The Jeffermans Review Their Life Choices by Max Sheridan

They will tromp through your back yard with flashlights at night, they will run their hands over the hood of your car, they will go home for dinner and eat pot roast and baby potatoes with smiling parents, they will scroll through the photos on your phone, they will scour for clues. They’ll solve your murder, they’ll find your killer. Everyone will congratulate them, everyone will tell them thank you, we always knew you could do it, your mother especially, taking their hands in hers, if only she’d known you, she’ll say, if only she’d known some boys like you.

Max Sheridan

The Jeffermans Review Their Life Choices

The Jeffermans finally burrow into Bob Tanner’s bedroom

It all seems so trivial now—the incessant arguments, the alimony, the acrimony—now that the Jeffermans have finally figured out a way to burrow into Bob Tanner’s bedroom at night and watch him sleeping, defenseless, next to his wife. Who, they both ask themselves, who is laughing at who now?

The Jeffermans cancel their NYT subscription

Elaine Jefferman tells Louis Jefferman she’s finally done it. She’s cancelled their New York Times subscription. Louis is eating breakfast. He asks a few perfunctory billing questions, finishes his toast and then retreats to the den and prostrates himself before the bubblegum-colored man with the fat baby head and retractable jaws who signed them up all those years ago, begging forgiveness.

Eliza Jefferman returns home from college for Christmas

For six days the Jeffermans communicate in tense sticky notes left on countertops, tables and the mantlepiece. On the seventh day, Eliza Jefferman threatens to self-immolate. You don’t understand me, she writes on her final neon green sticky note addressed to both her parents. You’ve never understood me. She ransacks the kitchen, searching for matches, but only finds old Bubbeh Jefferman, living in a peach crate under the sink.

Louis Jefferman confronts Elaine Jefferman with the perplexing news that he’s shrinking

In the marriage counselor’s office, Louis Jefferman says he remembers slipping into his favorite Perry Ellis slacks and gasping when he discovered they were two sizes too long. Elaine Jefferman says she doesn’t remember snorting, nearly spilling her Martini, and saying to Louis: “Ok. Ok. You’ve caught me, Louis. I threw out your old pants and bought you these larger ones so you would think you’re shrinking. Just like in the story, Louis. I want to drive you mad! I want to reduce you to sniveling infantilism so I can steal all your money!” Louis Jefferman remembers retiring to his study, chastened, with the wrong end of the Martini shaker, wondering if he should phone his actuary just in case. Elaine Jefferman doesn’t remember going online and ordering another pair of pants for her husband, these ones four sizes too long.

Isaac Jefferman quits the oboe by mail

Isaac Jefferman sends a sticky note home to his parents from Berklee Music School in Boston by FedEx. He’s quitting the oboe and enrolling in culinary school in Madrid, the note says. Elaine Jefferman is on the first flight to Boston. Months later, the private investigator brings news. Elaine has been discovered in Napeague, Long Island. In a series of freak accidents, she got on the wrong flight, changed her name to Betty D’Arcy and has been living with a line cook from Morty’s Oyster Stand in Amagansett ever since—but is happy to finally be going home.

Louis Jefferman remembers his wedding day

When asked about his wedding day in a past life regression, Louis Jefferman recalls a howling grey wind with an amorphous, long-armed being at the center of it. He recalls shouting at the malevolent creature until his tonsils bled. He also remembers the sardine canapés Elaine said she’d ordered for the reception, but which never appeared.