Women are from Venus
Young Mind of Medium “Blues Call”
Paul Wood was one of those men you wouldn’t want to see yourself pitting against in an argument.
The reason was quite basic; unless you were over 8 feet and constantly looked like you were itching for a fight, you were at a clear disadvantage. He was like a bear on steroids and purposely impolite in that way only steroidal bears can be. People who were not making their points from five feet away had to crane their necks to look up at him, and at times all even that managed to accomplish for some was a sight down the dual barrels of his nose.
If someone were to be found in the disadvantageous position of having to mention to Paul (in the gentlest terms, of course) that he had forgotten something, it usually meant they were about to find out the hard way why it shouldn’t have mattered much to them. He almost always added that if he had forgotten it, then it might not have been worth remembering in the first place.
The context for this argument, although as old as time, found a new meaning in his person, if only to the small group of interns he was responsible for at his work. Nobody ever questioned the presentations he failed to make. The youngsters grimly appreciated him for his arrogance. Everyone believed he always had some better things to do, or better places to be, some going as far as to imagine he held an important position with the company. And the worst thing of all was that Paul believed it himself.
But the context, when it failed, did so usually in the crimson gaze and the stolid expressions of his wife. It just so happened that at times he totally forgot to give even a dime’s worth of thought to something his over-anxious urban wife often considered pivotal to their stale marriage. Nine times out of ten, he managed to stand her up at the neighborhood parties, but at least, that was expected to be in the norm of someone who needed to catch up on his presentations. Somebody once remarked, to her belittled pride, she should start seeing other men, if only to not look lonely while the others were immersed in a waltz.
Brianna, however, was not the completely unforgiving kind. She yells, mutters, grunts, sometimes even casually messes up her husband’s dinner, but in the end, she always finds out that she’s not quite relentless. She was, after all, losing her figure to the sickle of diabetes and even the prospect of finding another man did not seem appealing. And therefore, for year after hopeless year, she’d let herself believe it might be true her husband only forgot things that weren’t worth remembering and that it was her fault that she wasn’t worthwhile.
In any case, she didn’t mind not being able to showcase the man she loved to those people who for themselves were as double-faced and vicious as a double-edged sword. But it’s the date of their anniversary that’d got her thinking, and the date of her own birthday. He wouldn’t be able to tell either if he were to be caught off guard. Aren’t anniversaries and birthdays supposed to be the cornerstones of celebration of any marriage? Did that mean her husband considered the one day that marked their holy union not worth remembering?
There hadn’t been an anniversary cake in forever.
There hadn’t been any presents — except the ones she gave to her bewildered husband who, unsurprisingly, had to take some time in figuring out what they must have been for. How bad she must have been hurt every time, the poor thing. Her man forgot his own birthdays for Christ’s sake.
When Paul woke up at 11 pm in the cold night of a late November weekend, he wasn’t sure if what he had for his wife was only of a mixture of love and hate or just the latter. He riveted his groggy eyes to the flashing blue lights of the muted television while trying to place the muffled source of the alarm in the crevice between the couch cushions. He then went to the kitchen, exposed his face to a stream of water and drank some to wash down the knots of drool accumulated at the threshold of his throat.
He turned the television off and got dressed up. Without waking up his wife sleeping in the bedroom, he saw himself out, closing the door softly behind him. He tumbled to his garage where a decent military green Toyota stood to attention. He climbed inside the sedan and maneuvered it on to the road.
In an hour, it would be his wife’s birthday. He knew he had never really cared about such trifles, but it was becoming impossible with Brianna. Lately, he felt he wasn’t getting the respect a husband deserves from his wife. However hard he tried to put enough meat in the fridge, enough clothes in the wardrobe, she always accused him of one thing or another.
But forgetfulness?
Was she kidding him? There’s forgetting something and wanting to forget something, and Paul was sure he knew the difference. He never gave a thought to his own birthdays, and for a reason.
However, let the dead past bury its dead, he told himself, and that this time, he would try and make things right with his wife.
So he drove, slowly in the calm of the night, although unsettled at the thought that he had to do this. “Oh these women and their convictions,” he muttered under his breath. “Women are from Venus! Good ole John Gray got that right!”
