Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
My wife – K – was on the other side of the room on her Apple laptop, grousing about the state of the world. News about Trump, COVID-19 (and something about lying), and his supporters triggered an angry explosion. “I’m tired of this. I have no sympathy for any of them today.”
I looked over at her. “So what K-con are you in?”
“K-con?”
“Yes, it’s like DEFCON, you know, defense conditions that the United States employs. DEFCON 1 is the highest state of military readiness.”
Yes, she knew about them. I was in Air Force command and control for twenty years. She’d heard me talk about LERTCONs, DEFCONs, EMERGCONs too many times.
“Would K-con 5 be my normal level?” she asked.
“No, K-con 5 would be when you — “
Realizing I was walking myself into a trap, I stopped. I’d been about to suggest that K-con 5 would be when she was happy and easy-going. I’d been about to observe that she usually stayed in K-con 4, or maybe higher. Anyone who’s been married for over forty-five years, like us, knows that the other has moods. Hell, most people discover this about their partner in the first year, if not the first month, after marriage.
She realized what was happening. Her eyebrows went up, her warm brown eyes grew big, and a grin split her face.
Looking around, I jumped up. “What was that noise? I better go see.”
I hurried out of the room to the sound of her laughter. Yes, I’m a coward, but I’m no fool. If she’s in K-con 1, those nukes are armed and ready to fly.
Let her target someone else.
I dreamed that dandelions were growing out of my cat’s head. I decided to pull them, because I thought, the roots must be growing into his brain.
I pulled the weeds. As they came out, his head broke apart like the top of a chicken potpie. Brains spilled out. Panicking, I tried pushing them all back in.
Before that —
I was marrying a robot. The robot resembled a cross between an Oscar and Marvel’s Iron Man. He’d been sent to kill me. I’d captured and converted him, easy to do because he was a foot tall and never moved, standing like the Oscar all the time. I don’t know how he was expected to kill me, but I was marrying him.
Before that —
It was cake again. A large white sheet cake was on a table. It looked gorgeous, and delicious. Writing was on the top. Leaning forward to read it, I misjudged space and distance and began falling into the cake. Wildly flailing, I managed not to hit the cake, but tilted the table. The cake began sliding away. I tried grabbing it, seizing a handful of a corner and tearing it away.
In a slow-motion sequence, I raised the cake that I’d torn away up to my face. Yellow inside, it smelled like lemon. I put some into my mouth to taste it. It didn’t taste lemon. I couldn’t decide what the taste was.
The cake was still sliding off the table. Lunging forward, I caught the cake, stabilized the table, and ‘saved’ the cake, except it was a mess.
Others came in. I wanted to run but I had cake all over me. Obviously, I’d done whatever had happened to the cake. As the rest came up (all strangers, dressed casually, but with what looked like flutes of champagne in their hands), I said, “There was an accident.”
Ignoring that, smiling and talking, they looked at the cake as though nothing was wrong. One woman said something to me. I held up the handful of cake and asked, “Is this lemon?”
Before that —
I was in the military, dressed in a crisp light blue shirt with dark blue pants, supervising a group of young NCOs. I was assigning them positions, roles, and titles. “You’re NCOIC of Back Office Reporting, BOC.” I laughed. “And you are Console Operations, COPs.” That brought more wild laughter from me. To the third, I said, “And you’re NCOIC of Training, which is, well, that’s just training.” I found that hilarious.
Before that —
My cat was sick. I was looking for his medicine. After I went through the house, I finally found it (it’s the last place that you look, innit?). Then I couldn’t find the cat. Putting the medicine down, I went through the house looking for him. Finding him at last, I couldn’t find the medicine. I said, “I just had it.”
That’s all there was.
“Do I have a flat head?” he asked.
The question was from the proverbial blue left field. It certainly had naught to do with what was going on (which was going to the store) (for groceries) (snacks, if they were honest) (he was driving), or what they’d been talking about (movies) (Parasite and Uncut Gems).
“No,” she said. “You have a perfect head. It’s a perfect shape and size. I’ve always admired the shape of your head.”
