Sam
I should be brewing coffee and heating up this place, but I’m pestering my wife instead. After I’ve whispered, “Good morning,” too many times, she’s finally objected, rolled on her side, and covered her ear. This means she’s had enough. Two of three pillows have met their demise on the floor just beside. I could give up, but instead I tuck my knees into the crook of hers.
“It’s Saturday,” I say. It’s not like I want to be alone. I don’t think that’s needy, pushy, selfish.
I hear a groan. “Another hour,” she asks and then, “just one more.”
My hand makes its way up her shirt, a faded jersey in white and gray reminiscent of high school locker rooms in the seventies. And she rolls to her back, ginger hair sprawling out like she went to bed with it wet. Nowhere near Vogue-ified.
“What time is it?”
“Nine forty-five,” I say.
“Just one more hour.”
But she resumes her back-to-me position, disappearing into fluff. I tug the comforter over her shoulder. Then I slide my feet off the bed, slipping cold toes into wool slippers. I glance back at her, sound asleep. I guess that’s just enough time to warm that dessert loaf and scramble some eggs.
After sneaking out the door, I shuffle downstairs and into the narrow hallway, mechanically switching this heater off, which says it’s sixty-four in here. I feel tired, heavy. But I need kindling—that and several sheets of newsprint and this pack of matches. I stoop at the stove as the heater empties itself one last time before a day of hibernation.
My mind’s a haze as I roll newsprint into cylinders. Knuckles curl. Roll and repeat. Obituaries become kindling. Real estate becomes kindling. The latest on the select board, the school board, the library board, the planning board, the zoning board. Nationwide protests.
Above this layer, I overlap sticks and top my masterpiece with the most substantial log of them all. Then a flick of the match and paper ignites into flames that crawl leisurely forming a trail of black singe that glows orange at its edge.
I shake open yesterday’s paper, flipping past the crossword puzzle and comic strips in hopes that Ms. Abigail Van Buren, which is now her daughter, might possibly offer some advice. But the only letter I find is Worried Wynne in North Carolina, who has just discovered inappropriate text messages from her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend.
A scenario that sounds like Ella in there, who stands true to the lesbian pact that we all must remain friends with our long string of not quite into yous. That’s never actually been my modus operandi. If you’ve slept with her and it’s over, in my book, you never speak to her, look at her, Facebook friend her, or think about her ever again.
In fact, my better half has kept in touch with most of her has-beens, even though most have been demoted to mere sidewalk nods.
Jessie, though, not so much. When the title ex was not yet registering, she was the embodiment of inappropriate to the tune of stopping by that shop a few times a week—and not for bagels and cream cheese. I’m pretty sure my then-fiancée half enjoyed the attention—to hook me (which it did) and to make me jealous (which it also did).
And just like Worried Wynne in North Carolina, I found those messages. That phone was rattling across the kitchen counter while she was indisposed one morning. They were glaring at me, provoking me. Innuendos. Inside jokes. Who did this has-been think she was? Her intentions were crystal clear right down to her winking emoticons.
I could’ve looked away or left the room. I could’ve placed that phone in the drawer, where it usually lived. I could’ve trusted her or, minimally, confessed. But I didn’t. And that was (undeniably) unforgivable.
Fast-forward a few months to a lovely day when my wife and I were still overnight bags and three-hour daily conversations.
A farmers’ market. Town center. Sunscreen-scented air. Relishing that vitamin D infused sunshine. Picture sunflowers and asparagus. And her index finger led me past those vegetable bins up and across the stretched tent to a slender (strong) androgyne in her midthirties perusing produce. That’s the first time I saw that winking emoticon in the flesh, and it shot a surge of possessive right up my spine. Her long-short haircut, the strands that tumbled down her forehead. She thought her tan made her hotter than the red habaneros she was eyeing. And she was right.
I watched as my competition brushed along, scanning chalked signs, pausing to listen to street musicians. She wasn’t the sweet type nor the cute type nor even the pretty or handsome type. She was Ella’s type.
“Let’s go say hi,” I heard.
Can we not?
