And I Asked the Gypsy
Brian Conlon
And I asked the
gypsy, “How many t-shirts do you require to grant me happiness?”
“Several, at least seven, if they fit properly. That is form-fitting; I want my wife to see my abs, like Brad Pitt.”
“What if they just fit like regular t-shirts, you know over about half your arm and all of your torso, but have no discernable shaping effect on your abs.”
“Hmm.”
“The t-shirts, the ones I’ve acquired are of various sizes and colors. Some say ‘Orange County District Attorney Heart Walk,’ others say, ‘A strange, strange, strange person resides under me.’ One says, ‘The Capital Building: Washington D.C.’ It’s gray, that one’s gray.”
“Gray?”
“Yes, that one happens to be gray, gray as the wolves that plague your people and stain some of my more valued trees.”
“The trees, maybe the trees would be better.”
“For what purpose?”
“In exchange for the happiness you seek, perhaps a few trees.”
“The trees are a non-starter, Jacob. You should know the trees are a non-starter. The trees, you see, they so happen to come with land, and that land, well that’s my land and you know land outlasts happiness in most cases.”
“And t-shirts?”
“These will, cotton, real cotton, there’s one with a grapefruit that says ‘Grapefruit League: The Games Don’t Matter, but Not a Bad Name!’ All color, real color, yellows, blues, you name it.”
“Reds?”
“Some reds. I have one with you know, a Doctor holding an apple, the words are something like, ‘Here’s your apple now go away,’ or ‘Cortland Medical School,’ or ‘This apple murdered my secretary!!’”
“Murdered? I can’t see how that would happen. Even if, you know, there are poison apples. But a secretary at a Dr.’s office she would . . . couldn’t she call someone to help? They’re not poisonous like a snake, more like some milk that’s been left out on the porch on a hot summer day. You know, that type of poisonous. Apples, they, you know they get a bad rap.”
“This one did I guess. But it may not have said that at all.”
“That’s true, it may not have.”
“You want to see them? I have, like I said, more than dozens.”
“How have you accumulated these t-shirts? I should think one does not just happen into such a treasure.”
“Years and years, years of unhappiness and doing things. The t-shirts found me you might say. Every time I attended a swap meet, every high school team I played on, every musical act I once enjoyed, every school dance I decided not to attend, there was a t-shirt. Every religion I abandoned, every cold storage unit I rented, every neighbor with too much time on their hands, every waitress I spoke too softly to, they all left t-shirts. Every drink I poured on myself or others, every moment I did not know what to say and then thought of what to say later, every person who ran their fingers through my hair and then shrugged their shoulders unimpressed, every carnival ride I was too scared to go on, for each I have a t-shirt and those are just the featured ones.”
“It seems very difficult indeed. I should not like to earn such a surplus.”
“Oh no, not at all. It’s the easiest thing in the world. Just live, and not fully, just live somewhat and they pile up, they pile on top of you and cling to you in some instances, until you are a series of meaningless t-shirts. You look around and it’s just you and these shirts and the end is near and you were never happy and the shirts prove it and the shirts prove it.”
“My friend, let’s not get dramatic. They are just shirts and some do sound interesting. Happiness is not so great in any case. Won’t keep you warm, won’t stop a rash if you wear a sweater, won’t make your abs look . . . just chiseled, like Brad Pitt. Oh, how my wife enjoys Brad Pitt!”
“And you?”
“Slightly less.”
“Do you have a t-shirt for that?”
“For her love of Brad Pitt?”
“Yes, that’s the type of thing that deserves a t-shirt.”
“I should ask, you know, maybe she does.”
“She really might, she really might.”
“I’m not sure I’d really want it, but yours, these sound like something I could deal with.”
“And happiness is something I’ve always had a, don’t want to say desire, yearning for.”
“It’s not so bad being happy. Some people take it better than others. You know that electrical engineer up the street? I traded him, you know, he gave me some fireworks, some hydroseed too I think. That stuff’s good.”
“You gave him happiness for some fireworks and hydroseed?”
“Fair trade, I should say. My wagon it just chews up the lawn. I mean, you know, you can see it. But this hydroseed, wonders I have to say, wonders. Anyway, as I was saying, traded him happiness, he just went stone-faced, never moved again. A slight grin.”
“Could be worse.”
“I’m just saying, happiness can have strange effects especially if you have limited experience with it.”
“I have a shirt to that effect I think, it says ‘Happiness is a Warm Diet Coke®’ and there’s a picture of three calico kittens and two golden retriever puppies sleeping on each other.”
“I’ll have to see these shirts of yours really.”
“Tomorrow, tomorrow, I’ll bring them tomorrow!”
~ ~ ~
I walked home through the woods, leaving Jacob, the gypsy, and his wagon on my property, surrounded by my trees. The porch had crabapples on it again, some were busted open. I think they were thrown. My neighbors have children who throw crabapples sometimes. It seems they often throw them at my house. They stain the siding and knock over my porcelain gnomes. That’s not fair. The gnomes are my ex-wife’s, I just hold on to them in case she comes back. Still, they do get knocked over and shatter occasionally. There are six remaining. I line them up in a circle sometimes and stare into their eyes. They most often don’t look back. Every time one shatters I get a t-shirt from somewhere. There are six left. There were once twenty-three. I have seventeen t-shirts of gnomes or shattered porcelain with painted tags. One has an upraised fake beard sewn into it that people like to rub up against.
My wife, last I saw her, she, well, my ex-wife, last I saw her she said she was running out to buy another gnome. I questioned her logic. Twenty-three that was a good number, I insisted. No, she said. She was insatiable. The next day I greeted a man with a brown hat and a file folder. He handed me a t-shirt and said, “Darlene wanted you to have this.” The shirt said, “I’ve left you a shirt and just generally. All the Best, Darlene.” I considered crying but then the man seemed embarrassed so I pulled myself together. I offered him tea. He declined, handed me another shirt, dropped the folder at my feet and ran into the woods. The second shirt read “Your worst day is not even that bad when you think about it!” The shirt was of no consolation, but it was a brighter orange than I was used to.
I still have the shirts. I still have all the shirts. But those two I’ll keep. I think she’d want me to keep them.
The house, my house, is large and empty. There are three fire places, one works. There are four bathrooms, two work. There are a number of stools stacked in the far corner of the entry way. I’ve asked someone to clean them up. No one has. There are six or eight pictures on the wall of my ex-wife and someone else besides me. Perhaps this should have been a sign. Next to my closet where I hang, amongst other things, my enormous t-shirt collection, sits a round spool of yarn. She took the cat as well, claws and all.
Besides these things and everything else a country house might be thought to have (at least two pitchforks for one) there is a sense of overwhelming misuse. The house feels betrayed, as if it were meant for something greater, meant to be the three-month residence of a Senator and his sweatered children who never really liked coming here, or the enormous and unheated abode of three generations of farmers who built it with dung and sweat and perfume. But no, it’s mine. I inherited it from my father who won it off a compulsive gambler who owned it as a joke and to also win bets with people who refused to believe he owned a country home. When he handed my father the keys he supposedly said, “The place had paid for itself.” My father had a t-shirt to that effect with a picture of the house and the gambler. He offered it to me before he died. I declined. I think it was placed in his coffin.
In short, the house did not make me happy. It never had. But when she, that is, Darlene, was in it, it was much closer, much more comforting. It was at least a place that I could look at with an acquaintance and they could honestly comment on some point of architecture I didn’t care about or was unaware of and nod my head. Now I couldn’t even do that. I’d stamp my feet and point to the discolored siding or the shattered gnomes. “See, see, see,” I might say.
Ah, but tomorrow, tomorrow will bring happiness. It’s a virtual synch. Jacob, the gypsy, he will like the shirts. He will offer me happiness for them. For what is the offer to him? It costs him nothing to grant me happiness. It is like a coastal city granting you a breeze. It breezes with or without you, you just happen to be there so why not give you the pleasure? And in exchange for the breeze most don’t offer the city a darn thing. The level of ingratitude in coastal cities is remarkable. Sun worship is at an all-time low. I have a black t-shirt with purple stripes and a big yellow fuzzy thing sewn into the middle. It reads: “The Sun is Not This!”
