Before we moved into separate bedrooms, I learned a lot about dressing myself from my wife. I would watch her pull suits and blouses and thick skirts from the closet and lay them out, splitting the bed in two with days of the week. She’d help me match ties to shirts, make sure my pants didn’t have any stains and remind me to iron.

Now I sleep across the hall in what she used to call the guest room. To work I wear what I find in the laundry hamper. Charlotte hasn’t said good morning to me in six months. I never iron, or hand wash my shirts to keep them from getting rings on the collar. I don’t even take the time to match anymore.

What I need is a program, something to build on, something that can help me save my marriage because I can feel it tumbling away from me and I want it back.

In school I studied History. I learned how important it is to the present and the future. If history gets taken out of the equation things will never really add up right again. What I need to do is bring what Charlotte and I used to have—our own history, the good and bad—back up around us and show her how much she and our son Brady mean to me.

When I get home from work on Monday I decide to do something about it. I change directly into something adventurous, something that will really start me out right: The Edmund Hillary Popular Non-American Explorer outfit. I put together a pair of short, woolen pants, tucked into hiking boots and a pair of sunglasses with flaps on the sides. They make me feel like a horse—blind to everything but what is ahead. I try to style my hair just like Edmund, all floppy, wind-blown and wonderful, but as I get older I seem to grow less of it. I look nothing like Edmund Hillary. I give up and opt for the hat he must have worn when trekking to the top of Everest.

I’m in the bathroom. Charlotte knocks on the door.

“What are you doing in there? You’re holding up the line.”

“What line? It’s just me and you and Brady is still in a diaper. The line can’t be that long.”

“Brady is six, Simon, he doesn’t wear a diaper. This is exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about.”

“We have another bathroom,” I say, but it sounds weak.

She pounds on the door and tells me that she needs to use the one where all of her things are.

“I’ll pass them out.”

“Come on, Simon,” she says. “Just hurry up. Why do you always make things so difficult on everyone?”

“It’s a surprise. You’ll see.”

“What will I see? When?”

“Friday,” I say and find the schedule I need. I have exactly the working week to make the changes I need to make.

The Himalayas are far away. I decide to substitute a trip there with one that will be allow me to document my good fashion sense and the beginning of my week long attempt at saving my marriage. I plan on posing for a photograph at the photo booth downtown using my very best Edmund Hilary Popular Non-American Explorer pose. That goes like this: one leg, bent at the knee, foot resting majestically upon the stool and my chest full of air and pushed out. Javier from the office is the only person who comes to mind to play the part of my Nepalese Sherpa, but he has been difficult to get favors out of in the past. I don’t have much hope.

Javier is a no show, I called him and he promised to join me but I am beginning to think that he agreed to get me off the telephone.

I’m angry and as soon as I get home on Tuesday dress accordingly. I need someone heroic, someone who wouldn’t fail. I need a role-model: The Davy Crockett Pre-Alamo Post Congressman Leathers. Unfortunately I have no leathers. I have moral issues with keeping too much leather in the house. All I have is one pair of hiking boots that I inherited from my father and a braided leather belt that I’ve had since the eighth grade. This is a problem. I’m sulking when Charlotte comes home from the grocery store and asks me help carry in the food. On my second trip from the garage to the kitchen I notice the striking similarity between the color of a grocery bag and the raw, unrefined leathers Davy Crockett must have worn.

With the groceries put away I am free to do what I want. She won’t ask me to do anything for at least an hour. I get the nice kitchen scissors with the serrated edges that feel so good to use. Normally I’m not allowed to touch the more expensive things she keeps around, but if she only knew that I was out to save us, I’m sure she’d make an exception. With the scissors I open the grocery bags, keeping only the wide smooth sides that don’t have any creases on them and throw away the rest. I spread the pieces out on the floor in the living room with the name of the store facing down.

Brady comes into the living room and asks what I’m doing.

“I’m doing something to help,” I tell him.

“Can I help?” He has a voice that is more perfect than anything I know.

