Creative Emulation: Dept. of Speculation

My emulation of the Dept. of Speculation was inspired by the voice of the narrator and the way the story is organized. One of the things I liked about the Dept. of Speculation was the tone of the narrator. Although it often read as melancholy and dark, I appreciated the authenticity it provided the prose. While this was mostly distracting, I sometimes liked the way the narrative seems to flop back and forth between flashbacks and current observations and quotes and poetry and seemingly useless facts. I knew when it came time to write my emulation I wanted to incorporate a similar trend of randomness (in terms of what moments I chose to include throughout) in my piece in order to show how a relationship has developed and why it has gotten to where it is. My story is about a couple and how their relationship has ended. It’s told by the perspective of the female who is intended to be perceived as a woman who is a little off, confused, and dealing with her own issues all while dating a man who is essentially too good for her and puts up with her attitude and distant nature.

This is a creative response I wrote for one of my graduate classes.

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The desks were hard and the laminate tops were cold under my shaking hands. I kept my left hand on top the desk because it kept me steady while I dipped my head inside stacking multi colored folders which read my name on each cover in curved handwriting. I stacked colored pencils and pink erasers and notebooks bound with wire. College rule because wide rule was for chumps and people with big handwriting and because I was an obnoxious eight year old. Our teacher walked around the room and introduced herself to us and our parents. Meet the teacher day. They were polite and shook her weathered hand and we gave a meek smile and kept stacking.

I didn’t see him walk in. My mother had been absently handing me supplies from our recycled paper grocery bag while she talked to another girl’s mom standing at the neighboring cluster of desks. We were late, as usual, and the other desks in my cluster had been stuffed, the teacher’s hand had been shaken, the half smile had been given, and each child had left before I could arrive. My mother said her goodbyes to the neighboring mother and her daughter who looked up at me and smiled after placing her last folder in her desk. It had cats on it. I would decide later she would be my friend despite the cats. I went back to stacking. My mother was growing impatient with my pace and sat down at the desk next to mine. The chair creaked as she shifted her weight. She laughed at his name card taped to the surface of his desk. Long name for a little boy. She stood when he and his mother came running into the room, panting words of explanation. Our mothers talked behind us while we stood silently next to one another filling our small spaces. All his supplies were blue. Wide rule. He wore a brown sweater vest and his wire rimmed glasses fit around his blue and green and gray eyes. His teeth were crooked. I wish they still were. I always liked his crooked teeth.

He said he liked my prom dress but I didn’t ever fully believe him. It was white and I got it from the bridal section of the local department store. My hair was piled too high on my head and I gotten a headache from all the bobby pins. I smeared some champagne sparkle on my eyes, bronzer on the wrong parts of my cheeks, and my mascara clumped my lashes into jagged pieces. He told me I was beautiful.

There was one day we walked over to the lake. The water was mucky and it swooped up onto the shore pulling the loose grains of sand with it making them swirl in little circles until they settled at the bottom. He wanted to hold my hand but I kept it in my pocket. I’m cold. It’s too cold to hold hands. The sky is dark and the water rocks against my bare ankles. No one wants to hold your feet. It felt like the straight edge on printer paper. It was sharp and real. He carried both of my sneakers and they dangled from his fingers at his side. The laces swung as we walked. He was always one step ahead as he dug his heel into the wet sand.

I remember he liked his pizza two minutes undercooked. He liked collared shirts, black Camaros, and pretended to like scotch. He preferred Marvel to DC and his foot always shook when he watched TV. He didn’t like to read but displayed every book I gave him. He hated sitcoms and always fell asleep during Guys & Dolls. Marlon Brando is my favorite.

I lived in an old building in college. It was a small place with a small kitchen and paint chipped walls and a toilet that always ran and a sink that always dripped. The hardwoods were original to the building but they were collecting scratches and their color had faded. I had piles of books in each corner, some daisies on the kitchen table, and I stored sweaters in my oven. He fixed the sink so it didn’t drip and built me shelves for my books. One day he offered to sand my floors. I like my floors. He said he could make them shine. I told him I didn’t like shiny things.

He wanted to be in uniform. He ran six miles every morning while I stayed in bed with an onion bagel. He got the degree in criminal behavior and the only time he read a book for fun was to practice for the department exams. He wanted to protect the uniform. He memorized departmental procedures even before he was accepted by one. When he finally graduated from the academy I cried and he said he was proud to serve the uniform.

My hair would drip over his face in bed. Crimped brown strands that never knew their place. His chest was hard and sturdy and I memorized his heartbeat beneath my ear. He kept his gun on the nightstand. Each time I picked it up it felt heavier than the last. He didn’t like me to touch it. I want you safe. He would kiss my bottom lip and gather my hair, balling it in his fists at the back of my head so he could see my face. I wiped my mouth once he fell asleep.

One day I found that little black box. I found it and it fit in the palm of my hand. I found it in the pocket of his jeans when I was doing laundry. I found it and I threw up. I don’t know if the band is silver or gold, if the stone has square or round edges, or if some small words are engraved on the inside of the band. I still can’t look inside that stupid black box.

Last night I tried to remember what he looked like. It’s only been a week but already he’s slipping. I was lying in our new bed. In my new bed. The sheets are navy with a white paisley design scattered across the material. We fought about these sheets last week. We were standing in the bedding department and I had just shooed the sales girl away. I was already holding the paisley sheets when he picked up plain beige ones. Let’s just get these. I called him boring and walked to the cashier with the navy sheets in hand. As I reached for my credit card he came up behind me and slipped his arm around my waist and smiled. These sheets are a week old but we were a decade old.

I wondered if he was scared. I wondered if he was remorseful, regretful, or angry. I pictured him sad he had wasted so many years with me. I hope he was. I hope he realized in those small moments how much better he could have had it. There could have been a woman whose heart wasn’t so far away and whose hand was always available.

I held the sheets up to my chin. I tucked them under and kept them close just like he used to do for me when I pretended to already be asleep. The flannel felt warm and soft on my skin. I haven’t moved in days. The pillows are flat and used to the curve of my face. At first I pictured him running. I pictured his feet hitting the wet pavement like they touched the sand that day at the lake. I pictured his arms stretched out in front of him, his finger on the trigger, pointed at another man. I thought about that uniform. The uniform he so badly wanted to wear. I remember how his dark skin looked under all that black and buttons and ballistic armor. I thought about the uniforms that came to my door last Tuesday while I was cooking to tell me he wasn’t going to make it for dinner, or to buy new sheets, or to hold hands by the murky lake. I wondered what a bullet to the head feels like. I got up, ripped the navy sheets off the bed, and went to look for anything in our home that resembled even the slightest shade of beige.