Alex Tronson
At the supermarket, two men claw each other over a six-pack of toilet paper rolls. They’re fighting over the good stuff, though. The off-brand rolls stay stocked, undesired, the last kids picked in gym class. The men are loud. I can hear the fight from my small balcony—the only fresh air I get these days. I retreat inside. Each time the world ends I try not to think about it.
I wrestle with the remote and bypass the news for something more my speed. A Robert Mitchum film, an episode of Ghost Adventures, whatever’s popular on HBO. I watch television until my eyes dry up. My partner, Cheryl, is doing taxes in the bedroom. She says to herself, “it all feels kind of futile, now, doesn’t it?”
“What does?” I say. “Taxes?”
But she’s not talking to me. She’s plugged in, crunching numbers and despairing over the sum.
“I should be more productive,” I say. Write a song. Write a poem. Do my homework. But after a minute, I say, “No, I should do whatever I want.”
I hope that someone, somewhere, is working harder than I am. That someone, somewhere, is intelligent and qualified and making great leaps of progress. That someone, somewhere, isn’t feeling as defeated as I am. But Hope cowers behind the armchair in the corner. Hope peeks out the window by the television.
Later, Cheryl rummages through the kitchen cupboards. She says, “We should go to the store soon, probably, don’t you think?”
“Is that a good idea?” I say from the couch. “Right now?”
“Okay,” she says. “Fine. How much peanut butter do you want on your toast?”
I’m not a scientist. I’m not in the profession of health care or sanitation. I’m not a parent. I’m not swabbing the nostrils of the sick or developing vaccines. I’m a grad student. I’m watching old movies and chatting with my classmates over the internet. I’m reading thousands of tweets and hardly writing them.
“Do you think we should be doing more?” I say. “Sewing masks and whatnot?”
Cheryl brings over two plates of toast. She sits next to me on the couch. Her leg rests over my leg. We’re alone together, I think. But even that’s a luxury.
She takes a bite and chews it slowly. “You don’t know how to sew,” she finally says. “Plus, we’re inside. We’re distant. We’re doing what they told us to do.”
“Is that enough?” I say.
Cheryl shrugs as if to say: what’s enough?
Hope is still ducked in the corner. Hope stares with shiny, pleading eyes. Hope is looking for a spot on the cushion between us, waiting for me to give the signal.
Alex Tronson is a writer from Minneapolis, currently an MFA candidate at the University of New Orleans. His fiction and essays have been published in Barstow & Grand, Red Cedar Review, and The Summerset Review. You can find him online at @alex_tronson