“Do you know where Mommy keeps the stapler?”

“I think so.”

“Can you get it for me?”

While he is gone I take off my jeans and my shirt. I lay my clothes out on top of the grocery bags and think about how good things are going to be when I prove to her that I’ve figured out our happiness. I want to share the process with her but I know that after the times we’ve been having she won’t appreciate anything but results. It’s not her fault. I can’t blame her for being cautious. What I’m hoping is that once I’ve shown her that I figured out what I miss and what I want back, she’ll realize what it is that she wants back and we can start communicating with each other again. She’ll let me move back into the bedroom and take Brady out alone to the park. I’m going to prove it to her. I can feel it.

Brady comes back and looks at me suspiciously. “Dad,” he asks, “why’re you wearing only your underwear?”

I take the stapler from him and start to staple the pieces of grocery bag to my clothes. Brady laughs. When I am pulling my shirt over my head, the paper rips.

My clothes are on, but it doesn’t look as heroic as I had planned. I curse under my breath and Brady makes a noise like, “Oooooo.” He’s getting to that age. I try to walk and keep the knees of my outfit from blowing out, so I keep my legs straight. To a six year old I must look like a monster. He gets scared and runs into the other room. When Charlotte comes in holding his hand, I know I’m in trouble.

“What are you doing?” She’s calmer than I expect which is a good sign.

“I’m working on something,” I say. “I can’t really tell you what.”

She asks Brady to go play in the other room. He looks at us both and leaves.

“Simon, really, what’s going on?”

I can’t explain it to her. How do you explain to someone that you’re trying to get your history back? How could I even start to tell her that I’m planning on saving our failing marriage by dressing up like different historical figures? She would never understand.

“Davey Crockett,” I say, and then I say, “I don’t want to lose this. I’m trying.”

“Well, I’m worried.”

By Wednesday they talk mostly to one another. I’ve become a sort of appliance around the house. They’ll ask me to pass the salt or take the trash cans down to the curb, but I can tell that they’ve teamed up against me.

I feel like giving up and just seeing how long the marriage will last. Fuck history, I think. I could visit Brady on the weekends. We could go to the park, or Disneyland or the themed restaurant in the strip mall downtown. It wouldn’t be the same as it was, but it would be something.

That’s not enough. I have to do the unimaginable. I will invade and conquer the impenetrable Rome that is my week. I prepare my Blind Hannibal Goes Blindly into Rome on the Back of an Elephant Outfit. I am having some trouble remembering where Hannibal was from. Greece, Morocco, Saudi Arabia? It obviously wasn’t Rome, but that only eliminates one possibility and there are many countries. Eventually I realize his ethnicity doesn’t matter and raid Charlotte’s closet for an appropriate look.

I decide on one of her long silk night-gowns. I think it is one I got her for an anniversary or a birthday. I’m not sure why I buy the gifts I buy for her. Mostly, I think, I buy her things that my father bought for my mother.

I tie my braided leather belt around my waist, put on the same sunglasses from Monday to illustrate my blindness, and head to the kitchen where I am fairly sure I can find a knife large enough to pass as a sword. The knives are all small and need to be sharpened. I sit on the couch, defeated and wonder how Hannibal did the impossible.

Brady comes into the living room where I have been moping and plotting for most of the evening. He’s crying. I ask what the problem is, and he tells me he has lost his shoe. He’s wearing the other one, which is blue and has two Velcro straps. We feel sorry for each other for awhile. He tells me he likes my outfit, I promise to find his shoe.

“It’s late, Dad,” he says. “We can look for it tomorrow.”

When I started college, back before Charlotte and I met and I still thought I would never get married or have children, I smoked a pipe. It was mother’s suggestion mostly. She said it looked distinguished. I wonder what she’d say now.

I get up early to keep my promise to Brady and find his shoe. This is also part of the deal I think as I’m getting out of the shower. I’ve got to hold up my half of agreements.

He’s at the kitchen table; she has set a bowl of cereal in front of him and gone off to get ready. I think about what she’s going to wear. Brady slurps milk out of his bowl.

