Autocorrect

by V. Joshua Adams

Gil Ribeiro

I am waiting to be called as a witness for the prosecution in the trial of my upbringing. The courtroom fills up. There is the piano teacher, neck ropy with veins, the housekeeper who fell in the pool, the wax pâte of the smiling headmaster. There is the coach with his tightly curled beard and the coach with his clean shave and sunglasses. The priest moves somewhere in the back —  I catch sight of green and gold robes, smell his aftershave. Kids are running around: J, with the puffy black eye I gave him when he made fun of A, there’s A herself, grinning shyly out of a blonde halo just like she did from the back seat  of her father’s red Camaro. College roommates in the balcony, banging on pots and pans. There’s that one girl I never called back, and a few that I shouldn’t have. Are they rolling their eyes? Down in the front with their dogs sit my folks, looking concerned: how dear my upbringing is to them, and there it sits, charged and indicted, in a navy Brooks Brothers suit, freshly coiffed, staring ahead, unapologetic, while the lawyers cordially confer on points of procedure and wait for the judge to exit his chambers. Everyone’s a little preoccupied so I light right the hell out of there to get some air and find my wife. She said my upbringing was not her concern, that she would wait for me at the Vietnamese place, maybe take in some sights. Seems it’s rained recently. The city hums, shaking off moisture, purposeful and optimistic. People with briefcases walk briskly through shallowing puddles and stop at street vendors for pretzels and coffee. School children pile off the bus and into the park  under a soaring Constable sky. Someone’s busking. Coins ruffle cash in the guitar case. Everything functions as it should now, even the newspapers, where, on the front page, I read a story about reasonable people getting along.

---

V. Joshua Adams is the author of a chapbook, Cold Affections (Plan B Press, 2018). Work of his has appeared or is forthcoming in Reed Magazine, Painted Bride Quarterly, Posit, Jet Fuel Review, Tupelo Quarterly, and elsewhere. A former editor of Chicago Review, as well as a translator and critic, he teaches at the University of Louisville.