The Grafton Voice

Good Night, Seymour

by Joan Bosco

“You don’t care. You’ll never care about me!” A strappy high-heeled shoe smacked Seymour in the chest and then fell limply to the floor. Seymour watched the sequined shoe as it glittered from its place on the ground, a thousand little prisms refracting light in a thousand different directions, one thousand times one thousand beams of light zigzagging across the room. Without looking up from the green sequined heel, Seymour mumbled, “You’re five ten already. Why do you wear these things?”

Sylvia responded with a fierce glare. Seymour finally broke his fixation upon the shoe and looked up at his wife. She was wearing a new purple eye shadow, which made her green irises flash more intensely than usual, and as she stood there glowering, sequined-sized flecks of light radiated around the room, temporarily pock-marking her face. She was in the position that, as of late, Seymour most often encountered her in, hands on her curved hips, eyes ablaze.

Seymour scanned the length of his wife’s legs, one culminating in a green sequined heel, the other completely naked. This made her appear slightly uneven, and so as she stood there in the living room, her symmetry compromised, she appeared almost to tilt to one side. “Well? Well?” she demanded.

Seymour gazed at the fiery mess of her hair. “Nice new shadow, Sylv.”

In frustration Sylvia snatched her other shoe from where it lay near Seymour’s feet and whipped her body around so hard Seymour felt the wind smack his face.

“Good night, Seymour.” And she turned off the living room light, imprisoning Seymour in darkness.

When Sylvia went out, she liked to kiss people. She would kiss her girlfriends on the lips, spinning on bar stools, she would kiss Seymour’s business associates upon first introduction, she would try to kiss Seymour in restaurant booths, but he would usually shrink away from her advances. When Seymour had proposed to her, Sylvia liked to brag to her friends that she was finally going to get to “see more Seymour.” Then they’d all giggle and Sylvia would sigh and twirl her auburn hair and fantasize about tearing the Scientific American from Seymour’s hands and tossing it callously into the tornado that would inevitably rage behind them. They would embrace as the spinning green funnel approached them, Seymour’s eyeglasses askew and obscured with steam, eventually being overtaken by the storm, becoming one. Then she’d wake up and turn and kiss her nearest friend on the cheek and order another drink.

Seymour sat there in the recently dark room for a while, staring at the emptiness.
When his thoughts became incomprehensible, melatonin cycling freely through his bloodstream, Seymour felt himself get up and walk to bed.

Seymour watched the color drain from Sylvia’s knuckles as she gripped the steering wheel with furious strength. Watched. And waited. The carton full of Sylvia’s leftover lunch was warm between his knees; she had been too upset to finish her sandwich.

“Upset? You think I’m upset?” Seymour gritted his teeth in response. “I am beyond upset, oh no, no, now I’m just good and pissed. And do you know why I’m pissed?” Seymour really didn’t have any idea, but he had sensed something was troubling her ever since they had left the bistro.

“Yeah, pissed, that’s what I am. Pissed. Fuming. And you don’t even know why! You didn’t even notice!” Sylvia swerved around a bend in the road, causing Seymour to grip the bottom of his seat, and adjusted the orb-like sunglasses she was wearing. She had bought them on their honeymoon, but Seymour had never really liked they way they obliterated half her face in an instant, completely eclipsing her eyes.

“But I…” Seymour felt his tongue moving between his teeth in an attempt to roll out some words.

“And another thing, oh, my favorite part of this whole fantastic mess, is that you don’t even care! You never care, and you never will. You don’t care about anything, let alone me!”

Seymour watched as the distance between her green sequined heel and the floor mat under the accelerator decreased exponentially as she shouted. “If you’d just tell me what was wrong, maybe I could…”

“You sat there devouring your lunch, having a grand old time-I even heard you doing that smacking your lips thing you know I can’t stand- while I was being practically assaulted by the waiter, and you just didn’t care, did you? Well? I tell you, I’ve never…”

“But Sylvia…”

The car suddenly lurched to a halt. “What, Seymour?”

Seymour realized they had stopped under an overpass, sunlight blocked from entering the tunnel by massive cement walls. Seymour turned to respond to his wife, but found her image was swallowed up by the blackness of the tunnel; he could no longer see her. He felt the oppressive weight of the surrounding darkness upon him and in vain squeezed his eyes shut until he could see squiggles of light shifting across the insides of his eyelids.

Sylvia’s eyes, however, had adjusted to the dark already. She turned to look at the outline of her husband next to her, hunched down in the passenger seat, eyes scrunched closed, her leftover French dip sandwich resting between his knees. Sighing, she accelerated into the sunlight.

Seymour went back into work after their lunch date, and Sylvia was suddenly alone. It was getting late, the hands of their clock creeping into the restless hours. Sylvia bent over the edge of their bed, night pouring in through the small bedroom windows, and groped around for her suitcase. In it she dumped some clothes, not even bothering to turn on a light to see if the socks she was packing matched, her favorite high-heels, and some money. She could have easily stridden out the front door, but instead, she chose to climb out their bedroom window, running through the night to where a man, men, and also women, were waiting for her. And late at night, when she’d be lying with him, with her, with them, pulsing under the smothering blackness of bed sheets, she would call out “Seymour!” “What?” he or she or them would ask, and Sylvia would grimace and yell, “I said, more!” and her green eyes would fade to gray in the darkness.

Seymour walked into the house and placed his briefcase on the kitchen table. “Sylvia?” he called, flicking on the light, but there was no reply. He shrugged and figured she had gone out for a late night cup of coffee with a girlfriend, which she was often known to do, and instinctively flipped down the light switch before he headed off to bed. He walked three steps forward and then suddenly pictured Sylvia clomping back into the house later, wearing her green heels. Seymour reached back and turned the kitchen light on again. He didn’t want her tripping in the dark, possibly twisting an ankle in those things.