Brian E. Szumsky

He thinks, rather, that dinner had been ok. He’d been trying to match a meatloaf recipe from memory, one they’d had at a friend’s the previous week. Remarkable as meatloafs went with this luminous red color permeating the meat. His just laid there, grey, not enough ketchup or paprika…or what.

“Yours’s just as good,” she says.

To get the fine texture of the beef he’d pounded the raw meat with his fists on a cutting board. He’d let the potatoes roast and the carrots and onions caramelize on the edge of the baking pan. Now he’s trying to see his plate, something like minutes beforehand, to decide whether the piece he took was dried out -- and what comes to him is that he’d forgotten the red peppers.

“That was soul food,” she says, “comfort food.”

He wonders at his own indifference…why he can’t share in her satisfaction. Something affecting his taste buds: an oncoming illness or that tequila from the night before, a tingling he could still feel at the back of his throat.

Peasant food, he thinks.

Before setting the table, he had asked their daughter, Julia, to clear her school papers from the table: spelling words with the long i sound: “twine,” “sky,” and Julia said, “Momma’s going to say no…” about all of them eating at the table together. Usually dinners went about sporadically. They might not eat at the same time. Or one would eat in the living room, another in the bedroom, and he might gravitate between the two or eat standing alone in the kitchen. It was a manifestation of differing schedules, sometimes one or the other working or going to school in the evenings, with Julia, the only constant…

And when Grace sat down at the table, he'd looked at Julia and said lightly, “Well you were wrong, huh, momma did want to…”

Then Grace, with this severe look, had asked, “What are you doing home…why aren’t you at work?” And he'd laughed. “Honey, it’s Sunday…” thinking this was some disorientation from spending most of the last two days in bed. What had finally gotten her up was his pounding of the beef. That and some back scratching…it was 3:00 in the afternoon.

“If this keeps up,” he'd said during the backscratch, “you’d better talk with someone…get some new meds.”

“I’m on enough already…”

“Maybe up the dosage,” he'd replied…as though that were any answer.

After eating a small plate of food, she returned to bed.

It is summer and their back door and windows are open. He can hear the highway, with its steady rush of traffic, like a strong breeze through the trees. Mingled within are the droning of their television and the monotonous chirping of the crickets. In the kitchen, he repeats “basketcase” under his breath, feels her like a chain around his neck.

In bed, she talks about the thousand pounds on her that keeps her from getting up, her friends who pay her lip service but whose true motivations run along the lines of convenience…

As she’s speaking, he looks into her face: the porcelain sheen of her skin, normally lit up from within, is now overrun with a paleness, and with the empty glaze of her blue eyes is like looking into a drained swimming pool.

They’ve been through this before. And she’s good at raising herself out, though sometimes he admits not fast enough for him. This is all an inconvenience, when the majority of the responsibilities are dropped onto his shoulders.

“I really needed a homecooked meal…”

Julia pushes against their bedroom door. Earlier one of her dolls had said to him, “You’re no Prince Charming…” and he'd laughed, and thought, “If only you knew.” He thinks about the young woman from the store he manages. Fantasizes about driving away with her…driving away from Grace and her downward spiral.

He whispers, “You know this upsets her too, your being in here all day…”

“Oh only for selfish reasons…it’s not out of concern for me, for my feelings…”

And yes, he thinks, you’re right, but isn’t that par for a seven year old…

Then, Julia is in the room, lying between them…

He feels the meatloaf rolling in him like a minie ball, remnant of some ancient battle, maybe never fought. On the highway there is this explosion of a truck hitting a pothole, and he jumps as though the shot had found his heart…

Brian E. Szumsky lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. His previous writings have appeared in The Lion and the Unicorn and Marvels and Tales.
 
 
 
 

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