BY BEN TANZER
“We need a tradition,” Alice says to me, like you can just go and create one whenever you feel like it.
“Who needs a tradition,” I say, hoping, praying, she’s referring to some other relationship she’s part of.
“You and me,” Alice says, “we need a thing. The kids are gone and what are we going to do every night? Watch re-runs of Law & Order and smoke a joint? Not talking, or even looking at each other as we drift off on the couch? Time is short babe and I don’t want that.”
This seems like an inappropriate time to tell her how much I have been enjoying our nights, the quiet house, getting high, Sam Waterston’s calming timbre and dulcet tones, the last thing we hear before we fall asleep,
“What about sex night?” I say. “Isn’t that the grandest of all traditions? A man and a woman, this man and woman, naked as the day they came into the world, sharing fluids and showing their profound love for one another? It’s like God’s work if you really think about it.”
We had installed sex night when the boys were in junior high school. Between practices, rehearsals, counseling, S.A.T. prep, driving lessons, court appearances, rehab, school dances, and on and on, it was so easy to lose ourselves in their lives and forget about ours, what we were, and what we needed.
Frankly, it was the first time in my life I hadn’t care about sex that much. Or more accurately maybe, it was first time I hadn’t wanted to expend all of my energy on thinking about sex and trying to get it. When we had it, we had it, and when we didn’t, it seemed fine to me.
Sex night was Alice’s idea. A friend of hers suggested it. My favorite friend I should add. The idea was if you don’t believe you have time, schedule it, value it, and recognize its importance.
Which we did, and as soon as we did, I realized just how much I had missed it, a reminder I suppose, that deciding you don’t miss something, is not the same as actually missing it.
“Sex night,” Alice says, “are you fucking kidding me?”
I look into her deep brown eyes, something I’ve been doing since I first got lost in them back in high school, and though she may still be speaking, I’m elsewhere, thinking about her breast cancer scare, not even a year before, sitting with her in Two Rivers Hospital, and watching the drip, drip, drip of the chemo trickling into her arm, killing the twisted cells intent on killing her.
At first everyone seemed so old there in the cancer ward, the wispy hair and ashen skin, and they were, but I soon realized that we were old now too, Alice and me, not old, old, but not young either, and somewhere in the second half of our lives.
“Hey,” she said during one especially bad morning when she could not get out of bed, “if I somehow beat this, and then it comes back, I’m not doing all this again, I can’t, and I need to know that you’re good with that?”
“Yeah,” I said lying, wanting every moment with her, every breath, and touch.
“You’re fucking lying,” she said, “you’re a terrible fucking liar, it’s probably the main reason you never cheated on me, but I’m serious, so look me in the eye and say ‘cool,’ because I need your blessing, I need to know you get it, and that you’re really listening, not that thing you usually do.”
“Yeah,” I said, “cool.”
She had recovered though, and now here we were talking sex, or not, and tradition, though not tradition that involved sex apparently.
“So, why isn’t sex night a tradition?” I say.
“Because you have to at least sort of enjoy it,” says Alice smiling.
“But I do,” I say, “even when you’re here with me.”
“Touche old friend,” Alice says, “but I’m thinking something else, something with meaning and richness, history.”
“Oh, you mean like an actual tradition, tradition, alright, I see where you’re going with this,” I say.
I realize now that this whole thing is about mortality, hers, and mine, that when the clock begins to feel like its ticking, really ticking, and time begins to slip away, that’s when we start to desperately hold on to what we have.
“So, what are you thinking then,” I say, “anything will be fine with me?”
“Not a big deal thing,” she says, “but do you remember where we went on our first date?”
I do, like it was yesterday. We had been sophomores in high school. My mother had driven us to Sharkey’s where we had met for dinner, City Chicken, shrimp cocktail, fried clams, and a pitcher of Yuengling, because no one carded there, or anywhere back then.
We had stumbled to Alice’s house and when we walked into the kitchen her older sister Rhonda, was on the phone wearing a short nightie that barely covered much of anything at all.
