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kleenexwomanI wrote this for a contrelamontre challenge. The title is from an Elvis Costello song. It only took me 82 minutes, which is fairly impressive when you consider that it now takes me several weeks to write a paragraph.
You can’t believe that the man sitting across from you could ever be connected with anything you could possibly be. Where is the cheap white dress shirt with buttons sewn on crooked, the nervous laughter, the hunched back? Where are the thick glasses, the premature wrinkles, the bags under the eyes? There’s hope in his face, no admission of inferiority, of weakness, of hopelessness—all the things you’ve had to accept by now. How hasn’t he learned yet that life hands all your dreams back to you broken?
He’s staring at the table, tracing an uneasy pattern on the scratched Formica, occasionally glancing at the cluttered kitchen, the ratty furniture, the peeling wallpaper, the scattered tchotchkes and stains that make up thirty years. Probably wondering how any version of himself could have let his life go to shit like this.
“If I knew I was coming, I’d probably have, um, cleaned up a little,” you mutter, trying to make a joke. You can almost see him cringe at the lame attempt at levity.
“Yeah,” he says. “I…um…no. It’s not bad.” It’s a transparent lie, one you both should know was unnecessary. Maybe he’s trying to convince himself that you (no, he) couldn’t have created a life as bad as this one looks.
Maybe you should ask him if he wants some coffee, you haven’t made any but you could make some or maybe would he like some cheap nonalcoholic beer—you only buy it because you started drinking it when you still couldn’t handle alcohol and by now you’ve gotten to like the taste, but he probably drinks scotch or rum or something expensive, and to him your beer would taste thin and sour.
You wrack your brain for something to say, finding too many questions. You want to know where your lives diverged, what you did wrong, what he did right, what he did that was different. It occurs to you that it might not have even been him. There are so many variables, after all. Maybe it was someone else’s whim, someone else’s life changed first—a relative’s death, a rival’s failure, an editor accepting a story that he rejected in your life. You don’t know whether it makes you feel better or worse that you might have not been able to control it.
“I’m afraid I don’t know much about exactly how we’re different,” you tell him. “Marty told me that you were a writer, but he didn’t say anything else, so…” Trying to remember what else your son (but was it even your son, or another version? Not that it matters anymore, he’s barely been yours for years) told you.
“Oh, I think it probably stems from one event,” your other self says as though he’s figured it out already. “The problem would be finding that one event—we don’t exactly, heh, have maps of our lives to compare. And it could be anything…”
“Maybe it’s not just one thing,” you say suddenly. “Maybe we were just different to begin with.”
Your other self gazes at you for a long time. There’s no pity or contempt, and it’s been so long since you’ve seen anything but those that you don’t understand at first what he’s doing.
You can’t look at him. You’re staring at the table, staring at your hands, tracing out the same uneasy pattern on the Formica.
He takes your hands in his and you hazily wonder for a second why you don’t explode, vaguely remembering something from back when you still read science fiction, something about matter and antimatter—or was it two things in the same place at the same time? You’re surprised to realize that his fingers are calloused, probably from writing all day.
“I don’t think it’s that,” he says softly. “We were the same person once.”
“What does it matter?” you say. “It’s not like either of us could go back and change it.”
Your other self takes a deep breath like he’s about to say something that he’s not sure you’d want to hear, then lets it out. “No,” he murmurs, almost to himself, “no, it wouldn’t work, would it? You were here already. That wouldn’t change.”
It wouldn’t change. It will never change, even knowing what you could have done, seeing your dreams realized by someone else that’s also you. You wonder bitterly why it couldn’t have been you, why this George sitting across the table from you couldn’t have been the one to see his life spiral downward.
“We were the same person once,” you repeat, remembering when you were seventeen and scared of the world. Both of you encapsulated in one body, one mind, existing as pure potential.
“We still can be,” he says. He’s stroking your wrist with his thumb and you’re not sure whether he’s doing it deliberately or as a kind of nervous tic. If it was you it would be a nervous tic, but this George isn’t you anymore and you don’t know what he’s thinking.
“How?” you ask, hearing your voice come out as a strangled squeak.
He lets go of your hands, walks around to your side of the table and bends down so his face is inches from yours and now you can’t look away. He gently removes your glasses and your vision resolves into a blur, or maybe it’s just tears.
“Start again,” he says.
It’s a ludicrous suggestion but you can’t laugh. “How can I start over? I’m almost at the end.”
“Did you save what you wrote?”
“It’s somewhere,” you say. “In the attic, maybe.”
“Good,” he says. “Dig it out, look it over, revise it.”
“What good will that do? I can’t write anymore.”