~ ~ ~
And I said to the gypsy, “As you can see, the wagon is filled to the brim.”
“Yes, I see. I really could have just come over to your place, you know. It must have taken you hours to pack them in.”
“Yes, the wagon took some time to fill, hours is probably right.”
“Why are you referring to your car as a wagon? It’s a Prius, is it not?”
“Well, yes, one of the bigger ones. The dealer told me the difference between the storage capacity of a wagon, like your standard wagon, the one you keep in my woods from time to time for instance, and this car, is really negligible.”
“I’m not so sure, remember those two Oxen I drove to the vet, them and those carrots from the market, so many carrots. They all fit and with ease.”
“I have no occasion to carry oxen and the gas mileage is really something.”
“Yes, I understand.”
“I have a t-shirt, it’s cobalt blue, it reads, ‘50 mpg on that one trip to your sister’s, whoosh!’
“That could be of interest. I’m really concerned about the fit, you know, they must really stick to my torso in the right way.”
“Ah yes, like Brad Pitt, I remember. Did you ask your wife about that shirt?”
“She says she remembers something like that, but it shrunk or I grew and she uses it to scrub dishes in the pond where the sheep graze from time to time.”
“That’s a shame, really, but you remember wearing it?”
“No, not at all. She may have been humoring me, or herself. I can never tell.”
“I’m no better, perhaps worse.”
“Perhaps . . . but those shirts, open the trunk will you? Today may be a happy one for us both.”
He walked over to my Prius and grabbed the trunk handle. I warned him to be careful, or else they might fall out. “I have filled it to the brim,” I repeated. He shook his head and carefully opened the trunk, pressing his left hand against the shirts under his right which was still engaged in lifting the door. None of the shirts fell out. I had organized them by size and color primarily, but then alphabetically in cases where the size and color were identical. He marveled for a moment at the sheer spectacle; the piles of cloth and color which somehow represented everything unimportant in my life.
“Where are the large reds? The large reds might be best.”
“They are just under the large purples and on top of the large oranges next to the small greens on top of the spare tire.”
“Ah yes, there are so many, and several red. Several red…”
He lifted up a large stack which contained the large purples, reds and oranges. He flipped through the purples and placed them on top of my Prius.
“Careful.”
“Oh no, I’ve balanced a haystack on a pin once. There’s no need to worry. You know, the wind today is not as strong as it has been. These reds, really.”
“Yes, try them on, some must fit.”
“One would think,” he said and ripped off his leather vest to reveal his unimpressive, but inoffensive torso. I will say, one could definitely tell where his shoulders began and his chest ended.
He sifted through the red shirts, first grabbing one with the picture of a farmer’s daughter wearing plaid and cut-off jean shorts, gnawing on a dandelion. It read: “The East Coast Girls Are Hip, I Really Dig Those Styles They Wear.” He put it on, and laid his hand flat against his stomach, rubbing it up and down and trying to catch a glimpse of himself in the faint reflection my Prius provided.
“Flat, I’d say, not chiseled though, certainly not chiseled.”
“It’s, you know, it really fits your shoulders perfectly, you look like a cornerback on the Baltimore Ravens. You know the one with the seven children and poor tackling form.”
“I . . . no, that’s irrelevant, the shoulders . . . she doesn’t care about the shoulders. She has even said, ‘You know if only shoulders were important, you might be Brad Pitt,’ and then she laughed and rubbed my shoulders as if I sold mattresses for a living and just tried, unsuccessfully, to sell her a waterbed.”
“There’s a blue shirt in there, it has an illustration of a clear waterbed with fish swimming around in it, and even some plankton. There’s an attractive couple on it, lying perfectly still and staring at the ceiling. The woman holds a knife. I was told it’s a commentary on capitalism. It was given to me when my stock became devalued.”
“Blue, huh? And what size?”
“Medium maybe. It’s in there, I assure you.”
He proceeded to try on what must have been hundreds of shirts, performing the same ritual to determine whether the shirt fit his specifications, namely whether he felt it made him resemble Brad Pitt. The gypsy did not discriminate based on what the shirt said, though it seemed as though he did have color preferences and an inclination as to which size might have the best chance of providing him with optimum muscle definition. He started by finishing up the red larges, then moved on to dark blue, maroon, orange, sky blue, yellow, royal blue, black, kelly green, swamp green, Christmas-sweater green, neon green, blue and black stripped, tope, beige, magenta, brown, bacon-fat-off-white, grayish-tope, gray with blue stripes on the sleeves, pure gray, white, purple and then finally pink. He repeated the process in the same order for mediums and then for extra larges, placing the shirts into three piles, one in his wagon, one on top of my Prius and one in the driver and passenger seats. I stood for a time observing him silently. He did not pay me much attention, fervently trying on shirts, rubbing his stomach and posing, facing the Prius, and then sideways in order to see how the shirt made him look from the two most important angles.
The vast majority of the shirts wound up scattered on top of my Prius with disdain. There was a certain inexplicable frustration in the way the gypsy would take the shirts off; he knew they did not make him look Pittable. He’d always, without fail, grab at the right sleeve with his left hand, pull his arm down through, stick his right arm through the neck hole and lift up on the shirt until the entire thing was above his head and then turn his wrist so as to lower it away from himself. He would then toss the unwanted shirt on to the top of the Prius and look at me as if my ownership of such a shirt was in and of itself a criminal offense. Perhaps it should have been.
The second batch of shirts was handled with significantly more care than those that had been discarded and strewn about on the top of my Prius. The ritual with these shirts was as follows: the gypsy would try them on like all the others, take them off carefully, flip the shirt around so that he could read or look at the front one more time (“The Soap Emporium: Clean Yourself and Others. . .”), rub his hand up against the fabric on the lower half of the shirt, the part that would cover one’s stomach if it were worn, flip the shirt back, open it up, put it on, pull the shirt back tight with both hands, stare at his reflection in the wagon, drag his hand down from his chest to his stomach, slowing as he reached his abs, decide the shirt did not quite make his abs look like Brad Pitt, place his arm through the neck hole, carefully lift it above his head, fold it neatly and place it amongst the other shirts that he had placed on the two front seats in the front of my car. He would not simply place them on top of each other, but seemed to order them in some way, placing each in a specific spot amongst the others. His organization was not by color or size or alphabetically, so I guessed it must have been somehow by desirability.
The final category of shirts was exclusive. After two hours of shirt-sizing, it consisted of only six shirts. These shirts hung crisply from a series of hangers inside of the gypsy’s wagon. He had brought a pile of wooden hangers in anticipation of his possible new acquisitions. The hangers appeared to be hand-carved, but I can’t imagine why.
And I asked the gypsy, “Did you carve those hangers?”
“No, my boy, Stephs, a school project. Useful though.”
“I guess so. I can’t imagine; it just seems time-consuming.”
“Not at all, they have to be in school anyway. I think it took him, you know, maybe three weeks for the whole bunch. There may be some molding involved. He wouldn’t say, you know kids.”
“No, not really, but I can imagine with molding and all.”
“Right, that may have been the key, or not at all. He has quick, accurate hands. He picked up a banjo one time, just found it on the ground and started playing, really you would have thought he’d been born with the thing. So precise.”
“Do you have a t-shirt for that? You really should.”
“He might, I’ve never seen it.”
“No, you, you should, he’s your child after all.”
“That’s not the way it works.”
“Does he have the banjo at least?”
“No, just put it right back where he found it. You know kids they’ll pick something up and then just like nothing it goes back down, as if it were never picked up in the first place.”
“I don’t, but I can imagine, banjos are heavy I think.”
“No,” he said and went back to admiring his shirt selections. They consisted of four mediums and two larges, two reds, one dark blue, a black, one gray with blue stripes on the sleeves and one beige. The first and brighter red said, “Campin’ an’ a Blurtin’ with Burt’n the Friendly Tree Owl” and there was a smiling tree housing a wide-eyed and expressionless owl, this was Burt’n, his friendliness implied necessarily by the smiling tree.
