THE FIRST TIME IN A LONG TIME

It was a hot Friday afternoon. I sat on the bench outside my building. Friday is usually the day the new shipment of coffins arrives and I would’ve had to be there, but today Jerry was replacing me at the funeral home. I had just begun working there and it was my first day off in a whole month.

I didn’t have any plans, so I opened a new jug of wine. I poured myself tea cup brimful, sat on the bench outside and smoked. Someone in my building was listening to the radio out loud, so I did too.

     Around five or six o’clock a mother and her two children came out of my building. The mother took the kids out to the playground across the street and left them there to play alone. She went back up to the building and continued to check in on them through the open second floor kitchen window.

      The two kids were a boy and a girl. The girl – eight or so, clearly a couple of years older than her little brother – grabbed his hand and they walked over to the fountain in the center of the playground.

      This metal fountain, shaped in the form of a dragon, was partially broken. The water squirting out from the few faucets that still worked made the teal paint peel off the dragon’s neck. The children didn’t care. They started splashing each other and laughing. They seemed to enjoy it.

      I hated the water when I was a kid. I hated how it felt inside my nose and ears. Every July my family vacationed at the same beach resort, and every July I made it my goal to stay out of the water. Back then I still believed that my father was capable of everything and that my mother loved us. 

     I heard voices coming from the second floor kitchen. The voices were louder than the radio. A man was yelling something, a woman was yelling back, and then I heard a plate smashing into the wall.

     I wondered if there was food on that plate, and if all families acted this way sometimes. My parents didn’t. They broke apart quietly. One July I went to the beach resort with my dad alone. My mother was gone; I was told she was living someplace else now. My dad always did the best he could do, but it just wasn’t good enough. And I hated being replaced. That summer I finally learned how to swim.

     I went back inside to pour another drink. When I came out the screaming upstairs had subsided and I could hear the music again.

     I looked over across the street. The kids hadn’t heard all the noise. The girl was now sitting on the bench. She opened a pack of cookies and called her brother over. They shared those cookies and she made him, to his disproof, wash his hands and mouth in the fountain. The boy obviously hated following orders. 

I hate to be told what to do too, but like so many others, I want to be taken care of. And for a long time I had no one. I had to work as a newspaper delivery boy all throughout high school. My dad developed a chronic heart problem and I helped with paying the rent. His health got bad though, real bad. He had to get himself a full time nurse; he eventually fell in love with her and later they got married. I had moved out long before that. I got through two and a half years of journalism school at the state university before the tuition became too big of a bite to chew. I put it on hold and left to find a job that paid better.

     I never went back to school.

     I got hired at the grocery store as a bagger, and later got promoted to a stock supervisor. I watched over the vegetable counters. A while ago a Beatles song had made me believe that all I need was love and one night at the bar I met Sarah. I bought her a drink and we slept together that very same night. She moved in a month later, essentially changing my life. We would talk, because we wanted to not because we needed to. Things that I never gave a thought about before, like the future, the universe, and the amount of possibilities, all of a sudden seemed plausible. I wanted her and she told me she loved me. It seemed great, no matter how rough the path we walked was. It didn’t even bother me that we always made love with the lights out.

     The neighborhood smelled like dinner, but the children across the street didn’t have to go home yet. The boy was crying when I looked over. They were playing tag when he fell and bruised his palms. His sister washed his hands in the fountain and wiped his tears off with her sleeve. The boy sat on the bench and stared at what probably was the first bruise he ever got chasing women. He didn’t know yet the game would only get harder.

     Sarah, for instance, was easy to catch, but hard to contain. We fought a lot. The reasons were always stupid - who broke the coffee mug or who had to change the light bulb in the walk-in closet – but they quickly escalated. I had lost count of how many times I angrily pounded her to climax as she howled my name into the night. I had lost the count of how many times I slammed the door on my way out just to come back later, or how many times she had done just the same. I thought that I needed her. She told me she loved me and it felt right again for a little while. Sometimes I sobered up before coming back home, and sometimes I didn’t. After a while I gave up on peace.

The grocery store didn’t make enough and eventually went under, leaving me and the rest of the crew unemployed. It just happened so, that my lack of motivation, Sarah’s consistent neurosis, and this whole emotional tumor we had been harvesting led her and me into our worst fight yet. She screamed that I am irresponsible and I called her selfish. We both knew that our disconsolate balloon had popped, and when she left I got drunk for seven days and seven nights. It felt different this time.

I thought I heard rumbling in the distance and noticed that the clouds of rain beginning to gather. Across the street the kids were taking it easy. They were both sitting on the bench and she was reading him a book with lots of big, bright pictures in it. I watched them. They read the whole book through together from the front cover to the back, then flipped it over and began reading it again.

When I stopped drowning my nights at bars, I started reading more. After Sarah left it got pretty bad. I didn’t look for a job any more, lost the apartment, and nearly died one night. I was out drunk and a driver flipped me over. He says he didn’t see me on the side of the road and I don’t remember what happened. I am alright now; I feel better. After I got out of the hospital I got hired at the local funeral home where I now manage the shipments of coffins, candles, ribbons, and such; I also take down the orders for the tombstones. I spend my days ensuring the dead get fancy burials, and I read till I fall asleep. The first month of responsible labor was over, and I earned my day off, my jug of wine, and my smokes. For the first time in a long time I felt at peace. When Sarah called three nights prior I didn’t know what to say. She kept quiet, and I kept quiet and we both needed to speak, but neither one of us wanted to. I eventually hung up.

The mother called the kids up for dinner and I watched as the girl walked the boy across the street and into the hallway. Once the two of them were gone it was just me and the radio.

I lit a cigarette.

The music made me think of a distance – an emotional distance, as well as a place far away - where serenity meets mystique. I looked over the empty street, the broken fountain, the playground swings, and the trees above it. I was alone. And for the first time in a long time I felt lonely.

I gulped the rest of my wine and smoked the cigarette to the filter, and before the first drop of the rain hit the pavement I went inside and cooked dinner.