When I came home, supper was almost ready. We traded off days – or, at least, we tried to. We were still in school, and Rhea was still little… less than a year old. We tried to set up a schedule so that we went to class and worked on opposite days… I went to school and worked on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and she went Tuesday and Thursday. Any odd day where we both had to do something, her parents would watch the kid. It was tough, but we had a support system and we were young. Down deep, we knew we loved one another. It was a Wednesday, and I had gone to class in the morning and worked one of my two part-time jobs in the afternoon. I was tired. I wanted a beer. I wanted to melt into my chair and watch TV. I had homework to do, but I wasn’t even thinking about that… an essay on the Byzantine Empire. Ugh. I was starting to wonder about the point of it all. Who cares about all this dead and gone bullshit? Why does it matter? We’re here NOW and we have our own worries.
I knew by the smell that she was making one of her variations on macaroni and cheese. Which variation depended on what we had in the fridge. Sometimes it was ground beef. Sometimes it was tuna. Sometimes she tossed in an onion or part of a green pepper if we had one. A box of macaroni and cheese – the generic kind with the powered cheese packet – sold five for a dollar. I was sick of macaroni and cheese. We were BOTH sick of macaroni and cheese. On the weekends, we ate with her parents. Her mother wasn’t much better as cooks go. But at least it was something different.
Rhea was sitting in her bouncy chair on top of the kitchen table, smiling. People say babies don’t really smile, but most of those people don’t have kids. Rhea was a happy kid; I mean to say, she was normal. She still cried sometimes, like babies are supposed to. She cried when she needed a new diaper. She cried when she was hungry. She cried if the lightening scared her. Babies are supposed to cry. Anabelle was going back and forth between the stove and the kitchen table talking baby talk and stirring the pot like a prospector looking for gold.
“It’s almost ready,” she said.
“Ok. “
“I need you to set the table.”
“Ok.”
I dropped my book bag by the recliner and walked into the kitchen, which meant walking two feet and stepping up. We were living in this tiny trailer near a rural airport. We were about 300 yards from the end of the runway. Sometimes the planes flew so close the windows rattled. I tickled Rhea’s belly. She laughed – it was a tinkling light laughter. Laughter like fire flies and Christmas lights. A baby’s laughter. It was hard not to smile. I squeezed between the table and Anabelle hovering over the stove. I wasn’t sure why she was hovering. It wasn’t as if there was anything complicated to be done. Boil the pasta. Drain. Add butter and milk. Add what have you. Add contents of powdered cheese packet. Stir. Plate. I took a couple of plates out of the cabinet and set them on the table. Rhea was watching me. Smiling. Always smiling.
“Did you have a good day?” I asked Rhea. “Did you and Mommy have fun today?”
“She didn’t want to take a nap today,” Anabelle said.
“Did you give her the warm milk like she likes?”
Anabelle snapped her head around at me. “Do I LOOK like I’m stupid?”
Shit. “No.”
She didn’t respond. She hardly ever did. I set the table. Anabelle took the pot off the stove dished out the gruel. The spoon made a sharp, loud sound on the each plate. I checked to make sure my plate didn’t crack. We sat She was already drinking a can of Coke. I got a beer out of the fridge and sat down.
“What did you do today?”
She looked up from her plate. Her expression said it all. “I watched Rhea,” she spat. “That’s what I did. I watched Rhea. I started laundry, but I didn’t finish it. You’ll need to finish that tomorrow. I also didn’t get to the store. You’ll need to do that, too.”
Sigh. I took a sip of my beer, and flavored the mass of melted powered cheese with some hot sauce. It was a store brand generic hot sauce that was mostly salt and red food coloring; but it helped. “Ok.”
“I haven’t even had a chance to read those three chapters for Early Childhood Development,” she said, “and I’m sure there’s a quiz tomorrow.”
“Study after supper,” I offered. “I’ll clean up and watch Rhea,” I pulled at one of her little toes. She always liked it when I did that.
Anabelle glared at me. “I KNOW you will,” she snapped. “I need to call Janice to see if I can look at her notes. That might help.”
“Don’t you have your own notes?”
The fork slammed down. “I lost my notebook,” she growled. “I told you that. Don’t you remember me telling you about it?”
I didn’t. “Oh, sure.”
She didn’t respond. Rhea was smiling and gurgling. I pulled on a different toe. Her feet were so small. I wondered sometimes how she’d walk on such tiny little feet.
“I’ll leave right after I eat,” Anabelle said.
“Ok.” God damnit, I thought. I didn’t mind watching Rhea. I didn’t even mind if Anabelle went out. But whatever her fucking problem was, it wasn’t my fault.
“We have an appointment tomorrow,” she said.
I looked at her. I must have looked confused. She sighed and shook her head. “Dr. Williams.”
Shit. “Oh. Yeah.”
“Mom is going to come over and watch Rhea.”
“Ok.”
Anabelle watched me for a few moments, her eyes narrowing. “Don’t you WANT to go tomorrow?”
Sigh. I took a sip of beer. “No,” I answered. “Not really.” Dr. Williams was our marriage counselor. We’d been seeing her once a week for three months. It wasn’t helping. This was our second bout in marriage counseling. The first one was six months into our marriage, when we were still living in married student housing. One of our fights were so loud that one of our former neighbors called the police. That was before Rhea. This bout of counseling came after Rhea. We still fought, but it was different. Quieter. Most of the time, anyway. Dr. Williams spent most of our sessions agreeing with Anabelle that I didn’t help out enough, that I didn’t communicate enough, and that I had anger management issues (most often defined as me raising me voice.) It didn’t seem to matter that, of the two of us, the only one who had actually hit the other was her. I’d had the bruises to prove it. Dr. Williams, however, seemed to be of the school that marriage worked best when the husband was whipped beyond belief and the wife was a total controlling bitch. I had made a point to look at the good doctor’s ring finger once. No ring. I wasn’t surprised.
