The Palimpsest Review - Volume 10

Palimpsest onLine!'s Professional Writers at Work

Return to Palimpsest onLine!
 

Sarah Etter: “Concaves”

Marissa Molina: "The Day I Wasn’t There"

Andrew Timberlake-Newell: "Smokie"

Anthony Kocur: "To the Edge"

David Kim: "Young and Perverted"

Ryan Morini: "B – Movie Enthusiast"

Joe Giachero: "Whatever Came First"

Meghan Elliott: "Sound"

Veronika L Daddona: "Driver" and "Lamentia"

Ronell Smith: "The 1988 Holiday Barbie"

Charles Howells: "Bandwagon Patriots"

Andrew Noll: "Ten Feet Behind J.F.K."

Sarah E. Smith: "Autumn Skies"

Daniel Debiec: "A Morning in Missoula" and "into the rain"

Ryan Melling: "Hand in Hand"

Andraleen Zelonis: "Let’s Play"

Kevin Cope: "House Guest"

Becky Liscusky: "I Like Dogs and Frogs" and "You know the pan’s hot"

Amber Shinskie: "Scent of a Cherry Cigar"

Zachary Bricker: "Bedtime Story"

 

The Palimpsest Review and Palimpsest onLine! are publications of The Pennsylvania State University. The words and ideas contained within their pages are the property of their authors and cannot be used for any purposes without the authors' specific written consent.

