A Meaningful Life by L. J. Davis Page A

was not an accurate description of how he felt. He felt as though he was losing his senses, not coming to them, just kind of fading out like the pattern of a cheap fabric that had been through the wash too often. “This is awful,” he said.
    â€œYou bet it is,” said his wife. “I wish we’d gone to Berkeley.” She sat down on the bed and opened the drama section of the
Times
. She leafed through it for a while, rattling and snapping the pages sharply. “Are you just going to sit there?” she asked without looking up.
    Lowell opened his mouth, made a little sound, and closed it again for fear that nothing would come out but gibberish. His shoes began to feel funny again, and he suddenly found himself wondering if he had them on the right feet. With a strangled cry, he sprang upright in his chair and stared down at them, but thank God they were okay.
    â€œCan I get you something?” asked his wife in a strange voice, looking at him with an expression that was hard to decipher. It came to Lowell that he had just given a convincing imitation of a person who has just seen a tiny little man dart out from beneath his chair on a wee little pony, and then dart back again. Or, for that matter, a man who suddenly wonders if he’s been wearing his shoes on the wrong feet for thirty hours. No wonder his wife was staring at him like that. Had she really thrown out his birth certificate? Who could blame her if she had? “The magazine section!” he croaked desperately. “I was looking for the magazine section. I thought I saw it on the floor.”
    Without taking her eyes off him for an instant, his wife slowly reached behind her and wordlessly produced the magazine.
    â€œThanks,” whispered Lowell. It had Oriental soldiers on the cover. He lifted it up and held it in front of his face.
    â€œDon’t mention it,” said his wife.
    They spent the next couple of hours barricaded behind walls of newsprint, warily passing fresh sections back and forth as the need arose, and doing their best not to meet each other’s eyes. The last section to come before Lowell’s face was the want ads. It was a moment before he realized what he was looking at. He wondered how it had come into his possession. Had he picked it up on purpose? Had his wife deliberately placed it where he could reach it? Was he absolutely certain his shoes were on the right feet?
    He folded the paper and looked across the room at his wife. She immediately got up from the bed and stormed out into the kitchen, where she began to take apart the top of the stove, throwing the knobs and reflectors and prong things into the aluminum sink with a noise that went straight to Lowell’s teeth. Lowell picked up his manuscript from the table. Curiously enough, although he had written it, he couldn’t recall ever reading any of it, but he knew approximately what he would find. He also knew what he would think of it. The first page was awful. The second page was a little worse, and the third was a little worse than that. It was a perfect counterfoil of his life these last few months, starting with good intentions and no talent and going steadily downhill, page by page, day by day, as though someone was slowly turning down the lights and slowly turning up the sound. He regarded this fact with a feeling that was utterly flat, as if something heavy had rolled over it.
    â€œI’m going to get a job,” he said.
    â€œIt’s about time,” said his wife. She turned the water off in the sink with a furious motion, turned around and glared at him for a moment, and then stalked off into the bathroom, first slamming, then locking the frail door behind her.
    â€œIt doesn’t have to be forever,” said Lowell with the eerie and quite accurate sensation of having played exactly this same scene before, although in different clothes. This time he had the good sense to shut up and wait, and presently his