Flights

She used to bring me cheese. Cheese and grapes and a bottle of wine… You know… Like emperors liked. Like the emperors in the movies liked. I liked it, too. Liked it a lot. Of course, meat woulda been better but I can’t bring that in here. It’d go bad and I’d have to give some up for cigs or… my life. You know how it goes. Anyway. Haven’t got my cheese, grapes or wine recently. Mmmmh! I wonder why.

Don’t tell nobody this but I shouldn’t be in here. Yeah yeah, I pled guilty. The papers, the judge, the lawyers all say I’m guilty. Someone’s got to be guilty, right? This time it had to be me. It had to be me. But don’t go telling nobody none of that — if you catch what I mean — cause then you’d have bored detectives reopen the case, everyone involved getting rung up and wrung around for information and… Nah! I wouldn’t wanna do that to them. This time it had to be me.

You’re my roomie and I like you. Not as much as the cheese, the grapes, and the wine, but I like you. So, are you gonna listen to what the lawyers don’t wanna know? You’ve gotta promise me, though. You won’t tell nobody. Promise?

This isn’t me. Out there I don’t talk this way. I don’t walk this way. Had to switch up from historical docs to reruns of World’s Worst Prisons before my due date. All of them said the same thing: don’t show them you’re weak. Everyone says that. In sales, in sports, in school, they all say it. But it’s different in here, isn’t it? We’ve been stripped down to life’s bare essentials in here. Weakness is weakness and life is… Aaaa! Well, it’s all we’ve really got.

You know… I think I told you… I was a teacher. Yeah, taught kids if you’d believe. Th-they loved me. Not saying that to brag. They actually did. The whole lotta them. Kids would cry whenever our time came to an end. Even the moms shed a tear or two.

Never really wanted to be a teacher, though. Things just sorta turned out that way. The real dream was to be a writer. You know, like Lewis or Steinbeck. Don’t know why I mention those two in the same breath. They’re not the same. Not that you’d care about any of that.

Either way, I wanted to write novels. Fiction. Something that might end up on the big screen someday. People used to ask, why not write screenplays? Cause fuck a screenplay. I wanted to create worlds, dig into the characters’ psychologies, show the density of a look with nothing but words. Real genius stuff, you know. B-but I was a coward. No two ways about it. The only reason I wrote nothing of note (wrote nothing at all) is cause I was damn scared of not getting it right…

Got something right though. Got myself a girl. A real fine piece of ass. And not just that. My wife… Mmmh, she’s an angel. Everything the fairytales talk about. Every single thing you imagine women to be when you’re young and pure and haven’t been played for a sucker by a bunch of bitches. Back then… Out there I couldn’t see it. Man loves woman, woman nags, man resents woman. The cycle is infinite. Then you find yourself in this place and the woman you resented is bringing you cheese, and grapes, and wine and a conjugal visit every now and then. Funny, right?

She gave me a kid. A girl. She looks just like me. They all say it. Everywhere they say she has her father’s face. Never saw it. What I did see was her mother’s nerves. Cold, hard steel. She was born a woman. An Amazon. I loved her. Until I didn’t. I mean, all parents love their kids but… Raising kids is hard and they don’t know when you’re tired or sick. None of that matters to them. They want all of you and when you can’t give it, they demand even more.

Solved that issue by making another one. A boy who looked just like his mom. And I loved him more… Maybe cause he looked like his mom… I don’t know. Didn’t have much of a say in the matter. He was pure with his big bright eyes and curly dark hair and the way he’d say daddy like they were… magic incantations. He made me tired and frustrated and all the bad things that kids do to their parents but for some reason it… None of it got to me. He was everything. Being with him is what parenting was promised to be.

Then he died. Fell down a flight of stairs. It happens. Happens all the time. Kids are pride incarnate. They think they can fight dragons or fly down the staircase… Huh! No one can fly down a staircase. My boy knew he couldn’t fly down a staircase. I bet he knew but he fell down that flight either way. He fell… He fell.

When these things happen, no one knows what to do. Women are too hysterical to think straight so it falls on the man to figure it out. Who’d you call first? I mean, the kid is dead. Do you call an ambulance, the firemen or the police? Trick question. No matter who you call they’re all gonna end up at your door. Pediatricians trying to resurrect the dead, firemen to console a grieving mother and the police to question the stoic husband cause… Of course the reason he’s so damn calm is cause he did it.

I was taken in the patrol car. Even in there I was silent. Don’t even know if I can call it that. Don’t know what to call it when you wanna speak but… Either way. They questioned me for the whole night. Describe to the best of your ability and where were you when it happened and everything to mask the real question. Did you do it? I had nothing to say. Wasn’t even hiding nothing. Just… I don’t know. Nothing could get out of me.

Next day they sent me a lawyer and he told me I did good not to speak. Silence, right now, is your only defense. These people were playing some game and I was… I didn’t do it. Wasn’t it obvious from the fact that it was me that called them? Why would I… I loved that kid. Loved him more than anything in the world. Goddamn it! It breaks me to…

My wife came to visit me. She had that look. The same one that was probably on my face since the flight down the staircase, haha! And my lovely wife… I mean, at this point she’s not yet the loving angel but… Well, she goes and tells me that she knows it’s not me and that she knows who done it and…

Somehow it’s my fault. You may have not pushed him but it was your behavior, and your actions that caused it, she says. Didn’t love the girl enough and focused all my attention on the boy and yaddy-yaddy-yadda. But she’s a kid. Just a kid and this kind of thing would…

Someone’s got to be guilty, right? This time it had to be me. It had to be me. So now, I get my cheese, grapes, and wine. That’s all gratis, of course. The real prize for my sacrifice are the conjugal visits. Huh! Haven’t had those in a while, either. I wonder why.