*The Future of Wallpaper* Christopher Jug George

Photo by Christopher Jug George

I Hope You Laugh Forever

By Christopher Jug George

Sally and Carol Winona smirk behind coffee cups at the kitchen table. I probably said some stupid things last night. I think I told them I wanted to sign up for astronaut training. I don’t feel like an astronaut today. I’m hungover pouring ginger ale into a glass. There is no fizz. I only wanted the fizz. That’s worth a laugh to them. I drink the flat ginger ale and look at them with a blank expression on my face.   

I had a crush on Carol Winona first. In high school, Carol would walk by our front picture window on her way to school, her pink leather coat framed by the white house across the street. She wore calf-length black pants with white socks sticking out of black pumps, her curly blonde hair afloat in the wind, a smile on her face. When she saw me at school, she’d say sweet things like “Hey, honey bear.” “Hey, sweet pea.” Her words crushed me.

When I was a sophomore, Carol Winona was a senior. She took a slight interest in me and invited me to her basement to make-out. My head convulsed at the possibilities. We walked home from school together, and Carol kept turning her head and smiling at me. We reached her driveway as Mr. and Mrs. Winona were leaving the house to go somewhere. I didn’t know them, but I had seen them around the neighborhood and at various school events. Mr. Winona scared the hell out of me. Mrs. Winona gave me strange looks.

They were walking toward the car, Mr. Winona stepped in front of his wife like a bodyguard. He glared at me and said,“Where do you think you two are going?”

“We’re going to the basement,” Carol told her dad.

“Well, so are we.” Mr. Winona looked at his wife and nodded his head toward the door.

“I thought we were going to the store?” Mrs. Winona protested.

“No, dear, you must be confused. We’re going to the basement.”

Carol called their bluff, and the four of us went downstairs. Mr. Winona turned on the television. Carol put her coat over the space between our legs. She grabbed my hand. That’s as far as it went with Carol Winona. Her sister Sally, the Winona I would marry, sat upstairs in her room at the time. We were the same age. After holding hands with Carol, I took notice of Sally. I saw Sally Winona’s smile before but the first time the smile landed on me I fell for her. Carol and Sally have the same smile.

It took their parents a long time to like me. Mrs. Winona told Sally I had a dark side. I did, it was called depression. I watched my father die of cancer, for months and then on the day he left. I was in the midst of puberty without proper ignorance or coping mechanisms, therefore, I spent the next two decades unknowingly depressed. But one day, after a couple of years of figuring out the root,  most of it fell off of me. I feel good now. I’m where I’m supposed to be. The Winona sisters had their tragedy too. Mr. and Mrs. Winona had died in a car crash before Sally and I were married. After this, the two sisters were inseparable.

The crash occurred two months before our wedding in the summer of 1974 when I heard a weak knock on my apartment door. Sally and Carol came straight from the hospital. Mr. Winona died instantly in the crash. Mrs. Winona made it to the hospital and died hours later. Sally and Carol sat on my couch melting into each other. I let them be. They cried all night. In the morning the tops of their sleeping heads and shoulders were touching on the couch. I knew they didn’t want to wake up. I’d been there. The first morning after a tragedy you don’t want to open your eyes and enter whatever form life had taken during the night.

Sally and I postponed the wedding. It took months for Sally and Carol to find those grins again but when they did the smiles preceded nonstop collaborative laughter. Carol comes to our house every day, and none of us think twice about it. She dated over the years but had yet to find a man to make her happy. She’s not sure if she wants to get married. Carol has an apartment nearby, but she is at home with Sally and me. She has a room here and a key to the house.

It took me a while to figure out why the Winona sisters were always laughing at me. Their cackling only made me do stupid things. A short time after Sally and I were married, the three of us were playing cribbage. The two sisters raced for the finish line. They were pissing me off because of a potential double skunk. After a bad deal, I threw my hands in the air, accidentally spilling my drink all over the cards and cribbage board. The sisters simultaneously doubled over in their chairs, laughing so hard they started to cry. I walked into the bedroom and started throwing shirts on my bed. I made some unnecessary noise to draw them into the room. They watched me put clothes in the suitcase. No one laughed. I pulled out a t-shirt that I loved, a white one with an iron-on of Fonz’s head. I delicately folded it on the bed, and they began to laugh. I closed the suitcase and walked to the door. I stood there with my head bowed.

I heard the two sisters scamper into the room.

“Where are you going, Hal?” Sally asked me.

“I haven’t figured that out yet.” The three of us knew I wasn’t going anywhere and I knew how ridiculous I was being.

“Do you want to watch Happy Days with us? You know it’s on in a few minutes.”

I set my suitcase down and walked over to the sofa. Sally went to the kitchen and grabbed three beers. I didn’t like the expression on their faces. They were birds ready to caw.

“If you two interrupt Happy Days I swear I’m leaving for real this time.” They didn’t laugh, but I knew it killed them.

