flashquake Fiction

TRUCE
by Brad Wagshul

"Come on, you've been in there forever," Carmen says.

"One minute," I respond from the bathroom. I'm inches from the mirror, struggling not to blink as I slowly drag my fingertip across my right eye. I'm searching for something, maybe a tiny hair, that's been irritating it for weeks, but all I find are little rays of green and gold that expand and contract in the light, flecks of color that I didn't know were hidden in my brown iris.

After a few unsuccessful minutes I open the door. Carmen's arms are crossed in front of her chest, and her face twists into a patchwork of rarely-visible wrinkles, giving me a preview of how beautiful she'll be in ten years.

"Were you playing with that eye again?" she asks. Her tone is serious, but not condescending. I don't respond, wary she'll begin another lecture about how my eye problems are psychosomatic. "We're late," she says instead, and I follow her out the front door and onto the sidewalk, where we hail a cab to take us to the restaurant.

During the ride and the first half of our meal I steer the conversation away from serious topics, and instead we discuss work, movies, and our friends' shortcomings. But after a few drinks she grabs my hand, and I know she's about to pierce the veil of superficiality that sobriety has allowed us to maintain.

"Any idea what's really going on?" she asks as she massages my palm with her thumb. "Nobody gets stuff in their eyes this often, and you and the doctor can never find anything. This latest thing's been in there, what, three weeks? Four?" Of course she has the right to ask these kinds of questions, to satisfy herself that her husband's brain doesn't harbor a psychological monster from his past that's trying to escape through his eyes by manifesting itself as a physical problem. But her brand of one-sided, alcohol-inspired honesty leaves no room for discussion of her issues, which are more complex than a hair stuck in an eye. I don't want to bring those up or to entertain her theories about me. I just want to enjoy the meal, the wine, and my wife.

"It's probably just one of the cat's hairs," I say, and she raises her glass to her mouth. "We're made differently, with different problems, like any two people. You get migraines, my eyes attract hair and grit." I know she'll never accept such a simple explanation, but I intend it as an offer of a truce, a proposal to refrain from dissecting each other's problems for the rest of the night.

"You know there's nothing in there," she says. Either she didn't understand my offer, or she's rejected it. My only option is to put her on the spot, to try to make her as uncomfortable as I am.

"What about you?" I ask. She furrows her brow slightly, as if she doesn't understand. As if this were the first time I've returned the favor of playing psychiatrist.

"Your nightmares," I continue. She sometimes screams and punches invisible intruders in her sleep, or wakes up trembling and drenched with sweat, so shaken that she refuses to speak for hours. "Or the gun you want to buy. Jesus, we live in a gated community. We have an alarm. Why do we need a gun? Why do you need a gun? What in those nightmares makes you this scared?" She tries to let go of my hand, but I tighten my grip.

"Maybe I'm scared of you," she says, and she glances at our joined hands. "Maybe I'm worried one day those problems won't manifest themselves as an itchy cornea or a twitch, but . . . ." She stops before she completes the thought, possibly remembering we've discussed this before. Remembering she's conceded that if I really were her concern, she would've left the house, and me, long ago.

"And maybe my eyes act up because I'm afraid you'll shoot me in my sleep," I respond. This time I let her pull away her hand, and she raises her glass to toast. I follow suit, hoping it signals her acceptance of the truce.

"Touché," she says, "I suppose it's the old 'chicken or the egg' problem."

"Which came first, the cat's hair or the nightmares?" I reply. She smiles and we clink our glasses.

We revert to talking as if we're sober, pretending for the rest of the meal and the ride home that what's most important is that, unlike many of our friends, we're not having affairs, riddled with cancer, or facing insurmountable debts. After we crawl into bed I wait for her to fall asleep, then sneak into the bathroom. Looking in the sticky corners of my eye, I wonder if anything other than pain would block a hair, or even a finger, from rolling around to the back of the orb. I then stare into my pupil, trying to gauge the depth of the black I can see, wondering whether I'm peering just below the surface or almost into my skull, but it's impossible to judge. I find nothing that would cause my discomfort, so I turn off the light and get back into bed.

Copyright 2003 by Brad Wagshul

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