When We Were Animals by Gaylord Joshua

Author:Gaylord, Joshua [Gaylord, Joshua]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, epub
ISBN: 9780316297929
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2015-04-21T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

My husband closes the door of his office and turns to look out the window while he eats the lunch I packed for him in the morning. He rotates his head in a small circle, meditatively, as though working out some stiffness in his neck. When he takes a bite of his sandwich, he leans forward, then leans back again to chew it, his eyes squinting at the sunlight coming through the window. With his empty left hand, he taps his fingertips together in sequence—which makes it look as though he’s counting something, but I don’t think he is. Sometimes, between bites, it’s almost as though he has forgotten entirely what he’s doing. He just sits, his eyes gone far out over the land, his whole body very, very still, until he remembers to take another bite.

I lean back behind the trunk of my tree so that he cannot see me. There’s a sandwich of my own tucked in my purse, and I take it out and eat it along with my husband, taking in the same view he sees. I imagine what it must be like to have an office, a desk, a computer to keep track of your appointments, and people visiting you all day, asking you questions and getting you to put your signature on documents.

A man who works for the school walks by with a rake. He waves at me. I smile at him but make no gesture. It is what a ladybug would do, I imagine, smiling indifferently at the world and continuing on her way.

I peek around the tree trunk, and when it is safe, I continue watching Jack. There’s one young woman who visits him frequently—she looks like a teacher. During dinner, he usually recounts his day to me in some detail, but he has never told me about her. She wears her hair in a ponytail and speaks in a very animated fashion and does a funny thing where she sits on his desk while she talks. I wonder if they have had sex, locked in his office after hours or suddenly, fervently, in her car in the deserted parking lot under the buzzing lamplight. She is very pretty, and she laughs easily.

Later, when I go to pick my son up at school, the children are all running to and fro on the playground. My son is being chased—or he is chasing, it’s impossible to tell—and as I watch, he trips and falls and begins to cry. He sits up and raises his scraped palms to the air. I can see that they are streaked sooty black and pocked with gravel, and they are bleeding a little. Hands are things that never stay undamaged for very long. They go everywhere, and they feel the suffering of all the tactile world. That’s why people use fingerprints to identify you—the scarred record of everything you have touched.

My boy cries, as children do when they are in pain.

His teacher, Miss Lily, is suddenly beside me.

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