Her hand dragged me—past pigeons, along tables and backed-in pickups, and beyond plastic buckets of sheared flowers—to introduce us. We shook cold hands, me sporting my horizontal smile and her holding two cantaloupes to her flat chest.
Then came that husky voice.
“Hey, Red, how’ve you been?”
Seething, I was. My tongue found its way to the top of my mouth and I took her in as she conversed with my girlfriend, intimately. Her ease. The slack of her shirt on her small frame, and those biceps. But as soon as her attention came back on me, I softened into a convincing enough fake smile.
Why am I still riled by this woman? It’s absurd. It’s every time they speak or even so much as look at one another. It’s who they were. It’s someone else. It’s more than me. It’s never platonic.
I roll up Worried Wynne in North Carolina and toss it in the coal bed, now fluttering like the wings of a monarch butterfly.
* * *
Ella
I’m sound asleep when the aroma of brewed coffee and something sweet spirals up to the bedroom. Leave it to her to turn this epic fail of a weekend into days and days of bliss.
I confess. I never do this sort of thing for her. She’s making me look like a bad wife. I think I’ve given her flowers once since we met, and those were lilacs plucked from our own yard. It gave her a massive sneezing attack, so they met their demise in the compost pile pronto. I did make her a chocolate marquise when we were dating, which apparently sat in the car too long in eighty-eight degree weather and, well, imagine that. I could probably write a book about failed romantic gestures. I have far too much experience in that area. But why try? Nobody could outrank my wife. Samantha Lasley: the last of a dying breed.
And now just thinking about breakfast is making my stomach growl. I can actually hear it amid her banging and clanging downstairs. Something sounds like it’s sizzling over the occasional thunk on that cutting board. She’s up to no good. I honestly blame her for these ten happy pounds I’ve put on since we wed. It’s enough to make a girl long for the days of heartache.
I stretch.
In the background, the distant melody of my wife humming a tune. How cute is that?
I hobble out of bed, cursing to myself that she woke first and left me to fixing this mass of linens all by myself. Which is precisely when I spot the clock, and damn. All of yesterday’s shoveling, the snowshoeing, it must’ve really done me in. I haven’t slept this late in ever.
I fix the bed, though, and feel heat once I hit the staircase. As soon as I reach the kitchen, I tell her good morning. Then I do that little ahem thing to get rid of the scratch. The house smells of sweet and hickory.
“What?” shouts the chef as soon as I reach her side. “No!” But this is not the response that I had envisioned. “What are you doing up?”
Did she not hear me moving around up there?
“I couldn’t sleep with this racket.”
“This was supposed to be a surprise.”
“It is a surprise.”
“No,” she whines, eyes welled with disappointment. It’s almost pathetic. I can tell this means a lot to her. “I was going to bring you breakfast in bed.”
“Oh.”
She motions me over to the other side of the kitchen, away from her. That means I’m crowding her space. I oblige and step back. “Now that you’ve ruined your surprise.”
“Babe, this is a surprise. This is amazing. Are you kidding me?”
A loaf of gingerbread’s warmed, its cup of molasses and half cup of sugar obviously the scents that lured me down in the first place. She’s also scrambled eggs with her to-die-for secret recipe which she won’t even share with me on her deathbed, so she says. I guess I’m stuck with her, happily, if only for the eggs.
She’s squeezed two glasses of orange juice, fresh. Like, really squeezed. There’s even a pot of fresh-brewed coffee, which she pours me along with a hint of French vanilla creamer. No sugar. A colorful snip of evergreen’s propped in a vase on each tray. She bought trays! I feel grateful with a dash of Methodist guilt as I recall my bed-fixing bellyache not five minutes earlier.
“I need to get silverware and napkins and…How big?” she asks placing a knife on the loaf.
“I’m starving. It’s nearly lunch.”
“It’s not nearly lunch. How’s this?” Still I move that finger over just a tad to widen her cut. Then I brush up behind her, resting my arms around her hips. “Not while I have a knife in my hand.” Once the first slice falls to its side, I fork a bite of her amazing eggs and gush about it being the best I’ve ever had in my life. And I mean it.
