1
Joshua Blair
jcblair@live.unc.edu
Trying
His key turned in the lock and he entered the apartment. She had already gone to
bed, Tom saw; all the lights were off. He crept across the living room and shrugged out
of his rain-drenched coat, placing it gingerly over the back of his chair at the rickety
kitchen table. Briefcase in the seat, carefully. Shoes one by one, softly. Then into the
room, quiet as a church mouse. She was snoring a little. He tried to breath as quietly as
possible while he changed into his pajamas and slipped into bed.
“Work ran late again?” The question startled him. He had been so careful not to
wake her.
“I’m sorry, dear. They had me close up again, you know how that is. I tried to tell
them you were waiting, I did,” he whispered. His wife remained a silent motionless lump.
Tom curled up to her, embracing her. “I’m really sorry, darling. I did all I could. I love
you.”
“I hate you.”
2
Tom sighed. “I know.”
---------The alarm clock pierced his eardrums a few hours later. The dream had been so
vivid. Better times. His hand cautiously probed the other side of the bed, finding it empty.
After a very quick shower, Tom put his suit back on and proceeded to the kitchen for his
coat and suitcase. She was sitting at the table in her robe, staring blankly at nothing and
sipping coffee.
“Morning, sweetie,” Tom said. “I’m sorry I woke you last night. I’ll be quieter
next time.” She continued to stare silently. He picked up his briefcase and still damp coat,
equipping the latter. He waited some time for a reply, or any acknowledgement, but none
came. “Alright, I’m headed to work.”
She took a sip of coffee.
“Darling, I’m sorry, I really am.” He sat in his chair at the table next to her. “I’ll
try and come home on time tonight, okay sweetie? I’ll try the best I can.” He leaned in to
kiss her forehead, but she moved away. He swallowed the dejection, the frustration; a
sigh, a roll of the eyes, any acknowledgement of her mood would only make her worse.
“I’m sorry. I’ll see you later.”
The elevator was broken again, so Tom took the stairs down. The frigid morning
air cut through his ragged coat. He wished he could afford a scarf, or even just a hat or a
heavier coat with less holes perhaps. But he did not need a scarf or a hat and he already
had a coat, so he was more than fine, he thought. He should be more appreciative.
He stopped by the cheap bistro on the corner to pick up a sandwich for lunch, then
started the hike across East River into Manhattan. Tom loved how the Brooklyn Bridge
3
looked at sunrise. There, that’s something to appreciate, he thought. I get to walk across
this beauty every single day.
Funny, he thought, that most dreams one has to fight to remember, but this one he
just could not seem to forget. Perhaps because it was more of a memory than a dream.
Better times. He and Elise had been married no more than a year. It was before she
changed, when she still smiled.
At five fifty-five sharp, Tom arrived at TELCO Teleservices. At five fifty-seven,
he planted himself at his cubicle, placing his sandwich in his desk drawer. At five fiftynine, he donned his headset, and at six o’clock, he made his first call.
“Good morning, Tom,” said Morgan as she took her seat in the cubicle across
from him.
Tom smiled and waved in acknowledgement as he explained the merits of a
particular blender to an unenthused mother with a howling infant and a deep southern
accent. Tom liked Morgan. She was a small person, mouse-like. Cute like a mouse. Her
glasses and invariable baggy green striped sweater reminded him of the talking mice
from the movies. When Morgan looked at Tom from behind those glasses, he felt as if he
were being analyzed intensely, manically, like he were a puzzle she had to solve
immediately to save her life. Tom often wondered whether he scared her somehow or if
she just looked at everyone that way.
Around lunchtime the usual boisterous crew, Steve and Eric, came by Tom’s
cubicle. Steve sat on the end of Tom’s desk; Eric stood disconcertingly behind him. Tom
wished he were not in the middle of a call. “Hey, Tommy,” said Steve. Tom smiled and
4
gestured for him to wait a second, pointing to his headset. Steve put on an understanding
expression and pulled the headset’s cord from the phone.
“Whoa there, Steve! I almost had that one, buddy.”