“Did you find your shoe yet, buddy?”

“No, Mommy said I have to wear my other ones and I don’t like those ones.”

I take his hand and ask him to walk us back through time until the last moment he can remember seeing his shoe. It takes him a couple of minutes of stopping and starting again but we finally narrow it down to two places. He either left it at school last Friday or his shoe is somewhere in the living room.

“I have an idea,” I say. “Hold this.” I give him an old pipe that I found the night before in a box of my college things and cleaned with dish soap and hot water. “Put it in your mouth.”

“Why? That’s gross.”

“Come on, you be Watson and I’ll be the great detective.” I tie one of Charlotte’s silk scarves around my neck like an ascot and together we head to the living room to find his shoe.

Although he is not strictly an historical figure, wearing the Sherlock Holmes Fictional or Not World’s Greatest Detective Uniform has proven an excellent choice. We’re only in the living room for a minute or two when I spot the shoe sticking out from underneath the couch. I look over at Brady who is rubbing his chin and saying, “I say!” over and over again like I taught him to. I push the shoe deeper under the couch with my toe.

“Watson, my boy, why not have a look in the kitchen,” I say in a voice that is supposed to sound British. We go together. He keeps looking up at me and smiling. I don’t know if he knows we already found the shoe. Either way, we’re spending time together and it feels good.

We look in the kitchen, the back yard and his bedroom. I see Charlotte pass a few times. She’s doing the laundry this morning so I make sure we spend a lot time in the kitchen where she’ll have to pass us more often.

It’s getting close to the time that Brady has to go to school and I want to help him be proud of himself. I direct him to the couch and tell him to look underneath. He puts his arm under, pulls the shoe out and gives me a hug.

She comes into the room and picks Brady up.

“All right, Watson, time to go.” She tickles him a little under the arms, sets him down and pats his behind. “Go brush your teeth and makes sure the homework we did last night is ready to go. Mommy will be there in a minute, OK?”

“See you later, Sherlock,” He says to me.

“See you, Watson. Good work today.”

When we’re alone she takes my hand softly, like you do with a baby, and moves her fingers around my palm. We both watch her do it. She looks up and says, “That was a nice thing to do, Simon.”

“Thanks,” I say. I feel closer, like it’s going to work and our history is coming back.

“After work,” she says. I can’t tell if it’s a threat or a goodbye.

All day I feel nervous like I have to give an important sales pitch to a client. By lunch I’ve convinced myself that if I feel like this then it must mean that there is something to hold onto—some kind of hope that my body has understood before my mind. Charlotte calls at three to tell me she’s gone home from work early with a migraine.

When we were first married a migraine meant I should buy her some flowers, and sit with her on our bed while she tried to sleep. When they were especially bad I would read out loud from a book, or describe what was happening in a television program because her eyes were too sensitive. Lately it has meant that she leaves a note on the kitchen table telling me what she wants done around the house and the phone number to wherever Brady is for the afternoon.

I come home slightly later than usual at 6:30 and find Brady playing alone in the living room.

“Hi, Brady. Where’s Mommy?”

“She’s sleeping in her room.”

On the kitchen table is a note. It reads, “We’ll talk in the morning. Make sure he eats something and put him down early.” I had felt so close before, like if only we’d had the chance to talk in the evening, we could have sorted everything out. If I could only show her my plan, outline it for her, she would understand. But she’s already asleep and I’ve only got Friday left to figure this out.

After some macaroni and cheese and a half hour of TV, I help Brady put his pajamas on. He gets angry because I’m helping too much. His head gets stuck in the sleeve and he starts to squirm around and try to pull it out.

I laugh at him which, I’ve learned, is not something you should ever do. I’m not laughing because he looks funny stumbling around his bedroom with his head stuck in the sleeve of his Spiderman pajamas, although he does look funny. I’m laughing because I know exactly how it feels to be so trapped in something, so frustratingly stuck, that no matter what you do it only seems to get worse.

