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Screens

Simon Hardy Butler

    After his wife died, Jimmy began installing screens in his apartment. He placed one over each window, then bought a couple more to separate the kitchen from the dining room. When his friend Robert visited only a month after Mary’s death, he said it “felt like jail.” Jimmy took offense.
    “It’s protection,” he said. “You want insects in your building?”
    The problem was, it didn’t stop there. More screens followed, which Jimmy kept in a pile beside his bed. He stood a few against the wall, stored others in his closets. Robert decided he was a hoarder, but Jimmy shook his head at the word.
    “You don’t want things coming into your home,” he said. “They could ruin your life.”
    “Don’t you think you’re doing just that?” Robert asked.
    Jimmy made a face. At 60 years old, he was too young to be a widower, but it was a fact, and he had to live with it. Mary’s cancer was devious; it came up quickly after she stopped smoking, as if punishing her for the practice. He wasn’t there when she died in the hospital – he was in transit, stuck on Lexington Avenue – and blamed the traffic for her demise. “If I took the subway,” he said, “I’d have been there, saved her.”
    The doctor, of course, said there was nothing he could do. Jimmy, however, knew he was lying.
    At the funeral, Robert spoke about the temporary nature of life. He said when he first met Mary, she reminded him of a girlfriend from long ago. Jimmy then spoke up and said that never happened. “She didn’t remind you of anyone,” he snapped.
    People forgave him – they realized he was distraught – but Robert wondered if this was the start of a larger issue. Soon after, Jimmy punched a hole in one of his window screens and took it down before installing a new one. He then punched a hole in that screen, too.
    “Thankfully, I have extras,” he said to Robert at dinner one night. His friend, a psychologist specializing in OCD behavior, pointed to his irrationality.
    “Let me be irrational, then,” barked Jimmy, hitting the table with his fist. A bit of foam spilled from his beer to the surface. Robert frowned.
    “You can’t cope,” he said, “so you’re starting patterns. Bad patterns. You need a hobby.”
    “Do I? Painting stinks. I haven’t written for years. What would I be good at?”
    “You could go back to writing, maybe blogging. You don’t lose the knack for that.”
    Jimmy tapped his glass with a fingernail. “Mary said I couldn’t write. Not for shit.”
    “She was joking. She really loved it.”
    “She loved me – not my writing.”
    “Sometimes people aren’t good judges. Mary was a sweetheart, but she wasn’t a connoisseur. She didn’t even write herself.”
    “You don’t need to,” Jimmy opined, “to tell other people how to do it.”
    With that, he picked up his plate and brought it to the kitchen. Robert’s still had food on it, the remains of a T-bone steak still on the bone. Peas and carrots, too. He gazed at the food, thinking that it somehow was like his friend, half-finished ... and then discarded. He took another bite, then pushed it away.
    “You having coffee?” Jimmy asked from the kitchen.
    The next day, Robert called to make sure his buddy wasn’t punching things again. Jimmy said he’d taken up writing.
    “Against Mary’s wishes,” he joked.
    “She’d appreciate it,” said Robert, with a chuckle. “At least she’d be polite.”
    “No, she wouldn’t.”
    Apparently, the first thing Jimmy wrote about was meeting Mary, a short story about their first date. They’d met in a coffee shop on First Avenue the day after Christmas about 30 years ago. She’d ordered a hamburger; he was trying to figure out why they wouldn’t serve him beer.
    “But you have it on the menu,” he protested.
    The waiter brushed him off. “They have it on the menu,” he said to Mary.
    “I like wine instead,” she said.
    “Hate it,” Jimmy muttered.
    It was a blind date, one where the participants don’t like each other immediately, but begin to show affection once they get out of the appointed restaurant. Walking down the street, they came across a derelict by the garbage can. Jimmy gave him five bucks, despite being out of work.
    “Good sir,” said Mary, dancing in front of him, “wouldst thou give me money, too? I’m hungry and poor.”
    “Aye, but I’m poor, too,” Jimmy said, laughing. The derelict didn’t find it funny.
    “Just wait until you find yourself here,” he said to them. “When your friends disappear and you’re stuck with bullshit. You won’t be laughing then.”
    Mary let out a guffaw, and they decided to cross the street so as not to offend the fellow anymore. At the light, they had their first kiss. Jimmy tasted her lip gloss, grape, and she felt around his solid white teeth with her tongue. Then they lit cigarettes and smoked a bit before holding hands.
    “I never met someone so open,” she told him.
    “What?” he said. “I’m always on the defensive.”
