Routine

“I don’t care,” she said. A silence ensued that made her wonder if he was still awake. “Are you there?”

“Yes, I’m here,” he replied with unmistakable indignation in his voice.

“Well, are you going to say anything?”

“Why would I say anything, when you won’t answer any questions that I have?”

“I did answer your question!”

“No, you didn’t answer my question. Whenever I ask you questions like that, you don’t answer it; you answer a different question. And no matter what I ask, or how I phrase it to try to get you to answer the question that I was really asking, you only repeat the answer you gave to the question you thought I asked the first time. You feel like I’m telling you that your answer is not good enough, and you’re right. It’s not. It’s not even the right question.”

“Well, then what did you ask?”

“Never mind. You don’t care.”

“I hate it when you do that passive aggressive crap!”

“Would you prefer that I were truly aggressive?”

“No. I’d leave you in a minute if you ever touched me.”

“So, what do you expect from me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Think about it.”

“I don’t want to think about it! I just want to go to sleep!” With her typically loud statement, he rolled over, gave a strong snort through his nose, and settled into position to sleep. She continued to lie motionless staring at the blurry, dark ceiling for a few moments more. The dog shuffled between them, and the sound of the fan took over.

She woke exhausted after having bad dreams throughout night. Her clothes were wet with damp with sweat again. Once during the night she arose to change from her drenched pajamas into dry shorts and a shirt. Bad dreams, sweaty bedclothes, and very little sleep were becoming routine for her. Not to mention the other part.

With his teeth slightly clenched, he rolled over and put his feet to the carpet. She always liked carpet better because of the warm feeling you get when your feet touch down compared to the shock and agitation you get when you touch down on cold hardwood. Knowing this about her, the last time they were looking for a place to live, he agreed to get an apartment with carpet, even though the dogs wreak havoc on the pale fibers. His morning routine continued as he wriggled into his clothes, put the dogs’ collars back on, and clicked their leashes in place as she made her coffee.

Outside the air was muggy as usual. A thunderstorm during the night had left it a little stickier outside than normal. It caused the skin on the back of his knees to peal apart after bending down to fill the plastic bags with the steaming piles from the already panting dogs. She walked over and deposited the bags in the receptacle, carefully dodging all the other land mines left by lazy dog owners. “I want to watch and see who this is, so that we can turn them in to the front office,” she said, with no intention of really doing it.

The coffee was dripping into the pot and had collected enough to pour a full cup. She pulled her favorite mug from the cabinet and filled it to just the right level. Two sugar-extract packets and a teaspoonful of creamer made it just right. The satisfying moment she had been waiting for was marked by the inevitable slurp and smack. He sometimes asked, “Why do you do that?” With a smirk she’d reply the same each time, “Just sucking the flavor out, honey,” a comment that would give him that boyish twinge he knew he’d have to suppress.

With coffee in hand, she slowly sat down to watch the morning news. “Strong winds downed trees and knocked out power to 1,300 residents last night,” the well made-up minor celebrity belted out. She heard the shower begin to spray with hesitant power and the curtain screech closed on its rod. He always took a shower first, leaving her to wait fifteen minutes so the tiny water heater could muster up the clout to coax another showers worth of water to warm up. The clown-faced anchor was failing miserably in keeping her attention. She watched the gimp legged dog slowly climb into his chair and begin to lick the dew from his feet. Somehow this was more interesting than the news of another car bomb in Iraq, the sort of news story that was commonplace to hear in the morning, given the time difference.

“Evalen?” She was jarred from her musings on the dogs tongue. She set her mug on the coffee table. “Evalen?!”

“I’m coming!” There was the nearly tangible agitation in her voice as she made her way into the bathroom. She knew what he wanted. Laundry was a weekend activity, which of course meant washing towels. Reaching below the sink to pull out a clean towel, she saw the bottle of personal lubricant that was a catalyst for bad emotions. She felt her throat constrict and her face get hot. She handed him the towel, turned and walked out without saying anything. Just a sharp glance in his eyes so that maybe he’d get a small amount of the agitation she felt.

“Whose turn is it to fix lunches? Did I do it yesterday? What day is it anyway? Oh, yeah. It’s Tuesday.” She sometimes talked to herself as she went through the day, without realizing it. She made noises too, thinking they were only in her head. He would laugh at her and never tell her that she was spouting nonsense, especially when they were in a long line at the grocery store. The other people around always smiled but kept quiet too.

She pulled the peanut butter from above the refrigerator and set it next to a paper towel she’d laid out, struggling with the twisty for a few seconds before finally being able to pull four slices of bread from the thin plastic. She placed them in a square and generously spread the brown paste over two slices, thinking how it would taste at lunch when she ate it. “Oh, I hope we have enough jelly.” The jar was nearly empty, but there was just enough there to cover the other two sides of the sandwiches. “Goooood,” she said as she spread the last bit over the fourth slice of bread. Preparing and thinking about food calmed her down a bit.

As he walked into the kitchen for a glass of water he said, “What are you making for me?” As soon as he said it he knew he shouldn’t have. He saw her take in a deep breath, and his stomach dropped leaving him momentarily feeling scared. “I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have said that. I know you’ll take care of it.”

“Thanks,” she said flatly. It was hard for her to let go of the emotion quickly.

Turning the knob on in the shower, she tugged on the end of the strap releasing her robe. Hanging it up on the hook adhered to the back of the door, she stepped into the not yet warm flow. “Ugh!” Within seconds, though, it was too hot for her to bear. She adjusted the knob to get the temperature just right, enough to steam up the mirror but not enough to redden her skin.

He sat down on the toilet and pulled in a cleansing breath of the humid air and slowly let it out imagining that the bad feelings of the night before were going out with it. “I’m sorry about the way I acted last night.” He waited for a few seconds to see if she’d respond. “I just get really upset when we talk about it. It scares me, because I think you might leave me over it.” Another long pause ensued. “I love you and it worries me to know that you are upset so much. And it makes me think that it’s all my fault. I’m the one who got you into it, and now we can’t seem to stop…but I can tell that it is causing you to be angry a lot. It seems like you are directing all that towards me, and we fight a lot.”

“Brit…”

“Wait. Let me finish. I know that we’ve gained a lot of weight in the past few months, and it’s keeping us from being able to have sex. Hell, we don’t even use the lube for that anymore; instead, I have to lube up my thighs before I go to work, just so they won’t chaff. We’ve needed to buy new clothes every month, and we can’t afford to because we spend so much on food. And we both know how restrictive that feels.”

“Brit, when I see myself in the mirror it looks like I swallowed a blimp.” He couldn’t help but laugh at that a little. “It’s not funny!”

“I’m sorry, but that was a little bit.”

“Well, I didn’t think so…ugh, what are we going to do?”

“I’ll tell you what. Let’s call in sick to work today. I can call and schedule an appointment with a dietitian, and we’ll go together to see her. I saw a book online yesterday that will help us break out of the nightly binging routine that we’ve gotten ourselves…well, that I’ve gotten us into.”

“But what does that have to do with today? You could schedule the appointment at work and pick up the book on your way home.”

He smiled and looked at her. “Today, I’m going to show you that I love you, Evalen. With all my bulging body, I love you.”