Seymour Skinner didn't typically find himself at bars – at least not on his own accord and certainly not at this hour on a Friday night. He'd shut his phone off the second he got into his car and threw it into the backseat as he reversed from his driveway and headed South. Along the way, he wondered if his mother would be trying to reach him once she discovered he was no longer waiting for her in their parlor room, but for once in his life, he didn't care. Another silhouette night, like the many that came before, like the many that would come again. It troubled him, the repetition of it all, when his world lay shattered at his feet that night and no one seemed to notice. The rattling screams that echoed for him to run while sitting in that chair under the grandfather clock, his best suit on for his photo, were loud enough to break him out of that terrible vice of obedience and he thanked them for getting him the hell out of there.
A semi blared his horn as he sped past it in the left lane, cutting back into the right just before a collision from an on-coming SUV.
The city limit of Ogdenville was coming up, and the signs along the highway both welcomed him to town and offered exit routes to hotels, camping sites, diners, and gas stations. What he was looking for he found pretty quick right off the side of the road, and he didn't bother to break or signal as he pulled over onto the gravel and into the dirt patch of bare land this bar must call a parking lot.
He killed the engine and stepped out, holding his suit jacket closed from the wind that turned his breath into a pale fog that November. Not even bothering to check if he'd locked his car or not, he slipped his keys into his jacket and made his way toward the neon glow of the entrance.
Ogdenville was on his radar for a few reasons, but the one he was most interested in was the variety of hard liquors they made locally available that would sure enough put to bed the screaming in his head and the ringing in his ears. While they did help him escape his house, he'd been wanting to put them down for hours.
He walked in past the jukebox and sat at the farthest end of the bar – a dead space beside a payphone, sure enough to bring him peace in the day and age of cellphones. No one to bother him, no one to talk to him. No one to come past to look at him. Just what he wanted. Peace.
His phone remained in the car, dead to the world as he wished to be. If only he could be so lucky.
A handsome, blonde young man took care of him in the few hours since he'd been there – the two making small, idle chat until the drinks took hold of his senses, and all Seymour could muster was another local brew or two he hoped would mix well with whatever whiskey or vodka-akin tonic he'd consumed the previous engagement.
As the night went on, and patrons came and went from the tavern, he began to loosen his tie and slump over an bowl once containing some complimentary peanuts. He turned a whiskey glass clockwise between his fingertips, the rim gliding around the ring of water on the wood as graceful as a figure skater. He concentrated on that and not the sadness knocking at the door, wanting to be let in and take him for everything he had.
A body sat close to him that stirred him from his thoughts. One with a voice familiar to him that called for the bartender to get him a drink and basket of fried onion rings. Seymour glanced over with a bit of shock that sobered him up briefly to stammer an introduction when he and his boss made eye contact.
"S-Superintendent Chalmers! Hello! What-uh-what are you doing here?" His leg bounced against the brass fixture of his barstool, loose and anxious while his upper half seemed to lock in a clench, afraid to move. His hair was unkempt and far too gone for him to worry about it now.
Superintendent Gary Chalmers, a man who always gave off an air of wanting to be anywhere but where he currently stood, only looked to him with a soft, reluctant growl. He was a man who hated to run into an acquaintance anywhere, much less in a place he figured would be safe from such interactions.
"Uh, hello Skinner," he said. "The conference down in Texas was cut short, so I've been on the road since lunch. Thought I'd stop in here for a drink and something on my stomach. What are you doing here?"
Trying to think of an excuse, but unable to come up with a good one, he noticed him plug his phone into a charger the bar offered up complimentary. Perhaps that would work. "N-no service, hmm?" he said.
"What?"
"Phone."
"Huh?"
"Ph-one service…" His speech was slurred heavily.
"Oh, no. It died this afternoon. Forgot my portable."
"Hm?"
"Are you okay, Seymour?" Gary turned more toward him on his stool, taking notice of just how loose his colleague was behaving.
"Of course, yes fine, fine." He forced a laugh. "Oh, thought I'd come down to see how things are going."