“Whatever. You’re biased. You’re married to me.”
“God, I don’t know what you put in these, but—”
She chuckles. “I said that very same thing to you the day we met. Remember? I recall kicking myself for being so unoriginal.”
I’m touched she remembers.
“What in God’s name did you see in me,” she asks. “I’ll never understand. You made me such a wrecked-up bundle of nerves. You know, I just wanted to be near you that whole night. Instead I had to work and listen to Aunt Annie and Gidget share medical stories I wish I could unhear. At the very least, it did give me a nice angle where I could check you out. That tight shirt and black pants, dressed up like a penguin. And that ponytail couldn’t hide this,” she tells me, running fingertips through my hair. “My brother told me you were drop dead—”
“Whatever.”
“He was right.”
“Not.”
“Why is it straight people think they can play matchmaker if they meet another single lesbian—any single lesbian. Anywhere. Like we’re all somehow into one another. It’s pretty absurd.”
“I know, right? But you really shouldn’t have been hitting on random caterers.”
“As I recall, you hit on me.”
“Not quite.”
“Quite,” she says.
“How do you figure?”
“Babe, you saw me checking you out and you nearly dropped that cake.”
“And who was checking out whom?”
“I was watching you set up,” she tells me.
“No, you were checking me out.”
“Where does this go?”
“How was I to know,” I say.
“Babe, you were obvious. You were hitting on me.” She gives me an oh-so-charming grin and then says, “Not that I minded.”
Back to our familiar silence, we dole up plates full of all things delectable and eat in the living room on our little wooden trays that she bought specifically for this occasion, though they were intended for use in bed I now know.
And we ramble through our breaking-the-ice topics: the storm and the weather and shoveling and our aching triceps and, “Did you sleep well?” I sniff this evergreen, which offers a hint of Christmas. And I ask about her family, which predictably gets her fired up and chattier than a ten-year-old on a shot of Mountain Dew. If it wasn’t for me digging, she’d happily sit back and listen to me hemming and hawing, ranting and raving for hours.
Sometimes her silence is nice. Other times it makes me wonder what’s in there. It’s always a relief to learn that it’s just family stuff, which leads to some work stuff, which segues back to me. We finish eating around the time my eyes begin to glaze over. That’s when I get up and collect our trays, carry them into the kitchen, and load the dishwasher as she silently tends to her fire.
* * *
Sam
I could think of better ways to spend the day, starting with a trip to Lowe’s for a snowblower and ending with a night on the town. I’m wondering if I should’ve called up United months ago and booked us a flight to Aruba. Hindsight, they say, is 20 / 20. Right now there’s the matter of our roof, which is going to collapse.
What’s worse, I’ve never used a roof rake in my life. I just need to steady myself, I suppose, while extending this wobbling twenty-foot pole overhead and balancing in knee-deep snow. It’s so far from suave. My wife’s more engrossed in shooting a video of it on her phone, which she’ll post and tag for our entire world to see—folks I grew up with, went to college with, currently work with.
“I’m glad you find this amusing,” I shout as a whoof of snow tumbles to my feet. “This isn’t exactly easy. You could help, you know, like clear some of those icicles before I get impaled.”
She peeks around her phone without so much as a word. I tug down another thick avalanche, crawling to the next section. Rake, chop, pull. Then a call comes in, and she ducks into the garage to take it.
I’m finally getting the hang of this when I catch her struggling toward me, hair peeking out from that gray hoodie that frames her face. She’s not even wearing a coat, so her cheeks are beginning to match that lipstick. In her typical urgency, she plods through, stumbling to her knees as she nears. I’m thinking this is what should be on video.
And that’s when I hear the unexpected (yet expected): “Work beckons.”
“What!” You’ve got to be kidding me, I think—sniffling and tucking from the wind. She buried what little pleasure I had beneath a heavy mound of disappointment.
“It’s not like I can leave it all to that thin crew.”
“How hard is it?” I snip, unable to mask my agitation.
“The line’s out the door. Busier than we thought.”
