he made in community college. I can tell you which drawer knobs are just screws sticking out, which drawer holds his bag of weed, which contains the love letter I wrote him after our first significant date.
The blanket on his bed is new. The new thing jumps around in my stomach. Good? Bad? Don’t know. And there’s that other salmon, propped above the window trim.
“Show me the kitchen,” I say.
A safe place, the kitchen, because it showcases more of his roommate’s stuff than his. He steps ahead of me, into the yellow and green space, and he lifts a yard sale find from the counter: a glass Chemex coffee urn.
“And look.” He shows me a fresh box of vintage cone filters that reek of river-killing by-products. The address on the box is listed as Pittsfield, MA.
It’s the weirdest thing, seeing that city printed there, “I lived there as a kid.”
“You did?”
“Two years.”
The things about me my husband of nine years doesn’t know. And the things he thinks he does. And the things he really does. It’s complicated, this dance. Especially in moments such as these: small movements into uncharted waters. Filters, blankets, history, future.
We have run out of things for him to show me this evening, so we’ll either make out on the couch like dry-humping teen-agers, or we’ll start an argument. I look at my watch-free wrist, “Guess I’ll go get that ice cream.”
In his voice is his own measure of regret. “These things are not marriage-busters.”
But he’s not really speaking to me. That’s the thing that’s different this time. We are putting asunder, just like that caution in the vows. Each of us finding in ourselves, a willing partner.
Spiraling Along, One Day at a Time
Around the table sit Morris, Hester, Yolanda, Wellfleet, and Bob. Their mom, Irene, is in the kitchen, dishing out chili. It’s their first meal in the new apartment, and chili is a ritual. Not the sort of chili you’re used to having. This is stuff made from chunks of pork. The beans have been soaked in rusty, orange water. The peppers, they’re from two apartments ago, those little plants on the west-facing balcony. The onions came from Safeway’s produce dumpster. Everyone loves this chili except Yolanda, who just last week turned into a vegan.
Yolanda is having nothing. Irene told her she could just fucking starve. This isn’t the kind of family, Irene told her, where the mom caters to every little whim of the kids. Yolanda said she’d just move in with her father, then. Go ahead, said Irene, go down to the public library and try to look him up in the Las Vegas phone book. According to Irene, Yolanda’s dad is the biggest miscreant of all the kids’ dads. He’s the one that got busted for hiring Mexicans to dig the foundation of an apartment complex and then called the INS on payday. Actually, he didn’t get busted, he got beat up. Really bad. Supposedly, only one of his eyes works now.
Yolanda has shaved one side of her head, and the other side, she dyed the hair of it teal. This would be okay with Irene, who believes in self-expression, except that Yolanda paid to have it done instead of doing it herself. The money Yolanda used was supposed to go toward a deposit on the phone for the new apartment. It was money Irene had put in an envelope under the mat and now it’s gone. Irene’s damned if she’s going to make a side dish of vegan chili for her thieving little rebel of a daughter.
Yolanda is really the only bad one of the kids. Hester is slightly brain damaged, and very sweet. Wellfleet, as you might have guessed, is a nerd. Morris is fat. And Bob, well, he’s too little to figure out yet. Of all Irene’s kids, Bob is the palest, and most snot-nosed. He has the sort of skin that is mapped in blue lines all winter. His skull resembles a gourd, somewhat. He wets his pants every other day. Irene probably loves him the most. Bob is her tubal ligation baby. The end of the line. And Bob’s
The blanket on his bed is new. The new thing jumps around in my stomach. Good? Bad? Don’t know. And there’s that other salmon, propped above the window trim.
“Show me the kitchen,” I say.
A safe place, the kitchen, because it showcases more of his roommate’s stuff than his. He steps ahead of me, into the yellow and green space, and he lifts a yard sale find from the counter: a glass Chemex coffee urn.
“And look.” He shows me a fresh box of vintage cone filters that reek of river-killing by-products. The address on the box is listed as Pittsfield, MA.
It’s the weirdest thing, seeing that city printed there, “I lived there as a kid.”
“You did?”
“Two years.”
The things about me my husband of nine years doesn’t know. And the things he thinks he does. And the things he really does. It’s complicated, this dance. Especially in moments such as these: small movements into uncharted waters. Filters, blankets, history, future.
We have run out of things for him to show me this evening, so we’ll either make out on the couch like dry-humping teen-agers, or we’ll start an argument. I look at my watch-free wrist, “Guess I’ll go get that ice cream.”
In his voice is his own measure of regret. “These things are not marriage-busters.”
But he’s not really speaking to me. That’s the thing that’s different this time. We are putting asunder, just like that caution in the vows. Each of us finding in ourselves, a willing partner.
Spiraling Along, One Day at a Time
Around the table sit Morris, Hester, Yolanda, Wellfleet, and Bob. Their mom, Irene, is in the kitchen, dishing out chili. It’s their first meal in the new apartment, and chili is a ritual. Not the sort of chili you’re used to having. This is stuff made from chunks of pork. The beans have been soaked in rusty, orange water. The peppers, they’re from two apartments ago, those little plants on the west-facing balcony. The onions came from Safeway’s produce dumpster. Everyone loves this chili except Yolanda, who just last week turned into a vegan.
Yolanda is having nothing. Irene told her she could just fucking starve. This isn’t the kind of family, Irene told her, where the mom caters to every little whim of the kids. Yolanda said she’d just move in with her father, then. Go ahead, said Irene, go down to the public library and try to look him up in the Las Vegas phone book. According to Irene, Yolanda’s dad is the biggest miscreant of all the kids’ dads. He’s the one that got busted for hiring Mexicans to dig the foundation of an apartment complex and then called the INS on payday. Actually, he didn’t get busted, he got beat up. Really bad. Supposedly, only one of his eyes works now.
Yolanda has shaved one side of her head, and the other side, she dyed the hair of it teal. This would be okay with Irene, who believes in self-expression, except that Yolanda paid to have it done instead of doing it herself. The money Yolanda used was supposed to go toward a deposit on the phone for the new apartment. It was money Irene had put in an envelope under the mat and now it’s gone. Irene’s damned if she’s going to make a side dish of vegan chili for her thieving little rebel of a daughter.
Yolanda is really the only bad one of the kids. Hester is slightly brain damaged, and very sweet. Wellfleet, as you might have guessed, is a nerd. Morris is fat. And Bob, well, he’s too little to figure out yet. Of all Irene’s kids, Bob is the palest, and most snot-nosed. He has the sort of skin that is mapped in blue lines all winter. His skull resembles a gourd, somewhat. He wets his pants every other day. Irene probably loves him the most. Bob is her tubal ligation baby. The end of the line. And Bob’s
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