What was he even saying? He said what his boss liked to hear right? That would be good…yes, a good thing…
He was swaying slightly in his chair with only a strong arm to keep him steady against the counter. His head was nodding.
"Uh huh…" Gary watched him carefully, still with discomfort.
Down on the counter, the screen lit up on Gary's phone, buzzing in time with each notification now delivered with fresh life brought to his device.
"Ah, finally." Anything to keep him from making small talk with Skinner. "Let's see here…" He trailed off as he cradled his phone in his hand and began to swipe this way and that, reading through the messages sent hours before.
With the attention off of himself, Seymour sunk lower into his arms, his head dipping down so hard that the threads of his suit felt like sandpaper against his forehead when he buried his face from view.
"Oh…" There was a brief silence from his boss, only filled with the clinking glass of fresh drinks being set down for the both of them. The silence as he read his messages was deafening and weighed down on his shoulders. It would come any moment…the pity.
"Oh…Oh God. Poor Edna…Seymour, I...I don't know what to say."
Good, neither did he.
"Is this why you're all the way out here?" His voice led Seymour to believe he was coming form a place of compassion, but all it did was raise his defenses.
"Does Agnes know you're out here?"
"You know I…I'm a grown man, sir."
"Well of course, but I…" He was planning his words carefully, like a move on a chess board. "I'm sorry Seymour, this is just so sudden. I really don't know what to say."
He got the courage to face him. "Oh come on, what isn't there to say? You mocked me when she left me at the altar; you slept with her yourself after we broke up. You and half the men in Springfield…and women." He sighed and combed his fingers through his hair, the strands sticking to them from the slickness of his sweat. "Just go ahead. I have no right to be like this. We weren't even together in the end, so just say what you want to say and get it over with."
"That may be true, but this is still shocking news nonetheless. I can only imagine what her husband and step kids are going through."
His muscles were tense.
"You know, sir, I…I really came out to Ogdenville to be alone."
"Oh, right; yes of course." He reached into his blazer and took out a few bills to lay on the table. "Forget my order," he told the barkeep, and he stood up to leave. After some consideration, he pulled a few more bills out to rest by his glass, close to Seymour's arm. "Get the next few rounds on me."
"Sir?"
"Don't say anything about it." He tucked his wallet back into his trousers and put a hand on his shoulder. "But, listen, for what it's worth, Seymour, let me give you a piece of advice. What you're going through, all of this, it isn't going to make it any easier. You know, you… You're going to start off with the drinking, then the anger, then the compensation of trying to fill that hole in your heart by any means necessary, eh, trust me, I've been there. I recommend trying to focus on the good times and try not to dwell on the issues the two of you had in the past."
Seymour could feel his teeth clenching.
"I'm sure Ned could use someone to talk to who shared the same fondness for Edna. Perhaps you two can talk about it after church on Sunday. I still have Shauna since Rosemary passed away, and in a way, it's a little easier to have someone to talk to who knows just how I feel."
He felt so absent from reality, he could barely feel the hand on him.
"I won't sugarcoat it and tell you it gets better. It does, but I know it hurts right now. It's okay; it's going to hurt. You miss her laugh, her smile…I get it."
"Sir, I…mm…" He slumped over again, unable to find anything to say again, but the anger was already mounting in his tone.
Gary must have sensed that about him because he quickly changed the subject.
"Do you have a place to stay or at least a ride home?" he asked.
"Yeah, mhm," was his only response, and to which option, Gary didn't know. Although, in a place like this on the interstate, his options were next to nothing.
"Alright then…well…take care, Seymour. I'll see you Monday."
His hand slid off his shoulder, and he walked away.
The principal kept his head low. He didn't want to talk anymore. He didn't want to look at him. He really had come to Ogdenville to get away from Springfield, but like always, Springfield had a way of finding him. It was a curse, that town.
He must think I'm an idiot, he thought. No, there wasn't any speculation about it. Of course he does. What an asshole…What did he even know about anything just because of a higher paygrade and a dead wife? Death wasn't the same...it wasn't the same. Goddamn it, death wasn't the same!