“WHY NOT?” She still had her fork in her hand.
“Because,” I said, “it’s not helping.”
“You’re not giving it a chance. Dr. Williams said you’re not giving it a chance.”
“Dr. Williams says a lot of things,” I answered. “That doesn’t make her right.”
“Do you think you know more than her?”
“Yeah. I think I do.”
Anabelle looked at me warily. “Really? YOU know more than a doctor?”
“A counselor,” I corrected. “And yes. She’s not even married.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Everything.”
“You’re such an ass!”
I drained my beer and stood up to get another. “Oh, go right ahead,” she harped. “Get another beer. Get drunk. Beat me up.”
“I’ve never laid a finger on you and know god damn well know it,” I said, my voice getting louder.
“What about THAT?” she pointed towards the door. It was a metal door, common to older trailers. There was a sizable dent in it from where I had punched it two nights before.
“Yeah, but I didn’t punch you,” I cracked open the beer and took a drink.
“You WANTED to,” she accused.
“Maybe I did,” I answered. “But I didn’t. “
“AH-HA!”
“Oh, so you’ve made a breakthrough?” I asked. I tried to focus on the macaroni and cheese. Looking at it was making my stomach turn. I looked back up at Anabelle. “You think that MEANS something? Well, it doesn’t mean a fucking thing. At least when I get pissed off, I take it out on inanimate objects. You get pissed and decide you’re allowed to punch and kick the shit out of me. Why don’t you ever talked to Dr. Williams about that? Huh?” I shook my head. “Not that it matters. She’d probably agree with you anyway.”
“What’s the matter?” she taunted “Don’t want to admit that you got beat up by a girl?”
“I could care shit less,” I answered. “But you don’t go and see that bitch to help our marriage. You go because she tells you what a good job you’re doing and what a lousy husband I am.”
“Well?” she countered. “Aren’t you? Why aren’t you out working a regular job? Why are we living like this?”
“You didn’t mind it before,” I said. “And what kind of job should I get? Stock boy at Wal-Mart? Maybe a line jockey McDonalds? We both need to finish school, you know.” This was an old conversation. I was sick of it twenty times ago. “Besides, I HAVE a job. I have two jobs.”
“OOOH,” she said. “Well good for you. You don’t make shit!”
That was fair, at least. I worked in one of the offices on campus, answering phones, making copies, and running errands. I also delivered newspapers – loading the big stacks from the printers into the back of my car and taking them around, filling the machines. She had a job on campus, too, and sometimes, she did hair on the side. Her folks helped us by letting us do laundry there, feeding us on weekends, and by being a free babysitter; but somehow Anabelle took credit for that, too. I guess she felt like she could because my family didn’t help out… but only because I didn’t ask them. Also, they didn’t live as close.
“I’ve got two more semesters,” I said. “Then I’m done. We just have to ride this out a little longer.”
“You don’t want to finish,” she accused. “You could’ve graduated last semester, but you changed minors.”
“So I can make more money when I get out,” I said. “We talked about this. You agreed. Remember?”
“WELL I DON’T AGREE NOW!”
“THAT,” I countered, “isn’t my problem! And what would be different, anyway? You’d still be in school because YOU changed majors last year. REMEMBER THAT?”
“I’M ALLOWED TO DO SOMETHING THAT MAKES ME HAPPY!”
“Sure,” I said. “So why do you expect me to be any different?”
“IT’S YOUR JOB!”
“My JOB?” I asked. “Where are we, the 1950’s? Who the fuck are YOU, June fucking Cleaver? If you are, I gotta tell ya, you’re the shittiest cook I’ve ever seen.”
“I KNEW IT,” she was screaming. “YOU DON’T APPRECIATE ANYTHING. YOU’RE A PIG! YOU’RE AN ASSHOLE!”
“AND YOU’RE A BITCH!”
Anabelle started crying. I drank my beer. Then I looked over at Rhea. She was still in her bouncy chair. Her blue eyes were wide open watching us. She still had smile on her face. At least she’s too young to know what’s going on, I thought.
I looked from Rhea over to Anabelle. I tried to imagine Anabelle the way she’d been when I first met her – that was one of the strategies the first counselor recommended. I tried to imagine who I had been when we first got together. We’d been young. We were still young. But it was different. We hadn’t gotten married because Anabelle got pregnant. We’d gotten married because we were in love. I remembered our wedding day. I remembered how she looked the first time I saw her, all wild haired and laughing. Free.
“I can’t do this anymore,” I said quietly.
Anabelle looked at me.
“Look at what we’re doing,” I said nodding over towards Rhea. “I don’t want to do this. It’s no good.”
“So what does that mean?” Her tone was softer. She almost looked heartbroken. Almost.
“I should leave,” I said.
“Where will you go?”
“I can crash somewhere tonight,” I answered.
I stood up and walked back to the bedroom to pack a bag. I wasn’t sure where I was going to go, but I knew I couldn’t stay there. When I walked out of the bedroom, Anabelle was standing in the middle of the living room. She was holding Rhea. I set the bag down and took Rhea in my arms. She was warm and soft the way babies are warm and soft. I could feel the life in her. I could hear her breathing. I kissed her on the cheek. My beard tickled her and she giggled the way babies giggle. Then I handed her back to her mother, picked up my bag, and left.
