Subtraction
A Short Story
Author’s Note
Once again, I thought I’d take a break from punditry and bloviation to share with subscribers another of my short stories.
It occurred to me one day that sometimes, loss can develop an unstoppable momentum. The notion lodged in my subconscious, where the first draft of “Subtraction” was written while I was busy with other things.
“Subtraction” is included in my second short story collection, The Double: Twelve Stories and a Poem, which is available on Amazon in both a Kindle edition and a handsome paperback edition. If you read and enjoy this story, I hope you’ll share it with family and friends, and perhaps even go on to read the other tales that comprise The Double.
Subtraction
A Short Story by Thomas Gregg
For a moment he thought that she’d even taken the vegetable oil.
Harris stood there, staring into the cupboard. Behind him on the counter were the elements of the dinner he’d intended to eat: a Porterhouse steak, redskin potatoes, fresh green beans, fresh mushrooms, French bread. There was butter in the fridge, but the bottle of vegetable oil was gone.
Sure, he’d expected to find things missing when he got home: He and Jenna had agreed that it would be best if she packed and departed while he was at work. So he’d expected to find pictures gone from the walls, gaps in the bookcase, half-empty drawers and closets. He’d expected the owl, carved from wood, that Jenna had possessed since high school to have flown from its windowsill perch. It’s over, he told himself as he wandered through the house. And this is what over looks like.
Harris had made a plan to cope with the last act in the dissolution of his marriage. After work he’d stopped at the supermarket, where he purchased the items that now lay on the kitchen counter. He would prepare and eat a good dinner, pan-broiling the steak in butter and oil, sautéing the potatoes and mushrooms, blanching the green beans in the French manner. There were several bottles of good red wine on hand and he would open one of them. After dinner he’d catch up on The Walking Dead, switching to brandy when the wine was gone and retiring to bed when he began to feel sleepy. He would not think about Jenna. Tomorrow was Saturday and that would be soon enough to embark upon the long ordeal of coming to terms with life after marriage.
But there was no vegetable oil, without which how could you pan-broil a God-damned Porterhouse steak?
Harris released the cupboard door with a flick of the wrist and it slammed shut. Two tablespoons of butter and one of vegetable oil, heated in a skillet until the butter foamed and subsided. Then you put the steak in: four minutes per side for medium rare. That was the method. But there was no fucking vegetable oil.
Had he mentioned his plan to Jenna? Yes, he had. She’d asked him if he was going to be all right and he said sure, he was going to make himself a good steak dinner. She smiled then and he remembered thinking that despite everything she still cared. But now—
Then Harris pulled himself up short. He even smiled a little. It was ridiculous to think that to spite him Jenna had taken the vegetable oil. Anyhow, there had to be a workaround. He reopened the cupboard and rummaged around briefly. Ah, shortening. He removed the can and weighed it in his hand. A little dab would do the trick.
So Harris had his dinner. But the vacancies in the apartment, the subtractions from his life, nagged at him like a sensitive tooth. He kept glancing at the corner of the windowsill where the carved wooden owl had stood for half a dozen years. The brandy he was sipping tasted bitter on his tongue. Jenna was gone. “Gone,” he muttered aloud, and the spoken word seemed to darken the air. Harris sat there in his recliner with The Walking Dead paused, his eyes moving from the windowsill to the bookshelf to the blank wall opposite, trying to recall the angle at which the owl had stood, the order of the missing books, the arrangement of the absent pictures.
But I love you, he’d said when she told him.
I know you do, she’d replied. But you’re just no good at this.
At what?
At being married, John.
Harris lost his temper then and he stormed at her, arms at his side, fists clenched, face flushed. And Jenna stood there, allowing his anger to break over her in waves, giving him that much without complaint—perhaps thinking that after all, it was the last thing she’d ever have to give him.
But Jenna, I love you, he said again as his anger passed.
And I care about you, John, but this isn’t working for me anymore.
She cared about him, yes, but during that final conversation she never said I love you, too. Harris had persuaded himself that if she did say it, there would be hope, he could go on fighting for her: If you love me…if we love one another…we can’t give up…
But she didn’t say it, so he gave up after all. And the remainder of their discussion was taken up with the logistics of her departure.
Harris woke up on Saturday morning with the idea that he’d drive over to the range after breakfast. He hadn’t done much target shooting lately. Jenna disliked guns; his shooting hobby was something about him that always had bothered her.
He shaved, showered, dressed, and had breakfast. Then for some reason he couldn’t recall the combination to the gun safe. It was written down, of course, and he retrieved the slip of paper from the corner of his closet shelf where he’d secreted it.
But then he couldn’t find his car keys.
Harris frowned. He was sure that last evening he’d hung them on the rack by the door to the garage. But now they were gone. Luckily, he kept a spare set in his desk drawer. Crossing the living room to get them, he noticed again the vacant spaces here and there. They seemed larger in the morning light, more blatant in their advertisement of his failed marriage.
