Ken Sparling - Dad Says He Saw You at the Mall

THERE’S NEVERany jelly in these donuts,” she said, crossing her eyes, trying to see the donut as it entered her mouth.

“All the jelly is on your chin,” he said.

She turned her eyes down and tried to look at her chin. Then she put her hand up and started feeling around on her chin for the glob of jelly. When she found the glob of jelly, she wiped it off with her index finger.

He tried not to look at her big, bare legs, which looked especially big against the black vinyl seats of the car. When one or the other of them spoke, their voice fell out and joined the hum of the wind on the other side of the window.

Driving down a long gradual hill in a small town where neither of them knew the actual name of the town, he opened the window and put his arm out into the cool rush of air.

“I could live in this town,” he said. Some dogs were standing in a group of trees in a park farther down the road. The car drove past an old man pushing a wheelbarrow with some groceries in it.

“Could you close the window?” she said.

He pulled his arm in and closed the window. He put his hand on the gear shift knob and told her to quit using her toe to pop the cassettes in and out of the tape deck.

It was Sunday and the air smelled of rivers.

~

Tutti says, if your Achilles tendon snaps, your foot just hangs there. We are out running and Tutti keeps stopping to stretch her Achilles tendon. “It’s stiff,” she says.

“Maybe we should go back,” I say.

“No,” she says.

“Don’t snap your Achilles tendon,” I say.

“Don’t be an asshole,” she says.

MOTHER IStrying to bake loaves of bread, but they come out hard, like rocks. She tells me to get the hell out to the parking lot and bring in the car battery.

I go into bars with windows. In between loud songs you can hear the sound of dogs.

Some trees have poked themselves up at the sky where the snow has stopped a moment before.

No one gets away from whatever it is that is holding them back.

The black-haired girl goes out to the road and looks up as far as she can see. “Come here,” she says.

My mother and I used to have long conversations where I wanted to run out of the house and scream. She would look up at me, her eyes all baggy and red because of how late it was. The kitchen light hung above us.

~

We were in Quebec one time before we got married. We were walking along the street in whatever city we were in and we were getting ready to go to the bank to get some money, because we were running low on money, and Tutti was practicing what she was going to say to the bank teller.

“Parlez-vous ling-long?” Tutti said.

I laughed.

“Isn’t that right?” she said.

“That’s right,” I said.

“No it isn’t,” she said.

~

Okay, here is a list of the guys who have died this week. Write it down, okay, because I’m not going to say it twice. Bob Simpson’s father died three weeks ago, but I didn’t hear about it until yesterday. Just shut up and write it down. I don’t know what his occupation was, but I do know they cremated him and Bob has the ashes in an urn in his living room. Bob’s in-laws will not come into the house anymore because they believe cremation is evil.

There is only one other one who died this week and she is not actually dead yet. She is only dying. Normally this doesn’t count, but don’t question my judgment, okay? Just write it down. She could be dead anytime now. Anytime. Okay? So don’t question my judgment.

~

I was blowing on the campfire, trying to get some flames to come out of it so Tutti would quit telling me how fucking cold she was. It was almost time to go to bed.

~

She drank coffee and stayed up late, watching TV. She watched old sitcoms. He watched documentaries. He watched them during the day. He watched National Geographic films about whales, or Australia, and these films rose up between him and certain consequences of the way he lived that he felt blowing toward him inevitably.

“I’d like to go to Australia sometime,” he told her. “I’d like to see whales.” They would drink coffee and talk about the films he had seen that day. But she said almost nothing.

The day after he went to get the cream, he could not believe how quiet it was. There were gulls spiraling in the air above the parking lot. There were red and blue and gray cars with no one in them. Inside the grocery store the cashiers stood idle, twirling their hair with their fingers, or tying and untying their aprons.

He was a large lumbering man who moved slowly. Once inside a store, he liked to stop and pick up a piece of merchandise and turn it over and over in his hands, considering the possible uses he might put it to.

She would grab a cart and hurry up and down the aisles, now and then coming back to collect him, to bring him along, to show him something.

~

“What do you want?” I said. It was Tutti. She was calling from work. “Did you call just to bug me?”

“Yes,” she said.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she said. “There’s no one here.”

“You want me to come down?”

“No,” she said. “I have appointments at three and four.”

“Did you think I was coming down earlier to get those papers you copied?”

“No,” she said. “I just called to tell you they were ready. You sounded like you wanted them so bad.”

“I did. But now I don’t care.”

“You going to go now?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Okay,” she said. “See you.”

“See you,” I said. I hung up.

The phone rang.

“Hello,” I said. No one answered. “Hello.” I stayed on the line for a moment. I was thinking Tutti was playing a joke on me. I stayed on the line until I heard the dial tone and then I hung up.

The phone rang again.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hi.” It was Tutti.

“Did you just phone and hang up?”

“Yes,” she said. “I thought I had the wrong number. I called to tell you you hung up too fast.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I mean, you shouldn’t have hung up so fast after we said goodbye. You should have waited a minute.”

Tutti and I used to do that when we were dating. I would say goodbye and she would say goodbye and then neither of us would hang up.

“I’m going now,” Tutti said.

“Okay,” I said.

“All right,” Tutti said.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll see you,” I said.

“See you,” she said.

“Goodbye,” I said.

Neither of us hung up.

“That’s better,” Tutti said. “You can go now. You’ve done your job.”

“Okay,” I said. “Goodbye.” I still didn’t hang up.

“You can hang up now,” Tutti said.

“Why don’t you hang up first?” I said.

“I like to hold onto the phone a little longer,” Tutti said.

“You hang up first.”

“Okay,” I said. “Goodbye,” I said. I went to hang up but then I stopped. I put the phone back to my ear. “Tutti?”

“Why didn’t you hang up?” she asked.

“I almost did. But then I pulled the phone back.”

“I’ve got to go,” Tutti said. She hung up.

~

He decides to go out for a bicycle ride. For a long while he rides along keeping his head down, not noticing anything. When he looks up, a strange thing has happened. He finds himself in a foreign country, possibly Italy. He thinks he recognizes the bridge he is crossing from a book his mother used to read to him as a child.

IT WASthe beginning of spring and all the girls were going around with bare legs, and there was a girl with bare legs on the subway and she was reading a magazine and I said to her, “What are you reading?” and without looking up at me she crossed her legs.