Chablis by Philip Brunetti

I want to think very small. Very small. Because whenever I think big there’s a problem. And hurt and pain. And all the things that make life unbearable. So I want to think small. Shrink my head like a tiny totem. Shrink-wrap my head even like a housewife’s gift of chocolates in cellophane. White chocolate in cellophane. I can’t even be a good blackguard, a good black sheep. I’m a white sheep, sad and wooly. Or a gray sheep, even, caught somewhere in-between. Somewhere undone.

*

I sit at the windowsill with a glass of Chablis. The wife’s downstairs with the baby; the baby’s wrapped in blue-cotton blankets. She’s breastfeeding him through a feeding tube while watching TV. But I’m upstairs, lonesome and alone. I sip my Chablis and my banal face begins to tighten. I feel the slightest tug and tautness spread across my cheeks. This is the first sign of happiness. My happiness. I wouldn’t dare share it with my wife. She still wonders why I’m not out there with the joggers every morning. Why I’m not walking the dog on a leash or running with it in tow. It’s not really a conversation we have anymore. It’s just a suspicion with which she binds me to a chair, puts a plastic mask over my face. I wear the mask for weeks before peeling it off. And once I’ve peeled it off, my face has changed to resemble the mask. It’s the face of the happy husband which I am not. It’s the face of the happy suburbanite which is deadwood and an oxymoron. It’s the face of God in a toilet tank, a transparent toilet tank, the face floating like a black bladder of surface-level balance. Or imbalance. We are waiting, only, to be flushed.

*

I got married too late. I had a child too late. I list these excuses as if they’re any substitute for real happiness. Genuine happiness. I remember the first time I took my wife in my arms. She seemed thin and spindly and when we fucked I felt I could flatten her jagged bones. But her bones became baubles and she plumped up and started to live on fried foods and TV-time desserts. It was the downhill slide into domestication. And I kept saying to her: “Let’s rise to the occasion. Let’s rise to the occasion.”

She would cough warily and walk away. If I tried to cough she’d slip her index finger under my testicles and look at her watch. I don’t know what she was timing or feeling for, but I’d make a face and tell her to release me.

“I’ll release you,” she’d say.

Then she’d jerk on it for a while. It was an antiestablishment pleasure. Audacious and abrupt. My wife jacking me in the suburban basements of our conjugal abode. The lost lower levels of our depleting love.

“Rise up. Rise up,” I’d say, feeling the semen slowly advancing up my shaft. It was a good feeling. Almost as good as the tightness across the mask of my face. The ways and workings of a good Chablis. The thing I drink so early in the morning. Right before breakfast even. A thing to hold in one’s hand while staring out storm windows at windblown brown leaves. Sad rakes on suburban lawns. All the neighbors walking their dogs. All the housewives humping their hands. Their bodies, gear-systems of nerves, in danger of screaming curses of ecstasy. Curses of doom and denial—oblique and anti-romantic.

*

“Eh, you scribbling again?” my wife inquires.

“Yes,” I say. “Yes.”

“This scribbling? It tastes even better than Chablis?” she asks.

“Sometimes,” I say. “Sometimes but not usually.”

“You’re never satisfied,” she says.

“No. I’m always unsatisfied,” I say. “There’s a difference.”

She leaves the room, suspicious and hell-bent. Her body angular and sharp like a blade.

“You are the woman I am in love with,” I say to her fleeting back too quietly. She goes to get the baby. The baby loves her more than I do. The baby is a genius of love and harmony. The baby wails and bawls and blubbers. His name is Sam. Sam the baby. I don’t believe in his name. I don’t believe in his future. I’m a terrible individual. A terrible father even. There’s something wrong with me. It’s embedded in my blood—in the double-helix destiny of my DNA. Sad systems of human aching. Sad twists of fate even. But no matter.

*

I uncork another bottle of Chablis. 1994. A poor year. A poor year all around, not just for Chablis but for Cabs and Chiantis as well. But I don’t give a damn about Cabs and Chiantis or any table reds. I’ve got my black-bottle Chablis, my French fermentation. I’ve got my bliss in hand. I’ve got the clouds drifting through warm sunny skies on this first day of March. Or maybe it’s November. The seasons blend. I can’t see past the fog in the window—the fog in my eyes, really. Yes, it’s in my eyes and not just the sockets. But in my eyes themselves. The pupils and irises. The ocular surfaces, sludge from too much sleeping, drinking, and dreaming. Dreaming.

I’m dreaming still. That’s the best I can hope for. I’m dreaming and I love my wife. I love the dog and I love Sam. I’m dreaming still—it’s all a dream—a meaningful, Chablis-spirited dream. I’ve been having quite a few of them lately. They seem to be signaling the start of something new. Or, a less painful, more apropos aftermath. Like the Chablis glass turned to fire. Like the Chablis grapes bleeding richly at the end of day.

About the author:

Philip Brunetti lives and writes in Brooklyn.