Ray Vukcevich: What the Socks Meant

As 2011 draws to a close, we’re featuring some highlights from our publication year with selections from Issues 9 and 10. Ray Vukcevich’s “What the Socks Meant” appears in Issue 9 of The Los Angeles Review.

What the Socks Meant

I set traps, and I fall into them.

Because you won’t haunt me, I haunt myself.

Better you should come screaming and decomposing out of the closet, or be a stiff zombie walking woman rising up from under the bed, or bang on the walls, rattle the china and spoons, moan, manifest inexplicable cold spots. At least say, “Boo.” Something.

Today, I ambush myself with purple socks.

I might not have come across the socks for many months, maybe not for years, maybe never, if I did the laundry more often. But I am a busy man. So very very busy. I am the sort of man who should have hired someone else to do his laundry. You sometimes overhear such men saying things like, Yes, it’s an added expense but when you consider the cost of my time, and we see the dot dot dots trailing off into space in the same direction he’s gazing while we consider the cost of our own time and wonder if he will be doing anything important while he’s not doing his laundry.

It hadn’t been my birthday the day you pushed the small flat box across the breakfast table to me. It was about the size of a checkbook. There was a blue bow. Your secret smile said oh just wait until you see what’s in this box! You may have been bouncing a little with excitement in your chair. Yes, I definitely remember some bouncing.

I ripped off the gift wrapping and opened the box and looked down into the black void of space. I imagined my hand passing through darkness into nothing, but my fingers were stopped by cool smoothness, and I lifted the deep purple mass out of the box. A pair of socks. I turned them in my hands and rubbed them between my fingers and thumbs, and they caught the morning sunlight and gleamed like incandescent lizards—X-eyed, pretending to be dead so I might get confused and put them down, and they could get away.

They’re not really silk, you said. It would be just too weird to give you silk socks, you laughed and looked away, but they are very silky, don’t you think?

I did think they were silky. What had you been trying to tell me with those socks?

What should I have done that morning instead of saying hey cool and kissing you on the cheek and after a brief period of sighing over the color and silkiness of the socks taking them to the bedroom and putting them in my sock drawer where they remained until today?

I should have put them on. Yes, that’s it. I should have pulled off my shoes and replaced my old socks with the new socks. I should have held up the legs of my pants and walked around so you could have gotten a good look.

Or maybe I should have undressed altogether and put on the shiny purple socks and then done a runway routine around the kitchen until you were clapping and laughing and I was so red you’d think I’d been cooking myself nude in the sunlight all day long, and we would have both called in sick—the giggles, we’ve got the giggles and can’t come to work today.

I could have danced, done deep knee bends, jumping jacks and shooed you back to bed and then made another breakfast, a better one, and brought it to you on a tray.

Is that what you meant by the socks? Am I getting warmer?

You’re not saying?

Okay, okay.

I will put on the socks now, because it’s either that or wear dirty socks. Maybe putting on dirty socks would be better. Maybe I should also not bother to shave. People will think I’m going for that retro stubbly look. But I’m not going for anything. I’m in a kind of fog sitting here on the bed in my underwear holding the limp lizard socks with nothing left to do but put them on.

The left one goes on without a problem. It’s cool and smooth and thin, and it fits so well you might imagine I’ve painted my foot.

As I pull on the other sock, I tear something loose with a ragged toenail, and a thread pulls up tight between two toes. Now I must take the sock off and snip the thread and maybe cut my toenails. But that would mean I’d have to take off the other sock, too, because I would want to cut both sets of toenails, wouldn’t I?

Forget it. The thread will break.

Instead of breaking, the strong silky thread cuts me deeply between the toes.

No one ever mistakes being cut for something else. Being cut is an immediately recognizable sensation. I realize this will change the way my day goes. I wonder how badly I’m bleeding.

I pull off the sock. It’s wet already. Yes, there is quite a lot of blood.

I hop into the bathroom and close the toilet and sit down and snatch off a bunch of toilet paper and apply pressure to the cut between my toes.

When the toilet paper is soaked, I replace it with new toilet paper. I would throw the bloody toilet paper in the toilet, but I am sitting on the closed lid, so I throw it on the floor. I do that many times. The bleeding doesn’t stop.

The pile of bloody paper is getting pretty impressive.

I’ve cut myself with a sock, and now I’m bleeding to death. I feel ridiculous.

I will have to call 911. Help me, I’ll say, I’m bleeding. The operator will want to know who and where I am and what happened. Why are you bleeding, sir? Well, I was putting on my socks—you know, the purple ones? No good. I will have to make something up, something about an intruder with a knife. And this housebreaker cut you between the toes? Oh, it’s hard to explain! Maybe I should say a burglar shot me. But then the paramedics might be primed for another situation altogether, and when they got here, they would not know what to do with a man bleeding between the toes. They might be totally at a loss. They might just go away and let me die. Not that I will call them anyway. No one calls an ambulance for a sock cut. The bleeding will stop.

The bleeding does not stop.

I’m feeling dizzy.

After I bleed to death, I will haunt you. You know I will. I won’t just go off somewhere and not haunt you. Watch for me.

I will leave you a note. Yes, that is what I will do. I will write you a note, explaining everything and telling you what to expect.

Can a ghost haunt a ghost? And what am I doing back in the kitchen? And how come I’m wearing nothing but my shorts and one purple sock? I slump down at the table.

I must have circled the table many times like a dog getting ready to settle down for a nap because there are bloody footprints all over the floor. Why did I do that? There is the grocery pad and pen in front of me. That explains it. I was wandering around looking for the means to write you that note.

I’ve killed myself with a sock. The thought does not frighten me now. I need only write my last thoughts to you, and that will be that. I will tell you how I should have put on the socks. I will tell you how I should have stayed home that last day, how I should have seen somehow that it was the last day. I will try not to be snippy about the fact you have done no haunting. I will talk about all the good times. I will list them. We’ll laugh at all the sudden memories.

Oh, hello, here you are at last, looking so light, so bright, like clear glass—hard to see, I mean. I can see right through you.

Never satisfied, you say, I’ve come, and now I’m not meaty enough for you?

Tears in alternating colors come to your eyes, red, blue, yellow, and green, and run down your glass face and fall and splatter on your glass knees and bounce away in all directions.

No, no, you are plenty meaty. You are the meatiest!

You sniff. You smile a small sad smile.

I put my head down on the table to die.

Which is all well and good, but some time later, I come to, and I am not dead. The bleeding has stopped. No one dies from a sock cut between the toes. I get up and go to the refrigerator and drink orange juice right from the carton. It’s late. I should call in with an excuse for missing work again.

There will be a lot of cleaning up to do here. There is blood all over the place—on the floor, on the table, on the walls. It looks like whatever died here put up a fight. I take the orange juice back to the table and slump down again. I pull the pad in close to read what I wrote.

Bloody fingerprints and one line.

“I so do miss you. Oh, and thanks for the socks.”