“No you didn’t, brother. She told me so,” he said, pointing to the phone. “She told
me you were getting on her nerves, she was just too polite to hang up.”
“It was a man.”
“There’s where you’re wrong, Tommy. If I were her I’d take that as an insult.”
“Why you insulting our customers, Tommy?” Eric chimed in.
Tom threw up his hands and forced an amiable smile. “Got me. Guilty as
charged!”
“Anyway Tommy we’re just on our way out. Time to get some grub! Know
anywhere good, Tommy? I’m sick of the same old stuff.”
“Can’t say I do. I usually don’t eat in Manhattan. But,” Tom reached into his
drawer, “I do have a sandwich from a corner bistro near my apartment in Brooklyn if
you’d like something different. All yours.”
Eric snatched the sandwich from behind. “Thanks, Tommy. Brooklyn? Why the
hell do come all the way over here? You know you can do this shit from home.”
“No phone at home, unfortunately.” If only he could afford it. He could spend the
whole day with Elise rather than none of it.
“No phone? A telemarketer with no phone. That’s a pretty good one, Tommy!”
As the two made their way to the exit Tom saw Eric take a bite of the sandwich,
convulse, and throw it spitefully in a garbage bin by the door.
“Tom.”
5
Tom swiveled around to see Morgan eyeing him with her characteristic intensity.
“What can I do for you, Miss Gates?”
“What the heck?”
“I’m sorry?”
“What the heck, Tom?” Tom stared back, utterly confused. “Someone told me
once that that sandwich you always bring is the only meal you get. So either they lied or I
have a good reason to ask you, ‘What the heck?’ Those guys are dicks. Why would you
give your only sandwich to a couple of dicks?”
“They’re my friends, of course I’d—”
“Those aren’t friends, those are dicks.”
Tom was aware of this, but there was no use confirming it, so instead he smiled
and said, “Well, I’m just happy to have someone to talk to.”
Morgan stared back at him without saying any more, nose curled up into the
bridge of her glasses like she smelled something wretched. Then she abruptly swiveled
back into her desk and went back to work, so Tom did the same.
---------“Tom, can you close up tonight?”
“No, I really can’t, sorry. I have to be home tonight. My wife—”
“Thanks! See you tomorrow. Don’t be late.”
---------More rain tonight. Tom made sure the door was locked tight and waved goodbye
to the TELCO building for the night, starting in the direction of the bridge, back to
Brooklyn and home—quickly, just in case he could catch Elise before she went to bed.
6
He reflected upon the beauty of the city at night, especially from the bridge. What a
beautiful place to call home, he thought. His stomach felt as if it might cave in—or
perhaps like it already had. Passing by the closed corner bistro he smiled and muttered
with a hand over his vacant stomach, “See you in a few.”
A flower by the sidewalk caught his eye, a little white one he could scarcely
believe was growing in the same freezing cold that numbed his hands. He had never been
able to buy Elise flowers, never. Gently, he plucked the flower from the ground, careful
not to break the fragile stem and petals.
Last night’s dream still lingered with him, every detail. A day in the park, a
picnic, warm sun, Elise’s now extinct smile. He remembered her wrists, once smooth and
unscarred. Her hair before she began pulling it. Her nails before she began to bite them
bloody. He remembered the way she used to move, with such vivacity, such freedom.
The way her eyes twinkled when she smiled. The way she used to tease him, pinch his
butt when he bent over, laugh at his jokes, kiss him on the cheek without cause, lay her
head on his shoulder, tell him she loved him. He could have stayed in that dream forever
and been perfectly content. He could bring her back, make her happy again, he knew it.
The dream had to be a sign: Tonight is the night things finally start getting better.
At the front door, he dropped the keys twice before he could get the correct one in
the lock; his bare hands were wet and freezing, and one was holding a fragile flower.
With a passive smile, he placed his hand on the knob, whispering to himself, “Tonight’s
the night.” He opened the door and stood for a moment, staring, blinking. He tried to
connect the pieces of what he was seeing. He never got much sleep; perhaps he was
seeing things. He closed the door and opened it again, but the scene remained. A fan, his
7
wife, a rope. Her feet, dangling. A rope, a fan, Elise, suspended. He closed the door
again, locked it back. He leaned his back against the door and let himself slide down to
the floor. He sat like that, blank.
