To Be Taken With a Grain of Salt 

by Carol Cho

For three days, it’s all I think about. It buzzes around, around my head, the most when I want to be alone. I throw books at it at first, but when I can’t sleep, I make a large flyswatter using cardboard and a curtain rod. Late at night, I slap the walls, my desk, the bed, only to give up sweaty and sorry in the morning. But today, I wake up with an idea. I borrow my neighbor’s vacuum cleaner, sneak up from behind, and suck it in. 

On Sunday afternoon, Phil calls to invite me over for a beer. “Any special reason?” I ask, not expecting much of an answer. He says he just wants to catch up, that it’s been a while. I try to get out of it, reminding him that Sundays are my only day off. “Come on,” he says. Eventually I say, “Fine,” and hang up the phone with a sigh. I put on my pants and slippers, walk up a flight of stairs, and knock on his door. 

Phil’s apartment has the bare essentials for a home: a couch, a television, a picture on the wall, and word magnets on the fridge. A fan of minimalism, he is without ambition in the traditional sense, and content with small things. “I work for myself,” he likes to say, as a freelance web-designer, getting by on commissions from friends of our parents, making just enough to call it a full-time job, filling the rest of his time with more enjoyable things. I watch him walk toward me with a sandwich in his mouth, beers in his hands, and for a moment, for no good reason, a feeling of envy comes and goes. 

We sit arm-to-arm on the couch, holding a bottle of beer in opposite hands, looking at each other through the reflection on the blank television screen. To start off our conversation, he tells me that his girlfriend wants to have a baby. I show my surprise and ask him how he feels about it. He shrugs and says he doesn’t have a choice in the matter. Clara, his girlfriend, wants a baby and Phil, my brother, needs Clara. 

“We’ve been living together for a year now and she’s about to turn thirty,” he says. “It was bound to happen, right?” 

In the months I’ve known Clara, we’ve never had a full conversation. She’s quiet, attractive, and always wears her hair tightly wound in a bun behind her head. I can’t say I know her too well but she always struck me as the cold, unsentimental type; the type that wouldn’t want to start a family. This was part of the reason why I thought she stayed with Phil and I think about telling him this but lose the opportunity as he continues. 

“She has this fantasy,” he says. “She’ll start out talking about her day, you know, her job, the weather, something along those lines. Then she’ll mention a baby she saw in a park or near a school.” He lowers his voice, “Then she’ll get closer to me and put her hand on my chest and whisper in my ear about how when we have a baby, we’re going to get the girl across the street to baby-sit so we can go on a date to the Spanish restaurant and order the roasted lamb with a nice bottle of wine. Then, she’ll start rubbing my stomach, like I’m the one that wants to get pregnant.” I imagine Clara tracing circles with her hand on Phil’s gut. 

“She does this every night,” he says. “I think it turns her on.” 

“Yikes.” I open another beer and hand it to him. “Where is Clara anyway?” 

“She’s visiting her mom. She’ll be back next Saturday.” 

“That’s nice. You’ll have time to think about it.” 

“Yeah,” he says. “Well, what’s new with you? You seeing anybody?” 

“No, I’ve been busy.” 

With nothing more to say, we turn on the TV and he relaxes further into the cushions. I could tell that if I didn’t leave now, I’d be sucked into an idle daze until Monday so I leave. 

The next morning, I leaf through the lesson notes for the day, drinking a cup of coffee. For the world history class, I planned to show a documentary about a tribe in Australia. The movie opens with a man in a suit with his thumbs to his chest, narrating, “To us, pointing to our chest is an indication of the self. But to a Guugu Yimithirr speaker, the thumbs point through his body, to something beyond him, as if he were made of air and his own existence was irrelevant.” 

Between teaching social studies in the daytime and taking business classes at night, the week passes quickly. The amount of papers to be graded takes up more time than usual so I don’t get to respond to Phil’s requests for dinner until Friday. 

“Sorry,” he tells me over the phone. “I’ve already made a reservation for tonight.” 

“With someone I know?” 

“I’m going by myself,” he says. 

“How about tomorrow,” I ask, wondering if he really was going alone. 

“I promised Clara we’d have dinner together.” He adds quickly, “But come by tomorrow before six.” 

