The Void by Christine Alexander

I drive by the garden center every day; there’s no shortcut home. But I never look. I never even glance out the window to check if I can see him. Stacking firewood in that ratty old lumberjack coat, those brown boots worn away at the steel toe. I hope he is wearing that same old coat; I think I’d feel betrayed if he’d gotten a new one. It would seem spiteful, like he didn’t want to look the way he appears in my memory. I look the same, I look worse for the wear, I look straight ahead and wait for the cars to turn right, into the Dunkin parking lot, the Shell station, the Rite-Aid. 

What if I didn’t wait, though? What if I hit the gas instead of the brake, what if I caused such a scene that he walked down the hill and into the street to see?

Last winter I asked him if he spoke any French, because of his French last name. He knew one phrase, he told me: L’appel du vide. The call of the void. 

Like staring into the abyss and the abyss staring back? I asked. 

Something like that, he said. I don’t think he really knew what it meant, because when I looked it up, I understood right away and could have explained it easily. What if I pressed my palm down onto the electric burner, what if I dropped the baby off the balcony, what if I was washing dishes and plunged the soapy knife right into my gut? I’d always been afraid of such things. 

What are you afraid of? I’d asked him. 

Nothing, he told me. Maybe the bottom of the ocean, like the middle of the ocean—The abyss, I tried again—I guess so, he said. 

My hands are old lady hands with bulging blue veins, unpolished nails. I won’t hit the car in front of me today. It will have to be a day when I have makeup on, clean hair, good jeans. So he remembers he used to think I was beautiful. Maybe today I will let myself look, just see if he’s there. That rangy gait, hands in pockets, Marlboro smoke, dark stare, furrow in his brow even deeper than mine. He’s mine, is what I’d think, and I can’t believe I still think so. 

I don’t look. I drive up and around and park at the shore—there are no ships on the horizon, just the cold, just the deep, the grey blue everything. It might as well be the middle of the ocean and I stare, and nothing stares back at me.  

Christine Alexander is an MFA candidate at Lesley University. Her work has appeared in Barren Magazine, High Shelf Press, Passengers Journal, and others. She lives in Gloucester, MA. Twitter: @d0llypop

6 May 2022