By Daniel Webre
To make a catalog of all that Sanders found objectionable would be pointless. Sanders knew because he had tried it, not just once, but on multiple occasions. Rather than start a new list each time, which would be grossly inefficient, he tried to keep an old one nearby so he could add to it. But these lists had a maddening habit of never being at hand when he needed them, so if and when he arrived at the point where he felt the need to write things down, he invariably started a new one.
His daughter, Allison, had grown weary of his lists, too. Frustrated with his own deficiencies, he sometimes got her involved. Write down “tooth decay” he told her. “Tornadoes.” Though that was a tricky one because he found them fascinating to look at when they weren’t posing an immediate threat.
“What about your phone?”
“Good point. Add ‘phone’ to the list.”
“No. I mean, why not keep your list on your phone? That way you’d always have it with you. You wouldn’t have to make a new one each time.”
“Don’t even get me started.”
Try as she might, Allison believed anything she did could get him started. He didn’t like the men she dated, definitely didn’t like the women, and had told her more than once that she was wasting her life. His only mercy was that he never asked her to write these things down.
“Have you ever thought about making a list of the things you do like?”
“What? That’s even worse. There’d be too much to put on it.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
Sanders grew quiet.
“Come on, Dad. It’s a fair question.”
“How old are you now, Allison? Twenty-five? Twenty-six? And you still don’t know what I like?”
“You don’t even know how old I am. I’m twenty-six.”
“I said that.”
“Yeah, and some other things.”
“Add ‘ingratitude’ to the list.”
“I’m not adding anything. You can make your own lists.” Allison stormed out of the room.
Sanders remained sitting. He watched the empty doorway his daughter just left through. He continued staring into the empty space, half expecting her to walk back into the room, but knowing that wouldn’t be the case for a while. So volatile, he thought, not bothering to write this down.
She definitely had Valerie’s sensitivity. And temper. He wished she could channel that better. What was a twenty-six year old woman doing living with her father anyway? Not that he minded. It was more for her sake that he wondered.
That list she was talking about. It would start with Valerie and Allison. But writing that down—dead wife, grown daughter—would sound way too sentimental. Sentimental for who? Who gave a damn about his lists? It might do Allison some good to write both names down on a sheet of paper. But then, what if she thought he was still adding to the other list?
“You still just sitting there?”
“I was thinking of watching some television.”
She looked at the blank screen, the remote on top of the entertainment center. “I think you might need this,” she said, then tossed him the remote. “I’m going out for a while.”
“Okay,” he said. He wanted to ask her for more details but wondered if that would set her off again. It was one thing for her to be angry at home, quite another when she was leaving the house. She needed her wits about her.
He pointed the remote at the TV, but set it down again. He didn’t want the distraction. Instead he sat in the quiet room and listened as his daughter opened one of the kitchen cabinets. Then he heard the sound of running water, the clank of a glass in the sink. Next, the door, the car. Then she was leaving. To whatever place she had decided.
He wondered if there had been an actual place she’d had in mind or if she’d simply had enough of his company. He couldn’t blame her. Then, catching himself, he reached for the new notepad he’d placed next to the sofa. On a clean sheet he wrote “Self-pity” followed by “Clinginess.” The quiet overcame him and he dozed—for a good while probably—because when he woke again, it was to the sound of the door opening.
Sanders struggled to get his bearings. He rubbed his eyes, tried to wake fully before Allison passed through the room. But it was not Allison.
“Who are you?” Sanders said. A man he did not know had entered his house. Surely Allison would be coming in behind him, but it bothered Sanders that this stranger did not seem the least bit ill-at-ease or apologetic for walking in unannounced.
“How was your nap?”
Sanders sat straight up, completely awake now. A growing sense of alarm was taking hold of him, but then Allison was in the room, draping her arm over the intruder’s shoulders.
“Daddy, this is Sal.”
“What’s Sal doing here?”
“Don’t be so rude.”
Sanders wanted to set things straight, let her know that if anyone was being rude it was Sal. With the aid of the sofa’s armrest, he managed to get to his feet with reasonable speed and dignity.
“Sal’s visiting.”
Sanders’ senses were finally returning to him and he got a look at the clock. “11:30 pm? I’m afraid visiting hours are over. You’re going to have to go home, Sal.”
“That’s the thing. Sal lives far away. All the way on the other side of town.”
“That’s right,” said Sal.
Sanders noticed Sal’s own arm had made it somehow around his daughter’s waist when he wasn’t looking. “No way. No way. No how. Go.” Sanders surprised himself by picking up one of the large pillows off of the sofa and thrusting it in front of him like a shield and advancing on Sal, forcing him back towards the kitchen.
“Daddy! What are you doing?”
“This imbecile is not welcome in my house.”
