A Weak Foundation by Leghorn

“Is something wrong, John?” Debbie, his secretary, asked as they stood together outside his office, each ready to go home from work. He had not been himself all this Friday, the last day of the work-week, as she had judged from subtle clues: he was unusually restless, inattentive...

“ I think my wife is having an affair, Deb.”

She just stood there, not knowing how to respond to this sudden shock. Finally, she replied, “Well, John,...go home. Go home to your wife. Maybe y’all can work things out,” and turned away to walk to her car.


“Are you seeing someone else,” he muttered softly, looking down. When he heard no reply, he turned his eyes upward to meet hers. He saw the tears well-up in them, those beautiful big blue eyes which stared still fixedly upon his. He saw those precious lips half-open...but no sound came forth from them.

At last, “John...,” she began, but he raised his hand and turned away,

“No, no!” he replied, and hung his head. “Don’t tell me the details. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know who it is,”—he felt the heat rising in his chest—“I don’t want to know how you met him”—he measured the words deliberately, as though to form a cold crust over the molten magma boiling up from below—“I don’t want to know anything.”

“I’ll leave,” the silent lips at last pronounced. “I’ll pack my things tomorrow morning and leave.”

“Laura!—“ The name trailed off, his throat pinched by a paroxysm of anguish. She had turned away, was already ascending the stairs that led to the bedroom, HER bedroom, since they had begun sleeping separately some weeks ago. He watched her disappear behind the wall of the second-story hallway, then threw himself wretchedly upon the couch and began sobbing convulsively into the pillow, HIS pillow, since he had become accustomed to laying his head on it each night as he slept. Eventually, he cried himself to sleep. Toward morning, as he began to awaken, a memory entered his half-conscious mind, and he lay there, unwilling to rise, basking in it...

...they sat together in his car in the city park. She lit a joint, took a draw, and offered it to him. He accepted it awkwardly, partook of it, and handed it back. This they continued until he had become more comfortable with it, and the joint had been reduced to a roach. Cars paraded past full of moms and pops, and their kids eager to jump in the pool, or run up and down the soccer-field dreaming of scoring a goal. His own thoughts meandered from one incoherent thought to another as they watched the parade, until she suddenly pronounced, “Do you see all these people? They’re lost. They think they know where they’re going, but they have no idea.”

That is the moment he fell in love with her.


“Please don’t go today,” he said, as they sat together on the back deck over coffee, the coffee he always brewed for them each morning. “Wait till Monday, so we can talk about this over the weekend.”

“What is there to talk about?”

“I...I just need a couple of days to process it, to wrap my head around it, to make sense of it, to...to say goodbye.” What he meant was he needed to talk to Edelman, his next-door neighbor and best-friend, his confidante, the man with whom he had been sharing his suspicions about his wife. She seemed to think about it for a while, and at last confidently exclaimed,

“Okay. I’ll wait till Monday.”

“Thank you, thank you!” He arose, holding his empty mug. “I need to get on the yard-work,” and hurried into the house to put on his work-clothes.


Rodger Edelman was a man of many skills. He and the Rosses had been neighbors for several years, and during that time had become fast friends. Edelman knew how to fix almost anything: from a broken-down mower to a bankrupt account, and advised John Ross on everything, from how and when to fertilize his lawn to how to budget his money. So John figured he could also fix his broken marriage. These services were customarily rendered on the weekend, when both men were home and working about their respective yards, meeting at the boundary line of their properties, 501 and 503 Clark St., to talk—which is what happened on this particular Saturday morning as each approached the other on his mower and cut the engine.

“She’s leaving Monday, Rodge.”

Edelman hung and shook his head. “I’m sorry, John; I’m so very, very sorry...”

“No, no! It’s not your fault Rodger! You did everything you could. You tried your best to advise me what to do. You suggested more intimacy—that didn’t work. You suggested marriage counseling—that didn’t work either. But most importantly, you stood by me and tried to help me, listened to me...that means everything to me, Rodge. I may be losing my wife...”—and here he couldn’t restrain his tears. After he had composed himself, he continued, “...but I am left with the best friend a man could ever want!”

At this, Rodger Edelman raised his head to peer into his friend’s face, that face which, despite its tear-reddened eyes and sagging semicircles beneath them, was yet strikingly handsome. John would have been very surprised to learn how often his friend had looked at his own face in the mirror, and wished he looked instead like John Ross. “Hey, look buddy: let her go. Don’t try to stop her. If she really loves you, she will come back to you.”


“What did Ro-...what did Edelman tell you?” Laura asked her husband across the table he had set with dinner-ware and loaded with homemade lasagna and a salad he had tossed full of fresh market-vegetables. A bottle of vintage wine, already half-empty, stood in the middle, ready to be poured into either glass. This was the ultimate meal, the last supper, the final ceremony in which they would participate together.

