2011 Book #31: ABBOTT AWAITS by Chris Bachelder

Returning home from a spectacularly unsuccessful quest to buy a couch, Abbott stops with his wife and daughter in the parking lot of a strip mall of premium outlet stores in Northern Connecticut. He’s not shopping, though. What he’s doing is cleaning vomited raspberries out of his daughter’s car seat with antibacterial moist wipes. He is reminded of the exceptionally strong mythical hero who had to clean out the dirty stables. He is trying not to be reminded of the exceptionally strong mythical hero who had to perform the same bad job over and over. The moist wipes are cool and pleasing, with a faintly stringent odor, redolent of bactericide. The considerable mound of red-tinted towels is striking, nearly pretty, on the black tar. He glances up once to see his daughter running across the searing lot wearing yellow socks and a sagging diaper, looking very much like a child whose parents do not file federal income taxes. Abbott’s wife chases the girl listlessly, pregnantly, in the heat. In one hand she holds the ruined clothes, in the other the clean clothes. In her uterus she carries another uncivilized human child. She appears to have no hope of catching the girl, much less of clothing her. Like a mythical hero, Abbott returns his attention to the car seat, the numerous crevices of which are coated in sweet-smelling gastric compote. She really ate a lot of raspberries. He removes the seat from the car and discovers that it is dripping somewhere from its center. There are brown birds in the parking lot picking off pieces of discarded bagel and croissant, then flying back to a crevice behind the Liz Claiborne sign, where they live and raise their children. They appear to be uninterested in his liver. Time has more or less stopped. Abbott’s sweat drips down into the vomit, and he arrives again in paradox. The following propositions are both true: (A) Abbott would not, given the opportunity, change one significant element of his life, but (B) Abbott cannot stand his life.

—from Abbott Awaits by Chris Bachelder