I peer into those soulful eyes now seeking my approval. But that’s just not something I can offer.
“They need me,” she says. “Like seriously pronto.”
I need you, I think.
“I won’t be long, I swear.” She offers a tight-lipped kiss. It’s unfeeling, or so it seems, and it leaves me incomplete. I don’t think I’m unreasonable or moody; she’s wrong about that.
With knuckles tucked in those stretched sleeves, she balances back like she’s on some sort of tightrope. And soon enough, she’s backtracked all the way to the garage. The door slams. The engine starts. She waves good-bye, and I stuff heartache into bottomless pockets.
I listen to her wheels crunch off, half tempted to follow. Get in the car. Turn the engine. Park and step inside where it’s toasty and she’s orchestrating, slipping into that corner unnoticed and unforgiving. Didn’t Hey, Red do that? Would I make her excited like that, or just hardened and still uptight? Because I would insist, stewing and stubborn. I would wait for her to finish.
But I don’t do anything of the sort. Instead I step inside this silent house. One toe forces off the heel of my boot until both are dripping on the rug. I hang my wet coat. A glove slips off, still in the shape of my fingers. This is the perfect age, I think, when the leather’s soft and pliable and worn. Molded to my hand.
I entertain myself for hours before she finishes work. Who doesn’t want to spend her anniversary on her knees and up to her elbows in Bon Ami cleanser? At least I’m dressed and ready to go by the time she even gets back.
“What are you doing up there,” I shout, “sewing the dress yourself?”
I’m picturing scissors, ribbon, and spools—and that way her tongue wets the strand before she threads it. Sure, patience is a virtue. But I’m reaching empty. I’ve already quadruple-checked the tickets, balmed lips, vacuumed ash, and started the car so it’s heated when we leave—if we ever do.
“I’m coming, I’m coming. In just five minutes.”
And my high-maintenance wife is still getting ready.
“We still need to eat, you know.”
After the bathroom opens, I hear her scrambling room to room. At least she’s moving faster now. “We need to get going. You said the roads are slick. And we’ll need parking. On a Saturday night. Downtown.”
Her pace slackens with each creak of the staircase. Why do I feel like an awkward kid waiting for a prom date?
“I know, I know,” I hear in a voice now abundantly louder. When she appears around the corner, arms overhead, fingers fidgeting with that honey-colored hair of hers.
“My, my, my, my, my.” I sigh, leaning back against the dining room table.
“Oh, stop it.”
“You. Look. Hot.” I peer into my phone screen and snap a quick photo, moseying my way closer to this bombshell.
“I don’t. Stop it.” But she does. Her hair’s cinched somehow in a low, messy knot sort of thing with a few strands falling down. Add nude lips. And that dress on those curves with that neckline that only she can pull off. And legs. Damn. This does something to me, is doing something to me, and she knows it. But she hasn’t worn anything even remotely like this in too long, if you ask me. There’s been no reason to.
“You’re my new wallpaper,” I tell her, finding the right button.
“You’re nuts. I thought we were running late. Who’s procrastinating now?”
Select, save, and into my coat it goes. That’s when my hand makes its way down to hers. “I’m not nuts.” But I sound pretty feeble about now. “And I’ve been ready to go for nearly an hour.” The bow of her hip, it makes my mind wander. Something that always happens at the most inopportune times. “So you’re ready?”
“Got the tickets?”
I (loudly) sigh, leading her to the coat closet. I love it when she answers my questions with her own. “They’re in my pocket.” I get her coat down, suspending it in midair. Once her fingers find their way through the sleeve, she does this pivot thing to pull it up to her shoulder. Afterward she points her toe into knee-high boots that cinch with a zip.
“This is exciting.” She’s hunched to secure her second boot.
“Had that storm hit two days later,” I say. We would be playing Scrabble or Parcheesi instead.
That’s about when the door lets in a fierce chill and that procrastinator bolts to the car before I can even lock the house. Getting out will do us both some good. My wife is beyond self-absorbed—stuck on that shop, even though she’s spent half the day there.
