It began with a string of bad ideas: don’t feed the crying baby, kick the dog who is always sleeping in the narrow corridor, break the alarm clock that never turns off. After laughing at how ridiculous they were, Stripford thought of many more bad ideas. Why not put one pantleg in his suit and walk out the front door to work? When backing up his car, why grab the steering wheel at all?
These were the kinds of ideas he thought of when nothing was working in his life. The argument always ran thus in his mind: if nothing was working right, why do anything the right way at all?
This was the day when Stripford decided to act on this impulse.
When the alarm clock rang, he threw it against the bedroom door, smashing it to pieces. His wife bolted upright in bed at the commotion, and the baby began crying in the next room. She asked him to tend to the little one. He didn’t reply and put on his suit for work and let the baby wail away while he nibbled on leftover cupcakes in the kitchen.
The Pomeranian, Benny, slept in the lone corridor of the cramped apartment, ready to stir at the exact moment that Stripford stepped over. With a shrug, Stripford landed a buckler of a kick into the dog’s ribcage. The mutt half-yipped, half-barked and raced around the apartment to escape further punishment, which was quite amusing.
He dented a neighbor’s car parked under the carport of the apartment complex, having refused to steer when backing out. On the highway, Stripford didn’t look to change lanes and ran a minivan off the road. The subsequent beeps and threatening gestures that reflected in his rearview might have been menacing the day before, but Stripford shrugged. He mentally checked the box of the list of Bad Things in his mind: reckless driving.
At his dental practice, Stripford merely glanced at decaying molars and glazed over at dentures in need of polish and refinement. He told children they might as well eat as much candy as they wanted so he could stay in business when they next visited for cavities. Mothers scorned his terrible attitude, threatening to complain. His dental assistants festered in the breakroom after lunch, each sharing one of Stripford’s suggestive innuendo about their fitted scrub uniforms, and each agreed to complain or file suits to HR.
Stripford was to pick up his eldest from school at 2:30, but he never showed. Passing by the school, he saw his little boy sitting on a bench outside, overlooking the parking lot for any sign of a silver sedan rounding the entrance. This was a particularly unforgivable Bad Idea that required more effort to perform for Stripford, and so he next stopped at a fast food restaurant to order a tripe deluxe Piston Burger, one so drenched in fryer grease that the inevitable uptick in cholesterol would surely befuddle the family doctor come his next checkup. His intestine churned noisily as he drove to the beach to stare at the weekly gathering of recreational women’s volleyball. He unapologetically parked as close as possible and ogled them; the games didn’t last long.
At the end of the day, Stripford parked his car in the adjoining parking lot to his own apartment complex. It was nighttime and the visitor spots in front of his home were occupied with his wife’s parents and friends, each certainly called to comfort and console why Stripford would ignore their crying infant, or kick the family dog, and even refuse to pick up their 10-year-old boy from school. He had ignored all phone calls, even the 3 voicemails left by HR from the dentist office. He checked off the box in his mind that read: Successfully completed list of Bad Things.
But he had so many more Bad Ideas, ones that were even more creative and realistic. Why not abandon the family? Why not take his savings to Vegas and bet big? Why not travel the interstate to that tiny diner off the highway and meet up with – what was the name of that waitress? – Molly…something?Stripford considered all the Bad Things that could still be done and found the list endless. He was gripped by dread knowing that an eternity could be spent checking the boxes on every heinous act.
He would never be done, never be rid of all the wrongness in his life.
Unless, he decided, to check the final box on the list of Bad Things this very night. The Bad Thing to end it all.
It would require heading inside the apartment, attempting to calm and explain his streak of reckless behaviors, apologizing profusely for his brief day of madness and stress. After they all had gone – still angry and bitter, to be sure – Stripford would excuse himself the bathroom for a long shower, turning on the water. Instead, he would dig underneath the sink for a hidden pack vintage razor blades he had received from his father a long time ago. His father explained that one blade was missing and never found. Stripford knew where it was, at the end of his father’s list of Bad Things.
He took one step forward and something stopped Stripford. He stood still, still enough to cease thinking for a moment.
The cool summer evening dropped below 60 degrees and he began to shiver. He wanted warmth, like cuddling up to his wife, even after an exhaustive day of tending to a newborn, she was still the best comfort of all on nights like these.
He listened to the sound of distant traffic on the highway some two miles away and how lonely he felt in its wake. It was calmer outside and Stripford found he didn’t prefer the calm. He much preferred the irritable cries of his newborn son and the bips and beeps of his 10-year-old’s video games that he played late into the night when Stripford needed sleep.
The parking lot was vast, and he could go anywhere, but why did he want to? There was always the cramped corridor of the apartment where the dog always waited for the opportune moment to awaken each morning to surprise Stripford. He nearly stepped on the mutt a hundred times over, but the dog was the happiest creature in the world to see him each day.
The night was hazy, but not enough to hide the twinkling stars above from shining down. They might have been brighter in the countryside, perhaps on a vacation somewhere next summer when the kids could see the world for what it was. He had heard of a place from one of his dental assistants, the ones he had made suggestive comments about.
He exhaled, and the breath of his day plumed out into the crisp night air like car exhaust.
Stripford began thinking again.
No, he thought, the razors were packed in the medicine drawer, not underneath the sink.
