September 16

Short Story

Mr. Jansen took great pleasure in napping right after lunch. He would put his feet up on the ottoman and prop a pillow behind his head, light a cigar, open his newspaper to any arbitrary page and stare until his eyes closed. 

That Saturday he felt especially snug and warm, and his newspaper was especially boring, and he would have fallen right asleep if it wasn’t for his wife’s penetrating voice making its way from the kitchen right into his left ear. Mr. Jansen could not hear a thing from his right ear, but moments such as those made him wish he was deaf altogether.

Mrs. Jansen had been in an especially good mood for days. September marked a happy period for his wife. He blamed it on the changing weather, the crisp morning air. 

To add to her cheeriness, she had also gotten news from a long-lost relative: her brother. Or half brother. Mr. Jansen didn’t know the details, nor did he want to know. He only cared about her plans if they affected him. And in this case they did. For days she spoke about little else besides September 16th. She had even forgot about his insulin injection that morning. They hadn’t made their Saturday walk, their lunch the day before hadn’t been whatever he wanted to eat, but what she had in mind (which wasn’t very much). She even forgot to make the bed in the morning. 

“Isn’t it just dreamy Fred?” she screamed from the kitchen.

He heard the sound of dish water as she cleaned the remnants of lunch from their plates and cutlery. In most regards Mrs. Jansen was the ideal wife, and realistically he couldn’t ask for better. Considering his looks and intellect. He only had his inheritance: his pockets were about the size of his stomach. Very large. If only she could stop that incessant talking. It had neither a start nor an end. It even followed him into bed, where he’d hear it in his dreams.

“Fred dear, Fred?” she screamed from the kitchen, “Freddy?” 

Mr. Jansen could hear her hasty footsteps in the hallway, coming towards him. In one sweeping motion he propped his feet up on the ottoman and pretended to sleep.

“Fred? Fred!”

After twenty-two years of marriage she still thought he was dead every time he took a nap after lunch. His face did have a very pale and translucent quality to it and with his mouth open to a slight crack, his dehydrated tongue gave the illusion of decay. He was also a good sixteen years older than she. And now, at the age of sixty-one in comparison to her almost forty-five, and his growing diabetes, their age gap felt especially daunting. 

“Fred!” she said shaking his shoulder violently.

Mr. Jansen kept his eyes closed and his breathe to a minimum. At his age physical contact was a rarity, restraint to those violent shakings, at times a quick peck on the cheek, the lifting of his shirt to show his voluptuous belly as she injected insulin into a roll of fat.  

“Freddy!”

He smelled her finger under his nose. Onion and vanilla perfume. He coughed.

“Oh, thank God! Fred, feel my chest! My heart is about to explode.”

“Mmm?” mumbled Mr. Jansen. Theatrically he opened one eye and looked at her from his peripheral, like a chicken. 

“Darling, you promised never to nap without telling me first. I just about got a heart attack and you would have slept right through it.” She had pale brown, almost colorless eyes with tiny bright black pupils. The same eyes Mr. Jansen had fallen for all those years ago. Now he was intimidated by them, they were equipped with knives ready to slice at the slightest provocation.

“Very well.” She placed her voluptuous behind on the sofa next to him and made herself comfortable. There goes my nap, he thought. 

“Where was I?”

“I don’t know, dear.”

“Oh, yes. That’s right. I simply cannot believe he knew where I lived. Can you?”

“Not at all.”

“It’s just so dreamy, having a brother. I wonder what he looks like.” 

“Probably at least somewhat like you,” Mr. Jansen said.

“And all that on September 16th... don’t you just love September? And the number 16?”

“I guess I do dear.” 

“I just cannot believe he knows where I live. How do you think he found out? Really, darling, just how do you think he found out?”

“I do not know dear.”

“Do you think he saw me walking in town?”

“Maybe, but how would he have known you were related?” The question slipped out before he could stop himself and he regretted it at once.

“Just what do you mean?” her eyes, or rather, her pupils were staring at him in a way that made him feel a lot smaller than his colossal stomach should have allowed. Mr. Jansen made it a rule never to provoke his wife. Her round face, which resembled a hamburger bun, distorted and gave way to a circular, round mouth, making her bun-face look more like a bagel.

“So you don’t think he saw me in town?” Mrs. Jansen eyed him.

“Oh, no darling, he may well have,” Mr. Jansen was very much awake now, “in fact, he probably did. Yes, in fact he probably did.”