Fortunately as soon as we hit the highway, our ride into town gets surprisingly smooth, restoring my faith in the public works department. It never ceases to amaze me when we get hit with a blizzard like this one day and then—poof—roads are wet and salted the next, totally drivable. At least throughways like this one.
“Don’t put me to sleep,” I tell her as she scrolls and settles on a playlist. And while she does her DJ thing, I take in the scenery. All of this fresh powder’s making everything festive. Pearly fields. Farms glow under a setting sky as if Monet smeared it all in smoky, silvery, ashen. It’s starting to put things into perspective, at least for the time being. It makes everything feel okay.
And we make the bend past a church steeple piercing the haze. Snow, like cotton, lit in azure blue. Pint-sized houses nestled in a nook, the glow of ginger peering out their many windows. Smoke billowing from stone and brick into hills sheltered with barren trees.
It’s tranquil. About as tranquil as this music my disc jockey just turned on, which I’m not at all into.
“Can we not listen to whining folk music tonight?”
“What’s wrong with my music?”
“It’s not very…upbeat.”
“But this is my fast folk mix.” I give her the eye. “It’s upbeat.” I furrow my brow to add emphasis.
“Normally okay, you know that. Just not today.” With that, she buries her nose in the screen, scrolling. “Do you remember when you dressed like this every time you saw me?”
“Are you disappointed?” she asks, even though I know she couldn’t care less.
“No, I rather like you in a pair of Levi’s,” I say, slipping my hand to her knee. “But I like this as well.”
“Watch the road.”
She’s tugging her hem above the knee and crossing those legs of hers. That ought to keep us out of an accident.
As soon as we reach town center, we hit a red. I glance over at her and then again. I watch the way her lashes fall and flit. It’s so everyday, yet unfamiliar. I don’t know where we fell into this…settled, overlooking so much. She did, and I did.
And I guess that’s when I shift the car into park because I’m letting off the pedal now and leaning over, feeling her warm thigh beyond the hem of her skirt. And we’re sinking into this kiss and it twists and ascends and dips. It falls into me, steadfast and relentless. And I guess that light turns green again because I hear honking behind and she’s offering such a curious smile as I put it back in drive.
Now that it’s warm out (with barrels of salt on this blacktop), roads have glossed over. It splashes all the way up Main Street. Above, rooftops drip to gutters, which are weighted by icicles.
“How’s this?” I hear. “This is my coffeehouse mix.”
“This is comatose,” I say with a wink.
We drive across rainbow-speckled blacktop. Streetlights, headlights, shop lights streaking across the windshield like a kaleidoscope. A pedestrian enters a crosswalk. Downtown’s desolate for a weekend and just beginning to wake.
I pull up to the parking garage, veering up its concrete lip. My window hums as it falls, and I fetch a stub. Past the wooden arm, fog crawls up the window becoming dangerously thick by the second. That’s when my wife hits defrost.
We take curve after curve after level by level to the tune of concrete slabs. Then I center the car smack-dab between two white lines. We settle into our comfortable routine.
“Don’t forget the tickets,” I hear for the umpteenth time. “Do you have them?”
“Yes—the show tickets, the parking ticket, your phone so you don’t have to carry it, tissues, your lipstick…” I slam my door before I finish, finding my way to her hand. And I walk to the beat of heels clicking on the pavement.
On Main Street, the clamor of rubber and exhaust drowns us out. We make our way through the crosswalk to a sidewalk on the opposite side, which is dimly lit by those gothic posts.
I pause to peek in the music store past my reflection to those guitars. She wants to keep walking away. This is about the time I drift off. I’m tuning, singing “Drive,” telling bad jokes to a small dive crowd, breaking strings, sleeves cuffed, and then she breaks in with, “You’re no Melissa Ferrick, but I love you anyway.”
I just give her a look.
“Keep practicing. I have earplugs.”
I would be insulted if she wasn’t so smitten by me.
We’ve reserved seats at the nicest restaurant in town. That’s not to say it’s uber high class. But it’s as high class as we’re ever going to get. I pull the door and follow this goddess in, where our hostess stands by a pedestal. Her eyes meet mine, though my wife’s the one vying for her attention.
