Serenading the Barrow
It started with Papa singing La Traviata to the pigs, specifically to the castrated barrow, Bernardo, and much later he joined an all-male choir that met in the city center. His voice became professional. “He’s really good, I think,” Mary said. Their mother would have been disgusted. For all they knew, she was hiking in Greenland under the majesty of the Northern Lights, something she had always wanted to do, and one day they would hug her and tell her how proud they were even if they missed her.
In the barn, they sat together, worrying about how to find their mother in case their father’s singing career spiralled out of control. “Does she even have a phone?” Mary said, trying not to stare at the sows who were known to take good care of their babies.
But what really got to them was the way Papa singled out Bernardo who Papa claimed smelled like maple syrup. The girls crept up to the barn just to witness the spectacle of it. Moonlight sliced gently through the slats of the barn while he crooned to the satiated animal who looked much sadder, less agonistic than the regular pigs. Bernardo snorted and grunted as if eager for more than just berries and zucchini.
And now, when their father sang alone in the shower, or in the kitchen making pancakes and veggie bacon, or with the gay men’s chorus downtown— the girls could imagine how much better things would have been if their mother had clapped.
The Gleaners
Less than a week before my wife’s fiftieth, I thought how impressed she’d be if I found her the right present this time. She was back from a weight-lifting championship in Florida with yet another gold medal gleaming in her hands. She handed it to me, told me to add to the display case. I polished her trophies regularly— it was fun to see them competing for small slices of living room sunlight.
“Do you understand?” I whispered to our overweight Corgi. “This time I’m going to buy her something larger than life.”
~
Four days before my wife’s birthday, I was stumped on what to buy her, so I found myself thinking about my Francophile lover. She sent me an old video of herself as a young woman visiting Paris, playing an accordion. She stayed in her apartment on sunny days, drinking wine, eating blue cheese, and watching French movies.
She would watch the same films indefinitely. Last time I visited, we watched Agnès Varda’s The Gleaners & I.
The movie was about down-and-outers who took everything they could gather including surplus veggies from fields, rubbish from trashcans, oysters washed up after a storm. Used whatever they could find to cobble together a rough kind of life.
After the movie ended, I felt almost fine again.
~
Three days from my wife’s birthday, I sat around in boxer shorts, drinking pastis next to the dog. Coming up with a special gift for this lady was hard. She was the kind of woman whose arms were thick as tree trunks. When I jumped on her shoulders from behind, she tossed me off with a shrug.
“Please let me know what you want!” I begged.
She picked me up and carried me into my bedroom, plopped me down on the old mattress like a sourdough starter.
“Don’t try so hard,” she said before retreating to the weight room.
“What do you see in me?” I texted my lover. I sent her a photoshop pic of myself in a beret and she sent me a golden thumb emoji.
~
Two days before my wife’s big birthday, I found myself feeling existentially empty. I looked at my skinny fingers. Why did my hands look older than me? I was tempted to heave the dog above my head, just to see if I could do it, but the dog seemed to sense it and ran to my wife’s weight room for protection.
My wife was training for the next competition. I could hear her grunting.
“I used to make her laugh,” I reminded myself. I walked into the weight room and wiggled my ears to crack her up. It was a skill that had been handed down through the generations.
“You’re ruining my concentration,” she said. Only my lover laughed at my tricks.
~
The night before my wife’s birthday, I made a list of items that might have worked as gifts even though it was too late to find them:
1. An “Am I the real joke?” t‑shirt
2. An accordion (she didn’t know how to play an instrument, something she felt fine about but I saw as a deficit).
3. An Agnès Varda poster, with a quote: Ageing is interesting you know? I really love it.
I thought about all these things that I didn’t buy or arrange. None of them felt right for her.
~
On the morning of the birthday my wife disappeared to the gym. I took a drive, trying to relax.
“Je né sais pas,” I chanted while the Peugeot growled its way along the familiar streets. I was winding my way toward to my lover’s apartment, as if the car knew what was best. When I got to her apartment, she threw her skinny pale arms around me.
“C’est l la vie,” I said. Then we turned on The Gleaners & I, played it over and over.
~
Meg Pokrass is the author of nine collections of flash fiction and two novellas in flash. Her work has been published in 3 Norton anthologies including Flash Fiction America, New Micro, and Flash Fiction International; Best Small Fictions 2018, 2019, 2022, and 2023; Wigleaf Top 50; and hundreds of literary journals including New England Review, Electric Literature, McSweeney’s, Washington Square Review, Split Lip and Passages North. Her new collection, The First Law of Holes: New and Selected Stories by Meg Pokrass, is forthcoming from Dzanc Books in late 2024.