He let out a grunt of frustration and backhanded the empty peanut bowl across the counter where it crashed into the wall by the phone, and it crashed to the wooden floor with a BANG. He didn't even care at that point who stared. They could all go to Hell.
It wasn't just a fucking matter of missing just her laugh or her smile. Of course he did. Who in their right mind who knew Edna wouldn't? No one, he was sure of it. She had a way with anyone who spoke to her…she really could make you feel like the only one in the room…sometimes…
But sitting there, trying to focus on her through his inebriation only gave him short, fragmented segments of their time together, and it bubbled and dissipated into those happy times his brain was trying to use to soften the blow of her untimely death. Those beautiful memories. Watching them on replay in black and white, far away from his reach, which he feared now was the only way he would ever still feel her.
With due respect to his superior – which at that moment was none by the way – Gary was wrong. While it may have helped him to share memories with his daughter, having anyone close to him who was that close to Edna was a luxury he didn't have. Ned Flanders had a side of Edna he didn't have, and Seymour had a side of her that he nor anyone else in Springfield didn't have. They weren't married and had no children in the end the way Rosemary had left Gary. At least Ned had his sons, but Seymour had no one.
Yet in a way, perhaps it's what he preferred.
Who else could say they had those special moments with her? Those special moments he didn't want to share with anyone. Moments apart from the sex that so many can say they had with her, or even to the simple conversations she had with everyone? Who else could say they and Edna shared nights away from his mother, spent in her apartment when it was too cold to go out. If he concentrated hard enough, he could still feel the weight of her head against his shoulder while they watched reruns of M*A*S*H* over graded school papers. Who else could remember the way he did of the smell of cheap pumpkin-scented candles she wished would hide the smell of her hair that she'd forgotten to wash that morning? It didn't bother him then, and he would always tell her so. But he smiled into his arm that night in Ogdenville, remembering how she would try to hide it under a blanket regardless. Who else had a moment of Edna's life like that? Or even of Edna herself? A woman who felt let down day after day, who often complained of her feet burning from the friction of her hosiery and high heels. A woman let down by the world like he was a man who felt let down by the world. A woman who always seemed to make the weather darken when her depression hit its hardest, but with just a laugh and a flick of her cigarette could make you feel the silver lining around the corner.
Oh, Edna.
Those days he was her whole world, and she was his. Those days lost to time but that would go on in his memory until the day he too would die. Those nights, the two of them alone were his moments of comfort before he ruined it – before he ruined everything. Although he let her slip away from him those past few years, she never held it against him, and often they'd rekindled something still left between them. They still had those fleeting moments in the school hallways in the end, where he knew what mannerisms of hers meant which problem. Problems she hadn't yet talked with her new husband about, but he was always there for her in the back of the school yard with open arms, ignoring the wedding ring on her finger just to feel her heartbeat against her chest when her tears warmed his shoulder.
Lately, he had come to terms with how they ended because, in a way, she still gave him those signals that he still had a meaning in this world. In her world.
And just as that smile came to his face, a pure reflection of his heart's deepest love for her, in those memories of time spent together, it violently averted into a grimace with clenched teeth that pained his jaw. Searing nerves numbed his skin but set a painful fire to his chest as if he'd been stabbed with a wrought iron spike. The sweet smell of pumpkin spice that clouded his nostalgia of that sweet woman dulled and faded into a molded dust. His fingers gripped a clump of his hair, fingernails digging into his scalp with a severity only matched by boiling tears that stung at his eyes.
And then, he let it all go. He sobbed into his arm.
Loud, uneven bursts of anguish broke away from him in heavy roars that echoed in the crook of his elbow where he hunched over the wood of the bar, and it shattered any sense of composure he so desperately wished to cling to.
Other patrons of the bar came and went behind him. Some figured him to be a poor drunk, but others more knowing of a grown man's pain spared their judgement with passing glances of sympathy. Either way, they gave him the space he needed.
