29
Pete walks through the front door on Tuesday at six and stops in the dining room to admire the mountain of unread mail I’ve moved there. “You really run a tight ship,” he says. I’ve just refereed a fight between Greer and Iris over who owns the guitar that my dad gave them for Christmas. It deteriorated into one of them saying the other had ugly fat hands, and there were tears. I’m not in the mood to take it from Pete.
“Well, it’s my ship for the next fourteen years,” I say. “So please ring the bell when you come.” I haven’t raised my voice; I just said the words. These words are true and right and perfectly reflect my reaction to him in this moment. I should have been doing this all along, and that makes me angrier.
“God, Ali. What’s your problem?”
“I’m angry,” I say. Again, completely true.
“Well that’s new,” he says.
I stop and stare at him. Is it new? He’d know, as he’s actually the only other person in our almost-over marriage. Well, besides my mom. “I think I was always a little angry, Pete. It just never had a chance to boil over,” I say. “Maybe today I’ve gotten angry enough.” Now that I’ve said this I know it’s true. When we were married, I never got angry enough. I was appeased and distracted, and it was always easier to just let it go. But now here we are, just the two of us, and I’m angry.
He does not apologize. He does not change his tone. He rolls his eyes and brushes past me toward the kitchen. I grab his arm and turn him back to me. “I don’t want you talking to me like that anymore. I’m done listening to it. So from now on, choose your words carefully or you’ll be picking the kids up from the street. This is my house.”
When they’re gone, I feel like standing up to Pete has cleared my vision. I sit at my kitchen counter amid the wreckage of the day, the week, possibly several years. It feels like if you woke up one day and noticed you were drowning in credit card debt. How did I let this happen?
“Mom,” I say to the puddle of syrup by my left hand. It’s impossible that this is my house.
Oh, Alice.
There is so much in front of me to do. I cannot get up to rinse and load. “Mom, I wish you’d just let me figure it out.” She doesn’t reply.
The bright red wing of a cardinal passes in my peripheral vision, as so often happens when I think of my mom. I turn to look and it’s not a cardinal. It’s just more of my mess. I’ve left the cabinet by the window open and what’s caught my eye is a red poppy painted on the side of the soup tureen my mother gave me at my bridal shower. It’s huge and takes up the length of an entire shelf. I drag myself off my stool and walk over to close the cupboard so I don’t have to look at it. But instead, I pull it off the shelf and open it. I gaze at the red poppies painted on the inside. Those poppies have never been covered by soup. Not once in thirteen years. Even resting on the counter, that tureen feels heavy in my hands. Heavy with my mother’s idea of what my life might be like. Maybe a life that involved inviting people over for soup. A life where we didn’t just stand around the kitchen serving ourselves off the stove. I have never hosted a dinner party with a soup course, and I have no intention of starting. I don’t even have six soup bowls that match. This tureen is heavy with unmet expectations.
I think of Ethan telling me to move toward things that make me happy. I run my hands over the poppies painted on the lid, and I feel bad. I was raising kids and trying to force Pete and me into the shape of a happy couple. When was I supposed to be making soup? When was I going to be so in control of things that I would have time to transfer soup to a tureen before serving it just seconds later while it was still hot? I do not need to hold this soup tureen to my heart to know that it’s the embodiment of all the ways I am a disappointment.
Honestly, Alice. This is a bit much.
I smile at the sound of her voice and lift the tureen off the counter. I lug it into the garage and place it along the far wall. It’s the first item to leave my kitchen in a long time, and I feel a release when I put it down. “It just wasn’t a good marriage, Mom. Things were never going to be right.” I sit for a few minutes in the silence of my garage waiting for a response. I know.
I have tears in my eyes, but I am lighter when I go back into the kitchen and am welcomed by that entirely empty shelf. I wet a washcloth and wipe it with reverence.