We watched for awhile. The Happy Days gang hung at Al’s. The Fonz walked in with a babe on his arm, he hit the jukebox with his fist causing me to lean forward in my chair, Carol and Sally started to giggle, then couldn’t stop the cascade. I went to the bar.

Carol and Sally claimed I would get a blank, puppy dog expression on my face when they laughed at me, and this egged them on further. I decided to manufacture some anger to come across as tough.

Soon after the Fonz incident, we were sitting around drinking cans of beer on the back patio. I had moved the kitchen television out there to watch the Twins. Carol and Sally were playing cribbage. The Twins loaded the bases, and the Oakland A’s changed pitchers. I went into the house to put on my Twins hat. I felt like it helped the team during crucial moments. I walked back out onto the patio with the hat on. They laughed when they saw me.

“What’s so funny?” I confronted them.

“We don’t know,” Sally said.

“Well, I don’t think it’s so funny. This is a big moment here.”

“Okay,” Carol said.

“Please. Refrain from laughing until the inning is over.”

“Got it,” Sally said.

Rollie Fingers pitched for the A’s facing Rod Carew of the Twins. In the ninth inning, the A’s were up by one with two outs. Ball one. “Here we go!” Ball two. “Lay off it, Rod, lay the fuck off it.” Ball three. “Oh, baby. That’s it, Rodney. Take, take, take.”

I glanced up at the sisters, and they looked like they just heard a fart in church. I didn’t care. Big moment.

Strike one. “Okay, Carew, take again. Make him earn it.” Foul ball. “Shit.” Foul ball. “Jesus, Carew.” Strike three. “RODNEY!” I heard a muted giggle and then a short squeal. I stood up in my chair and took off my ball cap. I tried to kick it but missed it completely. They had no more options. Sally took her hand and put it on Carol’s shoulder. Their heads were touching in a merging of laughter and bodies, the perfect time to unleash the anger. I turned to them and yelled, “ENOUGH!” They stopped laughing. I had their attention but hadn’t thought it through. I held a beer can and decided to chug it with only a sip left. I crushed the beer can in my hand and threw it on the ground. They laughed so hard I had to go inside. I had no chance.

A couple of hours later I sat on the stoop having a cigarette. The image of Sally putting her hand on Carol’s shoulder and their heads touching would not escape me. It reminded me of the night their parents died.

One evening we were at a patio fondue party on one of the last nights of summer. A bunch of our friends sat around the table. I couldn’t stop eating fondue, and I could see four Winona sister eyeballs following my every move with wispy traces of a smile at the corner of their mouths. I took a piece of bread and put it on the poker and dipped it into the melted cheese. I followed with a huge swig of beer. Some cheese fell off the bread and onto the collar of my shirt. I looked around, and no one noticed except Sally and Carol Winona. They didn’t laugh. They didn’t even smile. They both had concerned looks on their faces.

 I went into the kitchen to get another beer and Carol followed me in. She grabbed a washcloth and poured soda water over it.

“You certainly are a clumsy boy.” She said, wiping the melted cheese off my collar. She looked into my eyes and smiled. We went outside, and she sat next to Sally. They both smiled at me.

After the party, we drove home, and no one said a word. Carol rolled down the backseat window. The wind howled through the opening. A song I liked played faintly on the radio, so I turned it up. I whistled the tune at first, tapping the steering wheel with my fingers. I started to sing along when the chorus began. Carol let out a guffaw in the backseat. Sally roared. I sang louder because I liked the song.

That Curly Haired Sleeping Being, That One Is Mine

My three-year-old daughter rose from her bed while sleeping. She pirouetted with Frankenstein arms out, a hitch in her step like a wooden toy with flexible legs. She walked a half-circle with her eyes closed, a dreaming ballerina that fell back onto my chest. What was that thing? An apparition? And I thought, ‘my god, this little person is my life.’

Photo by  Christopher Jug George

Those Little Ships

By Christopher Jug George

            Trudy was usually so close to Bud’s ear that he was used to her speaking softly to him. “Sometimes I look at the sky, Bud, and think it’s the sea. All of that blue with puffy white ships passing by all day long.”

A year later Bud had become accustomed to Trudy yelling, her voice traveling along the walls or through window screens or down the stairs.  It made him think of the birds he would hear but could not see when he walked along the creeks in the surrounding Root River Valley.

Later, after she’d gone, he thought he could sometimes hear her sharp, sweet, chirping voice in the wind, carrying through those bluffs, believing it to be the sound of a ship blowing its horn in the distance.

He’d stand breathless, watching her sail across the backyard toward the woods where she would eventually slip in and disappear over the bluff with the sun and the moon. His body would point toward the woods when hearing branches crack, wondering if it was an animal or the wind or her.

He’d look at the swaying trees and subtly rock his body side to side in a lonely dance. He’d look up at the big clouds rolling through the sky above and soon he too began to imagine, as Trudy had told him, the clouds as ships, one after one, coming to pick her up at the top of the bluffs.

Later still, he started to wander the bluffs and get lost among the greens and browns of the valley. Looking up into the sky he started to imagine all of that blue to be the place all of the streams leading to, filling it up for the ships, for the clouds.

