Wednesday Rain

Two minutes before seven. Not far from where Cletus sat with a cup of decaf and the spring chore list, his older daughter folded over gracefully at the waist to gather up last scattered bits for her school pack. The fall of her hair obscured her lovely face, but the hallway mirror intriguingly doubled her figure. Worried as usual that the daily heft of Annie’s pack might damage her young spine and shoulders, he felt his hand sliding down between the kitchen chair and that ancient sore place in his own lower back, left side. Why not leave half the stuff at home, he’d asked her time and again, come on, how could all those items really be essential for one sixteen-year-old to navigate one day of public high school and city busses?

But no lecture from old worried Dad today—no, today he would restrain himself as he watched, waiting for what Annie might say to him when she finished with her heavy pack, something refreshing he hoped from his very bright girl. This morning he could really use new input. Ever since his shower there’d been a dull phrase looping in his head, time and effort; someone must have said it yesterday at the office, or he’d overheard it on the crowded street walking to lunch, who knew—you could monitor what you put into your stomach, but it seemed pretty impossible to keep track of what streamed into your head and especially how it replayed. He leaned against his hand until he felt the pressure more than the back pain. Chiropractic over the last few years hadn’t really gotten down to it; maybe the problem was just too old. Sacrum, Carol thought, and it did seem as if that whole neighborhood had somehow been messed with. Firm, steady touch could give this small degree of relief, or distraction, but of course as with anything you could overdo it, focus too much on one area, and then be worse off.

Time and effort—couldn’t he at least get stuck on something more exciting? An awful lot of similarly random, common phrases had started repeating like this lately, none very interesting, just things people said when they were out and about, doing their lives, like useless segments of everyday music, too short to be tunes but nonetheless monopolizing his mind like nobody’s business, especially when he was tired, as he was now, or a bit under the weather. He felt like a cow that had forgotten how to swallow its cud.

Annie straightened up and reached for her jacket. Amazing how fast sixteen had come about, how quickly she’d gotten taller than her mother. Carol had been telling him it was high time to get to the bottom of his back trouble, consider x-rays, maybe some other sort of bodywork. Like a car, he thought. Which would take time, and of course money. Money, now that was a word not many people, himself for sure, could avoid chewing on every day.

Seven o’clock, time for Annie to get herself out the door, but be grateful she’d sat down long enough to eat some of the eggs he’d scrambled and a few bites of toast, the soft parts. Cletus finished off one of her crusts and sucked in a few more hot swallows of the so-called coffee. Should he remind her to brush her teeth before school? After every meal, the dentist had told him, flossing, too. But what could you say—kids had no notion about root canals. And of course now it was too late, seven o’clock.

Time and effort, mundane as all get out, like him, he supposed, but how tiresome. If this was adult life without caffeine, maybe he should renege on his reformation; he didn’t even feel sufficiently virtuous about weaning himself. She looked nearly ready to go, his stunning, ambitious, whip-smart Anne Marie, hitching into the backpack, now tilting her face toward the mirror, oh lucky mirror, parting her lips for two swipes of gloss...