He drove two miles, swerved his car around a puddle and stopped in front of Maisie D’s, which was the biggest bakery in the area. The lot in the front of the store was nearly empty, save for a couple of hatchbacks that seemed to be parked for the night. He had called ahead previously during the day and had asked for a cake of really specific and ornate decorations to be picked up an hour before the store’s closing. He stepped inside the dimly lit store and walked directly to the counter.
“Mr. Paul Wood?”
“That’s me.”
The man behind the counter shuffled to a display cabinet, retrieved a full cake and placed it on the counter. Paul looked at it and was instantly shook by its beauty. It was layers of sponge cake baked with meringue, an assortment of sliced almonds dwelling in whipped cream, with rum custard strewn about in careful chaos. The vanilla layer on top was hollowed out in order to accommodate the words “Happy Birthday, Love” written using perhaps butterscotch and chocolate cream. It was also adorned with sliced strawberries planted haphazardly and edible flowers in rows along the perimeter.
“Verdens Beste,” the man announced with a sense of pride. “The best in the world.”
For a fleeting moment, Paul caught himself wondering if his wife deserved any of this. The thought of his wife robbed him of his temper, his mind torn between listening to the voices of his ego and that of his pity — the former for his wife and the latter for himself. Should he be worried he was losing ground as a husband?
“Hundred dollars.”
It made Paul’s heart skip a beat. “For the cake?”
“Well, it’s the best.”
Now, Paul was more withdrawn than ever. He didn’t think surprising someone on their birthday would come at such a great cost, although he knew Brianna wouldn’t fall for ten-dollar muffins bought at a cheap store. But this was certainly overkill, even if it would win his wife over in a tick. His train of thought was harshly interrupted when the guy said, “Sir, do you have the money?”
“Do I look like I don’t?” Paul dug into his wallet and retrieved a single note, one of the last few. He handed it over to the man behind the counter, then eyeballed him to a staredown as he made his way back to the exit. It was like he was gripped with an uncontrollable fit of anger and he couldn’t speak until it let go of him. His face was hard, his teeth held tight against each other. Just as he was opening the door to see himself out, the employee called his name, as if he wanted to challenge him. In way of reply, Paul lifted his right hand and held out a rigid middle finger.
Back in his car, he felt so pathetic that he began to bang the steering wheel with his head. After venting off some steam, he revved the whispering engine of the Toyota as best he could and started on his way back home.
The time was 11:54 pm by the time he had parked his car in the garage. He slowly picked his way inside the house. He went to the bathroom and splattered water onto his face. As he stepped back into the hallway, he saw his perplexed wife standing at the threshold of their bedroom.
“Honey . . . why are you not in bed? Why are you dressed up? Where have you been?” He took in the picture of his sleepy wife and for the first time since waking up, he felt something in the vicinity of love softening his senses to a near calm. She was wearing a transparent nightdress and her bewildered face was a mess of tangled hair. He guided her to the living room.
“What do meringue, almonds, vanilla, and strawberries mean to you?” he asked.
She twitched her face, trying to grasp the moment and make some sense out of it. “A cake?” she ventured, her face lighting up with the possibility, just the possibility of a day she had forever yearned for.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
“Oh, honey, you remembered! You remembered!”
“Happy birthday, Brianna.”
She threw her hands around her husband, brought him closer, kissed him in that superficial way people with unbrushed teeth do. She was smiling and happy as she held her husband close to her bosom. The way she began to sound, Paul was sure she was close to tears and soon enough, he felt her moist eyes on his shoulder.
So it might come as a surprise that after a short-lived moment, Brianna tore herself away in a fit of rage.
Suddenly, something came over her and she looked paralyzed. Paul thought she was overwhelmed with ecstasy, but her gaze was already crimson with anger and her expressions, stolid. She looked at him questioningly.
Pretty soon, Paul felt it too. The living room was right then the smallest he had ever seen it during all the time he had been there. And the most colorless, too. It all seemed too gray, although the walls were colored a vivid blue. Everything became obvious and incomprehensible at the same time. This was the moment Paul knew he had made the mistake of his life.
His heart began to pound as he waited for his wife to ask the inevitable question.
“But Paul,” she began, slowly, “where is the goddamn cake?”
If you think you know Paul, you’d probably think he told his wife that midnight he only forgot things that weren’t worth remembering.