Preoccupied with his thoughts, Harris took a wrong turn on the way to the range. By the time he realized his mistake, he was driving through an unfamiliar neighborhood. That was odd. Union wasn’t a particularly large town, and he’d lived there all his life. Hell, he knew its geography like the back of his hand. But this neighborhood was curiously anonymous, and the houses somehow didn’t look like the kind of houses that were typical of Union.
Eventually he came to a stop-signed intersection. The cross street was Crescent Avenue; he was on Madison Street. Oh, right. Crescent ran north to Broadway, just east of Low Town. Harris sighed, shook his head, and turned left. Four minutes later he turned right on Broadway and six minutes after that he was at the range.
“How goes it, John?” said the guy behind the counter.
“Not bad,” Harris replied, reaching into his back pocket. Though he felt that he ought to know the counter guy’s name, it wouldn’t come. Then he discovered that his membership card was missing from his wallet.
“No problemo,” the guy said, smiling a little at Harris’s befuddlement, “Just go ahead and sign in, John. I’ll look up your membership number and fill it in.”
“Okay, thanks,” said Harris, still struggling to recall the counter guy’s name.
On Sunday morning he made himself a big breakfast of eggs, sausages, home-fried potatoes, buttered toast and coffee. There was a moment of frustration when he couldn’t find his favorite skillet, but another one did just as well. He thought about Jenna as he ate, smiling at the memory of the lectures she’d given him on the importance of a healthy, balanced diet. “Well,” Harris said aloud, “that’s over, anyhow…”
After breakfast he took a cup of coffee out to the back porch, settling down in the decrepit old armchair, scrounged from the town dump, that Jenna had always hated. Bright summer sunlight flooded the back yard. He noticed that Jenna’s roses were blooming, and the anger he’d been holding at arm’s length rushed in on him. It might have been better, he reflected bitterly, if she’d uprooted the rosebushes and taken them with her. His eye fell on the small shed that housed the lawnmower and an array of gardening tools. An idea came to him. Later in the day he’d get himself a shovel and dig up her damned roses. Throw the fucking things over the back fence, he thought. It was a mean, spiteful resolution and he knew it, but the notion of trashing the roses on which Jenna had lavished so much time and care made him grin.
But hours later, when he went looking for the key to the padlock that secured the shed, it was nowhere to be found.
On Monday, Harris overslept, having neglected to set the alarm. “Late for work,” he muttered, heading for the bathroom, “Shit.”
After emptying his bladder, he decided that he’d just call in sick. It took him several minutes to locate his phone—for some reason he’d put it on top of the fridge—and then it turned out that the number for work was missing from his contacts. Cursing, Harris punched the number in manually, getting it wrong twice.
“Bay State Solutions,” said an unfamiliar female voice.
“Um, Vickie?”
“No, Veronica. John, is that you?”
“Oh…right. Sorry. Yeah, it’s John. Listen, I’m feeling a little under the weather this morning—”
“Say no more. Believe me, I know how you must be feeling. I’ve been through it myself.”
“Well…”
“Take the day, John. I’ll tell Marie to reschedule your appointments.”
“Okay, sounds good,” Harris mumbled.
“You take care,” Veronica admonished him.
“Right…” Harris agreed as she terminated the call.
Frowning, he put the phone down on the kitchen table. Veronica. Though he remembered the name now, he couldn’t put a face to it. And the voice…it hadn’t been at all familiar…
Harris made coffee and took a cup out to the back porch. Settling into the old armchair, he surveyed his back yard. Something seemed to be missing and after a moment he realized what it was: Jenna’s rosebushes were gone. He remembered thinking how good, how satisfying, it would be to dig them up and pitch them over the back fence. Had he actually done it, though? He couldn’t recall.
Later in the day Harris found himself standing at the foot of the basement stairs. He looked around, wondering why he’d come down. He stood there for a long time, his eyes moving from corner to corner, from the metal shelves loaded with anonymous cardboard boxes to the workbench with its litter of tools and hardware. Nothing came to him. So eventually he turned and plodded back up the stairs.
He slept late again on Tuesday morning and when he finally rolled out of bed there were voicemails and text messages on his phone. But his passcode wouldn’t work and he had a feeling that he wasn’t remembering it properly. For a few minutes he fooled around with different combinations of the numbers that drifted hazily through his mind. Nothing. So he gave up, setting the phone down and heading to the kitchen to make coffee. But somehow he ended up in the living room instead. Looking around, he wondered what was missing. He gazed for a long time at a corner of the windowsill from which, he suspected, something had been removed.
