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
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