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Slights of a Lifetime
by Cesca Janece Waterfield At her timid inquiry, he squared off in his office chair, and said with grave vigor, "Are you ready for it?" She stifled a burst of laughter, and then tried to let go her bias. By now, she had spent months observing his hands alternate between pointing fingers to pass on blame, and turning palms up to gesture how the world, women, careers, cars, and trends had failed him. Many of his most impassioned claims were suspect, she was beginning to discover, and present denials were usually direct routes to past actions. Admittedly, she found him genuinely alluring; his wounds and crimes, even as he wailed ceaselessly about the former, fervently denying the latter. Suppressing her smile, she tried to listen with compassion. She had broached the subject carefully, because she thought the experience would deliver pain upon its reflection, and she didn't wish to stir unpleasant reminiscence for him. But she was growing uneasy, unsure why she couldn't bring herself to feel domestic devotion to the man. He had long been telling her that if she could give him complete dedication, he could fly. She cared for him, and sometimes he seemed to care for her. Though he valued his own far more than hers, they shared some interests. All in all, she hoped to "make it work," if only to believe that "it" ever could. That afternoon toward the end, as they sat in the same seats, she gently inquired if he were willing to share why he'd been fired from his job in car sales. After ensuring she could endure witnessing the degree to which he'd been done wrong, he drew a deep breath, and looked directly at her. A mistaken friendship, he said, was the thrust of the plot. Drugs were exposition, climax and denoument. A trivial error on his part, he waved, trivia. The real culprit was someone else. It seemed to her, his negligence. But these two, they always used different names. He called them right out loud. "How is it his fault you were fired?" she asked. "He'd come get me and make me do it!" This time she laughed openly in disbelief. "How old were you?" "What does that matter?" he exclaimed, palms up, fingers open widely. "He was always there!" He stared open mouthed at her, then shrugged: "You don't understand." It was true. Empathy, and her own experience with blaming others, led her to accept how, decades ago, he might have failed to recognize his culpability. But somewhere along the brick road that wound down to this afternoon, it seemed he might have considered who fired him that day years ago: himself. She was young, and often confused, but it seemed that repeats and reiterations should have at some point ground his coarsened defense down into a talcum of introspection. She feared for the man who sat before her today, maintaining innocence with lips smeared in proverbial blood. Artlessness is free. Accountability, on the other hand, brings pain, at least momentarily. She knew then why this memory brought him none. He hadn't even looked into his truth, so the cost of doing so – the sting of admission – was nowhere to be found. He often informed her, in so many decibels, that she reminded him of his ex-wife who had left him years ago. While it hurt her, and later began to anger her, as days passed, she occasionally wondered what the woman might have to say about having moved on. His road was a circle. She liked to ride forward, wind in her hair.
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