I agree to come by and hang up, disappointed to have to change my plans for the evening. I think about calling June but decide against it after I’m reminded of our last encounter. We had been introduced by Clara and encouraged by my brother but we weren’t exactly a great match. On our first and last date, June mentioned something about Phil, something only Clara could have told her, and a silent panic struck. I sat in front of her, unable to react because I had become too conscious of the fact that anything I said and did could reach Clara. So instead of June, I think about calling John or Erik, but eventually choose neither. I spend the rest of the night eating cereal, doing the laundry, watching a movie I later forget. 

The next day, Phil and I take our usual places on the couch, face-to-face via the television screen and from the beginning; he is in an unusually cheerful mood. 

“I take it you had a good time?” I ask. 

He giggles and says, “Last night, I hired a babysitter.” 

“Phil.” 

“No, no, it’s nothing like that,” he says. “Clara put the idea in my head about how nice it would be to hire a babysitter and eat a nice meal out, so last night, I lived the dream.” 

“But wasn’t the point to do it together?”

“Anyway, I was at the grocery store and I saw one of those paper ads taped to a message board near the exit. MATURE HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT, EXPERIENCED BABYSITTER, CALL THIS NUMBER, that sort of thing. I came up with the idea as soon as I saw it. I called her up when I got home, and asked her to come in at 7pm on Friday to watch my baby for a few hours.” 

“Phil.” I lean forward and give him a look. 

“Listen, just listen,” he says, nudging me back on the couch, trying to contain his laughter. “So she gets to my house, a typical 16-year-old: jeans, t-shirt, dyed hair, you know, a little ditzy. I’m in a suit, with my new shoes on and I tell her that the baby is in my room. Like a worried new dad, I tell her I don’t want to leave the baby but I’m having dinner with my boss. I tell her that the baby has been up all day so just let her sleep while I’m gone. She says alright and I go to the Spanish restaurant, sit at a table for two, order grilled calamari to start, and a bottle of Malbec with the lamb for dinner. I finished it off with a molten chocolate cake with caramel drizzled on top. I ate it all, really savoring every single bite,” he says, patting his stomach as if he’d just eaten it. “It might have been the best meal of my life.” 

“What about the babysitter?” I butt in, impatient. “She wasn’t worried about the ‘baby’ when you got home?” 

“When I got home, the girl was on the couch, sleeping through a re-run of Seinfeld. The one about a coffee table book of coffee tables that stands like a coffee table.” 

I watch his face intently through the reflection on the television screen. His lips curl into an almost smile every time he finishes a sentence. 

“I opened the door to my bedroom, turned on the light, and shook her awake. I yelled at her, ‘Where’s my baby? Where’s my daughter?’ and she looks at the empty room, then back at me, and starts crying, really crying. She’s not making any sense, pointing to the TV, trying to say she doesn’t know, again and again. I push her out the door and tell her to go home, that there’s nothing she can do, that I’m going to call the police. I stuff two twenties in her jacket pocket and close the door before she can say anything. As soon as I was alone, I laughed so hard and for so long, I nearly fell over.” He chuckles a little and turns to look at me. 

“Phil,” I say. “What’s wrong with you?” 

After a short silence, he leans into the couch and says, “It was funnier last night.” 

The words are still hanging between us when Clara opens the door. 

“Hey guys,” she says, lugging her duffel bag inside. As she walks to put her bag away in her room, I watch her, her hair bundled at the top of her neck, and wish I could let it down. Suddenly I feel Phil’s gaze on me so I pretend to be looking past Clara, to the view outside the window. She comes back to the living room, looks at me, then at Phil, back at me, and asks, “Are you staying for dinner?” 

“No,” I say getting up. “I was about to go.” 

Before I leave, I whisper to Phil, “You should be ashamed of what you’ve done,” like a mother to a mischievous child. 

From Phil’s, I go to a Japanese restaurant a few minutes away. The food is all right, but the reason I go is because I can sit at the sushi bar alone, unbothered. The chefs slice and place the food artfully and as soon as it’s done, the waitresses reach over and around me to deliver the plates to their rightful tables. I sit at the bar, watching the dishes come together, feeling strange about Phil’s prank, and wonder if the girl is thinking about the missing baby. 

Phil has a habit of doing these things. The earliest one I can remember happened when I was six and he was ten. I went to the bathroom and found my brother lying in the shower, completely nude, seemingly unconscious, his limp arm draped over the side of the bathtub. I yelled his name and as soon as I touched him, he burst out laughing. 

The last time he pulled a joke like that, we didn’t speak for days. Though I can’t recall exactly what it was, I do remember his absurd, ridiculous acting, overlooked by the surprise of being shaken awake, and that sudden, sinking feeling of being (falsely) made aware of something awful. 

