What Happened Next?
A few weeks ago, I looked at my bookshelf, kicking myself for not having gotten a library card yet. I needed something to read. Something to wreck my day in a way only good fiction can do. Something to save from reality. I found a book of short stories that I accrued from a college class, though which one, I don't remember. Don't Make Me Stop Now by Michael Parker. It looked good enough. I read the first story: "What Happened Next?" It's been weeks, but I can't get it out of my head. The book is still sitting on the floor next to my bed (also on the floor...), and everytime I see it, I find myself thinking about how I want to be held inside of the story. The cover with it's half eaten pear and a fly sitting on the exposed meat, what happened next?
It's the story of a guy, telling a story to a girl he thinks he loves (or could possibly love). It's the story of the time he was a teenage, filled with angst and contempt. Filled with the rage we all have when we're 16 because no one understands (I guess they still don't). The story about the time he was to take his grandmother back to her home from the family reunion, how his father said with empty half hearted already boarded with the idea of threatening his child, "you be back in thirty minutes or else..." The story of his grandmother having a heart attack at the start of the ride, the loud rock music blaring. He swore it was an accident, he didn't mean to have the music so loud. And he pauses, long enough for one to assume that the story's done. For in fact, this is as far as he ever gets with the story. And he, the girl in his bed that he might possibly love, and he hopes, please dear jesus, say something. And in his mind he goes through all the other scenarios of the girls he's told this story to, of all the things they've responded with, "you're kidding, right?" "was your dad mad?" and so on and so forth, all the questions and statements that made him believe that he was going to be alone forever.
And the pause is long, maybe a little unbearable. Say something, he thinks. "So, what happened next?" she says, lying there next to him, maybe a little aloof. And no one's ever asked that. They all assume they know what happens next, they all assume that he goes in and tells his dad. That his pause is the end of the story. But like with so many things, the pause is the moment of thought-collecting, of do I really say the rest of this? And he thinks he loves her (or could at least for a long time). And he tells her what happened next, of arranging his grandmother in the sit next to him to a normal position, not slumped over, of driving away to anywhere, to a curve in the road, to an accident. It wasn't a suicide attempt. It wasn't like that. It was just an accident. And sure, his father had some choice words to say to him after that, but he didn't go back inside.
I haven't read any of the other stories in Michael Parker's collection. I think the best fiction are the stories one remembers weeks later. Lying awake at night or standing in the grocery store mulling over whether I should buy a watermelon or just beer or if i should actually buy food like a normal person (god, why is that so hard). It's comforting. And sometimes it's exciting and I want to tap someone on the shoulder and say, "don't you think it's beautiful how messed up we are?" How we crave to be loved, how we don't understand what that even means, and how we test, and test, hoping, please don't say what those bimbos would say, please respond, thinking that we love (or could possibly love) this person and by showing maybe not the darkest secret, but the most misunderstood one, that maybe they could also love us back.
What happened next?