“Get some water.”
Don grunted his way up, his skinny legs like pipe cleaners in his blue jeans. Sylvia wondered what he might have looked like if he’d fattened up a little. She’d figured he would the way most people do. Most men don’t stay rail thin but spread in the middle, and their faces broaden in a way she thought manly. Not Don. He was strong though, stronger than he looked. Sylvia thought his hair especially unruly today, spiky like the goldenrod bushes she liked, uncut, not careful shrubs, but radiant and irreverent. She knew that wildness was nothing to admire. Anything out of control was beautiful only to the distant looker, the woman passing by swiftly in the moving car.
Don searched the fridge, sliced a small section of butter into his hand. Butter greases the insides, his mother used to say. Every morning if they had it his mother gave all three of them still living at home a pat to eat before they separated to school and work. Don held (just for a moment) the slippery fat between his fingers before he popped it in his mouth. Of course the bad stuff would slip out of his body riding out like on a greased slide. His sister would do a quick chew then swallow hers to get it over with. But his baby brother, Nate, struggled and whined making the whole process a much bigger production than it had to be. Don hadn’t thought about eating butter for a long time, but now the moment seemed a kind of communion with the three of them standing and waiting for the fat to melt on their tongues. He hadn’t meant to think about that right now, but there in his wife’s kitchen, his sister’s narrow back rushing out the door, the way he was accustomed to thinking about her, always leaving, always gone. Dead now. And a clear picture of Nate, just as he was back then, a skinny kid, his face squeezed from worry, standing beside him, waiting for the world to let him down. Don had not meant to think about any of that. You are way the hell too old when butter can bring down a whole world of experience to you.
Don brought a bloody-looking drink made from carrots and beets to Sylvia. He took a long drink. “What is this red mess?”
“Don’t drink Ava’s stuff. Find something else.”
“Good god.” Don shuddered. “What the holy hell!” Don said and wiped his mouth, shook his head in disbelief.
“I told you not to drink it.” Sylvia shrugged. “She didn’t make that for you. She’s got enough on her without you taking her special food.”
Don took another swig just to make sure.
“What did you take another drink for?” Sylvia laughed. “I swear to God you are an idiot.”
“That’s some nasty mess.”
Sylvia laughed. He could always make her laugh, even if she also despised him at the same time.
Don replaced the container in fridge and wiped his mouth. Several familiar pictures stared back at him from Ava’s fridge. Ava and Henry at the beach in lounge chairs. Ava standing with the tellers at the bank, a flickering cake on her desk. Her happy face reminded him momentarily of Jonnie. He hadn’t forgotten about Jonnie at all. But anybody paying attention knew they weren’t a forever couple. That was easy math. Sylvia would always be in the picture, it was as simple as that.
The kitchen was his favorite part of the house. Each instrument, pan, and object had a reason to be, a function you could name. There had been days when he let himself in the house just to look around and touch the hard things with purpose, the oversize spoons, turners and graters, pots and chopping boards, all there, all seeming more necessary that he was.
Sylvia was still folding the towels, creasing the stained washcloths, stacking them for the closet. Her semiretirement has meant that she had time for things like folding laundry in her child’s house. The joy. She would admit that she did like the idea that Ava would come home and see her chores already done.
“That juice hit the spot.” He sighed.
“Do you know anything you haven’t heard before?” Sylvia rolled her eyes at Don’s willing face.
“Let’s sit here.” Don pointed to the space in front of the couch.
“I’m not getting on the floor with you.”
“It’s clean. Come on.”
“I do the cleaning around here and I know it ain’t. Forget it. I need to take a nap anyway.”
“Do you still love me, baby?” Don hadn’t meant to say that. It wasn’t a trick or some line to get Sylvia’s attention, but an honest question, one he wanted to know the answer to.
“Why do you want to start all that mess?” Sylvia yelled flecks of angry spit in his direction. The quick meanness of it startled him.
“I don’t know,” he said as he reached up to her, coaxed her shoulders forward, guided her to the floor. She rested her head on his shoulder, though that’s not what she was set on doing at all. She looked twisted and uncomfortable leaning into him like that, and Don worried over the contortions Sylvia had to do to be close. Don smoothed her hair, wanting Sylvia to be soothed, if just for a minute, like she was finally okay, finally awake from a bad dream. He loved the way Sylvia could open herself up for him, as easily and quickly as a child, her ire and disappointment forgiven or at least held in abeyance as her body slackened and fear rippled through and then escaped her face like an ousted demon. Just as quickly as she leaned into him she sat upright.
“JJ Ferguson came by here yesterday.”
“About time.”
“You know how many years it’s been? You understand that don’t you?”
“What did he want?”
“Why don’t you understand anything, Don? What makes you such an ignorant ass?”
“I’m not ignorant.”
“I’m happy to see him. Do you understand that?” Sylvia knew Don couldn’t understand. He had never really wanted anybody, not really, not more than a few minutes. Not in the ways she’d wanted. Nobody but his mother anyway. Any longing that went beyond his own gut, his own selfish pleasure, was beyond his comprehension.
“You don’t know, Don. Why I waste my damn time, I’ll never know.”
“I know you’re not happy to see me.”
Sylvia laughed. “I haven’t been happy to see you in about twenty years.”
“How did he look?
“JJ? He looked like you’d expect. Older. Good.”
“Did he say anything? What did he have to say for himself after all this time?”
“What could he say? I’m just glad he came.”