And my poor wife, he said. She worries about me so. She can’t sleep at night.

Reconciled, they let him talk on. Wise, they waited. Old, they gripped their tattered rags about themselves and leaned forward to speak of dreams and demons and faded plastic flowers.

Dead, he heard weeping high above him, and finally understood.

Facing the Music

Facing the Music

I cut my eyes sideways because I know what’s coming. “You want the light off, honey?” she says. Very quietly.

I can see as well with it as without it. It’s an old movie I’m watching, Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend. This character he’s playing, this guy will do anything to get a drink. He’d sell children, probably, to get a drink. That’s the kind of person Ray’s playing.

Sometimes I have trouble resting at night, so I watch the movies until I get sleepy. They show them—all-night movies—on these stations from Memphis and Tupelo. There are probably a lot of people like me, unable to sleep, lying around watching them with me. I’ve got remote control so I can turn it on or off and change channels. She’s stirring around the bedroom, doing things, doing something—I don’t know what. She has to stay busy. Our children moved away and we don’t have any pets.

We used to have a dog, a little brown one, but I accidentally killed it. Backed over its head with the station wagon one morning. She used to feed it in the kitchen, right after she came home from the hospital. But I told her, no more. It hurts too much to lose one.

“It doesn’t matter,” I say, finally, which is not what I’m thinking.

“That’s Ray Milland,” she says. “Wasn’t he young then.” Wistful like.

So he was. I was too once. So was she. So was everybody. But this movie is forty years old.

“You going to finish watching this?” she says. She sits on the bed right beside me. I’m propped up on the TV pillow. It’s blue corduroy and I got it for Christmas last year. She said I was spending so much time in the bed, I might as well be comfortable. She also said it could be used for other things, too. I said what things?

I don’t know why I have to be so mean to her, like it’s her fault. She asks me if I want some more ice. I’m drinking whiskey. She knows it helps me. I’m not so much of a bastard that I don’t know she loves me.

Actually, it’s worse than that. I don’t mean anything against God by saying this, but sometimes I think she worships me.