Earthling

That auburn moment in that 70s living room when the carpet matched the color of the light coming through the window and I thought, “I’m on a planet!?”

Dad

There is a ship that sailed the sea that became frozen in time. We all had to keep going, trudging through the seasons on our own. He used to take us everywhere.

The world was green that day. All of it. The sky, the sun , the houses, the people. I don’t know. Maybe it was just me.

The Man from the Thirties Standing on a Sidewalk in the Seventies

Standing on a crowded sidewalk, people rushed by and brushed his arms. His brown coat and green hat and brown pants looked like a spaceship sitting still on a planet that was only slightly different than the one he’d arrived from. It was a place so familiar. He was nearly knocked over a couple of times, he thought he might have hit the ground but his eyes could not waver from that place in the city. He had been there before.

It is Much More Immediate/ I Want Nothing to End

It used to be gazing at things from a distance that interested me most. Whether it be a person, a house, a tree, a town, a forest, a hillside, a river, a portion of the earth, moon, or sun through clouds. Whether it’s this life that has crashed behind me, looking like the movie Weekend. If you want to know what my life looks like to me, go watch Weekend. That’s not how I see the future though. No. That is tree lined country roads with spurts of fences near beautiful rivers, that is your little face, immediate, and looking up at me.

Half of This Night Is the Color of the Skin of a Dolphin in This Light

The rain ended in the middle of the street. You barely getting splattered with pouring rain making my hair shower wet and clothes as if I just crawled out of a lake. It was there that you said goodbye, walking away in the subtle glow of the street light in the yellow part of the world. You walked toward stairs and up them, your shoes finally disappearing just before the turquoise light had reached them.

The Other Half of the Circle is an Illusion

I peered into an empty room and imagined us all sitting there. There was a din in the air from plows and howling wind. There was a glow in the air between us. I pictured movement of legs, arms, and contorting laughing faces as the sun went down. It was late afternoon, soon it would be dark and no one would be leaving the house.

It Is the Same Vastness Everywhere We Go

The land is a ghost. It is not the special one. There is land 500 light years away. There are long views but no telephone polls. There is wind and rolling terrain. It is sometimes eerily flat there and often dark and light and dark and light.  There are horizons, beautiful mornings, and forlorn evenings.

What Penny said to me Behind the Bushes

Our family will move away from this dwelling temporarily. All of our bodies will be in a vessel that will be hovering in the vicinity of 55 miles per hour most of the time because the pilot does not like to speed. The direction will change a lot. Our craft will sometimes travel in all directions and you may think that we are trying to throw you off or that we don’t know where we are going. Don’t be alarmed though, there is a place out there that I’m told we are headed. It is called Winona. It is pretty there I hear. There are rolling hills of green set against the rotating colors of the sky. There are other humans there who share our blood. It is approximately 1900 miles away. Picture our car as a blip on a sonar radar, soaring so far away that you will think it will never stop moving, but then you’ll see it stop for a period of time, and slowly come back to you.

Let Them Look Through You

We went for coffee with my mother-in-law. It was a walk up place on the boardwalk. The coffee was served in fancy tea cups and my wife said she wished we had cups like that. My mother-in-law looked at me and said with a judgmental voice, “Why haven’t you bought her cups like that?” I told her I’d never really thought about it before.

As Long as You Are with Me Will You Remind Me of This Moment When I Am Lost?

This is the part where we do what we can to make it all work because we can hear life’s clock ticking . . .  as a reminder of this, we should all own clucking clocks with funny birds inside of them that come out every hour and do hilarious things like chirp, waddle, and splay.

I Hope You Laugh Forever (Abridged Version)

The two sisters sat in the kitchen and laughed. No one else was home.

They’ve all come home from the races now.

I am smarter than him.

How fast was your car going?

Her eyes keep people alive; they supply blood to the heart.

The grass was definitely greener on that day.

We Were Just Standing There out in the Open

I saw a black orb in the sky. It looked like a planet or a space ship or something not of this world. I told my friend’s dad about it and he said he didn’t see it. I pointed at it and said “it’s right there!” which it obviously was. He said there was nothing there. I’ve never forgotten seeing that black orb and now I understand why he didn’t admit to seeing it which I’ll never understand.

Advanced Coral Gables Supermarket Design

I wish she would have waited until we got home from Florida to tell me what was bugging her. She pouted the entire plane ride down there. At first I thought she was unhappy with the amount of orange juice they gave her on the plane. “Why can’t they just give me the whole can?” Then I thought she was annoyed with the size of the towel at the hotel. “It’s too small! It barely covers my body.” Then I thought she was mad because they didn’t give her enough melted butter for her lobster. “I’m going to soak it all up with the first dip!” She broke up with me in the frozen goods aisle of a Supermarket in Coral Gables. I told her I’d see her back at the hotel. I remember looking at the the lines on the floor. There was a green one that led to the produce. There was a red one that led to the meat department. There was a blue one that led straight out the door