—YOU’VE SURE GOT A WAY WITH WORDS

 

 

Meaningless Affections

 

Because you’re an angry person, I write you an audiobook that I never send. Editors demand rewrites, more show-don’t-tell, adjectives instead of lazy adverbs, an uproarious ending that makes people gasp then say, Ha! I had it pegged from the beginning! 

Our dog is neutered but sheds all its fur while the windows lose their minds because it’s that kind of Christmas where squirrels wear argyle sweaters and deer ridiculous parkas from Yves Saint Lauren (who might have died of a head cold) (like your great—great— aunt.) The Siberian mutt, once an avid reader, is now, instead, addicted to TikTok and anime porn. 

In the novel, everyone dearly and savagely loves someone who doesn’t know how to sculpt, climax properly or reciprocate meaningless affections. No one is killed, loses a limb or child, which is a first for me. No one runs from a fight or lies with a bald face because every character (even Sinead O'Connor) is unnaturally hirsute. 

When your daughter reads it to you one night, she skips the part about the garage and ladder and old rope with its frayed threads which, collectively, couldn’t get the job done until the third try. Your daughter, the split of me, writes a new chapter full of sappy fabrications, mentioning love-at-first-sight and randy moments in a car park instead of what I wrote about widowed moms and how much glass they shatter when the house, at last, decides to settle itself.