When Everything Was Brown
by Anthony Varallo
I don’t know what to say about those photographs, the ones from the years when we lived in a brown house, drove a brown car, owned a cat and a dog—both brown—and seemed to be perfectly at ease dressed in brown at every holiday meal. Even the food in those pictures, upon closer inspection, also seemed to lean toward brown, heavy on bean casseroles, Salisbury steak, and French onion soup. All I can say is that that was fine with everyone back then, or so it seemed to me. No one said anything about it. It just felt like normal life, you know? You’d wake up for another brown day in your brown bed, pull your brown comforter across your brown pillows, brush your hair with a brown brush and wrestle a brown sweater over your head. That’s just what you did. That didn’t seem strange to anyone. No one minded if you climbed into your brown car and drove to a brown office building overlooking a brown park, brown leaves turning upon brown branches. No one noticed any of that. What would there be to notice?
It wasn’t like you could say anything about it. Could you imagine that? Someone saying how strange it was that everything was brown? How would people react to that, even if it was true? Would they regret their brown loafers and sportscoats? Would they feel oddly embarrassed to sit at a brown kitchen table fitted out with four brown chairs, each one topped with a brown cushion? What would you want them to do about it exactly? Hide their brown belts and brown corduroys from their neighbors, who, by the way, also wore brown and also dried their chins upon brown bath towels?
I guess what I’m saying is, it was hard to tell in the moment that everything was brown back then, even if that seems totally obvious now. Even if that’s something we wouldn’t do today. Unless, of course, we’re totally doing something like that today, but we just can’t notice, because we can’t look back upon today yet, at least not for a little while. We’ll need some time to pass, and then we’ll be able to see the thing that we can’t see now, whatever it is. And think how foolish we’ll feel. God! We’ll be amazed that no one ever noticed the thing that’s so incredibly noticeable, the thing that will be without a doubt the first thing everyone in the future notices, because it is so painfully obvious—how could we not have seen it?
But here’s the thing: I won’t be embarrassed by it, whatever it is. I won’t. Because what good would it do to be embarrassed? Nothing, that’s what. So, go ahead, take a picture. That’s right. Get it all in. Everything in its embarrassing due. Because I was there when everything was brown, and I’m still here today when everything is whatever it is. See me smile!
Anthony Varallo is the author of a novel, The Lines (University of Iowa Press), as well as four short story collections. New work is out or forthcoming in The New Yorker "Daily Shouts," STORY, One Story, Vol.1 Brooklyn, DIAGRAM, and The Best Small Fictions 2020. Follow him at @TheLines1979 or anthonyvarallo.com.
