The children had left for college. It was just us. And it felt like some truth was in order.  And that one of us or both of us was set to administer it to each other other over time.

She said to me, “You’re not as good looking as you think.” She said this at a time when it was especially hard to lie to oneself.

And she wasn’t being mean in any stretch of the imagination. She just wanted me to shut up about my thinning hair and my bulging belly and my lack of sexual appetite toward her. She wanted to say it as a joke. And in a way, she did.

“Now tell me a truth,” she said.

“But that was only an opinion,” I countered.

“Right,” she said. “It’s the opinions that bother us more that fact.”

I agreed, and told her that she wasn’t as good-looking as she thought. She laughed agreed.

The husband seemed out of place with the festivities that surrounded him.

Outsice, an M6 awaited him. With someone inside, behind the wheel. Honking. Someone impatiently wanting to head home. Someone young, male, who wasn’t his spouse.
The honking pulled people’s attention from the party, from the house, and caused them to move outside, to the rather sprawling drive way.
Eventually the front yard filled with onlookers, wine glasses in hand, clutching linen napkins, gawking. What else might the man behind the wheel do? They wondered. Cry? Stop honking? Turn on the radio? Leaving without the husband who was still inside with the few remaining guests?
They were witnessing some sort of unfolding here. It was the young man in the car who unfolded, spilling out of the car in the process.
The honking had stopped. The husband never came out. Eventually the guests went back inside, most of them not bothering to look back, to see if the man picked himself from the gravel. Grovel? Gravel? It made not difference to them.

…is just the way she is.

Although it seemed our dog was falling ill, he seemed to make a good recovery along around the time I got home from work.
I had planned on taking him to the vet, but he seemed extremely chipper when I walked in, his tail waving, barking what I knew was a happy bark.
I wish I knew what had been wrong with him before. I don’t want to believe dogs get depressed from time to time. It’s a lot of guilt and blame I would feel, since I might not be able to find out what made it sad in the first place.

What if it’s something I can’t change. Or worse, what if it is?

It has such as specific smell that it is indescribable. It doesn’t smell like anything else in this world. Maybe it’s from another planet. Maybe it’s being transmitted from another galaxy. But that’s dumb. And scary. Only crazy people think that.

But I admire mentally ill people; their ability to focus on one or two ideas that they doggedly pursue. Or maybe even just their mumbling seems to make sense to them because they’ve done it so long.

I wonder what they smell. I wonder if its indescribable. I wonder if crazy is always crazy What would it be like. What would it smell like. Only the nose knows.

The cat awoke, stretched, stuck out its tongue, hopped off the couch, then turned the corner, and entered the bedroom.
“And we never saw the cat again,” the man told the detective.
“Why did you murder him?” the detective asked.
“I didn’t.”
“You most certainly did.”
The man knew he needed to confess. But instead he flashed a smile and offered the detective a cigarette.
“I don’t smoke.”
“Not even just a little?”
“Mr…”
“Please. Call me Ed.”
“Alright, Ed. You’re under the arrest for the murder of your cat.”
“Then you won’t mind if I have a cigarette?”
“Get your hat.”
“Alright.” The man did not light the cigarette. He reached for his hat and then his coat.
They took him downtown and booked him.

1. It tells you what you are missing.

She apologized for using the elevator, just to get to the third floor. “It’s been a long day,” she said.
“I get it,” I said. And then decided to flirt with her, on the ride up.

I told her I thought the elevator smelled like marijuana.
She agreed.
“Or Heinecken,” I added
“Or a combo of the two,” she said.

That was as far as we got. We had reached the third floor. I was on my way to the fourteenth.

It’s not about the dishes–they don’t have to be clean. Or dried. Or put away.

Just a chance to keep busy before the next chore: bedtime stories. Can’t decide what to read to him. If all else fails, I will choose the bible. He falls asleep fairly quickly anyway.

I’ll start with the Book of Exodus. I won’t get very far. My own eyes will grow heavy.

Maybe I should read something more lively. Dr. Seuss. J.K. Rowling. He says his heart cracks when he learns of Harry Potter’s misfortunes. If he comprehends the bible his heart may never mend. Not a chance I’m willing to take.

In the end I decide on National Geographic. The photography keeps him interested longer than I expected. He starts asking about caribou. We stay up way past his bedtime.

The boy had decided it was best to tell the truth, about his teeth, about the robin’s eggs, his mother, his pinkie, his towel, the rain, the piece of candy still stuck on the roof of his mouth. But truth could be told so much easily and with no words by grabbing his mother’s mascara and awning his eyes lashes with it, without benefit of a mirror.
His mother might be utterly confused by the site of him. She might yell and hit him. But the truth was there.