Chasm

After 25 years of marriage, a chasm had come between Bruce and Maggie. It wasn’t a chasm to begin with, of course. For a while it had been a rift. Before that, a fissure. No one can say for sure what caused the chasm. Perhaps it was because Maggie forgot how to communicate with her husband. Perhaps it was Bruce’s late nights at work. Perhaps it was the fault line that ran beneath their house. Perhaps…perhaps, I’d better start from the beginning.

For almost two decades, Maggie and Bruce were as happy as clams. Happy as live clams, that is. Clams living peacefully in the tidal mudflats of New England. Or, even better, in Canada where they’re less likely to be steamed, boiled, or fried. Not further south where they’re likely to be eaten raw or served up with so many of their brethren at St. Mary’s Fiesta Clam Bake. Oh no, definitely not those clams. Maggie and Bruce were as happy as two Canadian clams, then. Make that Western Canada. The clams in Nova Scotia seem to have short, stunted lives usually ending with the words, “Oh, so that’s a clam hack.” Maggie and Bruce were as happy as Canadian clams backpacking through, say, Ontario, spending quality time together in the Arts district of Toronto. There.

Then it happened. Both children left the nest. The twins went away to college, the boy to an Ivy League school on a Rugby scholarship and the girl to the same on a Physics full-ride. Their parents, alone at home, wondered where they went wrong. Did they go wrong teaching them to be self-sufficient? Or teaching them to be confident? Or thrifty? It seems they did everything they could to help their children succeed in the real world with the unfortunate result that they wanted to live in it.

Maggie and Bruce knew that without the constant practices, recitals, away games, and national science fairs, the excitement would go out of their marriage. And, as the weeks passed, the excitement of their marriage not only went out, but, like a flaming plum pudding cast into the soundless depths of a subterranean lake, stayed out and was devoured by eyeless cave fish.

Bruce secretly hoped his children would live at home after graduation like the Jenkins boy. Randolph Jenkins told Bruce that his son returned home not much worse than when he left. “Sure he scares the customers with all that ‘pre-reflective consciousness’ talk but he’s still a winner when it comes to stocking shelves!”

Maggie, who didn’t think she could wait four years, prayed that her children would be kicked out of school. She hated being the only one in her bridge club whose children hadn’t moved back into their old rooms. Failing grades, vandalism, manslaughter. If there’s anything she’d learned from her bridge club, it was that these were her children’s tickets home. She began to fanaticize about getting a phone call from one of her children. In this dream, she’d pick up the phone and hear sobbing. In between gasps she’d catch words like “expulsion” and “hazing accident” and “reasonable doubt” and “Mom, come and get me.” However, after weeks of waiting by the phone, she began to despair. Realizing that her children were just too damn self-actualized, she dried her tears, stood up from her phone-waiting chair, and searched out her husband.

She hadn’t gone far (about two feet) before she noticed a loose pile of sticky notes on the kitchen table. The note on the top read “Gone to work. Late meeting. Back around 10.” Maggie peeled off this note and read the one beneath. “Gone to work. Late meeting. Back around 10.” She picked up the whole stack and began reading from the bottom.

“Gone to work. Have a good day. Stop staring at the phone. I love you, Bruce.”

“I noticed you haven’t moved since yesterday. I couldn’t rouse you last night so I went to bed alone. I’m reheating the meatloaf in the oven for you. I hope the smell of it will wake you from your catatonic state. I’m off to work now. Love you, Bruce.”

“I didn’t enjoy coming home last night to a smoke-filled house so I’m leaving you Fruit Loops. Love you, Bruce.”

“Yea! You ate the Fruit Loops! Oh, wait, the cat is bouncing off the walls. See you tonight.”

“Found evidence that you are getting around while I’m gone. That’s good. Maybe you’re not catatonic. Maybe you’re just avoiding me.”

“Fine. Be that way.”

“I read somewhere that the condition of comatose patients can be improved if their loved ones communicate with them. So I’m going to keep leaving you these notes in case you still love me.”

“Be careful in the living room. There’s a problem with the floor.”

“I should probably take you to the hospital or something but I’ve got a big day at work. I have to hire a new receptionist. I can’t work with the old one until that sexual harassment thing blows over.”

“The hole in the living room floor has gotten bigger. I wish you’d wake up so you could call someone to fix it.”

“Mind the gap.”

“I found a new receptionist. I may be home late tonight.”

“Gone to work. Late meeting. Back around 7.”

“Mickey Mantle and Carl Fissure walk into a bar. Bartender says, ‘There’s a fucking chasm in the living room. Stop staring at the phone and do something about it!’ Gone to work. Late meeting. Back around 9.”

“Did I mention I started drinking again?”

“Gone to work. Late meeting. Back around 9.”

“Gone to work. Late meeting. Back around 10.”

Maggie stood in the kitchen, dazed, confused, and more than a little hungry. She made herself a peanut butter sandwich. While she ate it, she marveled at the stack of yellow sticky notes and their ability to turn her into the more sympathetic character.

Maggie, her hunger sated, quickly made her way to the living room to feed her curiosity. There she found what could only be described as a wall-to-wall rip in the wall-to-wall carpeting. The tear ran the entire length of the room, separating the two La-Z-Boy chairs and effectively bifurcating the room into “Her side” and “His side”. Maggie realized repairing the room would require more than a call to Empire Carpets at approximately the same time she realized the rip descended through the house’s foundation into the Earth and beyond the realm of incandescent lighting by a unknowable margin.

Maggie needed her pocketbook. She always kept a few pennies in there. You never know when you’ll need to test the depth of the burgeoning chasm in your living room. She always kept her pocketbook on top of the television but when she looked up for it, she realized that the television stand, the television, her pocketbook and all the pennies in it were already exploring the depths of the chasm.

“Before you jump in, could you send over some more beer?” Maggie, startled to hear the voice of her inebriated husband, looked across the great divide for the first time. “Come on! I’ve been trapped over here for days. What are you going to do, just stand there?”

Maggie indecision was over. She knew exactly what she was going to do.