YOU OUGHT TO KILL IT NOW by Matt Jones
Four days is an eternity. It is a long weekend. It is possible to survive, but not without losing little pieces of yourself: respect, humanity, patience. There is blood on the glass even before there is blood on the glass. There is a small gray bird with a streak of orange on top of its head that flies into the window on the first night. It seems dead. If not dead, then worse. Existing on the edge of death without the strength to fall further. Its thin legs twitch, and then it rights itself. It looks around with wet black eyes. It’s broken.
David calls for a shoe box. My mother-in‑law is drunk on wine. She says, “Always the caretaker, since he was a child.” She wants to tell me the story of the time David rescued a stray kitten and fed it from a bottle. I’ve heard the story before. Numerous times. I raise my foot up and then slam it back down on the porch and the bird takes off flying into the night sky. It disappears. It escapes. Don’t believe this family can take care of you. They will keep you broken. They will keep you boxed. “Jesus, Sandra,” my mother-in‑law says. “That scared me. Not the nurturing type, this one,” she says.
David comes back out on the porch with a cardboard game box. Balderdash. He looks at where the bird was and then up to me, disappointed. Like I’ve taken something away from him that never belonged to him in the first place.
* * *
There are mimosas in the morning. There are screwdrivers. David’s family loves to drink. They know they love to drink. This is what they call it: love.
While breakfast is made downstairs, I refuse to come out of the bathroom upstairs. David knocks and tries the knob. He keeps his voice low. He wants me to try harder. He wants me to come out of the bathroom and have breakfast, have a drink. He wants to kill me. He may not know this, but he wants it all the same. He wants to put me in a box and say something kind before burying me forever. Then, when I am quiet, he can speak for me. He can tell my story: happy, but confused. Hard to please. Never satisfied. Restless.
I hear him trudge downstairs and tell the rest of his family that Sandra didn’t sleep well. It’s the bed. She’s just stressed. She’ll be down in a few minutes.
* * *
He says this is the last thing he’ll ask of me. This long weekend. This eternity. Except there is always more.
He asks that I make an effort.
That I at least appear to be happy. Smiling. Endorphins.
He asks that I run into town with my mother-in‑law and sister-in‑law to get groceries while he and his father and his two brothers go out hiking.
He asks me not to say anything. Not just yet. Let’s enjoy the weekend. Eternity. These trips happen every year, and every year, I see myself flying away. I see myself, a woman like me. I see her. I attack her. I hurt her, and in turn, I am hurt. I am confused. And when I am confused, he offers to take care of me. He settles me into bed and tells me to rest and then I wake up having forgotten my wings altogether.
* * *
I go to bed early. I don’t stay up to play games or to pretend. I am allowed this. I am allowed to look out at a room full of people who want more from me and say, “I’m tired.”
I am allowed small truths.
* * *
He says he wants a reason. I give him one and then another and another, and still, he wants. He wants a thing that I won’t give him. That I can’t give him. Can’t and won’t are sisters. They are twins. One is prettier than the other. One is smarter. One is a reflection of the other. The difference is indiscernible. Look closely. Look closer. Lie to yourself if you must. Everyone does it. We’re all guilty.
I’m an only child. David says I don’t understand family in the same way that he does. I don’t understand compromise or sacrifice. I’m selfish.
We argue in small, quiet fits over the course of the weekend. Of forever. In the upstairs bathroom. Outside on the porch at night. In bed. Everything that can be said has been said, and everything that can’t, won’t.
* * *
On the third morning, I drink mimosas. My mother-in‑law tells me I don’t eat enough, so I eat. David sets his hand on my leg under the table.
“Excuse me,” I say, and his hand squeezes the muscle just above my knee. It makes my foot twitch. It is a reflex. “Excuse me,” I say again, and there is blood on the sliding glass door before there is blood.
There is a loud thump and my mother-in‑law spills her drink. There is a reason on the other side of the glass, a little bird. Maybe it is the same one.
“I think it wants to come inside,” David says. Do you, I think. Do you think you understand the inner workings of little birds? Maybe the bird is simply an idiot. Maybe the bird has just forgotten that it tried the exact same thing only days ago, to no effect. Maybe the bird saw itself in the glass and confused itself for another bird, perhaps one that it hated. More likely than not, the bird is just a bird.
It rights itself on the porch and cocks its head curiously to the side. It looks directly through the glass at our table adorned with orange juice and eggs and pastries. Do we look warm? Is that what it sees?
When it flies off, it leaves behind a stain. David and his father talk about what is humane, in an abstract sort of way. Can it be right to let a thing suffer if you have the power to end that suffering? Should they look for it? My mother-in‑law and sister-in‑law take dirty dishes to the sink. No one has the strength, not even me. Especially not me.
David wets a sponge and scrubs the door. Pink soapy rivulets run and run some more.
* * *
In the afternoon, my mother-in‑law says, “Can you believe that bird this morning?” There are still smears on the glass, streaks that David missed. They appear and disappear in different kinds of light.
In the evening, “Remember that bird? Poor thing.”
This, I think, is how they will talk about me one day. There will be regrets. There already are.
“I hope it’s okay,” David says. In his mind, an injured thing is injured forever. But this is just a long weekend. There is an end to even the quietest of suffering.
Matt Jones has published stories in The Threepenny Review, Chicago Tribune, Post Road, Ruminate Magazine, and Wigleaf.