John Jodzio - Knockout

“That’s priced to sell,” Ackerman yells to me.

I had a weekly thing with Ackerman’s wife, Elaine, before she died. Every Tuesday night we met at a motel and screwed. She kept telling me she was going to leave Ackerman, but she never did. One Tuesday Elaine didn’t show up at the motel and when I drove by her house a few days later I saw a hearse and a bunch of people dressed in black.

“What happened?” I asked one of the kids standing in her yard.

“Aunt Elaine crashed her car,” he said.

There are a couple of other people roaming around in Ackerman’s garage too. There’s a young girl flipping through his record collection. There’s an old guy rooting around in a box of tools. Ackerman’s middle-aged, not much older than me. He’s way too young to have lost a wife, but maybe too old and too sad to look for another one.

“That chair’s gonna go quick,” he says. “I wouldn’t dillydally.”

Ackerman’s right. There’s already another guy eyeing it. I look at this guy and can tell exactly what he’s thinking. He’s thinking about the chair’s possibilities. He’s thinking about where he could put it in his house, who he could talk into using it. He’s not thinking what I’m thinking — how I miss Elaine so damn much that I stopped by her husband’s garage sale to buy something she once sat in or touched or that still held the scent of her shampoo. Before this other guy pulls out his wallet, I pluck the price tag off the chair and hand Ackerman my money.

“Sold,” he says.

Ackerman pulls the chair down from the rafters. Everyone else is gone now; it’s just me and him. Grief isn’t a contest, but suddenly I want it to be. I want someone to invent a grief-testing machine and then hook both of us up to it so I can show Ackerman I miss his wife way more than he does.

“You’re really gonna enjoy this chair,” he says.

What a normal person does now is says “thank you very much” and walks back to his car. This isn’t what I do. Now that I’m here, I realize how badly I want to get inside Ackerman’s house to see what other things of Elaine’s I’m missing out on. The only way I can figure out how to do this is to pretend to faint. And so that’s what I do. I roll my eyes back in my head and make my legs go slack and down I go.

“Oh shit,” Ackerman says.

After I count to twenty, I open my eyes.

“Let’s get you somewhere cool,” Ackerman tells me.

“Yes,” I say. “Let’s.”

Isit on Ackerman’s couch and eat a banana. I assure him I’m fine, that this happens to me once in a while.

“Low blood sugar,” I say.

He hands me a glass of water and I drink it down. Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of talk radio for company. I don’t care what the topic is — sports or celebrity gossip or politics — I’m just really scared of it being quiet. I want to ask Ackerman what he does to fill up the silence, how he copes with Elaine being gone, but I can’t let him know I’m anything other than a random garage sale pervert.

“Great house,” I tell him.

I look out the window into his backyard. There’s a garden bed with some sweet corn and cucumbers, there’s a patio with a fire pit. Elaine always complained about Ackerman being selfish, not paying enough attention to her, but he seems nice enough to me.

“You want to see the rest of the place?” he asks.

The last time I shoplifted anything was in high school, but each room Ackerman and I walk through I shove something of Elaine’s into my pocket — a five-by-seven black and white of her at the beach, a fridge magnet, a dart from the rec room. When Ackerman goes to take a piss, I slide into the bedroom and shove a pair of her panties into my pocket.

“I’m really sorry about all this,” I tell him when he comes back.

“It happens,” he says. “It’s not your fault.”

We’re standing on his front porch now, staring out toward the street. A car slows down for a speed bump. It’s a convertible, full of teenagers. When they go over the bump they bounce around, laugh their asses off. Ackerman stares at them and I see tears form in his eyes. I understand how something insignificant can suddenly overwhelm you, how any old thing can dredge up a memory that knocks the breath from your lungs.

“You want to grill up some burgers?” Ackerman asks.

“Sure,” I say.

Ackerman fixes me a drink, tosses the meat on the grill. We sit on the back deck and watch the sun slide down below the horizon.

When Ackerman clears our plates, I run to the bathroom. I shove some fancy soaps and a hair brush of Elaine’s into my pocket. While I am in there, I hear a glass shatter. Then another one. Then another. The shattering is spaced out enough that I can tell Ackerman hasn’t had an accident, that he’s doing this on purpose.

When I get out there, he’s already got the broom out. He’s sweeping the chards into the dust pan.

“You okay?” I ask.

“Just a little clumsy,” he tells me.

When I leave, Ackerman follows me to my car. I move in a measured way, weighed down by all of Elaine’s curios. While I’m loading the sex chair into my trunk, that pair of Elaine’s panties I stole accidentally falls out of my jacket pocket and onto the ground. I quickly kick them under my car and turn back toward to Ackerman to see if he’s noticed. His lips have pursed and his eyes are held in a squint. He’s not looking at me, he’s gazing up at the clouds in the night sky.

“We should do this again,” he says.

“Definitely,” I say, offering a handshake. Ackerman lets my hand hang out in the air for a long time, but then he finally grabs it.

“I’m a hugger,” he says, and before I can stop him Ackerman pulls me into his body, surrounds me. I squirm a little at the beginning of his hug; wonder if he can feel everything else I’ve stolen from him pressing against his body, wonder if he can feel the picture of Elaine, or if maybe the dart is poking him in the thigh. He doesn’t say anything so I settle in, get comfortable, hug him back. We stand there for a long time. I don’t let go until he lets go.

From his bed, my husband Mitch yells for fresh air and sunlight for our son. He argues that this is child abuse; that Swayze needs to be an indoor/outdoor baby, not just an indoor one.

“For the love of God, Mona,” he tells me, “stop this now.”

I empty out Mitch’s catheter bag. I bring him his protein shakes. I flip his body to keep the bedsores at bay. While I care for him, Mitch never fails to remind me that he used to charge enemy bunkers and root around in mountain caves, always ready to meet his maker.

“Of all the crazy shit I’ve seen,” he says, “what you’re doing to Swayze is the shithouse craziest.”

We live in an isolated area, in a rambler surrounded by a thick stand of Norway pine. Our winding driveway is washed out, treacherous even in daylight. Mitch’s parents died years ago and the only visitors we get now are my mom and James, the delivery boy from the grocery store. I’ve tried to convince Mitch that Swayze’s safer living like this, but Mitch won’t be convinced.

“This isn’t about his safety,” he yells, “it’s about your irrational fear.”

Mitch was a ranter even before that landmine took his legs, but since then he’s gotten much worse. I usually play the role of the good wife and let him scream and gnash his teeth all he wants, but sometimes when his rant gets especially lengthy or loud I open up the Bible of indoor baby rearing, Nurture Against Nature , by the noted Swiss pediatrician and agoraphobe, Dr. Gustav Halder, and I drown Mitch out.