“What an intelligent man you are Fred, really. I envy you and your brain. I really do.”

“Thank you darling.”

“I hope he saw me last Saturday. I was wearing the pearls you bought me for my birthday twenty years ago. I can’t believe I’ve had that necklace for practically twenty years to the day.”

“I hope so too, dear.”

Mr. Jansen had closed his eye again, pretending with all his might like he was sleeping. But Mrs. Jansen took no regard in his theater. Quite the contrary, she started running her hands through his remaining hair. A thing she hadn’t done for at least ten years. Right around the time Mr. Jansen turned fifty and Mrs. Jansen thought it funny to call him primordial. 

“You wouldn’t mind very much if I went out tomorrow afternoon to meet him?” Mrs. Jansen asked.

“Of course not dear.”

“You didn’t have anything else planned?”

“I did not, no.”

“It wouldn’t be long. Not more than an hour or two.” 

“Mmm,” Mr. Jansen breathed, trying his utmost to hold onto the last hint of sleep he had left in him.

“If you had something else planned then of course I would choose to go out with you.”

“I had nothing planned, no.”

“It’ll be an hour or two. No more.”

“Lovely.”

“For lunch.”

“For what dear?”

“Lunch.”

They hadn’t skipped a single meal together for the past twenty-two years. He looked at her from the corner of his eye in his usual way. One really would think he stemmed not from an ape, but from a chicken instead.

“Must you?”

“As you said, we had nothing planned. And anyway, you know how important family is to me.”

“I know that dear. But I’m sure you can ask to meet for tea instead. Or have him come here.”

“Don’t be so silly. What if you don’t like him?”

“I like everything that resembles you dear,” and with that, he closed his eyes again thinking he must have convinced her.

“That is sweet darling but there is simply no way I will skip this lunch. Simply no way. I want to celebrate. It is the 16th of September tomorrow, after all.”

Opening his eyes one at a time, he stared at the wondrous woman who was his wife. He really did adore her, though she was a trifle irritating at times. For example, those little quirks of hers, he wished she would renounce them all. Especially the manner with which she looked at him, square in the face, her whole body turned towards him. It was extraordinary though how little her features had changed over time. While he had transformed from a grape, filled with a sweet vital liquid, to a raisin, she still had the same arrogant tilt of the chin, the flaring nostrils, the contemptuous eyes that were too small and slightly too close together for comfort; still the same habit of thrusting her face forward at you, impinging you, pushing you into a corner. If he didn’t need her like a baby needs the nipple, he would have abandoned her long ago. But he relied fully on her, there was no point in denying it, he hardly knew how to cook an egg. 

“And what am I to do?” he asked.

“You’ll find something to eat I’m sure. You are the most intelligent man I know.”

“You’ll make something for me before you leave?”

“Oh, I could try. But I doubt it. I can’t possibly smell like food the first time I meet my brother,” she laughed.

“I don’t like it one bit,” Mr. Jansen managed to say.

“Don’t be such a child Fred.”

Mr. Jansen took a long breathe, then said sulkily: “Very well then. As long as you’re back for tea.”

“Have I ever told you how much I adore you? I just adore you, really, I do,” she said, her voice full of sarcasm. 

She kissed him violently, almost dislocating his neck. He had a flabby face with so much flesh on it that his cheeks hung down on either side of his mouth like a spaniel. Yet still she managed to miss his cheek, and instead gave him a noisy kiss right on his good ear. He cried out in pain.

All his will to sleep had evaporate. He remained sulky throughout tea, dinner, and even bed. 

That morning his wife conveniently forgot to wake him at 8:30. When he opened his eyes, with no thanks to her, his watch read 10:23.

He got out of bed slowly, he did not want to faint, and put his slippers on his feet. He was truly angry, he could feel his heart pulsing in his temples. 

“Adriana?” 

She was in the bathroom and could not hear him over the rhythmic sound of running water.

“Adriana!” he tried again, “Adriana!”

“What is it Fred?” She said, turning the shower off. 

“Why didn’t you wake me at 8:30?”

“Oh, I must have forgotten.”

“Now my whole day is ruined!”

“Don’t be so sulky, you would have been mopping around in the bathroom all morning anyway,” she said, dropping her head through the bathroom door. A smile that wasn’t a smile played on her round face. Suddenly everything bothered him about that porcelain plate of a head: the curl of her nose, the big brown eyes which stared at him with their even darker centers, the thin red veins on their white planes.    

