Thursday, March 01, 2007
So much water so close to home
Last night I complained because my wife bought potato chips. I have complained about this before. In the interests of the kind of titilating confession a web blog is supposed to offer, below I shall I rank my complaints about potato chips in descending order. The descent will be from my ostensibly wholesome complaints to the atavistic ones they hide.
1) They might give our son poor eating habits.
2) While I would never go out of my way to eat them, if they are around I will eat them.
3) I fear my wife will eat them by the handfuls and get fat.
4) They are white trash food.
While I hewed faithfully to numbers 1 and 2 in the subsquent argument, I felt sure my wife suspected the loathsome presence of numbers 3 and 4, the latter of which she probably read in the context of prior aspersions I may have intimated about her extended family.
She is sometimes physically demonstrative in arguments, so she picked up the bag, crushed all the potato chips inside it, and threw it away. My son's face doubled up as the injustice of the situation overcame him, my wife left the room, and I was left to soothe him while we ate the burritos that my wife had prepared for us. She had bought the meat and tortillas on the same trip to the store in which she had also procured the disputed chips.
She didn't talk to me for an hour and a half.
That night, she came to bed with one of my Raymond Carver books. She never reads Carver. She likes to curl up in bed with a flashlight to read long, accomplished novels of fantasy, imagination or suspense. But here she was kneeling in the middle of our bed, the book opened to somewhere in the middle, just kneeling there reading it.
"Why are you reading that?" I asked, surprised.
"No reason," she replied.
"What do you mean, no reason?" I asked.
We always tell each other our reasons for everything. I thought about the Carver stories, with their couples who talk past each other while the silences between their words hold the truth of their relationships.
I watched my wife's eyes scan the page, and I decided I should speak before it was too late.
"You're going to divorce me, aren't you?"
She looked up from the page and smiled. ¶ 5:21 PM
1) They might give our son poor eating habits.
2) While I would never go out of my way to eat them, if they are around I will eat them.
3) I fear my wife will eat them by the handfuls and get fat.
4) They are white trash food.
While I hewed faithfully to numbers 1 and 2 in the subsquent argument, I felt sure my wife suspected the loathsome presence of numbers 3 and 4, the latter of which she probably read in the context of prior aspersions I may have intimated about her extended family.
She is sometimes physically demonstrative in arguments, so she picked up the bag, crushed all the potato chips inside it, and threw it away. My son's face doubled up as the injustice of the situation overcame him, my wife left the room, and I was left to soothe him while we ate the burritos that my wife had prepared for us. She had bought the meat and tortillas on the same trip to the store in which she had also procured the disputed chips.
She didn't talk to me for an hour and a half.
That night, she came to bed with one of my Raymond Carver books. She never reads Carver. She likes to curl up in bed with a flashlight to read long, accomplished novels of fantasy, imagination or suspense. But here she was kneeling in the middle of our bed, the book opened to somewhere in the middle, just kneeling there reading it.
"Why are you reading that?" I asked, surprised.
"No reason," she replied.
"What do you mean, no reason?" I asked.
We always tell each other our reasons for everything. I thought about the Carver stories, with their couples who talk past each other while the silences between their words hold the truth of their relationships.
I watched my wife's eyes scan the page, and I decided I should speak before it was too late.
"You're going to divorce me, aren't you?"
She looked up from the page and smiled. ¶ 5:21 PM
