Written by Cliff Chen
Content Warning: Marital confrontation
A digger, a backhoe, even a tractor has flashing lights to warn people of danger. I drive and
operate one or more of these on a daily basis. I manipulate danger for a living.
One light is blue. It pulses every half second. The other is yellow, and it goes every
second. Half- and one-second beats. Be-ware, be-ware, be-ware. You have indicators on cars,
traffic lights, fire alarms. The only flashing lights we don’t use for warning are Christmas tree
lights. And no one needs to be warned about Christmas, right? What with all the drinking and
arguments and breakups.
Today I dig several holes on site. It’s my job to do that. But when I dig holes at home,
in conversation with the wife, nobody wants those. I can’t seem to stop though. It’s like I’ve
kept the backhoe on the end of my mouth and it just keeps reaching out and diving into that
soil, excavating more and more bad feeling. And later I try and bury it under booze and
rowdiness. Builders put up fencing, like: No trespassers. Climb inside at your own risk.
‘If only there were signs when I met you,’ the wife says. ‘I’d have paid attention.’
‘And I should’ve taken one look at your mother and known,’ I said. Now, I know
that’s not what I should say. But she’s already inside the perimeter. We’ve already dug up the
dirt, busted the sewer mains, and torn up all the cables. It’s all out there and neither of us
knows how to put it back.
Flash-Flash-Flash.
She bangs the pot on the table. The pasta inside jumps like a pile of fusilli worms. I
look at the steam and see the burst pipes underneath, and think: I’m getting fired. Say one
genuine thing, I tell myself. Just one. But when I look at her hunched shoulders, that pose of
betrayal, all the steam rises up again and I feel sorry for us. All that fresh pasta gone to waste.
Try something else. Hug her. But I can’t bring my body to carry out the action. I know
I need to get off the machine, leave the site. Calm down. So, I go for a walk.
Try to notice three things: sights, smells, sounds. That’s what the marriage counsellor
told us. Really notice those things. What I notice is how bad I am at being good. And how
good she is at being a victim. No, the word ‘victim’ is off limits. I’ve been warned. That’s
victim-blaming. But somehow that still leaves me with all the responsibility for containing
the cables and dirt and sewage. All that mess underneath those fresh, carefree Facebook posts
she puts up for the world to see.
Flash, flash, flash.
Like we’re supposed to measure up to that. She seems to be saying to the world: This
is where we’re at. While saying to me: This is where you ought to be taking me. But a
backhoe doesn’t take you places. It digs. That’s all it can do. Maybe I don’t have the tools for
this job.
Quick, notice three things: the way her hair smells after she blow dries it, how she
squints one eye when she’s conflicted, how she stops midsentence sometimes, as if arrested
by love.
Flash. Flash. Flash.
I come back into the kitchen. She’s on the phone. ‘Yeah. Yeah. Of course,’ she says.
From the tone of her voice, I know it’s her mother.
I nod and she rolls her eyes, offering a wry smile. Her mother is the champion when it
comes to excavations. The earth is full of holes everywhere her mother goes. I think the
father, though alive and well, has fallen into one. For he cannot ever be found wherever his
wife happens to be.
Is that the solution? Just down tools and move to opposite ends of the site? Perhaps
we’re not building anything after all. That was our mistake, thinking we were laying the
foundations for something, casting concrete, erecting a structure we could be proud of.
Warmth, shelter, love. But maybe at some point we just learn to leave well enough alone. We
learn the virtue of peace and isolation.
‘Can you believe her?’ my wife says, after hanging up the phone.
Don’t dig. Drop the hoe. Turn the ignition off so the lights go dark and still.
I sit at the table. She stands beside my chair. I encircle her waist from the front and
press my ear to her heart.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
‘She doesn’t want me to be happy,’ my wife continues. ‘Why doesn’t she want me to
be happy?’
‘I know.’
My wife gives me a shake. ‘What are you thinking?’
Thump. Thump. Thump.
‘I don’t know,’ I say. Because this is what not digging looks like. It looks like not
saying or doing anything. Because inside here.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Where there are no lights.
Thump. Thump.
There is no danger.
Thump.
But it feels like sadness.
.
Cliff Chen is a Trinidadian-Irish writer with several publications. He studied Psychology at Edinburgh and Oxford. He won the Wasafiri Life Writing prize, and was selected for Penguin-Random House’s Write Now workshop. By day, he practices as a clinical neuropsychologist and is working on his first novel. Achievements include: Golden Pen competition (3rd prize), Bridport Short story prize (short list), Commonwealth Short Story Prize (long list), Aurora Short Fiction prize (short list), Fish International Short Story Prize (finalist), Wasafiri Short Story prize (short list), Carve Magazine’s Esoteric Short Story (semi-finalist). Publications include: Fish International prize Anthology, Black Rose magazine, Wasafiri New Writing magazine, Full caps, Hear me now (dramatic monologues, Bloomsbury), ‘Grief’ in Growth in grief poetry anthology.