“Get me a towel, will you?”

The thought of her naked body behind that half-open door gave him a sense of power. Suddenly he wanted to assert himself, even at considerable risk. 

“I don’t think I will dear,” Mr. Jansen said.

“Don’t be so difficult Fred!” She shouted back, “and anyway, it’s the least you can do.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s the least you can do on a Sunday.”

“A Sunday?”

“Yes, this Sunday in particular Fred,” she said with a sense of boredom, as though she were in a long queue. This, Mr. Jansen knew from experience, was a danger signal. She was a time bomb with the pin pulled out, and it was only a matter of seconds before she’d explode. In the silence Mr. Jansen could almost hear her ticking.

With his head slumped forward he walked over to the cabinet to retrieve a towel. A terribly small one, to prove a point. He knocked on the door and she slid it open slightly, just enough to get her hand through the open crack. 

“Thank you dear,” she said.

Mr. Jansen went downstairs and made himself a cup of tea. Presumably the only thing he’d be having until she returned. He could not even make toast, they always went from toilet paper white to soiled toilet paper black within seconds. Tea, though, he could make. And he also knew how to put honey in his tea, so as far as he was concerned, his insulin levels would be stable. 

It took Mrs. Jansen three hours to get ready. She had powdered her cheeks and forehead, put mascara on her upper and lower lashes, scarlet lipstick filled her lips and, most shattering of all, a massive pushed-up bosom projected like a balcony out in front of her, so far it was a miracle she didn't topple forward. 

Teary-eyed she said goodbye, then she was gone. 

With all this time to nap, he couldn’t. The house felt terribly quiet. He soon came to find the sound of his own breathing incredibly bothersome. At times like those he did not want to be reminded of his being alive. After an hour of mopping around, he began to feel hungry and lethargic, and above all else, he missed his wife. Surely he was happy for her. He came from a wealthy, loving family, and he could only imagine how horrid her childhood must have been. But his sympathies were meager and short-lived. Above all else he felt irritated and sorry for himself.  Everything felt like one big unnecessary inconvenience.  

What could he do to pass the time? Perhaps take a walk? There were no shops in his neighborhood, only a line of tall houses on each side, all of them identical. They had porches and pillars and four or five steps going up to their front doors. In short, a walk would only deepen his sense of isolation and boredom. Call a friend? In his wife’s absence he realized he did not have any. Not a single one.

The rest of the day passed as a sort of nightmare. He sat on the couch for so long that all sensation disappeared from his bum. With sheer desperation and power of will, he forced sleep to come. After four hours she still had not returned. Then five hours passed and she was still not back. At six his stomach made a noise so loud it shocked even him. 

What right did she have to increase his misery by keeping him waiting unnecessarily? Where in the world was that woman? If only he had taken more interest in her whereabouts. Slowly he got up and swaggered one step at a time up the long stairs to their room. Maybe if he laid in bed he could finally sleep for a few dreadful minutes.  

What he saw as he opened the door to their bedroom made him squeal like a pig at the slaughter. The bedspread had been taken off the bed and the bedclothes had been turned back on one side, all ready for someone to get in. On top of his pillow sat an envelop. 

With a quivering hand he picked it up and felt it between his fingers. Finally he drew out the contents. It consisted of some fifteen or twenty sheets of lined white paper, folded over once and held together at the top by a clip. What could all this possibly mean? He skimmed over the sheets, each page was covered with the small, neat, forward-sloping writing. 

He could tell she spent many hours playing with the wording. Each letter acted as a sort of propeller. She had gathered several hundred sentences together at once and fit them end to end, with the cogs interlocking, like gears, each wheel a different size, pushing him further and further away from her. Now and then she put a really long sentence right next to a very short one in such a way that the long one, turning slowly, made the short one feel like a slap in the face.

He felt himself go white and faint. A slight bluish-grey tinge had formed around his nostrils and mouth. A few strands of damp hair hung down over her forehead, sticking to his skin. 

The letter itself was long, but what it said could be summarized in a few words: he had forgotten her birthday for the twentieth time. Had he remembered, she would have stayed. But he hadn’t, so she had run away with her so-called brother and would never return. 

September 16th. Now that it was no longer necessary, the date would be stamped in his mind forever.