101 Words

I’m playing ping-pong with my brother in our mother’s basement. He finesses a nasty spin; I slam the ball into the net. When I try to serve, I can’t get anything out of my hand. Mike beats the crap out of me every single game. I obsess over all the missed volleys and returns.

When I wake up, I tell my wife how I only dream about him on his birthday or on holidays, especially Christmas and Easter, when we’d gather at our childhood home for game after game.

Mike has been dead eight years. I wish I missed him more.

Gale wasn’t going to be bound by convention. She refused to carry a purse. When she went to work, her personal items went in her briefcase.

Leo, a coworker, jestingly suggested, “That must be a purse. It contains all your personal stuff.”

Gale insisted, “I do not carry a purse. The briefcase is a briefcase.”

A pointless back and forth ensued.

Leo desperately appealed to an innocent bystander for support.

He asked John, “Gale puts her personal items in a briefcase. What does that make it?”

Trying to be diplomatic, John replied, “Normal.”

Gale, feeling validated, stuck out her tongue triumphantly.

“You swear too much.”

That’s what my son said, shaking his homemade swear box.

“A pound a swear word. All for a good cause.”

Then he left, slamming the front room door. Loudly.

I swore at him.

Twice.

Cost me two quid.

Day Two. He started a fight with his sister.

Cost me four quid.

Day Three. He took my car without asking.

Cost me five quid.

Day Four. He lost the garage keys.

Cost me seven quid.

Day Five. He stole the swear box and went out with mates.

A bloody good cause.

I swear; one day, I’ll kill him.

When I fell in love with flying, I never imagined this would be my fate.

Then we crashed. And Noonan tried to eat me, forcing my hand. The hunger, such that I’d never felt before, abated after I ate him.

I wish we’d found the fountain before that. As that clear water splashed down my throat, I felt rejuvenated, like consuming a thousand Noonans.

I haven’t felt hungry since, though I do crave cheese.

The years have ravaged my body into a state of perpetual weakness. But I cannot die.

I have to finish my quest.

I must swim.

—Amelia Earhart

A sense of calm surrounds me. I’m dying. The EMTs are shouting at each other over the siren. I hear their assessments—blood loss, pressure dropping, breathing shallow.

“Look at me,” the younger man orders. I do as he says, if only to keep him calm.

Suddenly you are right beside me. You squeeze in beside the older EMT and take my hand. “You’re going to be fine,” you say. “Trust me. We’ll be together forever.”

Trust you? I think about our last moments together. You reaching over to unbuckle my seatbelt as you drive us into the concrete bridge embankment.

It had rested in its hard-shell case for almost 60 years. The last time he took it out, demonstrators jammed up Fifth Avenue demanding a better tomorrow singing, “We Shall Overcome!”

And times were a-changing again.

He wondered if he could still use it. Slinging it onto his shoulder, he managed to hold it in position. His fingers refused to curl without causing crippling arthritic pain.

He was about to give up until it all cascaded over him: the cause, the hope, the girl. He played the old strings through the ache. Not his best performance, but that wasn’t the point.

I tell people I “lost”you, as if I left you at the busy bar or let go of your hand in the airport terminal. As if you’d fallen off the table and slipped through the gap between the floorboards or leapt from my pocket at the end of the garden. Tucked yourself beneath the sofa, forgetting to come out again.

I tell them you slipped away, as if I could pluck you from that gap in the floor, pull you out from the brambles. Like a jigsaw piece you’d surface again, as if you were always there, just temporarily misplaced.