He nodded, then said something about worrying about it, which was why he was combing his hair differently (she hadn’t noticed). She half-listened, instead thinking how easy it’d been for her to lie.
But that’s what was learned, during forty years of keeping a marriage alive.
Sitting with friends, laughing while nibbling a scone (blackberry, overbaked, it doesn’t taste that good, and she’s not that hungry, but she bought it because the rest insisted, “Get something,”), celebrating (after the fact) a friend’s birthday, an epiphany strikes her.
Inspired by Barbara’s recounting of her husband’s recent illnesses (he’d gone through surgery but developed an infection), Diana and Belle are speaking about their late husbands. Both died of heart attacks in their mid-sixties.
She thinks about her husband, two years older than her (and in his mid-sixties). Coughing for days, he’d been listless, and getting worse, it seems. He’d always been a health freak — didn’t and doesn’t drink except for an occasional social beverage when they’re out (which she usually finishes for him), and a pescatarian for over forty years (no, almost fifty years, to be more accurate, always important to her). He runs five miles a day four days a week, cycles everywhere, and rows with a club several times per month, activities that he’d needed to curtail when he’d become ill. A cup of coffee a day, he always said with a wink and a grin, is his vice. Yet, he seemed to be getting sicker.
His illness really started over two years before. He’d seen doctors, and everything was great. (“They tell me that I have the arteries of a teenager.) This is when her epiphany is delivered, a thought so striking that it sucks the air out of the room and her lungs. The voices fade. Dizziness topples her.
Others say suddenly, leaning in, touching her hands and shoulders, concern on their faces, “Are you okay?”
She smiles. “Yes, fine, what?” She shakes her head. “I just got distracted. I’m sorry. What were we talking about?”
They buy it after a few seconds. When the attention leaves her, she thinks, is her husband slowly killing himself to keep her from being happy?
It’s audacious and ridiculous, but she thinks, it’s keeping with his character. He’s always been something of a passive aggressive, secret saboteur. His mother, sisters, and cousin had told her stories about how he’d undermined friendships (and an engagement). He was always sneaky when he did it. He’d been the same at work throughout his career, a liar, essentially, but very clever about it, damaging relationships when he did, but always as an innocent, and almost always believed.
Now, he’d retired. No family lived nearby. He has few close friends (were any of them close to him?). Could he have turned his attention to his relationship with her?
She thinks, how? (He could be poisoning himself.) Why? (Because that’s who — what — he is.) She thinks, I have no proof. It’s insane for her to even consider it. Yet, the idea remains moored in her thoughts. She thinks with growing shock as the group breaks up and leaves the coffee shop, it’s possible.
Brooding with leftover anger and resentment, he stared at the page, unable to read.
The book, by Lee Child (a Christmas present), was a thriller (which he usually enjoyed), but an argument was displacing his attention. It’d been a stupid argument, not worth even recounting, but it was another in a string of stupid, exhausting arguments. One a day? Hell, on a good day, it’d be one a day. Most days, there was one in the morning before they left for work and another in the evening. They were part of the routines.
He was tired of that routine. He decided that if he could, he would change his life so that he and his wife had never reconciled after they’d separated. That had happened less than nine months in (nine years ago). His life would be so much more pleasant, wouldn’t it? Her, and her attitude. It infuriated him.
Maybe, instead, it would be better they hadn’t had children. Much had changed when she’d become pregnant. The pressure to succeed, save money, and everything else, had ratcheted up, becoming relentless. Besides, they hadn’t been getting along well before that point.
He loved his children, though, although they worried and wearied him. A friend said that having children was all about the three Ws: worrying, wearying, and weaning. That sounded right.
Maybe, instead of not reconciling, he would not marry his wife. Then there would be no children. He tried imagining that life. He’d be like Grover, alone on holidays (and declaring that he liked it most times, but also decrying it on other days), but doing whatever he wanted, whenever. But he’d asked her to marry him because he loved her. Probably be better then, to have never met her. But if he’d never met her, would he have ever met anyone and fallen in love? (What an expression.) Yes, he had other girlfriends. He’d been popular.