This lightness starts to move throughout my body. My eyes clock the breakfast dishes and my feet move me to where they are. I load them into the dishwasher and wipe the counters. I want to see clear spaces, and I start to talk to myself out loud in my professional organizer voice. “When was the last time you used this? Is it something you need to have within reaching distance or can we put it on a high shelf?” I take a garbage bag and toss in the plastic containers that may or may not be killing me. Either way, if I think about dying every time I pick one up, they’re probably not doing me any good. I move two weeks’ worth of newspapers to the recycling. I carry the laundry basket into the basement and start a load of whites.
With no paper or dirty dishes in my line of sight, I see what is left. I am my own client, moving through my kitchen objectively as if I’m staging it to sell to myself. Everything that meets my line of sight should please me. The platform with a hook for decoratively hanging bananas—gone. The Costco-sized Palmolive dish soap—stashed under the counter. Three of the four rolls of paper towels I currently have in use, to the basement. I work until my coffeemaker is the only appliance I can see. I like it where it is, next to my mother’s jar of coins.
I decide to make two areas in the garage—one for the Salvation Army, and one for things that Pete might want. I will give Pete time to go through it tonight, and then it’s all going to be gone.
I pile mismatched dishes and souvenir coffee mugs into crates along with Pete’s abandoned juicer. I find a device that turns potatoes into waffle fries, and I deposit it in the garage, where it will eventually find its way to a person who thinks that’s a good use of time. I toss spices that expired before Cliffy was born. I toss a broken pie plate and three dried-out bottles of glue. Broken pencils, years-old school directories, lids to things I no longer own. I want to play music but I don’t dare interrupt my momentum. The movement of things into my garage feels like its own symphony.
It takes nearly two hours to clear out my kitchen. I sit at the counter and take it in, my geraniums nodding their approval from outside. I could have done this years ago. I stop and wonder if this would have made the difference, if I’d still be married to Pete if I’d just cleaned up. I imagine Pete walking through the door and looking around appreciatively, smelling the dinner warming in the oven. I try to imagine it again with me hopping up to welcome him and asking for the details of his day. Neither rings true. It wasn’t just the house getting out of control, or even me going quiet. I resented that he got to go to work, and he resented that I didn’t. He was hurt because I disappeared; I was hurt because he let me. It was never right. I don’t think love is supposed to be transactional.
I must give myself a break; those are the rules. But I don’t want to. This is the best I’ve felt in years. I am infinitely more relaxed than I am after taking a candlelit bath. I have a little time before Pete will be back with the kids, and I make myself a cup of ginger tea and pick up the crossword puzzle.
They walk into the kitchen and Greer is the first to speak. “Were we robbed?” I think she’s kidding.
“I got inspired. Looks great, right?”
Iris runs her hands over the kitchen counter. “We should pick flowers.”
“Yes,” I say.
Cliffy gives me a hug. “I love it, Mom.”
Pete is frozen in the doorway. “It looks like it did when we moved in.”
He’s somber about it and I don’t want him to be. “I know. A life accumulates a lot of stuff, and I guess you need to pare it down more than every ten years.” Iris is sliding off her shin guards but is also listening.
“I don’t understand,” Pete says.
“Come into the garage,” I say. I am aware of how neutral I am feeling toward him. I don’t feel angry or awkward or any of the things I usually feel. It’s like I actually cleared the air. “I made two piles. Stuff neither of us wants, and stuff you might want. Take what you like and I’ll donate the rest.” I have a bit of showman energy about me. Like I am the Wizard of Oz or a game show host, inviting him to behold the museum of discarded items in my garage.
Pete picks up his juicer. I don’t tell him that it’s got seventeen pieces that all need to be hand washed after every use. He takes a World’s Best Dad mug and a few kitchen towels. It’s sad watching him do this and I usher the kids back into the kitchen. I want to move toward the happy thing.
Pete puts his stuff in the car and comes back to say goodbye to the kids. “Really looks great, Ali,” he says.
“Thank you,” I say. And I feel it again, that certainty that this wouldn’t have made any difference. And if it would have, that’s not love anyway. Love is not If you clean up, I’ll help you through your grief. I’m not sure what love is, but I think it’s something different from that.