Obituary
—
Michael Czyzniejewski
SO, ON THE FIRST DAY, KEITH gave his summer school kids this assignment to write their obituary, and by four p.m., the summer principal called to tell him he was fired, that six parents had already contacted her, the school board, the district, anyone they could find, to get him ousted ASAP, which Keith explained after hanging up, but first saying, “We’re going to have to cancel that trip to Arcadia in August,” as the summer school pay was going to cover that, making me say, “What do you mean, you got fired?” which is when he told me about the obituary assignment, which I’d told him not to do, prompting me to ask him about the tombstone template, which he confirmed, passing out the papers with the blank tombstones on them, blank except for “Here Lies …” at the top, followed by the empty lines for the kids to write their name and imagined obituary, what they wanted to accomplish in life before they died, e.g.,
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along with RIP at the end, which of course was supposed to get the kids focusing on their goals, but also freaked them the fuck out, especially after that kid in the district died just two months earlier, some kind of horrific cancer that only old people usually get, making these rising fourth graders, already jumpy, ponder their mortality, when their summer school class was supposed to be fun, a diversion, pirate-themed but still math-focused, after I told Keith to go in there the first day with a fake parrot on his shoulder and an eyepatch and pass out times table worksheets like a goddamn normal summer school math teacher, but no, he had to do the obituary/tombstone idea, and not that I’m someone who likes to say I told you so! when I’m right, but sitting at the dinner table, coping with the idea of no vacation and Keith maybe losing his job for the regular school year, I said, “I told you not to fucking do that,” and Keith said, “I know, I know, but last night, when you went to bed, I started thinking about Don, and …,” and then Keith went into a whole thing about Don, his dad, dying, and before I could say it, he said, “I realize that was almost two years ago,” because yeah, it was, and maybe the statute of limitations had run out on his freakout card, that maybe he would have gotten away with it two summers ago, when his dad actually died, when he got through that summer session just fine, the one with the archaeology theme, going into the classroom wearing a brown fedora, brown leather jacket, and bullwhip (which, by the way, he was lucky to not get fired for) and passed out times table worksheets like a goddamn normal summer school math teacher, but no, I don’t bring that up, because that was the summer of Andi, the summer session social studies teacher, who also dressed up like Indiana Jones, except of course when Keith was banging her at her studio apartment, which he said, later on in counseling, he did because his dad died and I worked a lot and we’d grown apart and we hadn’t had sex in four months, etc., etc., an affair for which I, in time, fucking forgave him, Andi moving to Maine at the end of the term, Andi who was just a year out of college, twelve years younger than us, as close in age to the students as to me, not that it mattered (…the cheated-on wife tried to convince herself…), not that any of that explained why he insisted, this year, on the obituary assignment, in a math class, everyone already on edge, everyone thinking they were going to be called scallywags and me hardies and get a lot of Arrrrrghs! but instead, on the first day, were asked to stare down death, getting Keith fired, which I’d told him would happen, and when I presented all of this to him, he looked down into his beef and broccoli, moved it around with his chopsticks, and told me that he’d been thinking about his dad, dying at a relatively young age, and for a second, I thought this was maybe leading to some revelation, some news from his annual physical, something making Keith question his mortality, and just as I was thinking I’d overreacted, gotten up in his face without considering his situation, without showing him the love and compassion a wife is supposed to show a husband, he said he was thinking about how Don told him on a fishing trip once that he and his mom never had sex anymore, not for years, and how he didn’t want us to end up like his mom and dad, asking if I even remembered the last time we’d done anything, noting that he did, citing a date and time and location and specific position, and then with a straight face (though just a bit of a quiver in his voice), asked, “Maybe, if you’re not too mad at me for being fired, after dinner, we could maybe go upstairs and, you know, fool around?” •
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Michael Czyzniejewski is the author of four collections of stories, most recently The Amnesiac in the Maze (Braddock Avenue Books, 2023). He serves as Editor-in-Chief of Moon City Press and Moon City Review, as well as Interviews Editor of SmokeLong Quarterly. He has received a fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts and two Pushcart Prizes.
Twitter | Bluesky
along with RIP at the end, which of course was supposed to get the kids focusing on their goals, but also freaked them the fuck out, especially after that kid in the district died just two months earlier, some kind of horrific cancer that only old people usually get, making these rising fourth graders, already jumpy, ponder their mortality, when their summer school class was supposed to be fun, a diversion, pirate-themed but still math-focused, after I told Keith to go in there the first day with a fake parrot on his shoulder and an eyepatch and pass out times table worksheets like a goddamn normal summer school math teacher, but no, he had to do the obituary/tombstone idea, and not that I’m someone who likes to say I told you so! when I’m right, but sitting at the dinner table, coping with the idea of no vacation and Keith maybe losing his job for the regular school year, I said, “I told you not to fucking do that,” and Keith said, “I know, I know, but last night, when you went to bed, I started thinking about Don, and …,” and then Keith went into a whole thing about Don, his dad, dying, and before I could say it, he said, “I realize that was almost two years ago,” because yeah, it was, and maybe the statute of limitations had run out on his freakout card, that maybe he would have gotten away with it two summers ago, when his dad actually died, when he got through that summer session just fine, the one with the archaeology theme, going into the classroom wearing a brown fedora, brown leather jacket, and bullwhip (which, by the way, he was lucky to not get fired for) and passed out times table worksheets like a goddamn normal summer school math teacher, but no, I don’t bring that up, because that was the summer of Andi, the summer session social studies teacher, who also dressed up like Indiana Jones, except of course when Keith was banging her at her studio apartment, which he said, later on in counseling, he did because his dad died and I worked a lot and we’d grown apart and we hadn’t had sex in four months, etc., etc., an affair for which I, in time, fucking forgave him, Andi moving to Maine at the end of the term, Andi who was just a year out of college, twelve years younger than us, as close in age to the students as to me, not that it mattered (…the cheated-on wife tried to convince herself…), not that any of that explained why he insisted, this year, on the obituary assignment, in a math class, everyone already on edge, everyone thinking they were going to be called scallywags and me hardies and get a lot of Arrrrrghs! but instead, on the first day, were asked to stare down death, getting Keith fired, which I’d told him would happen, and when I presented all of this to him, he looked down into his beef and broccoli, moved it around with his chopsticks, and told me that he’d been thinking about his dad, dying at a relatively young age, and for a second, I thought this was maybe leading to some revelation, some news from his annual physical, something making Keith question his mortality, and just as I was thinking I’d overreacted, gotten up in his face without considering his situation, without showing him the love and compassion a wife is supposed to show a husband, he said he was thinking about how Don told him on a fishing trip once that he and his mom never had sex anymore, not for years, and how he didn’t want us to end up like his mom and dad, asking if I even remembered the last time we’d done anything, noting that he did, citing a date and time and location and specific position, and then with a straight face (though just a bit of a quiver in his voice), asked, “Maybe, if you’re not too mad at me for being fired, after dinner, we could maybe go upstairs and, you know, fool around?” •
Michael Czyzniejewski is the author of four collections of stories, most recently The Amnesiac in the Maze (Braddock Avenue Books, 2023). He serves as Editor-in-Chief of Moon City Press and Moon City Review, as well as Interviews Editor of SmokeLong Quarterly. He has received a fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts and two Pushcart Prizes.
Twitter | Bluesky