The Card Decides

"Why haven't I been to one of your work events, since that first week?" she asked.

"It's just—you won't get it. All we talk about is work. Boring stuff." He put his phone face down, in an almost meticulous way.

Was that just chance? A 50/50 chance that he was putting it face down instead of face up, where she could see the screen?

"I'd like to go tonight. We were supposed to hang out," she tried.

He rolled his eyes at her. "You'll hate it," he said. "But fine."

She put on more makeup. More than she'd usually. He was nervous. She could tell. His eyes were shifty, he laughed too loudly, his movements jerky instead of smooth and unnoticed.

She took a sip of beer. A woman who had been so friendly to her that first time she met everyone, whose name had been so often on her partner's phone, in the moments he left it face up, was laughing too loudly at the next table.

A young boy helped his mother light the altar in their home. Flowers lay between the candles. It was beautiful, and he felt closer to his grandparents and great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents. His grandfather, Pops, had just passed.

"Why do we leave candles on the altar to honor our family?"

"Because it's tradition."

That made sense, the boy thought.

The boy became a young man. At college, he decided to rush the fraternity his father had joined. One night they made him eat rotted fish and drink beer until he was sick on the floor.

"Dude, why do they make us do that?" he asked the next day, laughing, thrilled that he'd been accepted.

"It's tradition."

The young man, now just a man, fell in love. They rented an old plantation house for the wedding. Weeping willows, white columned houses, long stretches of grass. His eyes filled with tears as he watched his bride walk down the aisle, her father by her side.

When the priest spoke, he spoke of a father passing his daughter to her husband. A man delivering what he owned to the next owner.

He thought: that's a strange tradition.

He went to Spain on vacation, finally getting the chance to run with the bulls. He had wanted to do this his whole life. He ran. He tripped. He saw someone get trampled but walked away okay.

Afterwards he watched the bull beaten to death. The crowd around him hollered with glee as the tradition played out.

As he got older, he wanted to learn more about his family's legacy. He found an article about his great-grandfather's death. His great-grandfather, a Black man, had been found in bed with his great-grandmother, a white woman. A mob had hunted him through the street and lynched him.

To uphold tradition.

He had finally done it.

He had been practicing his whole life for this.

The last brick was put into place, carefully, with skill. The tower stood. He had completed the first building he had ever designed and toiled over.

He looked at his creation.

It was—dare he say—elegant? His ambition surprised even himself.

A laugh burst out of him. Uncontrolled, manic.

But then—something was blossoming in his stomach. He was grieving the process of getting there. Grieving the boy he was when he started. Will everything in life feel like this? This mixture of elation and sorrow when something is finished?

A sudden wave of anger followed the sorrow. He needed to destroy it. He wiped at the tower and it fell, hit the ground in a cacophony of crashing and loss.

His laughter turned to crying.

What have I done?

His mother came over and picked him up and held him as his face got redder and his tears ran down. She told him it was okay. That they could build the tower again together.