After dinner, I head back home. From the bottom of the stairs, I see Clara pacing in front of my door. Her hair is down and it grazes the curve of her chest as she paces. She is visibly distraught, and maybe it’s her hair, but tonight she seems younger. Slowly, I climb closer, walking as softly as I can, to go unnoticed until I reach the top of the floor. When she sees me, she stops. 

“Was Phil with you?” 

“No,” I say as I open my door. “Did you have a fight?” 

She doesn’t answer. We go inside and she sits at the dining table, resting her flushed cheek heavily against her palm. I bring her a glass of water and wait to hear what happened. 

“We were having a great time, cooking and talking, joking around. I ended up drinking a little more than usual. I got this idea that I thought would make him laugh. I stuck out my stomach, like this,” she arches her back and pushes her stomach out. “And said, Phil! We did it! I’m pregnant!” 

I laugh; I’ve never seen her act this way before. 

“It’s funny right? Obviously a joke, right?” 

“Of course,” I say. “Don’t tell me Phil took it seriously.” 

“He freaked out.” She stops smiling. “He started mumbling to himself, switching the places of plates, gulping his wine…” 

“Oh man.” 

“He wouldn’t look me in the eye, and left saying that he needed time to think, about the baby, about us, about him. He put his sweater on backwards and left, all within a minute I think.” 

“Did you tell him you were joking?” 

“I thought he was joking, too. It happened so quickly.” 

“He’s probably waiting somewhere for you to come find him.” 

“Maybe, but that’s not what I’m really upset about,” she says bitterly. “About ten minutes after he left, a girl showed up at the door.” 

“A girl?” 

“She was young, really young.” She sighs. “She looked so worried that I thought she had gotten the wrong door, but she asked for Phil, which was a surprise. I told her that she’d just missed him. I could just tell she wanted to ask me something else but she didn’t and left. Thinking back on it, she was so nervous talking to me,” she says. “I don’t know what to think.” 

I contemplate telling her about Phil’s joke but decide to let him say it instead. 

“You’re thinking about something and that makes you forget to talk,” she says with her arms crossed. “I don’t like it when you do that.” 

“Sorry,” I say. “Where do you think he went?” 

“I don’t know. If he’s not with you, he’s probably walking around somewhere.” She looks at me and I can see she’s going to ask me about the girl. “Do you--” 

I get up and ask her if she wants anything else to drink. 

She opens her mouth, closes it, and responds, “I have a little wine left upstairs, actually.” 

“Leave it, let’s open a new one.” 

While I look around for the bottle of wine, she asks me how my brother and I got to live above and below each other. 

“Didn’t Phil ever tell you?” 

“I never asked.” 

“My mom lived in this apartment and my dad lived in Phil’s. That’s how they met. My father would drop flowers and letters on that,” I point to the balcony. “My mom told me that after a particularly big fight, he tied a rope around his cat and lowered it to the window to get her to open her door.” I find the wine and bring it to the table. 

“When they married, they kept the apartments as storage space and moved to a bigger place in the neighborhood.” I pour two glasses. “They separated when I went to college. They sold the family house, my mom moved uptown, my dad moved further down, and they gave us their apartments.” 

I hand her a glass, and clink it before taking a sip. 

“It’s funny,” she says quietly. The way she says funny is not funny at all. 

“What is?” 

“Phil’s so strange,” she smiles. “I can’t believe you’re related.” 

“That thought has crossed my mind before.” I laugh a little. 

“What do you think it is?” She asks, with genuine curiosity in her voice.

Her question catches me off guard and I say the first thing that comes into my head. 

“I think the main difference is that Phil acts moment by moment, as if anything he does doesn’t affect much else, even though he knows it does.” 

“No, that’s not it,” she shakes her head and says, “You’re just quieter.” 

She begins to play with the bottle, peeling the corners of the label. I rub my eyes and check the time on different clocks that are visible without getting up: the electric clock over the stove, the metal clock in the living room, the tiny hands on my wristwatch. Just as I’m getting used to the silence, I hear a faint buzzing from the living room. 

“It can’t be,” I say to myself. 

“What?” Clara stops mid-sip. 

I don’t bother answering and walk toward the noise. There it was. It had somehow climbed from the belly of the vacuum, crawled through the hose, back into my life. I point to the fly and declare my desire to kill it. 

“I want to help,” Clara says sternly. 