The second red shirt said, “Huff’s Farm’s Co-ed Games Champions.” Huff’s Farm’s Co-ed games consisted of ring toss, apple-bobbing, jarts, cherry wine guzzling, raspberry picking, and a bread baking and a pie-eating contest. We, that is, my ex-wife and I, won it three times. This shirt was from our second victory; they’re still talking about that seven grain and cheddar bread I baked. “How’d he get the cheese to stay so flavorful despite the seven grains,” is probably what they’re saying.
The dark blue shirt was silent; it simply showed a glowing orange harvest moon and the faint outline of a wolf, or oversized dog, the teeth reflecting the moonlight. If one looked close enough, one could see the breeze bursting through the fall night and making the hair on the top of the wolf’s head stand up. I may have imagined this.
The black, the black one I earned in 10th grade. There was a Flag Day raffle, my name was the last one picked. The shirt, while principally black, had a garish rainbow, subtly dotted with flags. The flags were mostly country flags, but when it came to creating the purple and yellow portions, it seemed like the flags were simply made up. There was a purple flag with a bunch of red grapes in a clear plastic bowl on it. There was a yellow flag with two livers displayed prominently and juxtaposed with the tiny words “Jaundiced,” and “Not” written on each. There were several others that I’m sure never existed in reality. I took a microscope and an atlas to it between chemistry and history class one day. Ms. Sheelt caught me and put the atlas back on the shelf. This was the black shirt that fit just the way the gypsy approved of.
The gray shirt with blue stripes I found one morning in my closet soon after Darlene, my ex-wife, left. It may have been hers, but I never saw her wear it. It would have been over-sized. It tapered at the shoulders in such a way that it seemed like someone had cut off the original sleeves and sewed on new ones from a smaller shirt. This only became apparent on close examination. The gypsy, Jacob, must have noticed. But it was the torso he was concerned about, not the shoulders; his shoulders could hold up any shirt. Brad Pitt has shoulders too, but no one knows what they look like. “Standard men’s shoulders,” one might guess. The shirt, it read: “A guess, I GUESS, a Guest, a Gust, a Gus, August, Given Name: Augustus!” and there’s a fig leaf serving, somehow nobly and thankfully, as the exclamation point. I might miss the leaf, but that’s all.
Beige, the beige one had a crude drawing of a cardboard box on it, so crude, I had to be told by the artist who handed it to me at a music festival I attended with Darlene, that the vague squarish depiction was a cardboard box. The box was empty, save for a mirror which reflected somehow an even more crude drawing of a cardboard box. The artist informed me that this made the t-shirt “meta” and was also the reason he was willing to part with it at no cost to me the consumer. He only asked that I wear it at least once to an event in which more than 10,000 people attended. I informed him that we were currently at such an event. He affirmed my observation, but clarified, “a different one, a different one,” he said. I wore it to the filming of a game show. There were 400 people in attendance and I didn’t get on camera. The audiences always seem bigger on TV. It was only fitting that I would part with this shirt, a shirt I had gained under false pretenses.
~ ~ ~
And I asked the gypsy, “So is that all the shirts you want?”
“Not exactly, no, but that’s all you have that fit correctly,” said Jacob.
“There is such a great number of interesting shirts that you have not found to your liking.”
“The only interesting, no, I mean, you know, the only characteristic that interests me is the fit.”
“Truly? Just the fit? But they say so much, or so little, are so old, or so young, are so bright, or so dull, are so soft, or so tough, paper thin, or thick as a down comforter, have so much potential psychological significance or none at all, say something very deep about the way we live, or reflect the vapid, torpid and just plain…”
“Alright, no. I just care about how they fit. Call me a gypsy or a simpleton all you like, but the fit’s the thing.”
“So, and, six for happiness; do we have a deal?”
“No, I believe I said seven at least. Happiness is not so unimportant that it can be bartered for six t-shirts.”
“But seven?”
“Yes, perhaps seven. One for every day of the week, or if you like, one for every one of my nephews.”
“I hate to say it Jacob, but I’d prefer six nephews really, they just scream half the time, I mean just scream. You can hear them from the house, even if they’re deep in the woods.”
“The woods, perhaps those, you could part with some of those, in addition to the six shirts.”
“Non-starter, again Jacob, that is a non-starter. What type of psychological benefit can you give me for six shirts? Really none of the others are suitable?”
“I’m afraid, I’m afraid not. Those shirts do not define me as Pitt, while these six, one could hardly tell the difference.”
“What will you give me for the six?”
“I can promise you, you know, a steep drop in melancholy, an increase in indifference to the plight of others, a smile from an attractive person definitely directed at you once a week, some anti-freeze maybe.”
“All of those things, or just one? That’s a pretty drastic drop in value. One shirt is the difference between happiness and anti-freeze?”
“Profound maybe, and in this case, true.”
“I won’t, I can’t, no it’s not worth it. You know I really wanted happiness too.”
“I know, it’s a shame, seven shirts would have been great. My wife, she’d be more interested and others too, perhaps others.”
“Jacob, be, you know, reasonable, is there nothing? I have some hats, there’s one that says, ‘Brett’s Rugs: Cheaper than Eric’s and More Durable!’ there are others.”
“No, no, no hats. The hats are a non-starter, a sign of weakness.”
“I’m sorry, no, but there must be something.”
“I’m sorry as well, but I came for seven shirts that make me look like Brad Pitt and nothing but that will secure your eternal happiness. . . . trees maybe.”
I looked at Jacob with a furrowed brow to indicate that the trees and anything associated with the land, my land, were still a non-starter. As I began to unfurrow and gaze at the barren ground I was unwilling to part with in exchange for happiness, I remembered. I remembered I hadn’t brought all the shirts. I had left the two shirts I had received on the occasion of the man with the brown file folder notifying me that my dear wife, Darlene, had left me. This was intentional. I wanted to keep these shirts. I think she would have wanted me to keep these shirts. What are the odds they’d fit right anyway? He’d been through hundreds of shirts already; why would these two fit? I’d never worn them. They’ve been folded, that’s all. They may be creased. How could they fit?
“Well, if that’s all my friend it looks like we’re one shirt short of a deal. It’s been fun, really, and to know six could fit so well is really a load off I’m telling you. But I must be going; no sense in bartering when a deal can’t be struck.” He turned and began to take the shirts off the hand-carved wooden hangers in his wagon.
“Wait, no, there’s more, two more!” I blurted out.
“Shirts, two more shirts? Where? I tried them all on, I could have sworn. I hunt methodically, you know, just ask the deer who once plagued this forest and injured two of my nephews. The deer thought they could run, they imagined I’d grow tired. My family, and the two nephews in particular, we ate for months. I even chewed methodically.”
“Uh, yes, so I’ve heard. They are at my house. I will get them, you just stay here.”
I piled all the unwanted shirts into my wagon and drove home, leaving the gypsy with the six shirts he had already selected. In truth, I met the gypsy less than a half mile from my house up the dirt road on my property. I parked the Prius carefully in my three car garage. The shirts remained spattered about in the wagon, I stepped on two when I reached for the gas and grabbed three others when I set the emergency break.
I made my way through the cavernous house, my house, and up to my closet. In the closet, stored next to three paintings my wife, Darlene, once enjoyed and forced me to display in case educated people ever decided to visit, was the bowed and ribboned gift box in which I stored the shirts. I had used the box to gift my wife a sterling silver statue of a calico cat, her favorite, on our fourth anniversary. She was terribly allergic, but insisted we own one, and we did. This box and the yarn remains.
I walked the unopened box back out to the gypsy.
~ ~ ~
And the gypsy asked me, “Have they not been worn?”
“No I’ve never worn either of them. I planned to though, I assure you I planned to.”
“Comforting,” he said as he slid his hand down the middle of the shirt which was creased from all the time it spent being folded in the box.
