The Syntax of Things by Vincent Barry

His lips moved perceptibly, silently, then broke a faint, brittle smile at the quotation from Carl Linnaeus in the manuscript he was editing: ‘Three flies could consume a horse cadaver as rapidly as a lion.’ With a double ended red and blue pencil, he precisely inserted ‘[sic]’ after the sentence, then lightly recited the mantra: “Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.”

Then word came.

“It was inevitable,” he thought, peering over horn-rimmed glasses to glimpse the email, his breath failing for just a moment, “somebody had to die.”

After a wide, uncomfortable pause and a full sigh, he got out a breathy, “Eventually,” and he muttered to himself with a delicate aestheticism, “Eventually, I had to hear.”                                  

He meant after so many years— of exchanging nothing but Christmas cards, then nothing; but he didn’t think that, only: “Eventually, I had to hear of someone’s death in the family,” and then, after second thought: “Eventually, I had to hear of a death in the family.”

There it was then, now that it was spring and a sickle moon was in the sky, there it was— the dreaded withering word staring him in the face hard and long, like a stern teacher awaiting a response. 

Word of a death in the family.

Braced up like a taut wire, he uttered thickly, “I had to hear of a death in the family,” and then the monepic, “eventually.”

After a space of musing on his lower lip, he submitted ‘about’ for ‘of,’ and, steepling his long fingers, sampled the two versions several times as if tasting wine— the one with ‘of,’ the other with ‘about.’ At length, ‘of’ elicited his nod of approval; and so, satisfied, he said with a quiet, editorial assuredness: “Eventually, I had to hear of a death in the family,” and again nodded.

He didn’t ponder the merits of substituting ‘learn’ for ‘hear,’ but, for some reason, he did muse further on his lower lip, though now with a wrist-bumping pulse.

“What did she say?” he asked himself distractedly.

He meant his wife— when she left. He recalled her saying something, something dramatic, something iambic, in a voice cold with terror—when she finally walked out for good.

“Life is not a paragraph, and death is not a parenthesis,” is what she said that he couldn’t recall, as he sat stock-still, with a finger that, for no apparent reason, had suddenly turned white and cold hovering over DELETE.

# # #

Vincent Barry’s recent publications include: Midway Journal (“Earslips,” April 2016), Literally Stories (“Borrowed Fragments,” June 24, 2016),Corvus Review (“Biker Girl,” Spring/Summer 2016), The Saint Ann’s Review (“Internal Damage,” Summer/Fall 2016), Bull (“Reading Hawking but Listening to Grieg,” Issue 6, August 2016), Dime Show Review (“Alchemy,” August 21, 2016), Random Sample (“Sunday Serenade,” forthcoming), Mulberry Fork Review (“Tour de Jour,” forthcoming), Rivet (“Through the Bay’s Lace Curtains,” forthcoming).

Photo credit: Kae Sable