Robert Lopez - Good People

I’M NOT TANYA’S IDEA of a handsome man. She hasn’t told me this herself, but I’ve heard it from other people, people we have in common, including my Sofia.

The people we have in common are horrible because of who they are and where they come from and how they were raised. There are other reasons, too, but these are the most important.

I remember the night my Sofia told me I wasn’t Tanya’s idea of a handsome man. Everything about it was awful and I mostly blame God, but certainly Tanya and my Sofia shoulder some responsibility, too.

Also, Teddy the cripple, who played a part in all of this and who once upon a time was my best friend, if you can believe that.

I sometimes think of Teddy and Tanya and my Sofia as an unholy trinity, but I don’t know which is the father, who’s the son, or what the unholy ghost.

I’m not at all religious, which is why I don’t know who should be what.

But this was long ago, before all of these horrible people, including my Sofia, told me that I wasn’t Tanya’s idea of a handsome man, though I’m sure nothing’s changed.

When I say nothing, I mean Tanya’s ideas more than anything else.

Otherwise, everything in the world has changed and not for the better.

Some of these people, the horrible ones, do believe I am, in fact, a handsome man, but that is both of no surprise and no consolation.

One of these is my Sofia, wherever she may be, all over the crippled world.

Even still, I wake like most people, in the morning and every day, after a long, brutal night and fitful sleep, and I stumble into the bathroom and think about the people, including Tanya and my Sofia, who I know are horrible and my headache pounds and the cold tile shocks and my erection sags and I empty my bladder and think another day and for what purpose and to what end and this is when I open the medicine cabinet and consider swallowing all of the painkillers and sleeping pills, but then I look into the mirror and I want to kiss myself, good God.

I take in my features all at once, though it is better to concentrate on certain aspects one at a time. Otherwise, the whole of it can be overwhelming.

There is the color and shape of my eyes, the perfect brows framing them just so. The forehead, which bears only the slightest hints of age and faded scars from a childish bout with chicken pox. The full lips with that charming birthmark edging toward the right corner, the dimpled chin obscured by a salt-and-pepper beard, neatly trimmed, the line moving from the top of my ears in a perfect L shape to the rim of my mouth.

There is a glow.

I don’t know what’s wrong with Tanya and her ideas, why she couldn’t see what was always right in front of her, though I’ve spent many a long night trying to figure out what the problem was and how it might’ve been fixed.

I try not to think about Teddy, because by rights he should be dead by now.

It pains me that the horrible people are horrible, including my Sofia and including Tanya, and I think what can I do. I am a man, after all, and I am surrounded on all sides, helpless, and all I can do is keep to myself, which I do most of the time because were I to say this out loud for anyone to hear, for anyone to take the wrong way, misinterpret, because that’s what horrible people do the world over, in big cities and small towns and quiet villages and hamlets and rural prairie places with all of the grain waving and grandstanding, then what will become of me then?

I often think about what will become of me.

I think about what will become of my Sofia, too, wherever she may be, who is, or rather was, when I knew her, as anyone might imagine, horrible.

I do not think about what will become of Tanya because of her misguided ideas.

The few people still left in town have always taken things the wrong way, have always talked about me and my private affairs, what went on between me and my Sofia and Tanya, for instance.

This is how these people were raised. You can tell by how they look at you out of the corner of their faces, hissing, snickering. They were taught to behave like this, to take things the wrong way, to talk about other people’s private affairs.

People always want to tear down their betters.

My Sofia and Tanya are twin sisters, or rather, were twin sisters, because one or both might be dead now. I’m not sure if you remain twins after death.

So many people are dead now or might be, including members of my own family.

My family did everything they could for me. They never allowed me to work on the farm, for instance. This perhaps wasn’t best in the long run, but they didn’t know better and I do not blame them entirely.

My Sofia was always dying.

I would feed my Sofia painkillers and sleeping pills because I wanted to help. I always had good intentions when it came to my Sofia. I didn’t enjoy seeing her suffer like that, though some claim otherwise. Some claim that I only got involved with my Sofia so I could get close to Tanya. Others that I was trying my best to kill my Sofia, keep her sickly, weak. This is yet another example of how horrible people are horrible, that they can even imagine this sort of thing, which is a particularly craven way of looking at the vicissitudes of love.

I don’t know what that means, but it seems right to me.

When I say some claim what they claimed about me and my Sofia in regards to Tanya I’m talking about Teddy the cripple, my best friend, most of all. Teddy would claim this all the time, both to my face and to everyone we knew in common.

Everyone recognized the peculiar perfection of my face, the way I carried myself, some said like a king or Jesus.

There was always scuttlebutt, hearsay, innuendo.

I was famous.

I would see her next to me in the mirror, my Sofia, in the morning, looking the way she looked, and I’d open the medicine cabinet and pull however many pills from the pillboxes and say, Take these.

She would choke them down all at once, look up at me, and say, So now what?

I never had an answer for her, but we would go back to bed and take advantage of each other for the rest of the day.

These were glorious times.

I never once thought of Tanya while in the middle of my Sofia.

Teddy was crippled anew every few years, but it started with what his parents did to him as a boy. They would have him work all day on the farm even though he wasn’t strong enough to do it. Teddy was born with scoliosis and a clubfoot and had no more business out there in the field than me or my Sofia.

When Teddy was finished in the fields, he would come in and they’d feed him some stew if they weren’t in the middle of themselves. Teddy said he’d come into the house sometimes and catch his parents tangled up in the living room. Sometimes they would ask him to take pictures. He never showed me the pictures, but I saw them one time over at his place. They were next to his bed, hidden behind a stack of books and papers.

I think maybe Teddy was in the fields while I was in his room looking at the pictures, doing whatever he had to do out there.

Maybe you can’t blame Teddy entirely for what happened with my Sofia.

So much of my time is spent trying to assign blame to those who deserve it most.

For instance, my Sofia. I haven’t seen her in years. I don’t know where in the world she might be hiding herself.

My Sofia used to hide from me all the time. I would come out of class and look for her in the hallways, in the playground, on the streets, in the meadow. She was always nowhere.