“May I have this one? That orange might be off-putting, like the leaves in October that are so bright they singe the tip of my good rake. You know, the type of orange that makes you back away from a marmalade. That orange I can only visualize for an instant before I close my eyes in horror. An orange, which, if I recall correctly…”
“Alright, alright, just try it on. It may be that very orange that makes your average everyday gypsy look like Brad Pitt.”
“It might,” he said, rubbing the fabric near where his stomach would end up between his thumb and two fingers and then placing the shirt above his head and finally onto his body.
He went through his routine and kept stretching the fabric to try to relieve the crease. He then, at last, read over what the shirt said: ‘Your worst day is not even that bad when you think about it!’
“This shirt,” he said, “This shirt it doesn’t fit quite right I’m afraid,” he said.
“Possibly, try the other,” I said, getting somewhat impatient. My future happiness now depended entirely on the t-shirt that Darlene left me: “I’ve left you a shirt and just generally. All the Best, Darlene.”
As the gypsy carefully folded the bright orange monstrosity that had brought me to the brink of eternal unhappiness, I snatched my wife’s gift and began snapping it with both arms, to try to remove the crease. It persisted. I stretched the shirt for all I was worth, grabbing at both sides of the creases which ran both vertical and horizontal, but to no avail. The crease, I thought, would seal my fate.
Once the shirt was on, a remarkable transformation took place. His torso, truly from his chest down to his jeans, looked like Brad Pitt’s. The creases in the shirt somehow fit the structure of his body perfectly and made it appear as though he had a distinct line down the center of his body, just cut, chiseled even and the same could be said for the horizontal crease. One could not even tell they were creases anymore, they seemed to be all part of one seamless package. He looked like a manikin with a face.
Despite the obvious success of the new shirt, the gypsy went through his meticulous routine, although, without my Prius, he had no easy shinny surface to check his reflection. He went to his wagon and rummaged up an old dingy mirror. He spit on it, rubbed it with what appeared to be an old and dingier rag and asked me to hold it still and aim it at his torso. I did. Through the glass the shirt insisted, “I’ve left you a shirt and just generally. All the Best, Darlene.” His eyes brightened as he kept staring at his Pitt-like abdomen. He ran his hand flat up and down his stomach probably fifty times. He then did a slow pirouette-type move and said, “How’s the back, how’s the back, is the back not terrible?” I said it was fine, and he giggled in a pitch higher than I thought him capable. “I’ve left you a shirt and just generally. All the Best, Darlene,” the shirt continued to say. I bit my lip and turned my head.
He slapped me on the back so hard I dropped the mirror which fell harmlessly to the earth, my earth. He grabbed my hand and shook it with gusto. I turned and faced him and the shirt, and nodded my head slightly. “I’ve left you a shirt and just generally. All the Best, Darlene,” announced the shirt.
“And happiness, happiness is yours my good sir,” said the gypsy.
~ ~ ~
I’ve been happy for five weeks now. Oh, what a joy it has been! Every minute, every second, just joyous! Things could not be better. I sit and watch the gnomes most of the time. Those gnomes with their sly grins. I never noticed before, but they are all grinning and on the sly too! Most people can’t tell, most people don’t even look for it. But oh, the slight upturn is evident in all of them and even the broken ones. The broken ones are somehow even better. Two more have broke since my happiness was granted by the gypsy, Jacob. Oh, the eternal happiness, the wonder, that gypsy, Jacob, he’s, he’s something else is what he is and those abs; he looks just like Brad Pitt. No, better! It’s such a pleasure to see a good friend, such as Jacob, the gypsy, a good friend such as he, so confident, so content. And his wife, his wife, she must be in the glories, as they say, truly, in the glories. What more could I ask for?
The house, this wonderful house with all this room and my unique assortment of objects to dust and lift over my head. I can lift several over my head, I know I can. I’ve even thrown a few through the window just for fun. One neighbor child was mildly injured, broken foot or something like that. His friends laughed at him, I laughed at them, we laughed together, even the injured kid laughed I think. Perhaps not. We laughed so hard I really could not tell if there was an injured child. He was not hurt so bad, builds character, compels character even. Character in exchange for a broken foot or two; not a bad deal. One I might take if offered.
And I have no one to hold me back! I can watch the gnomes all day and nobody questions it. Freedom, the joy of freedom! My ex-wife, oh that lovely creature who I once had the great pleasure of devoting my life to and now have the great pleasure of not devoting my life to, my ex-wife, she used to say, “oh if only you’d let yourself be free, what an elegant writer you might be!” No, no, she never said that, but something to that effect I assure you. I had a t-shirt . . . I have a t-shirt . . . . a veritable treasure-trove of t-shirts. What is one man to do with all these riches? I must wear them, wear as many as I can. One day I changed shirts every 6 minutes for 12 hours. The next week, I did laundry. What a well-structured week that was! Gosh, and the odor! Buckets and buckets of detergent! Like a field of tiger-lilies without all that color to distract you. The shirts; some of them dulled a bit and shrunk. One shrunk down so small I gave it to the child who broke his foot. He said, “This does not make us even.” The shirt said, “The Pan of Pasta Challenge!” I said, “The Pan of Pasta Challenge!” He shut the door and hobbled back to his chair. What character in that child, such strong character!
And Jacob, the gypsy, he came by the other day. He came by and he asked, “How’s the happiness working out for you?”
“Excellent, everything I expected and more maybe. I can’t say for sure. And the shirts, how are the shirts?”
“They fit, I believe they still fit correctly. See,” he said and pointed to his torso which was adorned with that lovely shirt Darlene left me on the day our lives changed directions. Just changed directions is all.
“Yes, just like Brad Pitt. Oh, you’re wife must be chasing you all over the lot!”
“Oh, well, at first, but now no, you’d be surprised. She says, now she says the nose is the thing, she says my nose ruins the whole effect. I still like the shirts though, really.”
“But you said she was in the glories, the glories!”
“No, I never said that. I don’t speak like that.”
“Oh, well, I can see the nose, but no bother, a nose can be easily fixed. There are doctors and even now lawyers that deal in that type of thing.”
“Perhaps, but I know my limitations.”
“Yes, and this too is good, accept who you are. She is your wife after all, she loves you, not the movie star.”
“That may be. Speaking of love . . . there is . . . you know . . . a tree, a particular tree, or set of trees, yes, a set of trees, you know, no more than thirty I would say, in the northwest corner of your lot, my nephews really enjoy them.”
“Your nephews, ah yes, and why shouldn’t they enjoy them? Trees are something to be enjoyed. You can even climb some.”
“Yes, right, you can, but I and my nephews, we would like them for lumber.”
“You want my trees?”
“Yes, but only some, you know, forty at the most.”
“For lumber?”
“Yes, that’s right. We really admire the lumber potential in the trees. We might even be happy, should we obtain them.”
“Happiness is wonderful.”
“I know.”
“The trees don’t play into my current happiness. Honestly, I don’t even know which trees you are referring to. Oh, it is a wonderful thing to have trees in such abundance that one does not even know which forty he is giving away.”
“So you are giving them to us, my nephews and I? We would be grateful, years of gratitude.”
“Ah, well, I don’t see, I mean, I’ve happiness now thanks to you . . . and the trees I had for quite some time. Yes, sure, Jacob, my friend, you may have the trees.”
~ ~ ~
Yes, I gave away the trees, then the land that came with them, then the house that housed all the stuff, then all the stuff, and then the gnomes, they were last. I gave them all to Jacob, the gypsy, and why not? He gave me happiness. I still have it! I’m happy! His wife, she sleeps alone in my bed. She smashed the gnomes against the porch steps right in front of my eyes. She cackled and made me sweep them up. What a show! She tore up all of my shirts except for one and knitted them into a giant quilt she sent to Brad Pitt with a note and a camera. “Amazing torso, sir,” said the note, “Please send photos.” What ingenuity!
I sleep in the woods. The wolves howl at me, seemingly nonplused at my presence. I point them in the direction of some of the slower rabbits and raise my eyebrows to lead their gray-blue eyes towards my chest. There, the one t-shirt I have left reminds them: “Your worst day is not even that bad when you think about it!”