“Bring a chair,” I tell her as I grab a dustbuster from the closet. 

She finishes off her wine, picks up a chair and scuttles it over to my side. We scope out the pest in the corner above my sofa. She puts the chair straight below the fly and fixes her hands on the back to support my weight. I climb on top of it without a word, my eyes glued to the dark smudge against my white ceiling. I put my finger on the power button and slowly lift it toward the fly. It doesn’t move. I can feel Clara’s hands slightly shaking in anticipation. I shift my weight onto my toes to get an extra two inches. As I’m about to press the button, I begin to wobble and freeze in position. When the fall is inevitable, I aim for the sofa. Instead, my elbow hits Clara in the face, she cries out in surprise, and we end on the floor. 

Clara giggles a muffled, gurgly laugh; I look over and see that her nose is bleeding. 

“Oh god,” I say. She’s on her back, the chair clumsily obscuring her bottom half. I roll over and take the sleeve of my shirt to the blood running down her left cheek. Holding her nose shut with my fingers through my shirt-sleeve, I notice the faint trail of pink from the nose matches her wine-stained lips. Forgetting to think, I lean over and kiss them. I sink back on my back so that we’re on the floor, in silence once again. 

She turns over onto her stomach to face me, and begins to talk as if nothing had happened. 

“On my tenth birthday, I slipped on juice and fell on my face. I bit straight through my lip,” she says, rolling her tongue inside her mouth, under her bottom lip, showing me her scar. 

“I capped two teeth and got four stitches and so every day, I’m reminded of my birthday,” she pauses, “just a little bit.” 

She says, “Today is always a strange day for me because today, everyone else is supposed to be reminded that it’s my birthday too.” 

“I’m sorry I didn’t know.” 

“That’s okay,” she laughs. “You couldn’t have known. I just felt like saying it, that’s all.” She smiles shyly and the scar, hidden before tonight, stretches and smiles too. 

“To be honest,” she says. “Birthdays have always been bittersweet for me.” 

“Why?” I ask, even though I think I know the answer. 

“They make me think that I should have kept up with the things I liked doing when I was younger.” 

“Like what?” 

“Oh I don’t know,” she says. “Like the violin. Or drawing. Writing, even. Maybe I’d be good at it by now if I’d done it regularly.” 

“You can start again,” I say. 

She smiles. “Thanks but it’s unlikely. Also, my problem with writing was that I could only write endings,” she says. “That’s about as useful as having bookends with no books in between.” 

“Do you still write them?” 

“One-liners occasionally.” She breathes out ruefully. “I just wish I’d forced myself to write a story after I’d written an end.” 

“How many endings do you have?” 

“A lot.” She looks into her empty glass. “In fact, I just thought of one right now.”

“Let’s hear it.” 

“No,” she says. “Maybe later.” 

I try to get it out of her, but she doesn’t budge. 

“I promise,” she says, putting her soft fingers on my arm. “I’ll write it down and let you read it later. I just don’t feel like sharing it now.” 

I look at her hand; the thin, smooth skin paling slightly over her knuckles and in my mind, I imagine one thing leading to another. 

My thoughts are interrupted by footsteps stomping up to the next floor. Indistinctly, a door creaks and slams shut. Clara takes her fingers off and walks to the balcony. She slides the glass open, leans her head out and says, “The light just went on.” 

“Are you sure?” 

“I’m going back,” she says, coiling her hair back into place. 

I hear myself say, “Happy birthday,” as I watch her leave. 

Once alone, slightly drunk, I find it necessary to fill the room with noise to replace the humming in my ears. I turn on the radio and finish my drink on the bed. As I lay there, a peculiar thought enters my head: Is it possible to feel guilt and joy at the same time? I think about it for a while, taking one side, then the other, and settle on the answer to be no. I decide that the weighty feeling of guilt and the tickling sensation of joy could never be together, at least not for me. And from that thought, I tune in and out to a vague, familiar voice until I fall asleep. 

The next morning, I open my eyes to a flittering shadow on the wall. I walk to the window and find a note hanging on a string, tied to the balcony above. 

He walked through the park, listening to the quivering of leaves, 
shaking off the memory of a bad dream, and went on with his life, 
laughing from time to time, dying very slowly. 

On the back of the note, it reads, “an end.” 

Carol Cho is a senior at Gallatin with a concentration in cinema studies, writing, and psychology. She is currently and always re-reading the same books, please send recommendations for new reading material to read.this.its.good@gmail.com.