He learned too much to keep doing the same things. He learned too little to do anything new. He learned too slowly that the two approaches had crashed into each other, and that the force of the collision was beginning to spread outward from the point of impact. He was twelve years old, on the brink of being jettisoned from the perfect moment.
©2022 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
Essentially, said Mary Josephine to the woman who had come to the door, life boils down to being unclear — with yourself and with others — about your fears. Whether you are drawing a contract for the purchase of a dog or replying to a message from a prospective suitor, “do not disclose that you are afraid,” said Mary Josephine. “It’s not a matter of getting what we want. It’s a matter of not getting what we do not want. Are you tired of screwing up? Are you tired of this town? Then for the sake of Henrietta, listen to me.” Henrietta, in the corner, took off her headphones. “What’s that?” she said. Mary Josephine, her sister, her older sister, despite that the sister who was letting the other sister do her homework, math first, then science, shook her head. “Never mind,” she said. “Nobody was talking to you.”
©2022 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
Ronald posted every Tuesday starting in June. Weeks went by without even a single response, but he told himself that it was a slow build. He told himself that in the mirror. more than once In August, he perished after a brief illness. In September, his husband discovered that the computer Ronald used to compose and edit his blog had never been connected to the Internet. His last post was a review of an opera where the singers signed as they sang. His last sentence: “What is heard is…well, what is heard?” His husband posted that on Ronald’s headstone.
©2022 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
Two brothers swim at the lake. One waves his arms in alarm. This is his favorite joke. He has done it for years. This time he is not joking. The surviving brother, two years younger, is stunned into silence. Two years later, he is now older than his brother will ever be. Now he not only does not speak but does not feel either. Ten years after that he moves to a new city, takes a job in hardware, spends most of his time not quite writing a book about his grandfather, a famous bridge architect. His grandfather’s name, obviously, was the same as his brother’s. A younger woman who serves him coffee turned so weak by milk that it is hardly coffee any longer begins to love him despite his incompetence in these matters. Sex is ok as long as something is in someone’s mouth. Eventually he leaves town without even minimal drama. The desk in the woman’s apartment where he sat to write contains a doodle of a bridge with two people walking across it. One is crossed out. The woman marries a local banker and gets off regularly, both in the narrow sense and in broader ones. She travels. She writes reviews of restaurants. She becomes an adept cellist. She raises three kids who call her Mom, as she expects, and seven grandkids who call her, surprisingly, “Fifi.” The man, not heard from by anyone who knows him, perishes in rural Washington.
©2022 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