“What did Edelman tell me,” John mused, and became absorbed in thought—then suddenly burst into hearty laughter. “What did Edelman tell me? How many times have I heard you ask me that over the last five years, Laura?” He grabbed the bottle and sloshed another drink into his already half-full glass. Red stain, the color of blood, seeped into the tablecloth and began spreading outward.

“Look what you have done, John!”

“Lord mercy, Laura! Is that all you care about? a stained tablecloth? What about the stain on our marriage? Does that mean anything to you?” He had stood up without realizing it, shaking the table and rattling the dinnerware. She just sat there very still, a look of premonitory disaster on her face. He laughed again, less heartily this time. “I’ll tell you what he said. He said you will regret your decision, Laura. He said you will want to come back. But I tell you now...if you leave me, I will never take you back, NEVER!”

At this, she rose up and hurried out of the last supper. He remained standing where he was. He thought about his wife and his friend’s advice, then chuckled, drank down his glass, poured himself another, and eventually made his way to the couch, grasping whatever he could to hold himself steady, sloshing wine here and there onto the carpet, set the glass on the end-table, and flopped down onto the cushions, in a much better mood than he had been the previous night, and soon fell fast asleep...


...”Do you see the man, the man’s face?” he asked her. They lay together on the grass looking skyward. Fleecy clouds floated high above; cumulating, transmogrified into shadowy shapes that only the soul can decipher.

“You mean the one with dark sunken droopy eyes and a Cheshire grin? Look! His beloved puppy floats above him, with floppy ears and a long snout.”

“Yes! Yes!” He saw it. He saw it, and a feeling of oneness with another being came over him he had never felt before.

She reached to her side, away from him, produced the roach and a lighter, took a puff, and handed it to him...


“Remember your sagging floor?” Rodger Edelman was speaking to John Ross late Sunday morning, as both men sat together in the Edelman workshop, a 20’x 40’ building on the back of the property at 503 Clark St., a room full of both materials and the equipment needed to transform them into useful products: band- and table-saws, grinders and sanders, lathes and planers, compressors and nail-guns, riveters and welders, pipes and iron bars, various lengths of board of various widths and thicknesses, hardware of all sorts assorted into various bins and drawers. Neither man was particularly religious, neither a regular churchgoer or observer of the Sabbath. So it wasn’t uncommon for them to spend the whole weekend together in backyard fellowship.

“Yeah, I remember. It took you two weeks to fix it, you and your cousin.”

“I told you at the time there was no quick fix to it, that it was a result of poor initial construction. First of all, the contractor didn’t dig the crawl-space deep enough for anyone to get to the foundation later on if there was a problem there. Secondly, insufficient drainage of the water coming from your gutters meant that it would seep underneath, and since the floor joists were only a foot above the bare earth, it was inevitable that they would gradually rot.”

“Which they did.”

Before his friend’s question, John had been describing to him his own perplexity at his wife’s alienation: he just couldn’t understand why she had grown distant over the years, why he hadn’t detected it, why she felt the need to seek affection from someone else. He didn’t know where Edelman was going with this, but he knew that if he remained silent and waited, he would find out. As he waited, he absentmindedly kicked a pile of sawdust lying near his feet. A little cloud scurried across the floor...

“A weak foundation, John; that’s what it was. You built your marriage on a weak foundation.”

“A weak foundation...a weak foundation,” John repeated to himself, thinking back, trying to crawl back into the narrow spaces of his memory to find the vulnerable supports, the compromising seepage of corrupting material that rotted away his marriage.

“You saved her, John...remember? She had just been thrown out of a relationship where she enjoyed security and comfort. Suddenly, she was alone and homeless and poor. You rescued her, like a man rescues a dog from the pound, where they would otherwise just put it down. Dogs are faithful to their saviors, their masters, but people are not animals. After people are rescued, they find they want something more than just comfort and security. They want to fulfill their lives, John, not just fill them with things.”

As he listened, John Ross’ eyes were fixed upon the saber-toothed blade of Rodger’s rip-saw, the one Edelman had used to cut the new boards for his friend’s sagging floor. “You think she is just a puppy to me, Rodge? A pet? A rescue animal?”

“Not to you, John; to herself. Look, this is the way I think she sees it: you saved her, rescued her, right? You saw this beautiful creature in dire need and wanted her, so you gave her a place to stay, supported her, nurtured her, gave her anything she wanted. In return she married you, gave you companionship...

“...the years passed. She began to feel something lacking in her life, began to want more than just comfort, security and things. She found it in someone else...