“What the fuck,” Alice had screamed at her, “get out of here.”
“Excuse me, what, you little twat,” Rhonda had screamed in return, “fuck you, get the fuck out of here, and take fucking Clark Kent with you.”
No one screamed in my house. We talked civilly. It was fine, but this was electric and I had decided right then that I was marrying into Alice’s family by any means necessary.
“Stop thinking about Rhonda,” Alice says, “it’s disgusting.”
“She was pretty hot,” I say, “c’mon those boobs, wow.”
“She’s still hot,” Alice says.
“Sure she is,” I say, “but she’s not eighteen anymore.”
“Neither am I,” Alice says.
This is a trap. You don’t talk age, asses, or sisters with your wife, not if you’re smart. Which maybe I’m not, having already discussed two of those thing, still I haven’t touched age yet, and I don’t plan to, I’ve been married long enough to know better than that.
“I was actually thinking about Sharkey’s,” I say, “so there, why, what were you thinking?”
“That was nicely handled sir,” she says, “smooth even, too bad for you it’s not sex night.”
“Indeed,” I say, “lucky I’m thinking City Chicken though. Hey, do you think that’s real chicken?”
“As real as my feelings for you,” she says.
“That’s my girl,” I say reaching for her, “kiss?”
“Only if you promise to never say it like that again,” she says.
“Like what?” I say.
“Like you’re seven,” she says, “we’ve done the kid thing and we’re done with it.”
“Deal,” I say.
And with that we kiss.
The day of the new tradition, the rain starts early and never stops. The Susquehanna River starts to swell and then climb above the banks, over the closed bridge, spreading across the streets, coursing through the South Side, flooding basements and businesses alike.
Two Rivers hasn’t flooded like this during our lifetime and it hasn’t rained like this since biblical times. The smart thing to do is not go out at all, but Sharkey’s claims it will be open no matter what, and I don’t have the balls to tell Alice I would feel safer staying-in, smoking a bowl, and riding it out with Chris Noth and Paul Sorvino.
When we get into the car I can see that the water has climbed up to the fenders of the cars parked in the street as the rain courses down South Mountain only to collect at the bottom of the small hills that serve as our front yards.
I wonder again if I should suggest staying-in, the flooded streets, scattered tree branches, and downed power lines as good an argument as any, but then I think about the cancer, Law & Order, and old age, and reflect on what it all means.
How our time here is limited, how making those we love happy is more important than anything, and that to be scared of a storm, even the storm of the century seems silly in comparison to trying to live as full a life as possible.
I steer carefully down the driveway, around our floating garbage cans, and onto the street.
There’s a moment where I wonder how Alice can be so calm, and I look at her searching for a sign of some kind that she thinks this is stupid too.
Her eyes are closed, so I start to look away, but then stop, caught for a moment in her skin.
Maybe it’s the way the sun is setting, refracting through the incessant raindrops and the misty windows, but her skin, her always lovely skin looks different tonight, ashen, and not so much pale, as faded and without life.
It is then that I realize what is happening. She’s sick again, very sick, terminal, and this idea of a new tradition, and our going out even on a night like this, is her dying effort to fade away on a happy note.
“What,” she says suddenly, her eyes snapping to attention.
“Nothing,” I say, “I just love you that’s all.”
“Oh God,” she says, “when did you get like this, and if I promise to put out later, do you promise to stop?”
“Of course,” I say, “deal, and done.”
“Good,” she says, “now step on it, we don’t have forever.”
Ben Tanzer is the author of the books Orphans, which won the 24th Annual Midwest Book Award in Fantasy/SciFi/Horror/Paranormal and a Bronze medal in the Science Fiction category at the 2015 IPPY Awards, and Lost in Space, which received an Honorable Mention in the Chicago Writers Association 2014 Book Awards Traditional Non-Fiction category, and now The New York Stories, among others. He has also contributed to Punk Planet, Clamor, and Men’s Health, serves as a Senior Director, Acquisitions for Curbside Splendor, and can be found online at This Blog Will Change Your Life the center of his vast lifestyle empire.