Sal continued to backpedal. His hands were raised defensively—palms out in front of his chest. “Whoa, whoa, whoa . . .” Sal said. He was grinning and seemed rather amused about the whole thing.
Sanders halted his advance and turned to address Allison. “He’s drunk. Isn’t he? You brought home a drunk man to my house. Some guy from a bar.”
Sal was laughing now, doubled over, making a high-pitched whine, like years earlier when some other obnoxious boy at one of Allison’s birthday parties had discovered how to let the air out of the balloons he and Valerie had so carefully inflated.
“Out,” Sanders said, with one more quick thrust of the pillow. It startled all of them when it made contact with Sal, causing him to lose his balance. He collapsed into a seated position, landing hard on his backside. But after one tense moment, when it seemed like anything might happen, Sal’s laughter intensified into even greater hysterics as he sprawled out on the floor.
Sanders threw the pillow down at him and retreated into the living room. Allison watched in silence.
The next morning, Sanders was reluctant to leave his bedroom, unsure what might be awaiting him. Had he gone too far this time? He put on his robe and headed toward the kitchen.
The door to Allison’s room was closed, though that didn’t necessarily mean she was in there or that Sal necessarily wasn’t. Sanders felt better seeing that the pillow had made its way back onto the sofa. He’d fully expected to see it on the kitchen floor still, quite possibly with Sal stretched out and reclining on it.
Not knowing what the fallout might be unsettled Sanders, but he took some comfort in these small returns to normalcy and fixed his attention on making coffee.
Coffee would be something he could add to his good list, if he ever bothered to start one. Before he could think what else might go on it, he heard a car pull up in the driveway. He hoped maybe it had been at the neighbors’, but moments later, a key was turning and Allison opened the door.
Instinctively, Sanders fell back into what he considered his fatherly role. “Where have you been, young lady?”
“I stayed over at Sal’s. You made it clear we weren’t welcome.”
“You were welcome. You live here.”
“Well, Sal was my guest, and you attacked him.”
“I didn’t attack him. I was merely trying to get my point across.”
Allison walked by Sanders and began opening kitchen drawers, pulling out sheets of paper. She collected several sheets and continued into the living room where Sanders could hear her rummaging around through various pieces of furniture.
She came back into the kitchen with an armful of loose papers and dropped them onto the kitchen table in front of her father. They scattered, spreading across much of the table’s surface.
Sanders picked up his cup of coffee and took a sip. Then inspected a few of the lists lying before him. Here was Allison presenting him with so many of the things he didn’t like about the world. When he’d first written them down—or had her do so, as the case might be—it felt liberating to be rid of them. But now, they were finding their way back, confronting him.
Sanders noticed some of the pages weren’t in a handwriting he recognized at first. He picked one up for a closer look. The left-leaning loops—these were Valerie’s, and this surprised him; he’d never asked her to write down his own complaints. Sanders was curious, but afraid to read on.
“You’ve been saving these?”
“Not exactly.”
“But they’ve been right here all along?”
“That’s right. Aren’t you going to read them?”
Sanders nodded, steeled his resolve. “Moodiness.” “Negative attitude.” “Always the victim.” He tried attaching these shortcomings to Valerie, but could not. It was him she was writing about.
“Do you think she was unhappy with me?”
“I wouldn’t say that, exactly.”
“But these lists—” Sanders held up several of them as proof.
“Don’t forget. They were your idea. She was only following suit.”
Sanders surveyed the scattered papers and began arranging them into a pile, not bothering to separate out Valerie’s complaints from his own. He stood up, picked up the pile, and aligned it by tapping it perpendicular to the table. “If you’ll excuse me, I suppose I have some reading to do.”
That morning, Sanders lost himself for several hours in lists of grievances, both trifling and serious. There were things he could remember writing that seemed so insignificant now that the only woman he had truly loved romantically had been taken from him. And there were other things that upset him to this day, and he felt guilty about that, but still couldn’t quite let go. As he read Valerie’s lists, what he found was by turns comical and staggering. He remembered his wife’s biting sense of humor and her very real sense of pain. Several times he had to stop reading and collect himself when he realized that he, and not the cancer, had been the cause of something hurtful to her, something he could now see was preventable.
When he emerged from his reading, he found a note from Allison on the kitchen table—“Went to Sal’s.” Sanders ran his fingers over his forehead. Maybe this Sal was someone more to her than just a drunk in his living room. Maybe he had overreacted a bit. He got out a clean sheet of paper and sat down at the table and began work on a new list. “Allison, Valerie,” he wrote at the top of the page. Then he balked at the great white space that awaited him. It was okay, though. He had all day, and he knew there was nothing more important for him to be doing at this moment than try his best to start filling in that page.
Daniel Webre’s fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Concho River Review, Xavier Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Big Muddy, The MacGuffin, and elsewhere. He lives in Louisiana where he teaches first-year writing and literature.