kindred spirits*

I've been reading a lot. Just finished the last of three books about families and their little problems. So, naturally, I'm channeling these subjects a bit. :) This is the beginning of a story, maybe, or just a step into a character's development, but I'm warning you that he is not necessarily like-able, neither is he completely dislike-able. Like most people. I know it's long. Just read it when you have a chance. No skimming. :)

*

He was that gelled sort of insincerity that looked like a button-up Hawaii shirt with a gold bracelet, and chest hair. Today, he was annoyed, and his jaw was twitching like he should have something to say. His girlfriend, Melanie, was asking questions about his ex-wife, and there was something provoking about the way she tried to see both sides, the way she tilted her head like she was looking into him, or worse, looking into the past, where his bright-and-popular ex hummed every-other-line of a Karen Carpenter song in the kitchen, looking busy and helpful. His wife’s desire to please him was obvious, even in the memory, a pink fever under her skin. When they touched, this smoldering made him uncomfortable, and guilty for his cool hands with their narrow, almost-invisible blue veins. He avoided touching her.

            “Hard or runny?” She had asked, holding the skillet out with both hands, as if it were very heavy. The uncooked egg had unsettled him, as so many things did at the time, and he had answered her crossly. In the end, she had burned the egg, overwhelmed the tiny sun with the hell of the stove, and possibly the heat of her gung-ho, but with an Oh, Neil, she made him feel responsible for the failure, and guilty for having a egg-preference, and guilty for not appearing grateful, and guilty for not helping in the first place. He thought if he had volunteered to help with breakfast, here honey, give me that, the kitchen wouldn’t smell so burnt, and maybe she would be happy, and maybe she would remember the whole Karen Carpenter song. Neil felt guilty for feeling superior to his little wife in her little apron with her little weak wrists and that heavy iron egg-pan. He felt guilty for buying her the apron and the iron egg-pan, for trapping her with these things, with household items that were nothing special and she knew it. He felt guilty that she knew, and here she was still, scraping blackened egg into the sink, while he hid his shame in the morning paper. He didn’t like to read, but reading was better than talking. He felt guilty because he hated her so much.

            Melanie was still giving him that look, less scrutinizing that blank, as if she was in the long-ago and far-away kitchen with him, reading the sports section over his shoulder, frowning at the egg, and watching his wife, mesmerized by the blue and orange roosters on the apron. She shook it off.

“But seriously, Neil, you’re supposed to learn something from it. You don’t go cheating on your husband for no reason, usually. I mean, I’m not saying you drove her away or anything, I’m just saying—“

            “I know what you’re saying.” Neil was tired, and he noticed, as he looked down at his fingernails, that they were yellow: dirty, unsettling yellow, like a smoker’s wallpaper. Twelve years ago, he had repapered the guest bathroom in his first house; poor ventilation in that room meant that whoever had regularly smoked in there had practically asphyxiated himself with ash and nicotine, and his lungs had no chance of making off better than the wallpaper, so heavy and saturated with smoke that it had begun to peel away from the plaster. Neil had imagined the previous resident, sitting on the toilet after a long day with a cigarette. Probably, his wife didn't want him smoking in the house, or her husband didn't know she burned through a pack a day, or some teenager thought it was his secret, and his mama pretended not to notice that the wallpaper curled and turned. Maybe that mama smoked in there too, because her son was keeping secrets, and her husband was keeping secrets, but in the bathroom there were just familiar drawers, and the sink, and the other household items that she had selected, one-by-one, with power and care. She had settled this room. She had made it match. She had chosen. Nothing like having children. Or getting married.

So the wallpaper was yellow and Neil had to tear it down and air out the room with giant fans, and then reassemble the feeling of order. Out with the old, in with the new. His radiant wife had watched him work with something more intense than approval. 

Melanie was watching him with another kind of intensity when he looked up.

“I left her home too much and she couldn’t forgive me, I guess. We moved to California and fell in love with other people.” Neil watched Melanie trying to fit his story together, and he heard each word strike her eardrums with a hollow dong, like an old church bell pillowed in fog. He could see that she was dissatisfied, so he added, “She fell in love with some Presbyterian, and I met you.” More bells. He hadn’t said, directly, that he loved her, and Melanie had noticed. She fell in love with some Presbyterian, and I—met you. Dong. Dong. Neil knew she would drop the subject now; he had frightened her with his tone, and something more—like she could hear the clock striking too, tasted the fog, and felt they were counting down to the end of something.