The bartender took notice with an air of indifference, however, seeing this same shell of a man several times a week in rotating waves. He may have been numbed to such sadness of others by this point in his short career, but it didn't stop him from taking care of the poor man, sliding him over a fresh glass when he noticed him running empty.
Between large gulps of that alcoholic spice he kept coming and coming, Seymour let out every pent-up emotion he'd kept hidden back in Springfield. Hidden from the faculty who mourned for Edna that he had to counsel as part of his job, from his mother whose words of comfort were how Ned Flanders had it worse, from his friends and neighbors who texted him, asking if he heard the news, but never how he was…and above all, himself.
By the time he'd had another glass put down before him, he patted the countertop to find he'd run out of cash, and he'd already put down everything he had to begin with. Whether or not the bartender took extra for a tip or he really had gone through copious amounts of liquor on his and Gary's dime, he didn't know, and the static tensing through his brain didn't allow him to care. He'd run out of cash, and he supposed that his cue to call it a night.
He finished the remaining bit of his last drink – down to the thin film of water from the melted ice in the glass. He set it down, head spinning from the loud clank it made on the mahogany, and pushed himself away from the counter. His legs were numb, and his motor skills were shot, but it was time perhaps to head home. He was coming down from the psychotic break of his anguish, and a headache was coming on like a powerful storm. He just needed sleep…
Yes….sleep…
Before he realized how far he'd gotten out, he's stumbled into the frosty night air and began immediately to pat his suit pockets and trousers for his keys. Each touch came up flat.
Even in his drunken stupor, Seymour knew he should perhaps had to go back and search below the barstool where they could have fallen out, but all his body seemed to want to do was sway slightly in the cool breeze. Maybe just enough to sober him enough that he could drive…
The wind chilled the beads of sweat still pouring from his forehead as well as the dried streaks of his face where salt still caked his cheeks. But even such a shift in temperature and weather couldn't bring him back from where he'd gotten himself.
But just then, a firm hand appeared beside him and took hold of his shoulder with an authoritative grip.
"Finally. Come on, Seymour."
Seymour only stared down at the shoes of his boss as he was led away by that hand from the front of the tavern toward a vehicle not his own.
He was tucked into the passenger side of Gary's sedan, his legs pushed slightly inward as the other man shut the door behind him. He put his head back against the headrest and tilted it slightly left to see his own car keys tossed inside the cup holder.
Gary must have taken them from his jacket pocket before he left...It was one of his only sobering thoughts as the driver's side door opened.
Gary plopped down into his seat, his weight shaking the car that already made Seymour a bit nauseous considering how much he drank on an empty stomach. He quickly started the car to get the heater going, and as he did, Seymour's head tilted the other way to slump over against his door. He lay there motionless while a hand reached over to pull his seatbelt around him, another one lifting his arm to make sure the belt was fastened and secure across his chest.
"I've already called Agnes." Gary said – although how much of him Seymour could hear was beyond his knowledge. He felt it best to try anyway. "You'll stay at my house tonight in the guest room, and I'll bring you back for your car in the morning." He paused, considering the absolute hell of a hangover looming on the horizon. "Well, sometime tomorrow anyway."
Seymour shut his eyes and only concentrated on the steady rocking of the car as it pulled out of the gravel onto the freeway. He kept his eyes shut to save them from the flashing glares of the streetlights as they passed by.
There was no music, no conversation.
Only once or twice would he open his eyes. Not for any purpose to see anything, or to have any kind of tangible feeling. He didn't care to take in any awareness of the space he occupied nor the world around him. He only cared to see how blurry his vision had become – how distorted his view would be both now and possibly forever. How awful that with every passing thought of Edna, more tears fell to freshen the dried, raw patches of skin that were still so tender from both the harsh weather outside and more chilling emotions inside.
What a world to go on living in, he thought. One that would always go on, day after day, but forever changed as a personal Hell he had to bear.
A world in which he still loved her, but he never even got to say goodbye.