Setting his book aside to watch football on television for a moment, he waited for some spirits to show up, someone to tell him how different his life would be if he’d never met his wife and married. That sort of tale had been written to death. Hadn’t there been movies with that theme? He waited for the television screen to change to a movie where he was the star and the plot was that he’d never met his wife and married. But that would’ve required many other changes, since he’d met her in high school as freshmen.
He had to consider all that would’ve all changed to keep them from meeting. One of them would not have been in that school (or maybe just not that year) (but both were good students), or their activities, likes and interests would’ve needed to change. He tried peering into the past to see what needed to shift to stop their meeting from happening. Maybe they met but didn’t fall in love. That’d seemed instant for both of them, like destiny.
Wiping her hands with a dish rag, she stepped into the room. “Kitchen’s clean.”
“Good.” He heard the dishwasher running.
“Are you hungry? Can I make you a sandwich?”
“Okay, sure, thanks.”
She smiled. “Want a beer?”
“Okay.”
“Anything else?”
“No, thanks, that’d be good.”
She glanced at the screen. “Who’s winning?”
“Titans, third quarter.”
“That’s not who you wan to win is it?”
“No.”
“Well, there’s still time for it to change.” Smiling again, she turned and left the room.
One child hit the other. A scream erupted. He leaped up, refereeing, consoling, explaining, parenting. A few minutes later, detente achieved, he sat down with a slow exhale and looked at the television. The third quarter was almost over but the score hadn’t changed. He picked up his book. He couldn’t remember where he’d stopped reading, what was happening, or what he’d been thinking about.
Turning the page back, he began reading again.
She was home.
He moved into the living room and his little electric heater. He preferred warm air. She (she claimed) liked it ‘normal’. It exasperated the hell out of him. Wasn’t like he was choosing to prefer hot. His need for heat (he’d probably never see that on a movie poster) was derived from injuries, illnesses, and diseases. Life demanded a harsh toll from him.
Hurrying to the heater, he turned it up from low to med. Then, with silent swiftness, he settled into his recliner, grabbed his book, and pretended like her arrival was a surprise.
“Oh, you’re home.”
“Yes.” She talked about things going on outside as she removed her coat. Then, as he turned away, he watched her reflection in the television screen out of the corner of his eye. Soon as she saw his back was turned, she took two long fast steps to the heater and bent over it. A soft click followed.
She bustled away as he turned back. Smiling to himself, he glanced at the heater. On low, just as he preferred.
A happy marriage sometimes required a little guile.
Going through the morning’s triple S activities – shit, shower, shave – he was thinking about his parents and their health. They’d divorced when he was a little boy. Each had contributed to that mess, he decided while conducting his retrospective. Mom forced issues and seemed to thrive on confrontation. Dad shunned conflict. Throwing himself into work, he’d held several jobs simultaneously. He did each well, and they paid well.
After their divorce, Mom had remarried six or seven times – he wasn’t sure – and Dad had several live-in girlfriends besides two other marriages. He thought it was remarkable that he’d married and managed to keep it together for over forty years.
Of course, he’d never been close to his parents. Splitting time between Mom and Dad’s households, he’d struck out on his own after graduating high school when he was seventeen, and then married at eighteen. Neither parent had made an effort to stay very close outside of birthday and holiday cards. Mom visited him and his wife one time, after he’d bought the round-trip airline ticket for her, after they’d been married thirty years. Dad had visited once, dropping by their first apartment for a grinning, goofy fifteen minute visit. Two visits between the two parents in more than forty years.
He sighed. Both parents, in their eighties, were in declining health. He knew he’d miss them once they passed away – everyone told him so – but it was hard for him to generate compassion for their situation.
He hated that he had that flaw and couldn’t seem to do anything about it.
The start
seeing
noticing
talking
flirting
friendship
lust
sex
love
trust
The relationship
trust
sex
love
support
compatibility
complacency
ennui
questions
regrets
The decisions
disagreements
betrayal
anger
arguments
fights
threats
tears
compromise
counseling
separating
praying
choices
The end
together
apart
resigned
accepting
hopeful
dismissive
optimistic
pessimistic
loving
trusting
hoping
Death.
Michael Seidel, writer 