---------“Tom? Tom. Hey. Tom?”
“Yeah?”
“You alright?”
“Uh… Well, Jerry, I have certainly been better.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Hey, you look like you been crying, man.”
“Nope, not me.”
“You sure? You’re all puffy and shit.”
“Positive.”
“Alright. Hey, your flower’s dead.”
“My flower? Oh, yeah. It’s alright.”
“Hm. Tom, why you sitting out here in the hall, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Oh, Jerry, that is a very long, very sad story. Say, I haven’t got a phone. Would
you mind if I used yours?”
---------“And you don’t know what might have prompted her to do something like this?”
“She had depression. Started a few years ago, couple years after we got married.
Genetic thing.” Tom disliked when the officer wrote as he talked. He wished he would
put the notepad away.
----------
8
“Tom.”
“Yes, Morgan?”
“What the heck?”
“More specific, Morgan.”
“You aren’t smiling. What’s up.” She popped popcorn into her mouth between
phrases. “You always smile, and you’re not today. And you weren’t here yesterday.”
“No, that I wasn’t.” Tom focused on his computer screen, filing a sale.
“But you’re always here, and always smiling. So what the heck?”
“I was sick. Still a little sick,” Tom coughed.
“That’s a fake cough and you’re a terrible liar. Tell me.”
Tom sighed. “My wife hung herself. I wasn’t there, and I should’ve been. She
kept telling me I should come home earlier to be with her, and I tried, I really did, but I
guess not hard enough. So it’s my fault, no denying it. I had to help with the investigation
yesterday. That’s why I wasn’t here,” Tom said as he confirmed shipment of three
blenders to a woman in Texas. The silence startled him. He looked over his shoulder to
see Morgan the most sedated he had ever seen her, in tears. She got up from her chair and
pulled Tom up from his, embracing him as tightly as her tiny five-foot-three self could.
“It is not your fault, Tom. You are a good person. It is not your fault, you hear? I
promise.” She squeezed harder when she emphasized a word. Tom was at a loss. He
wanted to cry too, but he could not do that here.
“I have to use the bathroom.”
“What?”
“I have to use the bathroom, please let go.”
9
Tom composed himself in a stall before reentering the public eye. As he sat back
down at his desk, he could feel Morgan’s eyes on the back of his head.
“Thank you,” he said, his eyes on the screen.
“You’re welcome,” she said between sniffles.
Hours later, Morgan broke the silence. “Tom?”
“Hm?” Tom answered with a mouthful of mediocre sandwich.
She rolled her chair to Tom’s desk, nearly whispering, “Can I ask you
something?”
“Is it ‘What the heck?’” he jested.
“No, it’s not.”
“Then shoot.”
“How do you do it? Live like you do? I mean I don’t mean to say that you…well,
you know…I don’t mean to say that…I mean, I’m not calling your life is ‘bad’ or
anything, but—”
“It’s okay, I know what you mean.”
“So how do you…you know… Why are you still so… I mean, you’re here at
work just as smiley as ever, and I don’t know… I just want to know how you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Stay like this all the time. All positive and happy and stuff.”
“Happy? I’m not happy.”
“You’re not?”
“No. I’m newly widowed.”
“Well what the heck?”
10
Tom put his sandwich down and thought for a moment. “When I die, I just want
to know I tried, you know? You only get one life, and I don’t want mine to end like my
wife’s. So I could stay home and just around being sad about it, or I could do something
about it: come to work, learn a lesson, and not slow down. As difficult as it may be…”
“But that has to wear you out after so long…”
“Well, it’s never been easy and it’ll never get easier…but it’ll always be worth it,”
he said with a smile. “One day it’ll pay off.”
Before Tom could think to stop her, Morgan stood up and kissed him on the
forehead—the first time he had been kissed in years. “You’re a good man, Tom.”
He shrugged and smiled. “Doing my best. Want some sandwich?”