“Several, at least seven, if they fit properly. That is form-fitting; I want my wife to see my abs, like Brad Pitt.”
“What if they just fit like regular t-shirts, you know over about half your arm and all of your torso, but have no discernable shaping effect on your abs.”
“Hmm.”
“The t-shirts, the ones I’ve acquired are of various sizes and colors. Some say ‘Orange County District Attorney Heart Walk,’ others say, ‘A strange, strange, strange person resides under me.’ One says, ‘The Capital Building: Washington D.C.’ It’s gray, that one’s gray.”
“Gray?”
“Yes, that one happens to be gray, gray as the wolves that plague your people and stain some of my more valued trees.”
“The trees, maybe the trees would be better.”
“For what purpose?”
“In exchange for the happiness you seek, perhaps a few trees.”
“The trees are a non-starter, Jacob. You should know the trees are a non-starter. The trees, you see, they so happen to come with land, and that land, well that’s my land and you know land outlasts happiness in most cases.”
“And t-shirts?”
“These will, cotton, real cotton, there’s one with a grapefruit that says ‘Grapefruit League: The Games Don’t Matter, but Not a Bad Name!’ All color, real color, yellows, blues, you name it.”
“Reds?”
“Some reds. I have one with you know, a Doctor holding an apple, the words are something like, ‘Here’s your apple now go away,’ or ‘Cortland Medical School,’ or ‘This apple murdered my secretary!!’”
“Murdered? I can’t see how that would happen. Even if, you know, there are poison apples. But a secretary at a Dr.’s office she would . . . couldn’t she call someone to help? They’re not poisonous like a snake, more like some milk that’s been left out on the porch on a hot summer day. You know, that type of poisonous. Apples, they, you know they get a bad rap.”
“This one did I guess. But it may not have said that at all.”
“That’s true, it may not have.”
“You want to see them? I have, like I said, more than dozens.”
“How have you accumulated these t-shirts? I should think one does not just happen into such a treasure.”
“Years and years, years of unhappiness and doing things. The t-shirts found me you might say. Every time I attended a swap meet, every high school team I played on, every musical act I once enjoyed, every school dance I decided not to attend, there was a t-shirt. Every religion I abandoned, every cold storage unit I rented, every neighbor with too much time on their hands, every waitress I spoke too softly to, they all left t-shirts. Every drink I poured on myself or others, every moment I did not know what to say and then thought of what to say later, every person who ran their fingers through my hair and then shrugged their shoulders unimpressed, every carnival ride I was too scared to go on, for each I have a t-shirt and those are just the featured ones.”
“It seems very difficult indeed. I should not like to earn such a surplus.”
“Oh no, not at all. It’s the easiest thing in the world. Just live, and not fully, just live somewhat and they pile up, they pile on top of you and cling to you in some instances, until you are a series of meaningless t-shirts. You look around and it’s just you and these shirts and the end is near and you were never happy and the shirts prove it and the shirts prove it.”
“My friend, let’s not get dramatic. They are just shirts and some do sound interesting. Happiness is not so great in any case. Won’t keep you warm, won’t stop a rash if you wear a sweater, won’t make your abs look . . . just chiseled, like Brad Pitt. Oh, how my wife enjoys Brad Pitt!”
“And you?”
“Slightly less.”
“Do you have a t-shirt for that?”
“For her love of Brad Pitt?”
“Yes, that’s the type of thing that deserves a t-shirt.”
“I should ask, you know, maybe she does.”
“She really might, she really might.”
“I’m not sure I’d really want it, but yours, these sound like something I could deal with.”
“And happiness is something I’ve always had a, don’t want to say desire, yearning for.”
“It’s not so bad being happy. Some people take it better than others. You know that electrical engineer up the street? I traded him, you know, he gave me some fireworks, some hydroseed too I think. That stuff’s good.”
“You gave him happiness for some fireworks and hydroseed?”
“Fair trade, I should say. My wagon it just chews up the lawn. I mean, you know, you can see it. But this hydroseed, wonders I have to say, wonders. Anyway, as I was saying, traded him happiness, he just went stone-faced, never moved again. A slight grin.”
“Could be worse.”
“I’m just saying, happiness can have strange effects especially if you have limited experience with it.”
“I have a shirt to that effect I think, it says ‘Happiness is a Warm Diet Coke®’ and there’s a picture of three calico kittens and two golden retriever puppies sleeping on each other.”
“I’ll have to see these shirts of yours really.”
“Tomorrow, tomorrow, I’ll bring them tomorrow!”
~ ~ ~
I walked home through the woods, leaving Jacob, the gypsy, and his wagon on my property, surrounded by my trees. The porch had crabapples on it again, some were busted open. I think they were thrown. My neighbors have children who throw crabapples sometimes. It seems they often throw them at my house. They stain the siding and knock over my porcelain gnomes. That’s not fair. The gnomes are my ex-wife’s, I just hold on to them in case she comes back. Still, they do get knocked over and shatter occasionally. There are six remaining. I line them up in a circle sometimes and stare into their eyes. They most often don’t look back. Every time one shatters I get a t-shirt from somewhere. There are six left. There were once twenty-three. I have seventeen t-shirts of gnomes or shattered porcelain with painted tags. One has an upraised fake beard sewn into it that people like to rub up against.
My wife, last I saw her, she, well, my ex-wife, last I saw her she said she was running out to buy another gnome. I questioned her logic. Twenty-three that was a good number, I insisted. No, she said. She was insatiable. The next day I greeted a man with a brown hat and a file folder. He handed me a t-shirt and said, “Darlene wanted you to have this.” The shirt said, “I’ve left you a shirt and just generally. All the Best, Darlene.” I considered crying but then the man seemed embarrassed so I pulled myself together. I offered him tea. He declined, handed me another shirt, dropped the folder at my feet and ran into the woods. The second shirt read “Your worst day is not even that bad when you think about it!” The shirt was of no consolation, but it was a brighter orange than I was used to.
I still have the shirts. I still have all the shirts. But those two I’ll keep. I think she’d want me to keep them.
The house, my house, is large and empty. There are three fire places, one works. There are four bathrooms, two work. There are a number of stools stacked in the far corner of the entry way. I’ve asked someone to clean them up. No one has. There are six or eight pictures on the wall of my ex-wife and someone else besides me. Perhaps this should have been a sign. Next to my closet where I hang, amongst other things, my enormous t-shirt collection, sits a round spool of yarn. She took the cat as well, claws and all.
Besides these things and everything else a country house might be thought to have (at least two pitchforks for one) there is a sense of overwhelming misuse. The house feels betrayed, as if it were meant for something greater, meant to be the three-month residence of a Senator and his sweatered children who never really liked coming here, or the enormous and unheated abode of three generations of farmers who built it with dung and sweat and perfume. But no, it’s mine. I inherited it from my father who won it off a compulsive gambler who owned it as a joke and to also win bets with people who refused to believe he owned a country home. When he handed my father the keys he supposedly said, “The place had paid for itself.” My father had a t-shirt to that effect with a picture of the house and the gambler. He offered it to me before he died. I declined. I think it was placed in his coffin.
In short, the house did not make me happy. It never had. But when she, that is, Darlene, was in it, it was much closer, much more comforting. It was at least a place that I could look at with an acquaintance and they could honestly comment on some point of architecture I didn’t care about or was unaware of and nod my head. Now I couldn’t even do that. I’d stamp my feet and point to the discolored siding or the shattered gnomes. “See, see, see,” I might say.
Ah, but tomorrow, tomorrow will bring happiness. It’s a virtual synch. Jacob, the gypsy, he will like the shirts. He will offer me happiness for them. For what is the offer to him? It costs him nothing to grant me happiness. It is like a coastal city granting you a breeze. It breezes with or without you, you just happen to be there so why not give you the pleasure? And in exchange for the breeze most don’t offer the city a darn thing. The level of ingratitude in coastal cities is remarkable. Sun worship is at an all-time low. I have a black t-shirt with purple stripes and a big yellow fuzzy thing sewn into the middle. It reads: “The Sun is Not This!”
