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A Few Things Before Coffee

by Nicholas John-Francis Claro


Dear Marjorie,

The world it seems has a smaller heart than I originally thought. I’m not sure what that means, but it sounds tragic and somehow a little beautiful, too. I thought I would share it with you. The line came to me in a dream I can’t quite piece together. When I woke in a predawn haziness half an hour before my alarm was set to detonate that was all I remembered of it. From bed to shower to kitchen table, where I sit writing this to you, it echoed in my head like the chorus of a catchy song. Though it has since stopped, now that I’ve given it a place to rest.

I know I usually call on the anniversary, but I don’t feel up to it today. That’s the purpose of this email. I hope you’ll understand. In bed last night when I was watching the news, they played a little bit of footage from yesterday’s attack that had been caught on someone’s iPhone and I thought: Well, there they go again. I changed the channel. I fell asleep ten minutes later watching a rerun of How I Met Your Mother. Isn’t that terrible? I kept asking myself what Lawrence would have thought of that. Would have thought of me, I mean. I do know after clicking on the notifications from The New York Times and The Huffington Post I had on my phone and giving them each quick read while I used the bathroom earlier, the man who drove the car into the crowd yesterday was taken into custody and sustained injuries only from his own recklessness—this was after he sped off and wound up crashing into the side of a building more than 10 blocks away. He then proceeded to flee on foot from the wreckage and while doing so exhausted the magazine of a 9mm semiautomatic at police cruisers and a news helicopter. This wild firing killed two more people and they still took him in alive. It amazes me the things you can get away with in this country if you’re simply born white.

 

I’m sorry to unload on you like this. I haven’t yet had my coffee.

 

I should mail you a bag or two of the Geometry blend from Onyx. I know it’s been a long time since you’ve had it and I remember how much you loved that place and their coffee. Anyway, I will say it is a shame I won’t get to hear you read whichever poem it is you that you’ve chosen. I mentioned how you do a different poetic recitation every year to a close friend of mine last week when we were out to lunch, and while finishing a mouthful of chicken salad, Johnathon reared back a little, fixed his glasses and said, “That’s a really sweet gesture. I never would have thought of something like that.” I told him you didn’t, and how you got the idea from a novel you love so much. The Sportswriter, isn’t it? I don’t know why I did that. I shouldn’t have said anything except for maybe, “It is,”—because it really is sweet. Truly. Regardless of how you got the idea. Be sure when you write back to post a link to the poem, if that’s possible. I’ll read it aloud in my very best Marjorie Wynn voice.

 

I haven’t been outside. Not sure if I will today. The thought of wearing anything but boxer shorts is unappealing. I can imagine how it feels outside, given the A/C kicked on earlier and hasn’t yet quit. I’m sure you’re experiencing about the same. How much different could our weather possibly be? Tulsa is only two hours west.  

I can’t shake this mood, so let me get this out of the way, since I know, too, every year at some point during our conversation I tell you this and each time you interrupt me at one point or another by saying, “Please, Henry, you don’t have to. You don’t.” But you can’t do that now, so here I go—it’s not your fault and I’m sorry I couldn’t see that for so long, as clearly as it is now. I remember arguing about whether or not we should have let Lawrence go to that march. How I said no, because I was terrified at what might happen down there. And how you said yes because one day you said you hoped it would pave the way for a time when he wouldn’t have to be afraid because of his very nature—even in The South, you said, where people believe they have a mandate from heaven to discriminate against their brothers and sisters. You brought up his rights. His passion. His voice. You had such a compelling argument. How could I have not conceded? And I know even if I had been able to talk you into agreeing with me, I know Lawrence would have gone anyway. Snuck out of his window or, more his style, walked right passed us and through the front door to… oh, what was the boy’s name again? The one from Springdale who drove him to Little Rock that day? The really good-looking one? I can’t for the life of me remember. Only that he was shot, too, but managed to pull through.

I’m almost done, just one more thing.

I’m sorry for allowing you to cling to hope for so long. That wasn’t very good of me. I kept telling myself it would pass. But I knew deep down it might not. And if it did, it would surely take a long time, and during that tenure of grief things were going to be abandoned and left to crack and break apart. But I mostly kept that to myself, and I shouldn’t have. I should have clued you in on this particular bit of foresight. My old therapist once asked me a few weeks after we buried Lawrence how life was at home. I don’t think I ever told you this.

“How do you think?” I said. “Our only child was killed. Senselessly murdered. I walk by his room every morning. Do you know what that does to a person?”

He stared hard at me through his thick glasses (I’m convinced all clinical psychologists wear glasses) and said, “That isn’t exactly what I meant. But while we’re on the topic, have the two of you thought about relocating into a smaller place?”

I took this as: Hey, you and your wife are in your 40s and you’ll probably not want to have another child. But if you do and you try and succeed you’re going to be running a lot of risks. Why don’t you just cut your losses?

I don’t remember what I called him. I just remember doing it loudly. When I stormed off down the long hallway I noticed all the doors were open. But I didn’t see anything inside of the rooms, any furniture or people or paintings that may have hung slightly askew, because I was already crying. Regardless, they may as well have been empty. What I do remember thinking was each door was like a day in an advent calendar that had already passed, and I was rushing to see what the last one had in store for me.

 

I’ve gone on quite long enough, haven’t I? I set out to write you something brief; the only goal of its composition to explain how you needn’t call today. Had I known this was going to wind up being so long, I would have told you to print this off in the beginning. I know how strained your eyes get looking at a computer screen even after a few minutes. But I’m all the way down here now and it’s such a long way back to the top.

Warmest to you and Kevin both,

Henry


Nicholas John-Francis Claro is a writer and editor living in Fayetteville, Arkansas. His work has appeared in Existere: A Journal of Arts & Literature, Gravel, Linden Avenue, Every Day Fiction, Sky Island Journal, Pithead Chapel, & others. He is currently at work on a novel.

 

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