The Drawing Board

"Stop reading love letters and help me move your mattress," I half joked. She was kneeling down beside her bed, a shoebox's capacity of old bill statements, forgotten parking tickets, and various other correspondence strewn about her on the floor like the paper orbit of a beautiful sun.

"It's from you," she replied, trying to hide the watery sheen her eyes had just acquired. Why'd she have to find this now? So much for production.

I stepped closer and looked down at the three poorly ripped pages of composition notebook paper. They were folded into three unequal sections. It looked like a four-year-old had torn them out and butchered their creases. Even in the early days of our courtship I'd failed her. My coordination, my presentation, my overall effort: they were lacking. Only my intentions were there, but what good had they done us? Or anyone, for that matter?

"Oh. Right. I remember that crooked I." And I did, though partially because I'd drawn an arrow to it and made mention of its ambiguity in the margin of the paper. It looked like an upper case Z, or perhaps a 2.

Scanning the fine-point black ink over her shoulder didn't jog any tangible memories in terms of content. My observation of the letter was like that of a child looking for constellations in the night sky. They're there if you say so, those mythical beasts. So were my yearning words of yore; I just didn't recognize them. Acknowledging their presence was an exercise in faith, a faith as fake as my father's.

The climate of the room changed, though not due to the hissing radiator. She shot me a smile, one I didn't deserve. "You're the best, Babe." I wished I knew which ancient line had convinced her of such a fanciful notion. It could be the premise for a best-selling book to dupe the masses.

"Thanks. I think I can lift this mattress alone," and I did. Somewhere in the back of my dense skull I sensed that I'd be doing a lot more things on my own quite soon. This first act seemed like good practice. Even my absent dad would agree with my assessment: Christ, too, was more fisherman than carpenter.