The Explanation
By Joanna Theiss
Because we majored in ancient Greek and the gods of that language love a fight. Because I grew up with a father who demanded that I play sports. Because you told me once that you believe in competition as if it’s a religion or a spiritual practice. Because we met in a sticky communal kitchen that smelled like bacon grease and the pheromone stench of twenty-three-year-old graduate students and we sparred over noun declensions and you were quicker than me and I said, “Sarah, one, John, zero,” and built the score card that would follow us through our relationship, a running tally of told-you-so’s and grudges, every decision a skirmish, every conversation ending with an outcome: right, wrong, no draws.
Because nineteen years in, the score card reads Sarah, three thousand and seventy-two, John, eight hundred and four, and while I’ve had my triumphs you have been right about the important things, the plate shifting, life and death things, like whether the condom broke, whether you’d get tenure and whether I wouldn’t, whether the second baby would be a boy, whether we should buy the house with the mature elms even though the backyard fence was falling down rather than keep our apartment in the city where the landlord did all of the repairs.
Because the fence needed fixing. Because I should know how to fix a fence. Because the old man behind the counter at the local hardware store asked me, eyebrows raised, if I knew what I was doing. Because I thought I’d be finished before lunch. Because when I told you I didn’t need your help you squinted at me like I looked familiar from somewhere, but it was not somewhere you wanted to go again.
Because storm clouds rolled across our backyard, darkening the sky from cornflower to gas-flame to indigo. Because rain drops big as carpenter bees landed on my shoulders and soaked the wire netting and shorted out my electric drill. Because you and our boys jumped around behind the screen door like giddy sheepdogs, gawking at the force of the wind and how the rain chopped the dirt to mud and plastered my shirt to my chest. Because you laughed. Because you shouted, “John, come inside. You’re going to get struck by lightning!”
Because the chance of being struck by lightning while standing in your own backyard is lower than the chance of the condom breaking, lower than the chance that a man doesn’t know how to fix his own fence, lower than the chance that I’d be outside while a summer storm turned the air so cold and damp it felt like it was coming from underground.
Because the odds of being struck by lightning are so low, but the odds of dying from a lightning strike are lower still.
Because I thought I would be right.
THE END
Author Bio: Joanna Theiss is a writer living in Washington, DC. Her short stories and flash fiction have appeared in publications such as Aquifer: The Florida Review Online, Bending Genres, Anti-Heroin Chic, Fictive Dream, and Best Microfiction 2022. Before devoting herself to writing full time, Joanna worked as a lawyer, practicing criminal defense and international trade law. Links to her work are available at www.joannatheiss.com, on Twitter @joannavtheiss and Instagram @joannatheisswrites.