And If a Man and a Woman Are Drowning in a River, First They Will Save the Man
- Mar 31, 2021
- 4 min read
by Jeanne Jones
The present
She remembers three things about the first time. His hand on the back of her head. The rest of his body pushing against her. The smell of fabric softener. A thought: his wife washes his clothes.
After that, he’s bolder, coming in while the children are at recess, trapping her in the corner. She asks him about a student and he pushes up against her. It doesn’t seem like he is listening.
The past
Her father called from the psych ward, “They’ve got me scheduled for trial today,” he said. “They’re claiming I hurt that girl. I need your help.”
She rushed to the hospital, burdened by stories she wished he’d never told her. The nurses at the ward desk buzz her in.
“Has my father done something?” She was almost out of breath. “Are you having some kind of hearing?”
The two nurses looked at each other and held the gaze. Finally, one of them turned to answer.
“A hearing?” the nurse asked. “This is a hospital.”
She felt foolish for believing him. She walked to the dayroom and saw her father. He had forgotten the call and was putting together a jigsaw puzzle.
The present
He has a gift for her. He walks into the classroom and hands her a phone, set up to show a video. “For you,” he says. “Let me know when you’re done.”
He leaves, and she taps the little arrow. It’s him in the teacher’s bathroom. She recognizes the green wall in the background. He’s looking in the mirror. He says, get ready. He flashes his hands before him like he is about to perform a magic trick. He takes off the suit jacket, the tie, then the shirt. He is standing there in his undershirt. He is smiling. He unbuckles his pants. She turns it off before he gets to the part where he takes off his underwear.
“Thanks for the video she says,” when he returns to her classroom.
He asks her how she liked it. She turns her back and rearranges books in her small library’s bookshelves.
“Which part was your favorite?”
The future
Her father will be old, driving his Dodge Dart on a crowded sidewalk. People will jump out of his way, dive into the grass or off the curb and onto the street. He will crash into a retaining wall. When he opens his eyes, he will still be at the wheel, his car surrounded by people. He will say he does not know why they are doing this. A police officer will peek in his window, speaking calmly to him. “Everything’s going to be fine, sir,” he will say. “Everything’s going to be fine.”
The past
Before she became a schoolteacher, she used to be married to a house and a husband.
They used to take vacations away from the house to a beach.
One summer, her husband walked her out to the water. He told her, “If you stand here and look out at the right moment, you can see the flash of green.”
She had never heard this before. She thought it was a joke. But she stood there, with the orange and the yellow, a little pink.
He told her to think green thoughts—Jello, trees, grass. “Try it,” he said. “How can it make anything worse?”
Silence. Then she said, “You forgot my birthday.”
“No, I didn’t. I brought you this sunset. Look.”
She looked out at the right moment for the flash, the change; she looked for the green. But all that she saw was the darkness.
The present
At the staff meeting, she is texting. He tells her to put it way, that he needs to get through the meeting. He comes over and moves her arm, pushing her hand away from her screen with a small amount of force.
“Put it away,” he says.
She points at him. “Do that again and I’ll have you arrested for battery,” she says. “Just try it one more time.”
He backs off, the rest of the room sits in shocked silence. So much power when you know the law.
He fires her the next day.
The past
Once, when she was playing Barbies on her own in the TV room, her father called her to the screen door.
“Say goodbye,” he said. He smiled and held a BB gun.
Before she could plead with him, he shot the neighbor’s cat. The cat tore off into the woods behind their house.
The future
The morning after she’s fired, she will wake to a newscaster report that lava is flowing through the streets of Hawaii. The newscaster will say to the man in Hawaii, “Well, at least the eruption is over.”
The man will respond, “It is still seeping underground. It is moving beneath the surface.”
Jeanne Jones is a writer, teacher, and former lawyer living in the Washington, D.C. area. Her stories have been published in American Short Fiction, SmokeLong Quarterly, Jellyfish Review, Barrelhouse, Fanzine, and Juked, and and she is excited to have new work coming out in Rejection Letters. She is currently a flash reader for Split Lip Magazine.
