Sad Songs
by Jake Barnes
She spent half her time in the hospital with a bad back. The other half she was in her shrink's office.
Once she made me go with her when she went to see the psychiatrist. “He doesn't love me,” she told the shrink. “Oh, of course he does,” said the learned man. They both looked at me. I looked at my shoes and didn't say anything.
She was thrilled when she learned that her best friend was having an affair. She left her husband and ran off with a high school history teacher, my wife reported. The woman and her husband were our best friends. That evening my wife called the husband to see how he was doing. Okay, he said. He had called the history teacher's wife and asked her over for dinner, he said. She had accepted.
I shook my head. “That Ken,” I said. “He's an enterprising sucker!”
My wife made calls to everybody she knew that evening while I sat in our den and listened to jazz tunes, sad songs like “Nardis” and “I'll remember you.”
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Author's Note
Sad songs.
A fav Jake.
If only spousal revenge were so sweet.
Remove the sad art and you got hardly any art at all.
fave*
Oh, the skewed lines of a tiring relationship... so sad!
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Once you start seeing the shrink, it's over.*
Finely done in the way the failing marriage gathers around the words about others.
Brief, powerful & sad. Good one Jake!
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Needed a story like this. Thanks.
I can't decide if the wife's enjoyment of her friend's marital breakup is schadenfreude or vicarious desire. I like the complexity of this relationship and the emotional ambiguity.
I love the scene in the shrink's office, and I love the ending, too. All round, very good! *
Yes. Harold Somebody or Other and Pete Other Guy traded wives in my tiny town while I was in high school. Both wives' names were Virginia. Didn't seem like much of a trade to me. *
Jake, I just read a bunch of your stories: so much in so few words and so many with a surprising, dark twist.
I usually write novels, but how I'd like to be able to do these flashes.*Fav on this one.
I've appreciated your comments on my work this past week or so. Reassuring after being away from Fictionaut fro such a long time.