“Party of two. Lasley,” I say. “We have reservations.”
* * *
After signing a credit slip for our whopping one hundred fifty dollar meal with drinks and sweets, I tuck the pen in the binder and slide it over to the edge of the table. Ella takes one last drink of water, ice tumbling, before she stains her lips strawberry—something she always does after a meal out.
“I hope you got enough to eat,” I say, rising to help with her coat.
“I could’ve skipped dessert.”
I just shake my head.
It’s a shadowy restaurant. Crystal chandeliers drop from elegantly high ceilings and sparkle across pressed tin ceiling tiles. I hold her coat as she slips an arm delicately into one sleeve and then the other. Coated up, we wind our way through the maze to the front lobby. I pause to grab a mint from a tray before slipping mittens on.
“I think we’re early,” I tell her. Then we push through the door together. The snow’s returned, resting along fine limbs up above. I can feel flakes featherlight as they melt on my skin. We huddle together, heads ducked, down the sidewalk.
“I love you,” I say in the most unromantic voice imaginable. “Your hair smells like coconut.”
“You like?”
“I kind of do,” I say. “You have my permission to buy this stuff again.”
I get the same expression back that I give her. Then I finger loose strands of hair that have fallen across her forehead.
“There it is,” she says.
A scrolling marque reads: Friday and 7:30 p.m. and Giselle.
“But is that the line?”
“Doesn’t look open yet.”
The place is pretty out-there. Picture neon red meets violet on brick. An angular facade, a touch of Neo-Renaissance, with prominence suitable for tuxedos—at least, in a more cosmopolitan region. And that line wraps and crawls around it. I follow the smooth tempo of heels until we reach the end. That’s when my shivering companion inches forward past anchored benches and a glassed-in cast list.
I whisper privately, “You know what this reminds me of…?”
“The Nutcracker,” my wife says.
“Have I told you this story?”
“Only a million times.”
I feel dejected, which must show on my face.
“It’s cute. Really, babe.”
I’m thinking about women wrapped in fur-lined capes. Perfectly choreographed plies and pirouettes. “We should do that.”
“Do what?” She sounds so disapproving.
“Have a tradition every winter, like now—”
“I don’t know about that. Traditions can be kind of, I don’t know, monotonous. Don’t you think?”
“Tradition doesn’t mean boring. Just familiar. That’s not always bad.”
“Tradition is doing the same thing over and over and over,” she says. “How is that not monotonous?”
I continue to harp.
She raises her eyebrow.
I twist my lip.
She rolls her eyes.
I wink.
“What time is it?” I ask.
“It’s six forty-five.”
Then we opt to listen to conversations as opposed to engaging in one of our own.
And eventually we step inside, my fingers tingling. I marvel. The ceiling. That carved wood. It’s antique right down to this worn carpeting at our feet, which we follow, guided by ushers, making our way to a staircase leading to our own balcony—and we’re hidden above rows of chatter.
“Can you see?” I open the program, sinking into my seat. An ankle settles on my knee.
“Yes, perfectly,” says my shadowed companion, leaning headfirst to watch a crowd of heteros file in just below. The program’s barely decipherable under jewelry light and tells me tidbits of absolutely no interest. Though they would be to her.
And soon enough, the room dims and heavy drapes are lit. A conductor enters and bows. Applause soars into a hush. A dramatic pause, a shift in the seat. A page is flipped. And the melody begins. Flutes dance in leaps and lulls. Violins flitter until a second curtain rises, gathering section by section until it unveils a quaint autumn day. A cape crossing before troops of loose skirts on laced slippers.
I turn to my wife, lit and entranced, and I’m more entertained by her than the show itself. I feel for her hand in the darkness, finding her knee instead. And there are no butterflies, for her or me. She doesn’t even acknowledge me. I’m not holding my breath or flexing or tense. She’s not pretending. I’m not wondering or worrying, tortured or longing. There is no apprehension. It’s really the most wonderful thing. This.