~ ~ ~
And I said to the gypsy, “As you can see, the wagon is filled to the brim.”
“Yes, I see. I really could have just come over to your place, you know. It must have taken you hours to pack them in.”
“Yes, the wagon took some time to fill, hours is probably right.”
“Why are you referring to your car as a wagon? It’s a Prius, is it not?”
“Well, yes, one of the bigger ones. The dealer told me the difference between the storage capacity of a wagon, like your standard wagon, the one you keep in my woods from time to time for instance, and this car, is really negligible.”
“I’m not so sure, remember those two Oxen I drove to the vet, them and those carrots from the market, so many carrots. They all fit and with ease.”
“I have no occasion to carry oxen and the gas mileage is really something.”
“Yes, I understand.”
“I have a t-shirt, it’s cobalt blue, it reads, ‘50 mpg on that one trip to your sister’s, whoosh!’
“That could be of interest. I’m really concerned about the fit, you know, they must really stick to my torso in the right way.”
“Ah yes, like Brad Pitt, I remember. Did you ask your wife about that shirt?”
“She says she remembers something like that, but it shrunk or I grew and she uses it to scrub dishes in the pond where the sheep graze from time to time.”
“That’s a shame, really, but you remember wearing it?”
“No, not at all. She may have been humoring me, or herself. I can never tell.”
“I’m no better, perhaps worse.”
“Perhaps . . . but those shirts, open the trunk will you? Today may be a happy one for us both.”
He walked over to my Prius and grabbed the trunk handle. I warned him to be careful, or else they might fall out. “I have filled it to the brim,” I repeated. He shook his head and carefully opened the trunk, pressing his left hand against the shirts under his right which was still engaged in lifting the door. None of the shirts fell out. I had organized them by size and color primarily, but then alphabetically in cases where the size and color were identical. He marveled for a moment at the sheer spectacle; the piles of cloth and color which somehow represented everything unimportant in my life.
“Where are the large reds? The large reds might be best.”
“They are just under the large purples and on top of the large oranges next to the small greens on top of the spare tire.”
“Ah yes, there are so many, and several red. Several red…”
He lifted up a large stack which contained the large purples, reds and oranges. He flipped through the purples and placed them on top of my Prius.
“Careful.”
“Oh no, I’ve balanced a haystack on a pin once. There’s no need to worry. You know, the wind today is not as strong as it has been. These reds, really.”
“Yes, try them on, some must fit.”
“One would think,” he said and ripped off his leather vest to reveal his unimpressive, but inoffensive torso. I will say, one could definitely tell where his shoulders began and his chest ended.
He sifted through the red shirts, first grabbing one with the picture of a farmer’s daughter wearing plaid and cut-off jean shorts, gnawing on a dandelion. It read: “The East Coast Girls Are Hip, I Really Dig Those Styles They Wear.” He put it on, and laid his hand flat against his stomach, rubbing it up and down and trying to catch a glimpse of himself in the faint reflection my Prius provided.
“Flat, I’d say, not chiseled though, certainly not chiseled.”
“It’s, you know, it really fits your shoulders perfectly, you look like a cornerback on the Baltimore Ravens. You know the one with the seven children and poor tackling form.”
“I . . . no, that’s irrelevant, the shoulders . . . she doesn’t care about the shoulders. She has even said, ‘You know if only shoulders were important, you might be Brad Pitt,’ and then she laughed and rubbed my shoulders as if I sold mattresses for a living and just tried, unsuccessfully, to sell her a waterbed.”
“There’s a blue shirt in there, it has an illustration of a clear waterbed with fish swimming around in it, and even some plankton. There’s an attractive couple on it, lying perfectly still and staring at the ceiling. The woman holds a knife. I was told it’s a commentary on capitalism. It was given to me when my stock became devalued.”
“Blue, huh? And what size?”
“Medium maybe. It’s in there, I assure you.”
He proceeded to try on what must have been hundreds of shirts, performing the same ritual to determine whether the shirt fit his specifications, namely whether he felt it made him resemble Brad Pitt. The gypsy did not discriminate based on what the shirt said, though it seemed as though he did have color preferences and an inclination as to which size might have the best chance of providing him with optimum muscle definition. He started by finishing up the red larges, then moved on to dark blue, maroon, orange, sky blue, yellow, royal blue, black, kelly green, swamp green, Christmas-sweater green, neon green, blue and black stripped, tope, beige, magenta, brown, bacon-fat-off-white, grayish-tope, gray with blue stripes on the sleeves, pure gray, white, purple and then finally pink. He repeated the process in the same order for mediums and then for extra larges, placing the shirts into three piles, one in his wagon, one on top of my Prius and one in the driver and passenger seats. I stood for a time observing him silently. He did not pay me much attention, fervently trying on shirts, rubbing his stomach and posing, facing the Prius, and then sideways in order to see how the shirt made him look from the two most important angles.
The vast majority of the shirts wound up scattered on top of my Prius with disdain. There was a certain inexplicable frustration in the way the gypsy would take the shirts off; he knew they did not make him look Pittable. He’d always, without fail, grab at the right sleeve with his left hand, pull his arm down through, stick his right arm through the neck hole and lift up on the shirt until the entire thing was above his head and then turn his wrist so as to lower it away from himself. He would then toss the unwanted shirt on to the top of the Prius and look at me as if my ownership of such a shirt was in and of itself a criminal offense. Perhaps it should have been.
The second batch of shirts was handled with significantly more care than those that had been discarded and strewn about on the top of my Prius. The ritual with these shirts was as follows: the gypsy would try them on like all the others, take them off carefully, flip the shirt around so that he could read or look at the front one more time (“The Soap Emporium: Clean Yourself and Others. . .”), rub his hand up against the fabric on the lower half of the shirt, the part that would cover one’s stomach if it were worn, flip the shirt back, open it up, put it on, pull the shirt back tight with both hands, stare at his reflection in the wagon, drag his hand down from his chest to his stomach, slowing as he reached his abs, decide the shirt did not quite make his abs look like Brad Pitt, place his arm through the neck hole, carefully lift it above his head, fold it neatly and place it amongst the other shirts that he had placed on the two front seats in the front of my car. He would not simply place them on top of each other, but seemed to order them in some way, placing each in a specific spot amongst the others. His organization was not by color or size or alphabetically, so I guessed it must have been somehow by desirability.
The final category of shirts was exclusive. After two hours of shirt-sizing, it consisted of only six shirts. These shirts hung crisply from a series of hangers inside of the gypsy’s wagon. He had brought a pile of wooden hangers in anticipation of his possible new acquisitions. The hangers appeared to be hand-carved, but I can’t imagine why.
And I asked the gypsy, “Did you carve those hangers?”
“No, my boy, Stephs, a school project. Useful though.”
“I guess so. I can’t imagine; it just seems time-consuming.”
“Not at all, they have to be in school anyway. I think it took him, you know, maybe three weeks for the whole bunch. There may be some molding involved. He wouldn’t say, you know kids.”
“No, not really, but I can imagine with molding and all.”
“Right, that may have been the key, or not at all. He has quick, accurate hands. He picked up a banjo one time, just found it on the ground and started playing, really you would have thought he’d been born with the thing. So precise.”
“Do you have a t-shirt for that? You really should.”
“He might, I’ve never seen it.”
“No, you, you should, he’s your child after all.”
“That’s not the way it works.”
“Does he have the banjo at least?”
“No, just put it right back where he found it. You know kids they’ll pick something up and then just like nothing it goes back down, as if it were never picked up in the first place.”
“I don’t, but I can imagine, banjos are heavy I think.”
“No,” he said and went back to admiring his shirt selections. They consisted of four mediums and two larges, two reds, one dark blue, a black, one gray with blue stripes on the sleeves and one beige. The first and brighter red said, “Campin’ an’ a Blurtin’ with Burt’n the Friendly Tree Owl” and there was a smiling tree housing a wide-eyed and expressionless owl, this was Burt’n, his friendliness implied necessarily by the smiling tree.