“Maybe she’s wrong. Maybe this new guy—whoever he is—has nothing better to give her than you do—but she THINKS he does, John...she thinks he does, and that’s all that matters.”

That what Rodger Edelman said to him was true was as clear to the mind of John Ross as a sagging floor was to his eye. Edelman was never wrong. He may not have been able to fix all his neighbor’s problems, but he had never misdiagnosed them. And this is why, over all these years, he had never gotten angry with him. No matter what Edelman said to him, John Ross knew it was somehow true...


...that night his sleep was restless and uneasy. He dreamed he was driving to the pound with Edelman to pick up a dog, but they lost their way and ended up nowhere, on some deserted country road at night. Then he heard a whine coming from deep in the adjacent wood, and cried, “That’s her, Rodge, that’s the dog!” leapt out of the car and ran into the wood. “Here, girl!” he shouted...but no sound came in reply. There was total darkness; he could see nothing. Then he heard the whine again, now farther away and from deeper in the wood, and began feeling his way toward its source, repeating the cry, “Here, girl!” over and over, until he heard nothing...

...then he remembered his friend, turned around to look back toward the road, and saw only black. “Rodge!” he cried; there was nothing but silence. He sat down on the ground, hung his head between his knees and began to weep...


...which is how he found himself when he awoke that Monday morning, sitting doubled-over on the couch, his eyes moist. Morning had inevitably come, coffee was to be made. The sun shed his rays undeniably through the half-shuttered windows. Reality was not to be put off. John Ross had to go to work. When he returned home that evening, presumably, Laura would be gone.

He surreptitiously watched her go about her morning routine, even as he went about his own: nothing seemed different. He bade her goodbye—even dared deliver the perfunctory departing kiss—then pulled out of the driveway, turned north on Clark, drove the four blocks to Independence, took another right, merged onto the turnpike, which took him to the other side of town and to his office, just as it did every Monday morning. Nothing seemed different...

...everything was different...


“Debbie, can I borrow your car?”

John Ross’ Secretary stared back at him with a blank look disguising utter astonishment. “Borrow my car?”

“Yeah, I...I need to go somewhere, check on something.”

“Why can’t you just take your...oh, I see.”

“It won’t take more than an hour, I promise.”

“Okay. Just don’t leave me stranded at lunchtime!”

“Here,” he tossed her his keys. “If I’m not back by noon, take mine.” He had sat at his desk for three interminable hours, scarcely able to either do anything or follow what anyone said. “Take all callers’ names and numbers and tell them I will get back to them this afternoon.”

“Yes sir!” the faithful secretary replied, and headed back to her desk to fetch her car keys.


There was little traffic this time of morning, and John Ross soon found himself tooling slowly down Clark St., gradually approaching 501, but dreading to come within sight of it. He did not want to see the empty driveway, devoid of both vehicles; but he continued on. His heart had begun to race. It beat faster and faster as he approached ever closer, until suddenly he was within view. There it was, her car parked exactly where it had been as he pulled out this morning.

“Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!” he shouted with glee, pounding the steering wheel. “She changed her mind, she decided to stay. Oh happy day, oh happy happy day!” He pulled over to the curb, parked and cut the engine.

He sat there a good while, imagining how he would reward her faithfulness. Why, they were going out tonight! They would celebrate. And from now on he would be more attentive to her; they would communicate better, and he would satisfy her needs—no need to talk about the other guy; let bygones be bygones. Then he remembered: his secretary would probably rather drive her own vehicle to lunch, so he started its engine...

He was about to put it in drive, when he caught something moving at 501 Clark St. out of the corner of his eye. A figure was walking from the house to his wife’s car, its arms full of clothes. It was Laura. She opened the back door and placed in her load. Then she walked to the other side, got in the driver’s seat, and began backing out of the driveway...

A new plan was sucked into the vacuum left in his mind by the sudden exit of that foolishly premature one: he would follow her. He would follow her, until she led him to the source of his misery, to the mystery man who had stolen her away from him; he would duck down as she passed, do a u-turn and get in behind her...

John was quite astonished to watch his wife back out the wrong way, and head south on Clark St., away from him. When she had reached the drive at 503, she slowly pulled in...”Ah, she wants to say goodbye to our dear neighbor!” he exclaimed, “the man who helped us out in so many ways over all these years. That IS very touching!” and broke out into sardonic maniacal laughter...

When he had composed himself, he looked back out, and saw her carrying that same armload of clothes she had just placed in the backseat of her car up to the front of the house at 503 Clark St. There was Rodger Edelman, holding the door for her. John Ross watched her disappear inside...

...and his belief in truth and honesty and love and friendship, and anything good, disappeared with her.