By Ellis Camden
I quit my job at The Strand and moved to a town in South Carolina that no one outside of a Cracker Barrel parking lot has ever heard of. Population: 1,223 and at least three of them are stray dogs with names.
The reason for the move was Juliana Beal. We met online the way everyone meets online now—through a comment thread on a poem about bus stops and unfinished apologies. I said the line break didn’t work, she said I didn’t work, and then somehow we were emailing.
Juliana’s a poet, which in this economy means she works at an orthodontics office during the day and reads Lorine Niedecker on her lunch breaks. Her town is called Ashton and it’s got a Piggly Wiggly, two Dollar Generals, and one old man who waves at your car even if he doesn’t like you. Especially if he doesn’t like you.
She invited me down after six weeks of emails and video calls and one drunken 3 a.m. phone reading of “Ode to a Nightingale.” I showed up with two duffel bags and a notebook full of job leads, none of which panned out.
Juliana picked me up from the Greyhound station in her sister’s borrowed pickup. She wore a t-shirt that said “Ask Me About My Cat” and handed me a Coke before even saying hello.
We live in a rental now that used to be her aunt’s. The walls smell like cedar and Vicks. The bathtub leaks. The internet is strong in the kitchen but dies if you walk two feet toward the living room.
Her mom—Miss Terri—said I could maybe get a job at the recycling center, “if I play my cards right.”
I asked what playing my cards right looked like and she said, “Don’t say you’re a poet.”
The first week, I applied to nine jobs. The second week, I stopped counting. I walked into the local Food Lion and handed a manager my resume. He glanced at it and asked if I had experience with forklifts. I didn’t, but I said I did. He said he’d call.
He didn’t.
Juliana leaves for work every morning in scrubs and kisses me goodbye with the kind of optimism that makes you feel bad about not doing your dishes. I drink her fancy coffee, stare out the window, and apply for jobs I don’t understand: office assistant at a seafood distributor, part-time groundskeeper at a junior college, something called “field data collector” which I think means spying on cows.
One of the jobs I applied to was for a janitor at the community center where Juliana teaches ceramics on Wednesday nights. The same guy who taught her in high school runs the place and I think he might hate me. He nods real slow, like he’s measuring something invisible.
I got one interview at the second Dollar General, the one next to the defunct tanning salon. A girl with green hair and an ankle brace named Brandy interviewed me. She asked what I’d do if a customer stole candy. I said, “Ask them if they’re okay.” She said I had a poet’s answer.
Didn’t get the job.
Juliana says I’m good with plants, even though I forget to water them. We have three dying succulents and something she insists is a fern but looks more like a depressed weed.
Some mornings I wake up and say today is the day I get a job. I sit down with the laptop. I open four tabs. Then I close them. Then I open YouTube and watch a video on how to make French toast without eggs.
I make us French toast without eggs. It’s bad.
Juliana eats it anyway.
She says we’re like that one Hemingway story where nothing happens and it still feels like everything’s about to. She makes it sound romantic. I think it’s just joblessness with good lighting.
Today she emailed me a link to a job in the bookstore at the technical college. It pays almost nothing but comes with free parking. I apply immediately.
Then I clean the kitchen and water the plants and sweep the porch. I even change the litter box for Colonel Mustard. I’m trying. I swear I’m trying.
When I pick her up at five, I bring her an iced tea and we sit in the truck for a while before heading inside. The sun’s still up but already dying.
I say, “I feel like a househusband who forgot the husband part.”
She says, “You’re the stay-at-home dad of our domestic dream.”
She points to the plants on the porch and says they’re our kids.
I look at them.
They’re wilting.
I say, “They’ll be okay.”
She says, “So will we.”
And for the first time all day, I believe her.Ellis Camden is a writer and occasional yogurt shop employee currently based in the American South. He once got fired for recommending too many sad books. His poems have appeared in grocery lists and unrequited emails.
