On an Evening of Rain
by Darby Larson
His wife danced in the attic on mornings of rain. In the attic she read and wrote poetry, read books he'd never heard of, books she'd only barely heard of, recommended by people she'd barely heard of and never met. She never wore make-up except during her untouchable years. Some of this he loved about her. What he used to love about her. Years ago she looked up at him and he said to her, "Mascara ruins your eyes," and he meant it and she never wore mascara again after that, and every morning he looked into her clear eyes and loved her, on mornings of.
Their two children, an eight-year old girl and a nine-year old boy, were similar to their parents in some ways, different in some ways, in other ways."Where do you get these magazines?" the man asked his wife on an evening of rain.
"I get them from the internet," she replied all wet from the rain.
Mornings were hard on the man because his wife slept in on mornings. He had to get the kids ready for school and get himself ready for work at the same time under the same rain. His wife didn't work. His wife woke up at 8:30 am to an empty house most mornings and climbed the tiny attic stairs and drank coffee and painted and read and wrote and danced. Loud folksy music coming always from the attic in the afternoons.
"I've decided to commit suicide," she said to the man, her husband, after he'd just walked in the door, home from work after a long day.
He said nothing, frozen in the doorway.
"Just kidding," she said.
He said nothing, frozen like a golden statue in the doorway. Later he melted into a puddle of gold on the floor. Later she danced on the puddle of gold on the floor near the front door; on the other side, in the street, kids on bikes on ramps jumping into gravity.
They sat at a booth at the cowboy restaurant. The man's wife wore a cowboy hat. She was doing a cowboy thing and the kids were cowboys and everyone was cowboys except the man. She was a vegetarian but ordered anyway a full rack of pork ribs and ate the ribs and spit sauce on the floor like there was a spittoon down there and the kids laughed like cowboys happily learning tricks of the trade. She ordered two shots of whiskey and did the shots and slammed the empty glasses on the table upside down. "I reckon we better git along," she said. The man paid with his gold card.
Their son came home from school with his elbow scraped and bleeding from riding the gravity ramps. The man's wife took him to the bathroom, applied disinfectant and a band-aid. She sent him back outside to scrape the other elbow, then went back up to the attic and sat on the attic floor and looked at the attic clouds through the tiny attic window and wept a little.
The man came home on an evening of rain to find seven or eight drunk men in his living room. One was playing an old banjo. One was his father-in-law. They were singing sea shanties. His wife was amongst them, dancing, twirling. Everything, loud. One of the men noticed the man standing on the puddle of gold in the foyer and yelled. And everyone yelled. And one of the men went to him, took him by the arm, dragged him to the center of the room, to his wife, and the music erupted, and his wife wiggled, and the man was the only thing in the room not moving.
Darby Larson has work published or forthcoming in Pequin, Wigleaf, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Eyeshot,Eclectica, No Colony, New York Tyrant, and elsewhere. He is the editor of the online journal ABJECTIVE (http://www.abjective.net). He blogs regularly at http://www.darbylarson.blogspot.com.