He went back into the bedroom. Coffee, he realized after a moment. I want coffee. Frowning, he wondered why if he wanted coffee he’d returned to the bedroom. The kitchen, he reminded himself. Coffee’s in the kitchen. That realization seemed to lift the mists from his mind; with a confident step he made his way to the kitchen. It took him only five minutes to locate the coffee, the filters and the mug that was, he suspected, his favorite.
While the coffee was brewing, his phone chimed and he hurried back into the bedroom to answer the call. But while he was fumbling with the phone the call went to voicemail and since he still couldn’t remember his password, he returned to the kitchen. When he got there he realized that the phone was still in his hand and he put it down, perhaps on the kitchen table, perhaps on the counter.
The coffee was ready. He filled the mug and carried it out to the back porch. The decrepit old armchair was gone; probably his wife, who’d never liked it, had gotten rid of the thing. He sat on the top step instead, surveying the back yard. The doors of the shed stood open and the lawnmower squatted in the middle of the lawn. The grass was getting long, he noted. Maybe I’ll cut it this afternoon, he thought. But when he roused himself to begin the day, the sun was low in the west and the coffee in his mug was stone cold.
The doorbell rang. Then someone started knocking on the front door.
“John? John!” Now that was a familiar voice, but he couldn’t put a face or a name to it. Anyhow John—whoever that might be—wasn’t home at the moment. Only he was home, lying on the sofa, and he was afraid that if he got up to answer the door, he’d get lost again. Why he could no longer find his way around his own house was a mystery. Maybe his wife could explain it. But when was the last time he’d seen her?
“John! Hey, you in there?”
She must be away on a business trip, he told himself.
“Come on, man, you haven’t shown your face at the office all week!”
It was strange that he couldn’t remember his wife’s name, but he could close his eyes and there she was: so beautiful, even when scolding him for—but scolding him for what he couldn’t quite recall.
The familiar voice at the front door eventually fell silent. That was a relief, for he wanted to go to sleep, which was hard to do with someone banging on the door and demanding to talk to someone named John…
One day, he remembered to check the mailbox and found it stuffed full. He carried everything inside and sat down on the sofa, placing the mail on the coffee table. He stared down for a moment at the litter of envelopes and advertising flyers, then started sorting through them.
It was odd, but the printed words, though they looked familiar, somehow failed to coalesce. SUMMER DOG DAYS SALE: He knew what SUMMER was, and what a DOG was, and what DAYS were. He thought he understood the concept of SALE. But what these things had to do with one another was mysterious to him.
And here was an envelope emblazoned with a logo that seemed familiar. He scrutinized it carefully, trying to decipher the meaning of BAY STATE SOLUTIONS. Inside the envelope was a sheet of paper that he recognized as a letter. Again, the individual words—failure, respond, regret, termination—were familiar, but their combinations baffled him. Well, he’d get his wife to read the letter to him. Or did he actually have a wife? Sometimes he was certain that he did, sometimes he had his doubts.
Thinking about these things made him tired, so he decided to go to sleep again.
Wandering into the bathroom, he glanced into the mirror, wondering who it was there, staring back at him with glazed and bloodshot eyes. The stranger was thin of face, needed a shave, wore a stained t-shirt. That’s me, he realized eventually. I’m really letting myself go…
He stumbled around the back yard in the dark, whispering what he believed to be his wife’s name. But since he couldn’t remember his own name, how could he be sure of hers? It seemed odd to him that he couldn’t remember his name. Everyone has a name, he reminded himself.
The grass was really getting high now. Tomorrow he should mow the lawn.
A momentary breeze passed over the back yard and he shivered. He looked down at himself and discovered he was naked.
Later he found himself lying on the kitchen floor. He was clutching his phone. He knew he should get up, go to the sofa, go to bed, but while trying to decide on the proper course of action he fell asleep.
The house was a labyrinth. Odd how that word just popped into his head. Words were becoming problematical for him, but every now and then one bubbled to the surface, pure, clear, bright.
When in the bathroom, he could not recall the way to the kitchen; when in the living room, he could not recall the way to the bedroom. He had the impression that he hadn’t eaten in a long time, but oddly he did not feel hungry. Unless hollowness was a form of hunger, for he did feel hollow. Yes, hollow—another one of those words that bubbled up from time to time.
He felt that if he raised his hand to his face, he’d be able to see right through it. Hollow, transparent—insubstantial. Words to conjure with. It seemed to him that his thoughts had become profound. But they were fleeting, no sooner formed than evaporated.
A new thought came to him. Miraculously, it lingered. Television. He remembered that days or weeks ago he’d eaten a steak dinner, then settled down with the remainder of the wine to catch up on The Walking Dead. Here was the living room; there was the TV. On the table beside his recliner, he spied the remote. All was in order. He went to the table, picked up the remote, turned to face the TV. But when he tried to press the POWER button his grip on the remote loosened and by the time it struck the carpet, bounced, and settled, the living room was deserted.
That was powerful--thanks for sharing!