I pull the shirt off his head. His hair is standing on end, his eyes are wet and his nose is running. He looks at me like he’s angry but he doesn’t understand why. I feel like screaming at him all the words that describe how he must be feeling but isn’t old enough to understand.

Instead I ask if he wants a story before bed. Because he’s angry he only agrees to a short one.

We read together for a few minutes. Brady falls asleep before the story starts to get exciting. I tuck the blankets up under his chin and sneak out of the room. It’s funny with kids, sometimes they’ll sleep through anything, and other times, you’ll shut the door three inches too far and they’ll wake up crying. More and more when this happens he goes to his mother’s room and not mine.

When Charlotte and I were first dating we made up histories. It was a game that she invented. One of us would pick out a person on the street and say to the other, “What’s their story?” And the other one would have to fill in all the details. An older couple would walk by and we’d give them dead children, diseases and sadness. A young man would ride by on a bike and Charlotte would assign the most terrible things she could think of: his mother is in the hospital, he’s on his way to visit; he won’t know it until he starts to get sick, but three months ago after a night at the bars, he picked something up, something serious and acronymic.

As I leave Brady’s room I’m careful to shut the door just the right amount. I’m too tired and have too much to prepare for tomorrow to deal with him waking up. I can see that Charlotte’s door is open and go down the hall to see if she needs anything.

“I’m in here,” she calls from the kitchen.

I follow her voice.

“How’s your head?”

“It’s fine.” She nods to the glass she’s holding and asks if I’ll join her. There’s something she needs to talk about, she says.

“No, thank you.” I pretty much mean it, too. I’ve stopped drinking more or less, but when she asks me if I’ll have a drink, I know what she wants to talk about.

She takes a big swallow and looks at me. She looks scared but strong and willful. “Simon,” she says, “I’d like it if you found another place to live.”

“I don’t think. I mean, really? I don’t know, Char. I mean, come on, you have a migraine. Maybe right now is not the best time to talk about this.”

She can’t end my week early.

“My head is fine; I came home to think a little bit. Brady and I have already talked. He knows that you’re going to be leaving soon.”

I don’t say anything.

“Brady understands,” she goes on. “As well as he’s able. I told him that I no longer love you.”

“Charlotte you can’t say things like that to a child.” In a way I am so angry with her that I think, “Fine, fuck him up like that. In the end it will only prove that you shouldn’t have made me leave.” But I can’t think of how to say it and just look at her.

I get up to leave the room. I need my bed and the possibility that this is all wrong, some kind of dream that belongs to another person’s life. I need the last day of my week.

“Simon, you don’t have to leave right away, but Brady and I will be staying with my mother until you find someplace. Good night.”

“Good night,” I say because I can’t think of anything else.

When my father was diagnosed with cancer I had just moved to another state. It was my first time living more than three blocks from my parents. When my mother called to tell me, I was sitting in the kitchen drinking beer and feeling good about the fact that I could. I had a job, no idea how much money I had in my pocket; no clue how much the day to day things were costing me and never enough time to call home.

To call the room I was in a kitchen is slightly misleading. It was more like a corner with a hotplate and wash basin. It was carpeted. All I could think about while my mother was outlining treatment options for my father was how I had carpeting in my kitchen. Who has carpet in their kitchen, I thought. I was completely stuck on that one fact. I’m pretty sure that I finished the conversation, promised to come home for a visit as soon as possible and hung up the phone. But I have no memory of any of it. Carpet and my father’s cancer are improbably and forever linked in my mind.

In my room, across the hall from Charlotte, I fall asleep easily. The last thing I think about is how I am going to dress the following day, my last, to stop Charlotte from kicking me out.

I sleep through the alarm. On my way to the shower I can hear her talking to Brady. I see his small head at the end of the hallway nodding to something that she’s said. Before I close the door after me I hear that the talking has stopped like when you’re at a party and someone drops a glass.