The second red shirt said, “Huff’s Farm’s Co-ed Games Champions.” Huff’s Farm’s Co-ed games consisted of ring toss, apple-bobbing, jarts, cherry wine guzzling, raspberry picking, and a bread baking and a pie-eating contest. We, that is, my ex-wife and I, won it three times. This shirt was from our second victory; they’re still talking about that seven grain and cheddar bread I baked. “How’d he get the cheese to stay so flavorful despite the seven grains,” is probably what they’re saying.
The dark blue shirt was silent; it simply showed a glowing orange harvest moon and the faint outline of a wolf, or oversized dog, the teeth reflecting the moonlight. If one looked close enough, one could see the breeze bursting through the fall night and making the hair on the top of the wolf’s head stand up. I may have imagined this.
The black, the black one I earned in 10th grade. There was a Flag Day raffle, my name was the last one picked. The shirt, while principally black, had a garish rainbow, subtly dotted with flags. The flags were mostly country flags, but when it came to creating the purple and yellow portions, it seemed like the flags were simply made up. There was a purple flag with a bunch of red grapes in a clear plastic bowl on it. There was a yellow flag with two livers displayed prominently and juxtaposed with the tiny words “Jaundiced,” and “Not” written on each. There were several others that I’m sure never existed in reality. I took a microscope and an atlas to it between chemistry and history class one day. Ms. Sheelt caught me and put the atlas back on the shelf. This was the black shirt that fit just the way the gypsy approved of.
The gray shirt with blue stripes I found one morning in my closet soon after Darlene, my ex-wife, left. It may have been hers, but I never saw her wear it. It would have been over-sized. It tapered at the shoulders in such a way that it seemed like someone had cut off the original sleeves and sewed on new ones from a smaller shirt. This only became apparent on close examination. The gypsy, Jacob, must have noticed. But it was the torso he was concerned about, not the shoulders; his shoulders could hold up any shirt. Brad Pitt has shoulders too, but no one knows what they look like. “Standard men’s shoulders,” one might guess. The shirt, it read: “A guess, I GUESS, a Guest, a Gust, a Gus, August, Given Name: Augustus!” and there’s a fig leaf serving, somehow nobly and thankfully, as the exclamation point. I might miss the leaf, but that’s all.
Beige, the beige one had a crude drawing of a cardboard box on it, so crude, I had to be told by the artist who handed it to me at a music festival I attended with Darlene, that the vague squarish depiction was a cardboard box. The box was empty, save for a mirror which reflected somehow an even more crude drawing of a cardboard box. The artist informed me that this made the t-shirt “meta” and was also the reason he was willing to part with it at no cost to me the consumer. He only asked that I wear it at least once to an event in which more than 10,000 people attended. I informed him that we were currently at such an event. He affirmed my observation, but clarified, “a different one, a different one,” he said. I wore it to the filming of a game show. There were 400 people in attendance and I didn’t get on camera. The audiences always seem bigger on TV. It was only fitting that I would part with this shirt, a shirt I had gained under false pretenses.
~ ~ ~
And I asked the gypsy, “So is that all the shirts you want?”
“Not exactly, no, but that’s all you have that fit correctly,” said Jacob.
“There is such a great number of interesting shirts that you have not found to your liking.”
“The only interesting, no, I mean, you know, the only characteristic that interests me is the fit.”
“Truly? Just the fit? But they say so much, or so little, are so old, or so young, are so bright, or so dull, are so soft, or so tough, paper thin, or thick as a down comforter, have so much potential psychological significance or none at all, say something very deep about the way we live, or reflect the vapid, torpid and just plain…”
“Alright, no. I just care about how they fit. Call me a gypsy or a simpleton all you like, but the fit’s the thing.”
“So, and, six for happiness; do we have a deal?”
“No, I believe I said seven at least. Happiness is not so unimportant that it can be bartered for six t-shirts.”
“But seven?”
“Yes, perhaps seven. One for every day of the week, or if you like, one for every one of my nephews.”
“I hate to say it Jacob, but I’d prefer six nephews really, they just scream half the time, I mean just scream. You can hear them from the house, even if they’re deep in the woods.”
“The woods, perhaps those, you could part with some of those, in addition to the six shirts.”
“Non-starter, again Jacob, that is a non-starter. What type of psychological benefit can you give me for six shirts? Really none of the others are suitable?”
“I’m afraid, I’m afraid not. Those shirts do not define me as Pitt, while these six, one could hardly tell the difference.”
“What will you give me for the six?”
“I can promise you, you know, a steep drop in melancholy, an increase in indifference to the plight of others, a smile from an attractive person definitely directed at you once a week, some anti-freeze maybe.”
“All of those things, or just one? That’s a pretty drastic drop in value. One shirt is the difference between happiness and anti-freeze?”
“Profound maybe, and in this case, true.”
“I won’t, I can’t, no it’s not worth it. You know I really wanted happiness too.”
“I know, it’s a shame, seven shirts would have been great. My wife, she’d be more interested and others too, perhaps others.”
“Jacob, be, you know, reasonable, is there nothing? I have some hats, there’s one that says, ‘Brett’s Rugs: Cheaper than Eric’s and More Durable!’ there are others.”
“No, no, no hats. The hats are a non-starter, a sign of weakness.”
“I’m sorry, no, but there must be something.”
“I’m sorry as well, but I came for seven shirts that make me look like Brad Pitt and nothing but that will secure your eternal happiness. . . . trees maybe.”
I looked at Jacob with a furrowed brow to indicate that the trees and anything associated with the land, my land, were still a non-starter. As I began to unfurrow and gaze at the barren ground I was unwilling to part with in exchange for happiness, I remembered. I remembered I hadn’t brought all the shirts. I had left the two shirts I had received on the occasion of the man with the brown file folder notifying me that my dear wife, Darlene, had left me. This was intentional. I wanted to keep these shirts. I think she would have wanted me to keep these shirts. What are the odds they’d fit right anyway? He’d been through hundreds of shirts already; why would these two fit? I’d never worn them. They’ve been folded, that’s all. They may be creased. How could they fit?
“Well, if that’s all my friend it looks like we’re one shirt short of a deal. It’s been fun, really, and to know six could fit so well is really a load off I’m telling you. But I must be going; no sense in bartering when a deal can’t be struck.” He turned and began to take the shirts off the hand-carved wooden hangers in his wagon.
“Wait, no, there’s more, two more!” I blurted out.
“Shirts, two more shirts? Where? I tried them all on, I could have sworn. I hunt methodically, you know, just ask the deer who once plagued this forest and injured two of my nephews. The deer thought they could run, they imagined I’d grow tired. My family, and the two nephews in particular, we ate for months. I even chewed methodically.”
“Uh, yes, so I’ve heard. They are at my house. I will get them, you just stay here.”
I piled all the unwanted shirts into my wagon and drove home, leaving the gypsy with the six shirts he had already selected. In truth, I met the gypsy less than a half mile from my house up the dirt road on my property. I parked the Prius carefully in my three car garage. The shirts remained spattered about in the wagon, I stepped on two when I reached for the gas and grabbed three others when I set the emergency break.
I made my way through the cavernous house, my house, and up to my closet. In the closet, stored next to three paintings my wife, Darlene, once enjoyed and forced me to display in case educated people ever decided to visit, was the bowed and ribboned gift box in which I stored the shirts. I had used the box to gift my wife a sterling silver statue of a calico cat, her favorite, on our fourth anniversary. She was terribly allergic, but insisted we own one, and we did. This box and the yarn remains.
I walked the unopened box back out to the gypsy.
~ ~ ~
And the gypsy asked me, “Have they not been worn?”
“No I’ve never worn either of them. I planned to though, I assure you I planned to.”
“Comforting,” he said as he slid his hand down the middle of the shirt which was creased from all the time it spent being folded in the box.
