We Don't Encourage Stopping By by Sean Ennis

We Don’t Encourage Stopping By

When Gabe wouldn’t talk as a baby, oh man, did we have excuses. Same as now. Colleen wants to know where we’ve been, have we sided with Connor? She’s at the door in denim. Our house was built in the fifties by a man’s man but we have a woman contractor now, which we like on principle only. It’s a pain-point for us, all those voice mails. But Colleen has dipped into the pills she takes before flying, and she’s like slurring her growls. Grace and I stay quiet, let her talk and question—accuse—she’s been through it. Though, of course, she started it. Poor Connor, who reminds me explicitly of an elephant, stripped of its tusks, deciding to trample a rickety, abandoned village. This is exactly his reaction metaphorically out in the world. I’m not going to say he’s hiding around the corner in the kitchen. He’s not. We are trying not to get involved! Instead, Grace and I have inserted a new move into our lovemaking—we just made it up. You have to keep it fresh and awkward or else you end up like Colleen and Connor. Other than this moment, no one ever comes to our door. We don’t encourage stopping by to borrow some sugar. The dogs hate it. I hate it. Grace takes a step out into the carport thankfully. Some might think I am obligated by gender to take Connor’s side in this mess, but I haven’t since 2018. A person with pink hair was flirting with Grace at the movies and I didn’t even get mad or punch them, though Gabe wanted me to. With Grace and Colleen in the carport, I go back to the kitchen where Connor is in fact hiding. “She has denigrated my manhood,” he says. “It’s tattered.” He has the look of a dog that’s been mounted. “People should lose their jobs for doing what she did.” I pour him a soda water, and then Gabe walks in the kitchen, already talking about basketball. I don’t want my son to see this. “Do you have a girlfriend, little man?” Connor says. “Watch your fucking back.” I’m training Gabe to look for love and beauty in the world and this ain’t it.

I’m up! I’m up!

This was real life and she was actually showing a group of teenage boys how to blow a bubble. I also happen to know that her JavaScript is excellent. I do have some gum but this is no place for me. The youth is shocking, and this wasp has been in my car for days, by which I mean, I’m in a bad mood. The yoga did nothing. The teeth whitening, nothing. That trip to Yazoo City, boy, did we go. I have a picture in my camera roll of their witch’s grave. Maybe I blame that. I’m in the Yazoo City of the soul, hack hack! I’ve always imagined the soul as a pair of glowing lungs. That’s too much. I’m in the Birmingham mall of the soul, spending green money on Gabe. It’s actually quite mild—in this mutant food court, we are smiling and superior. Grace asked where I would go if I had five days to myself, and the right answer was nowhere without you, but I said New York to work and Tokyo to eat. I’ve never been in a hotel alone. I’m so bad at reading her mind.

Narration as follows: 

[Bored, there was a rainbow]

Bored, there was a rainbow. The power had been literally out for two hours and I hated playing cards. In the dark, that thing where I cleared my throat a hundred times got really annoying and I was not having a moment of communing with my pioneer ancestors. I was reading The Changing Light at Sandover & Zombies with a flashlight in my mouth. It’s not that scary. But with storms like these, people lose their minds/ trees, the roots end up pointing up. The psychological effects, for me, are mild—this house has brick integrity and our magnolia trees could be taken down a few notches. There was no appliance buzz, and it’s like I'm hearing our home for the first time. The panting of the dogs mainly, their scratching. This natural ambiance inspired me to be romantic.

 “Come kiss me under the rainbow,” I said to Grace, “There’s a rainbow and just a drizzle.” 

“Not now,” she said, “I’m engrossed in this word puzzle.”

It was at this point in the dark Gabe chose to realize something.

 “I was an accident, wasn’t I?” He was learning Calculus and Sex Ed  and combining that education, and for that, our pride continued.

So I said, “Like a rainbow is an accident,” which was not the right thing to say to a teenager or really accurate. 

“Happy accident!” Grace yelled from the bedroom and Gabe laughed as if we had just unlocked his freedom to do whatever. 

I kept trying to work the rainbow into conversation. This showed I could be socially awkward when I wanted. “I’m going to take a picture of this rainbow if anyone wants to see.”

No one did, so I didn’t. 

The birds came back. There were trees we wanted and trees we didn't want, but none were damaged. There’s a young oak I wouldn’t mind dragging to the curb. The magnolias, it’s illegal to cut them down. I remember Mrs.King frowned when I just pruned one. I’m allowed!

Then,  Gabe asked, “Also, am I circumcised?”

*

But, what luck, the power came back, cramming the rooms. I nodded. It, all of it, was a non-issue now. This was just a little afternoon. We’d lose these soon–Gabe had been packing his bags one item at a time for years. Grace might invest more ruthlessly in her puzzles. It will become hard to distinguish which memories have value. They’ll continue adding ghouls to books. I am not that old.

………………..

Sean Ennis is the author of CHASE US: Stories (Little A) and his fiction has recently appeared in Wigleaf, Flash Frog, Jellyfish Review, Pithead Chapel and Hobart.

More of his work can be found at seanennis.net

Twitter: @Seanennis110