Carl

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The Understated Drama of Seeing
Though he had no idea Beth was so
rambunctious—the thrusting, sweating, panting.
He was not averse to her quirks, and never had
been: ever since she was young he would need to
nurse her knee, thigh et cetera, from some type of
scrape or scuffle. They grow so quickly, he told
Lars, who agreed. They both felt like lucky parents
when Beth and Maude decided to get together all
those years ago. Maude is such a disciplined young
man, he said, and I really did wonder what life
Beth would have otherwise, as she started to grow
—the throes of puppy fat slowly replaced with a
voluptuousness, unspoken, and rather difficult to
take: your own daughter someone else’s, your
daughter at the mercy of another. A man that fails
to work amounts to nothing, a dictum of his, and
by and by this stood pedestrian to Jamela’s
increasingly silent laments, which were less
significant than the works of his hands—he told
her. This was met by what he thought was the
normal inflictions of a ten year marriage. Has the
world affected me or I been affected by it? am I
not good enough? He asked himself and then Lars
too.
Lars would always, silently, nod along, but
be wholly in a sort of Swedish housed abyss—the
disdained alcoholism since Brittany died
influenced a glazed facial expression he would
most often take as didactic of what can occur in
life under fatal duress; Jamela coerced him, at
times, to check on Lars. “Why don’t you take
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