He bends down and puts his lips to your ear, and you shudder as his breath makes the inside of your head tingle. “I don’t want me to have given up,” he whispers.
You can’t believe that the man sitting across from you could ever be connected with anything you could possibly be. Where is the cheap white dress shirt with buttons sewn on crooked, the nervous laughter, the hunched back? Where are the thick glasses, the premature wrinkles, the bags under the eyes? There’s hope in his face, no admission of inferiority, of weakness, of hopelessness—all the things you’ve had to accept by now. How hasn’t he learned yet that life hands all your dreams back to you broken?
He’s staring at the table, tracing an uneasy pattern on the scratched Formica, occasionally glancing at the cluttered kitchen, the ratty furniture, the peeling wallpaper, the scattered tchotchkes and stains that make up thirty years. Probably wondering how any version of himself could have let his life go to shit like this.
“If I knew I was coming, I’d probably have, um, cleaned up a little,” you mutter, trying to make a joke. You can almost see him cringe at the lame attempt at levity.
“Yeah,” he says. “I…um…no. It’s not bad.” It’s a transparent lie, one you both should know was unnecessary. Maybe he’s trying to convince himself that you (no, he) couldn’t have created a life as bad as this one looks.
Maybe you should ask him if he wants some coffee, you haven’t made any but you could make some or maybe would he like some cheap nonalcoholic beer—you only buy it because you started drinking it when you still couldn’t handle alcohol and by now you’ve gotten to like the taste, but he probably drinks scotch or rum or something expensive, and to him your beer would taste thin and sour.
You wrack your brain for something to say, finding too many questions. You want to know where your lives diverged, what you did wrong, what he did right, what he did that was different. It occurs to you that it might not have even been him. There are so many variables, after all. Maybe it was someone else’s whim, someone else’s life changed first—a relative’s death, a rival’s failure, an editor accepting a story that he rejected in your life. You don’t know whether it makes you feel better or worse that you might have not been able to control it.
“I’m afraid I don’t know much about exactly how we’re different,” you tell him. “Marty told me that you were a writer, but he didn’t say anything else, so…” Trying to remember what else your son (but was it even your son, or another version? Not that it matters anymore, he’s barely been yours for years) told you.
“Oh, I think it probably stems from one event,” your other self says as though he’s figured it out already. “The problem would be finding that one event—we don’t exactly, heh, have maps of our lives to compare. And it could be anything…”
“Maybe it’s not just one thing,” you say suddenly. “Maybe we were just different to begin with.”
Your other self gazes at you for a long time. There’s no pity or contempt, and it’s been so long since you’ve seen anything but those that you don’t understand at first what he’s doing.
You can’t look at him. You’re staring at the table, staring at your hands, tracing out the same uneasy pattern on the Formica.
He takes your hands in his and you hazily wonder for a second why you don’t explode, vaguely remembering something from back when you still read science fiction, something about matter and antimatter—or was it two things in the same place at the same time? You’re surprised to realize that his fingers are calloused, probably from writing all day.
“I don’t think it’s that,” he says softly. “We were the same person once.”
“What does it matter?” you say. “It’s not like either of us could go back and change it.”
Your other self takes a deep breath like he’s about to say something that he’s not sure you’d want to hear, then lets it out. “No,” he murmurs, almost to himself, “no, it wouldn’t work, would it? You were here already. That wouldn’t change.”
It wouldn’t change. It will never change, even knowing what you could have done, seeing your dreams realized by someone else that’s also you. You wonder bitterly why it couldn’t have been you, why this George sitting across the table from you couldn’t have been the one to see his life spiral downward.
“We were the same person once,” you repeat, remembering when you were seventeen and scared of the world. Both of you encapsulated in one body, one mind, existing as pure potential.
“We still can be,” he says. He’s stroking your wrist with his thumb and you’re not sure whether he’s doing it deliberately or as a kind of nervous tic. If it was you it would be a nervous tic, but this George isn’t you anymore and you don’t know what he’s thinking.
“How?” you ask, hearing your voice come out as a strangled squeak.
He lets go of your hands, walks around to your side of the table and bends down so his face is inches from yours and now you can’t look away. He gently removes your glasses and your vision resolves into a blur, or maybe it’s just tears.
“Start again,” he says.
It’s a ludicrous suggestion but you can’t laugh. “How can I start over? I’m almost at the end.”
“Did you save what you wrote?”
“It’s somewhere,” you say. “In the attic, maybe.”
“Good,” he says. “Dig it out, look it over, revise it.”
“What good will that do? I can’t write anymore.”
He bends down and puts his lips to your ear, and you shudder as his breath makes the inside of your head tingle. “I don’t want me to have given up,” he whispers.