scene from home life

“Goddamit, Frank!”

The screen door slammed.

“Jeez, what?” He set down his coffee and, for a very brief moment, watched the liquid settle in the cup upon the table’s equilibrium.

“Frank!” She swished into the kitchen from the front hallway. “Frank!”

She looked at him with the weirdest mix of accusation and pleading, much how Joan of Arc must have looked when they stepped back from lighting the pile under her, he thought.

“Well, what?” His chin rested on his shoulder. No point in rushing the process, he thought.

“You can’t set the garbage can on the bricks like that.” She chopped her hand back and forth in the air. “They’re uneven? Next to the step?”

“Well?” Wait, he thought, that was not right. “I’m sorry.”

"Well! Well!?"

It was only fair, he thought. He had said that first.

“I went to put the last garbage in and the whole thing tipped over. On the sidewalk. And they’re not going to pick it up off the sidewalk. The whole thing is spilled across the bricks”

“Honey!” he moaned. “It was full already. Of course it tipped over.”

“It tipped over because you put it on the bricks that are uneven. I’ve told you. You know that.”

“But…” He knew before he said it that it would not work. “…I balanced it.”

“Frank!” Her hands on her hips made her look taller. It defied reason, he thought, looking at her. The skirt of her muu-muu flared out from under her hands. Why did she wear that? He wondered. It was old lady clothes. And yet she looked like a tropical flower, dangerous and seductive.

“Frank!” She knew he was not paying attention to her words. He smiled to think of what if she knew what he was paying attention to.

“Frank!” Again, pleading and accusatory. Amazing. Joan of Arc never got very old.

“What do you want me to do?”

“The coffee grinds are all over the sidewalk!" The import struck her suddenly. “You put coffee grinds on top of the garbage can! It was full! Frank!”

His hands turned out, palms up. “You put the paper bag on top when it was full.”

“But the coffee grinds are all over the sidewalk now.”

Amazing, he thought. He sat back and looked at her. Her face was glowing with the humidity that was already expanding the air, though it was barely seven in the morning.

“Frank, are you listening to me?”

He smiled.

“Frank!”

“Yes?” he said, still smiling.

“What in god’s name is so funny, Frank?”

He turned his body toward her, in the chair, to get a better look.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?”

”Come here,” he said.

“The coffee grinds are all over the sidewalk.” Before she had quite finished the sentence, she stopped. Suddenly she understood.

(first published 7.9.07, 7.24am)
dedicated to my dad