    “Not you. You’re transparent. I understand you. We’re like sandwiches.”
    “Sandwiches.” What kind? Jimmy wondered. But he didn’t ask. She told him.
    “Club sandwiches,” she said, and shrieked with laughter. “I’m the lettuce,” she added. “You’re the chicken ... and the bacon.”
    “I want to be the lettuce,” he said.
    “Tough noogies.”
    “No tomato?”
    “Oh, yeah. We’ll hire someone.”
    Robert smiled after hearing Jimmy recount this. “Maybe I’m the tomato,” he said.
    “We didn’t have any,” Jimmy noted. “It was a tomato-less club sandwich.”
    There was something mournful in his voice, despite the silly context. It was like he missed the conversation, all that nonsense. Robert tried to perk him up.
    “You and I, we’re both 60,” he said, though he actually was 58. “How about we go to Coney Island, check out the aquarium? When was the last time you went to the aquarium?”
    “I don’t know ... before Mary died.”
    “That’s why I’m asking. Why don’t we do that? It’ll get your mind off death. Off Mary.”
    Jimmy sighed. “What will we see? Some stupid fish and a couple of whales? A few sea lions do tricks?”
    “Maybe it’ll rain,” Robert said. “Then the only thing you’ll see is the otters.”
    “I hope it rains,” Jimmy said.
    It turned out he didn’t, and they went to the aquarium on Coney Island that Saturday. It was packed, but they were able to visit the tanks and see a show, as well as watch the penguins get fed. Jimmy told Robert that the reason he stopped writing was that he had nothing to write about anymore – except his life. Was that worthy? he wondered.
    “Sure,” Robert said, as a seagull stole some fish from a penguin’s beak. “Look at that – what a bastard.”
    “I once stole a pack of gum when I was a child,” Jimmy said. “They never caught me.”
    “I’m catching you right now,” Robert snapped, taking his friend’s wrist.
    One of the penguins dove into the water and swam right near them, his undersides visible through the glass. Jimmy stopped horsing around and watched.
    “You know,” he said, “if this was a screen, the water would drown us.”
    “Or we’d run away,” Robert said.
    “I’m glad it’s not. I’m glad the animals are separated. You know? I’m glad there’s one thing and another, and we’ve got the right boundaries.”
    His pal gazed at him. “You need therapy,” he said, as he let his wrist go.
    In reality, Jimmy was seeing a therapist, but he didn’t like him, so he often cancelled appointments. “The guy’s so damn critical,” he said while digging into his burger at the café. “He never says, ‘Oh, you’re mourning.’ Instead, he’s like, ‘Why are you complaining?’ I’m complaining because I’m mourning. He doesn’t get it.”
    “You should get a new therapist,” Robert said.
    “Then he told me I should go to one of those groups. They’re for idiots. I can’t do that. I mourn privately.”
    “Except to me. You complain all the time.”
    “True.” It was obvious he was feeling better. The sun was blistering; Robert wished he was one of the penguins in the pool. Jimmy, however, didn’t wish anything. He noticed a young woman cutting up a hot dog for her toddler.
    “Good thing I don’t have that,” he said.
    “I always thought you’d be a good daddy,” Robert said.
    “Mary and I didn’t want kids. And I don’t want someone holding my hand when I die. I want to be alone, comfortable. I want no one to notice.”
    “Like Mary.”
    A cloud came over the sun briefly. “She wanted to die with me,” Jimmy said.
    They finished their burgers and left the aquarium afterward. That evening, after he got home, Robert received a call from Jimmy complaining about his screens.
    “They’re falling apart,” he said. “They’re bad quality. I think they’re wrecked.”
    But Robert didn’t call him back. The next day, Jimmy texted him with the message: “I took the screens down.” His friend texted back: “Why?”
    “Well,” said Jimmy, during lunch at a local diner, “they didn’t keep out the insects after all. The bugs still got in the apartment. I tried and tried, but nothing stopped them. Some of the bugs were dead on the windowsill. A couple of flies were in the bathroom.”
    “So you took all of them down?” Robert asked.
    “All of them – even the ones by the kitchen. They don’t work.”
    “So you can move freely now, right?”
    “Freely. Sometimes.”
    “It’ll get better,” Robert noted. “Just remember: You’re not a penguin. You don’t have gulls taking your food.”
    “I’m happy about that,” Jimmy said softly. “I’m happy.”
    They talked about this and that for the rest of the meal, then left to do whatever. Jimmy went back to writing. Robert headed to an appointment. Before he went, he dropped a piece of bread on the sidewalk for a pigeon. The bird pecked at it, and the bread flew into the street.
    “Better get it before a car hits you,” he said. And he turned the corner toward his building.

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