Joe Giachero – Berks

   Whatever Came First

Andrew Kelley ducked into his banged up sport-compact car; it was far too small for anyone of his stature, but it was the sole possession willed to him by his little brother. Sure, he knew that the car probably served as collateral for a drug shipment at one point in its history, but it now served as Andrew’s transportation from his dead-end job to his dead-end life. Each night he folded his six and a half foot body into the driver’s seat, drenched in the thick odor of cardboard french-fry containers saturated with week-old frying oil from his fast food breakfasts, lunches, and dinners of the week. Occasionally he sipped from the leftover super-sized Coke in his cup holder that had become a lukewarm solution of more melted ice cubes than coke. The waxy cardboard cup was soft and wet by now, and as Andrew tightened his grip, the cup became less structural. This was his constant reminder that his life, though simple and repetitive, was building towards a collapse.
    Exactly seven minutes earlier, Andrew had pressed the necessary combination of buttons to arm Shop-Rite’s overnight security system. Andrew’s workday was over at eleven thirty-six, marking the moment that his worries officially changed focus from frozen foods to a frozen wife. As he turned the key in the door, it was as if the deadbolt struck the closing bell of the New York Stock Exchange, and if he squinted, Andrew could see his red Porsche across the lot, waiting to take him home to his penthouse, to a different wife in the dining room mulling over which wine to serve with their candlelit dinner that she had prepared. As Andrew made his way across the artificially lit, empty parking lot, avoiding the puddle of motor oil positioned in each spot, the shape of his sixteen-year-old Toyota became more apparent.
    Once inside the car, disintegrating cup in hand, Andrew was assured that the dream was over. All expression that may have accidentally entered his face during the lapse of reality had now drained down his chest and legs and probably escaped through the rusted hole in the floor of his Toyota onto the road, to be run over by the big trucks. His drive was silent and pleasing, that is until home was close enough that he could feel the chill in the air and the cold sweat on his chest. Only a few turns off the main road and he would be in the driveway of his home of deadly glances over silent Sundays, home of a marriage that was nothing more than a certificate and a ball of confusion and anger, home of his daughter, whose conception meant the death of Andrew’s dreams and ambitions. Andrew’s smiles and plastic enthusiasm that covered him at work were not bulletproof in this home. He was just thankful he had the fourteen-hour shift, was gone before his family woke, home after they were asleep. The mouths he had to feed would deliver rhythmic snores into the midnight air by the time he got home. Anything was better than actual confrontation.
    Andrew Kelley had exaggerated aspirations in high school. His plans included an extensive college education, and a life as a brilliant businessman, working and living in New York City. His true potential was realized the day his wife showed him the pregnancy test, the same day he signed his withdrawal papers after a semester and a half in business school, the day he had to add diapers and baby formula to his budget, which previously included only candy bars and quarters for the laundry mat. His abbreviated education and total lack of common sense rendered him very unqualified for even his low-level career as the frozen food department manager.
    “It’s the perfect job for summer; you’ll spend most of your days in the nice, cool freezer. We’ll get you some new work gloves and a box cutter, and you’ll be all set.” Andrew remembered the day he trained Bud as a stocker in the frozen foods department. He could tell that Bud was impressed with his encouraging words, acquainting him with the advantages of this minimum wage summer job with excitement, as if Bud were signing into a multi-million dollar partnership. Andrew found the excessive enthusiasm in his own words slightly eerie because he knew that Bud was just beginning the same hell he had lived for seven years. Bud was expecting Andrew to hand him the keys to the company’s vacation cottage in Vermont for him to visit at his leisure, but Andrew knew that in reality this job would barely afford Bud the proper treatment of his young wife’s expected baby.
    “Bud, look at these!” Andrew picked up a box of packing materials.
    “Okay, what are they?”
    “Oh, man, they’re those new Styrofoam peanuts that dissolve in water!”
    “Okay, that’s cool, I guess.”
    Andrew popped a handful of the Styrofoam in his mouth and started chewing, “Look! They’re gone!” He opened his mouth to show Bud, like a child who had finished his peas.
    “That will probably kill you, Andy! You can’t eat them!”
    “Nah, I eat these all the time. I’m actually thinking of marketing them with flavoring.”
    Andrew only intended friendly interaction but knew that these episodes fueled his coworkers with jokes about him, and he hated it. He knew every time that they were laughing at him, not with him, and he heard every word muttered under their breath expressing their disbelief at how darn stupid he was. He knew that eventually his days at work would become as unbearable as his nights at home, and he dreaded that. But for seven years, a fake smile and a couple of blinders kept him out of harm’s way, just as his bed and closed eyes saved him at home.
    The headlights of his car cast narrow beams of light down an empty highway. The road was clear because nobody else was lucky enough to come home this late from work, and Andrew felt truly blessed for that fact. He wondered if his neighbors were jealous of him. They had to be jealous that he could easily avoid his wife and daughter, while they were forced to discuss their family’s problems over dinner. Life was painful enough for him, and he couldn’t imagine the pain his neighbors must have dealt with. His body and car rumbled over the three potholes that let him know his turn was coming soon. His time was almost up. His wheels turned with the ruts in the road that he believed his car’s seven-year routine were solely responsible for creating. From the top of his street he could see that the bedroom light was off, one of the few things on his checklist that assured him he could safely squeeze through the night without sharing words with the woman in his bed.
    Andrew preferred to coast down his street with the car off, so not to wake the family. He got out of his car carrying his weekly paycheck and watered down drink. He walked a few steps, and again twisted a key in a lock. There were no bells this time, but silence that he hoped not to disturb. In the kitchen, Andrew tore open the envelope that contained his paycheck and read the digital print by the gray moonlight. As he placed the check on the table for his wife to cash and spend as needed, he thought of what a great husband he was. He could almost picture god smiling down at him. He paused at the kitchen counter and downed the last gulp of Coke. Andrew browsed his memory, but couldn’t recollect a conversation between his wife and himself since the last five or six paychecks he had left her. He dropped the cup in the trashcan, kicked off his shoes, and his socks brought him silently down the hallway.
    The bedroom was lit by an angle of light spilling through the bathroom doorway. The soft sixty-watt bulb above the kitchen sink was blinding in contrast to the soaking black of their apartment’s hallway. As his fingers, deadened by seven years of freezing temperatures at work, fumbled with the buttons on his pinstripe shirt, Andrew followed the slice of white light with his eyes. It outlined a piece of the floor, then cut to the bed. The light came to a point on his wife’s motionless body. She looked the same every night, like a few sacks of potatoes bundled in a white comforter aged to an antique brown. Twisting his torso, he reached into the open closet to hang his shirt, embroidered with the “Shop-Rite” insignia, amidst its dozen or so freshly laundered identical counterparts. His eyes fixed on the pocket of the first shirt. There was a corner of pink notepaper staring right back at him from the pocket. Andrew removed the note from the pocket, angling it toward the bathroom door so he could catch the light.
    Andy,
    I’ve laundered the last batch of your shirts.
    I’ve read our daughter her last bedtime story.
    I’ve waited for you too long.
    I loved you.
    Goodbye,
    Margery
    A wave of warm numbness came over Andrew’s body. He contemplated pleading with her, but she had threatened to leave him before. As long as nothing changed, it would be okay. Note in hand, he walked toward the bathroom to shut off the light. He almost began to think about the meaning of this note, but instead imagined he was at work, where the humming of the fans inside the freezer filled the gaps in his body where emotion should be. The bathroom sink was filled with three empty, transparent, brown pill bottles. He crumbled the note, and with no emotion, swept it into the trashcan along with the pill bottles.
    Andrew Kelley folded his six and a half foot body into bed, a bed that was far too small for anyone of his stature. Once in bed, Andrew counted the seconds as long as he could until his eyes closed, his brain shut off, and he could stop worrying about having a conversation with those he was supposed to love. His dreams were prayers that he would quickly see the end of this night, or this life, whatever came first.