I run the water medium warm so that I can shave and commiserate with my reflection over the fact that I’ve been exiled. Then I start running through a list of people who have been exiled and come back to accomplish something, my list stops at one name. I get right to work.

It will require a drastic step but I think that the Vladimir Illich Lenin Returned from Exile in Switzerland to Defeat the Royal Forces Look will serve my purposes well. The Tsar in this case is being played convincingly by my wife and the proletariat by Brady. The problem is, I can’t really remember what he looked like. The only thing that stands out in my mind—other than the suit and the strange facial hair—is the bald, slightly too small head.

He wasn’t a great explorer in dashing, adventurous clothing or a man who fought and died bravely in the American west in the finest leathers. He certainly didn’t invade a city riding atop an elephant in splendid silks or solve the fictional world’s crime sporting an ascot and a pipe. He may not be the best, or the most permanent fashion icon, but a revolution might be what I need right now to buy some time.

I lather shaving cream onto the top of my head and grab my razor. By the time the crown of my head is shaved my confidence has returned. As soon as I walk the short distance to the kitchen and Charlotte and Brady see what I’ve done, what kind of steps I’m willing to take, everything will be solved.

I shower and put on a suit.

“Everything is fine,” I say. “Look, I’ve figured it out. Char, I couldn’t tell you before, but look, I’ve started to bring our history back.”

Nothing.

“Brady, look. I think I’m finally getting it right. Do you see what I’m doing? This is for us.”

For our anniversary two years ago, I put in a small flower box on the outside of the kitchen window. It was my one great home improvement. I think I was happier with it as a project than Charlotte was as a gift. The flower box gives the window a border and when it’s filled with the right flowers it can make anything look like a painting.

I’ve learned that plants are an accurate barometer of trouble. They are not like children or pets—always there to remind you to feed them or give them water. When time and worry hijack your life, your plants are the first thing to show it.

Through the kitchen window, past the dying flowers, I see Charlotte and Brady standing on the curb with suitcases. A car pulls up.

Before I can make it down the front walkway, the driver is out of the car. I recognize him immediately from the company barbeque we hosted last month for Charlotte’s office. She says, “Hi Thomas.” I can’t hear what he asks her, but Charlotte nods her head and I think I hear her say, “He’s in the house.”

I’m not sure anyone has noticed that I’m heading straight for them or if it’s just that they don’t care. Thomas kisses her on the cheek, very close to her mouth and I hear him whisper, “Char, everything is going to be fine. You made the right decision.”

“I know,” she says.

Thomas picks Brady up and hugs him.

“Hi Tom,” Brady says.

He puts him down and messes his hair. They still haven’t noticed that I’m standing right there. I’m watching a movie of my family with my part being played by someone else.

The new me is the first to notice that I’ve become part of the action. He puts his arm around Charlotte and the other one around Brady. “Morning Simon,” he says.

I start right in on him. “Fuck you too, Tom,” I say. “How long have you got? We have seven years. That means something. There’s history in seven years.”

Charlotte interrupts and wants to know what happened to my hair.

“I brought it back, Char. Look. Everything is going to be like it was. This is all it took. I made history a part of the now, Charlotte. Do you understand? Doesn’t our history together mean anything to you?”

Thomas smiles. It’s one of those fake, salesman smiles where the lips completely disappear into a straight line across the face. I hate him for it. He puts their bags into the trunk.

“We’ll talk soon.” I know she’s lying by the way her eyes scrunch up and move away from me back up to the house. “Bye.” She puts Brady in the car, shuts the door and gets in the passenger side.

I wave as the car pulls away from the curb. When it has disappeared around the corner I let my hand fall to the top of my head to gently touch the razor burn that has already begun to hurt.

§ § §

Jensen Whelan's fiction and poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Fictionwarehouse, Eyeshot, The Glut, Identity Theory, Pindeldyboz, NFG, The Edward Society, Surgery of Modern Warfare and other places. He lives in Stockholm, Sweden and can be reached at jensenwhelan@hotmail.com

This piece was first published in INK POT #3- 2004, a literary journal.