“May I have this one? That orange might be off-putting, like the leaves in October that are so bright they singe the tip of my good rake. You know, the type of orange that makes you back away from a marmalade. That orange I can only visualize for an instant before I close my eyes in horror. An orange, which, if I recall correctly…”
“Alright, alright, just try it on. It may be that very orange that makes your average everyday gypsy look like Brad Pitt.”
“It might,” he said, rubbing the fabric near where his stomach would end up between his thumb and two fingers and then placing the shirt above his head and finally onto his body.
He went through his routine and kept stretching the fabric to try to relieve the crease. He then, at last, read over what the shirt said: ‘Your worst day is not even that bad when you think about it!’
“This shirt,” he said, “This shirt it doesn’t fit quite right I’m afraid,” he said.
“Possibly, try the other,” I said, getting somewhat impatient. My future happiness now depended entirely on the t-shirt that Darlene left me: “I’ve left you a shirt and just generally. All the Best, Darlene.”
As the gypsy carefully folded the bright orange monstrosity that had brought me to the brink of eternal unhappiness, I snatched my wife’s gift and began snapping it with both arms, to try to remove the crease. It persisted. I stretched the shirt for all I was worth, grabbing at both sides of the creases which ran both vertical and horizontal, but to no avail. The crease, I thought, would seal my fate.
Once the shirt was on, a remarkable transformation took place. His torso, truly from his chest down to his jeans, looked like Brad Pitt’s. The creases in the shirt somehow fit the structure of his body perfectly and made it appear as though he had a distinct line down the center of his body, just cut, chiseled even and the same could be said for the horizontal crease. One could not even tell they were creases anymore, they seemed to be all part of one seamless package. He looked like a manikin with a face.
Despite the obvious success of the new shirt, the gypsy went through his meticulous routine, although, without my Prius, he had no easy shinny surface to check his reflection. He went to his wagon and rummaged up an old dingy mirror. He spit on it, rubbed it with what appeared to be an old and dingier rag and asked me to hold it still and aim it at his torso. I did. Through the glass the shirt insisted, “I’ve left you a shirt and just generally. All the Best, Darlene.” His eyes brightened as he kept staring at his Pitt-like abdomen. He ran his hand flat up and down his stomach probably fifty times. He then did a slow pirouette-type move and said, “How’s the back, how’s the back, is the back not terrible?” I said it was fine, and he giggled in a pitch higher than I thought him capable. “I’ve left you a shirt and just generally. All the Best, Darlene,” the shirt continued to say. I bit my lip and turned my head.
He slapped me on the back so hard I dropped the mirror which fell harmlessly to the earth, my earth. He grabbed my hand and shook it with gusto. I turned and faced him and the shirt, and nodded my head slightly. “I’ve left you a shirt and just generally. All the Best, Darlene,” announced the shirt.
“And happiness, happiness is yours my good sir,” said the gypsy.
~ ~ ~
I’ve been happy for five weeks now. Oh, what a joy it has been! Every minute, every second, just joyous! Things could not be better. I sit and watch the gnomes most of the time. Those gnomes with their sly grins. I never noticed before, but they are all grinning and on the sly too! Most people can’t tell, most people don’t even look for it. But oh, the slight upturn is evident in all of them and even the broken ones. The broken ones are somehow even better. Two more have broke since my happiness was granted by the gypsy, Jacob. Oh, the eternal happiness, the wonder, that gypsy, Jacob, he’s, he’s something else is what he is and those abs; he looks just like Brad Pitt. No, better! It’s such a pleasure to see a good friend, such as Jacob, the gypsy, a good friend such as he, so confident, so content. And his wife, his wife, she must be in the glories, as they say, truly, in the glories. What more could I ask for?
The house, this wonderful house with all this room and my unique assortment of objects to dust and lift over my head. I can lift several over my head, I know I can. I’ve even thrown a few through the window just for fun. One neighbor child was mildly injured, broken foot or something like that. His friends laughed at him, I laughed at them, we laughed together, even the injured kid laughed I think. Perhaps not. We laughed so hard I really could not tell if there was an injured child. He was not hurt so bad, builds character, compels character even. Character in exchange for a broken foot or two; not a bad deal. One I might take if offered.
And I have no one to hold me back! I can watch the gnomes all day and nobody questions it. Freedom, the joy of freedom! My ex-wife, oh that lovely creature who I once had the great pleasure of devoting my life to and now have the great pleasure of not devoting my life to, my ex-wife, she used to say, “oh if only you’d let yourself be free, what an elegant writer you might be!” No, no, she never said that, but something to that effect I assure you. I had a t-shirt . . . I have a t-shirt . . . . a veritable treasure-trove of t-shirts. What is one man to do with all these riches? I must wear them, wear as many as I can. One day I changed shirts every 6 minutes for 12 hours. The next week, I did laundry. What a well-structured week that was! Gosh, and the odor! Buckets and buckets of detergent! Like a field of tiger-lilies without all that color to distract you. The shirts; some of them dulled a bit and shrunk. One shrunk down so small I gave it to the child who broke his foot. He said, “This does not make us even.” The shirt said, “The Pan of Pasta Challenge!” I said, “The Pan of Pasta Challenge!” He shut the door and hobbled back to his chair. What character in that child, such strong character!
And Jacob, the gypsy, he came by the other day. He came by and he asked, “How’s the happiness working out for you?”
“Excellent, everything I expected and more maybe. I can’t say for sure. And the shirts, how are the shirts?”
“They fit, I believe they still fit correctly. See,” he said and pointed to his torso which was adorned with that lovely shirt Darlene left me on the day our lives changed directions. Just changed directions is all.
“Yes, just like Brad Pitt. Oh, you’re wife must be chasing you all over the lot!”
“Oh, well, at first, but now no, you’d be surprised. She says, now she says the nose is the thing, she says my nose ruins the whole effect. I still like the shirts though, really.”
“But you said she was in the glories, the glories!”
“No, I never said that. I don’t speak like that.”
“Oh, well, I can see the nose, but no bother, a nose can be easily fixed. There are doctors and even now lawyers that deal in that type of thing.”
“Perhaps, but I know my limitations.”
“Yes, and this too is good, accept who you are. She is your wife after all, she loves you, not the movie star.”
“That may be. Speaking of love . . . there is . . . you know . . . a tree, a particular tree, or set of trees, yes, a set of trees, you know, no more than thirty I would say, in the northwest corner of your lot, my nephews really enjoy them.”
“Your nephews, ah yes, and why shouldn’t they enjoy them? Trees are something to be enjoyed. You can even climb some.”
“Yes, right, you can, but I and my nephews, we would like them for lumber.”
“You want my trees?”
“Yes, but only some, you know, forty at the most.”
“For lumber?”
“Yes, that’s right. We really admire the lumber potential in the trees. We might even be happy, should we obtain them.”
“Happiness is wonderful.”
“I know.”
“The trees don’t play into my current happiness. Honestly, I don’t even know which trees you are referring to. Oh, it is a wonderful thing to have trees in such abundance that one does not even know which forty he is giving away.”
“So you are giving them to us, my nephews and I? We would be grateful, years of gratitude.”
“Ah, well, I don’t see, I mean, I’ve happiness now thanks to you . . . and the trees I had for quite some time. Yes, sure, Jacob, my friend, you may have the trees.”
~ ~ ~
Yes, I gave away the trees, then the land that came with them, then the house that housed all the stuff, then all the stuff, and then the gnomes, they were last. I gave them all to Jacob, the gypsy, and why not? He gave me happiness. I still have it! I’m happy! His wife, she sleeps alone in my bed. She smashed the gnomes against the porch steps right in front of my eyes. She cackled and made me sweep them up. What a show! She tore up all of my shirts except for one and knitted them into a giant quilt she sent to Brad Pitt with a note and a camera. “Amazing torso, sir,” said the note, “Please send photos.” What ingenuity!
I sleep in the woods. The wolves howl at me, seemingly nonplused at my presence. I point them in the direction of some of the slower rabbits and raise my eyebrows to lead their gray-blue eyes towards my chest. There, the one t-shirt I have left reminds them: “Your worst day is not even that bad when you think about it!”
