got it covered.” He’s not lying. He can juggle. No assignments are behind. Notes to teachers have been written. At work he’s catching up to people who have a year more experience than he. The essay is done, discussions are done, math is done, art flippin history is done. He’s bursting with confidence and he is right to be. Nothing has been dropped. All that remains is the dishes and the laundry.

         They always had a system with dishes and laundry – she hated doing the dishes, he hated doing laundry.

         He’s a typhoon of paternal order. No toddler is unwatched. No school-aged child goes to school dirty or without a clean uniform. No cat has no place to poop, no bill is unpaid. He is paterfamilias.

         He calls to tell her.

         “I knew you could do it, baby,” she says. Muscles relax in places he forgot might be tight. Her voice is a balm, so he talks to her some more.



         Every night the same thought crosses his mind:

         Sleeping alone in this bed is bullshit.

         The first night is done like a man; like a cowboy; like Bruce Goddamn Willis. He tackles the bed with the single-minded focus of a college student at a Waffle House on “Free Browns” day. In the morning he wakes at first light and is amazed at how much room he has to stretch out in. It’s horrible.

         Every night after that is simple, once he realizes that he is no cowboy Bruce Willis. He room is so empty of sound that he has dusts off his CD alarm clock to rediscover that it has an AM/FM radio. He finds a station he can stand and turns it on. The room isn’t so quiet anymore. The radio can’t quite mimic the rata-tat-tat of her speech, but it’s better than nothing. The light goes off and the radio stays on until he’s ready to pass out.

         In the morning, it’s still bullshit.



         He and dad-in-law agree – some food must happen. Not just any food, because both of them can cook enough to feed themselves and the children. No, what must happen is man food.

         So dad-in-law and he get together to eat cyclopean mounds of spaghetti. On another day they toss back tacos like M&Ms. There is a pizza, with tons of meat and extra cheese (for the fiber.) They eat the entire pizza between the two of them and belch contentedly. The children nibble at theirs with small, careful bites, mostly because they don’t know any better.

         “Have you been sleeping okay?” dad-in-law asks out of the blue.

         He shrugs and tells a lie.          

         “I’m sleeping fine.”

         Silence lies between them.

         He says “So they’ve already packed their suitcases” at the same time that dad-in-law says “They’re going to leave Texas tomorrow.” They nod and eat pizza and pretend that it’s okay if their women come back a day early. If they want. No big.



         The computer talks to him, like it is wont to do.

         “Write it down,” it tells him.

         He takes a drink of ice-cold tea.

         “I have nothing to write,” he responds.

         He gets up to refill his drink. The words of his computer follow him.

         “It’s got a rhythm,” it tells him. “Kind of quirky. Almost stream of consciousness.”

         He sits back down and drinks some more. He says nothing, so the computer continues.

         “Write it down,” it urges.

         “Why?” he asks. “Nobody will read it. Nobody reads what I write.”

         “She’ll read it. And you’ll have written it. Since when was that not enough?”

         So he thinks Good fucking point.



         “I’m home,” she texts.

         “I don’t believe you,” he texts back. Nobody in class knows why he’s smiling.

         “You’ll see,” she responds.



         His truck kicks up dust in the driveway. His seatbelt is unsnapped before the vehicle is in park.

         Nobody can say I can’t handle this by myself, he thinks.

         He approaches the steps to get to her first. The front door opens and she meets him on the second step down, and her arms are crushing the life out of him what can only be described as the best murder ever.

         “Hi, baby,” he feels her say into his chest.

         He crushes her back. Make it a murder-suicide.

         “Hi.”