“The Kidney”
He cooked the kidney with zest, fumbling through the cupboards for the faded ingredients listed on the recipe card, standing on his toes to add a dash of paprika. For hours he had monitored its progress, turning from bright red, to greenish-brown, while his wife, Molly, sat crossing and re-crossing her legs, her eyes fixed on the juicy pages of the paperback she had picked off the shelf the day before. Almost like a kid sometimes, setting it in the middle of his own goods, the blood red cover kind of blending in the with the sausage casing.
The kidney looked tender, not in a soft way, but in a wounded way. A tiny lake of blood on the top dividing into small tributaries — is that what you call them? The veins of Earth — so no-one is ever really alone then? Even War, maybe an ill inspired attempt to gain our oneness. An image flashed in his mind, the War of Roses — thousands of men running to their death,as if they cannot wait one more second to see if God really exists. (or maybe it was nothing like that. Maybe the death song was a dull chime in the wake of the deeper need for continuation….)
The heart is like the ocean, Leopold decided, flipping the kidney on it’s side. Molly flattened the book under her knuckles and reached for the tea kettle. A relief, as it settled back down into the juices. Not much to make, therefore, not much to replace. The same crunch sound like cracking a human spine. Reversing things where they ought to be. The different between entropy and mankind. Like life flows naturally one way, then we contradict it with our own designs, in order to make it smaller. Thats what entropy is, he decided, although he was not a scientific man of design, he liked to ponder such things- things made smaller — finding the essence of things, and then manipulating them into the microwaves and stovetops, iron kettles, where her tea water sits for days sometimes, slowly leaking back in the air. Wonder when that cold of hers will disappear. The thinnest line of snot running to the top of her lips, almost beautiful when she turns her face to the window, like one of those tiny rivers that keep us together. Except they never seem to keep out the bloody draft. She sighed, lifted it back off the table.
When he first saw it, the kidney, sitting on ice, she tightened her grip, involuntarily probably because that’s how things are — you are not aware of how stricken you are by the horror of something, whether its the long pink sheath of a rats tail, or the pinkened ice, or more recently, you are expecting someone to reply, and then you remember they are- what do you call — their souls not here, maybe already searching for a body for the next time, reincarnation, transmigration, everyday a decomposition of the past. He often wondered what it would be like without her, usually on the verge of sleep — can still see the curves of her youth, kind of superimposed on her older body. The thin white wrinkles forming like a lace scarf on her neck, almost like that some babies are born with. Yes, a caul, so that they’re supposed to possess more beauty in life, or a special gift like looking into the future, — the sheet tucked between her legs — her face a waxy mask to peel off in the morning. Or that night she wore that red dress of hers, after a night at the movies, and it started raining. She didn’t mind the translucent tributaries on her cheeks, the delicate bones of her bare back. In the early days I’d imagine pulling one of them out and and keeping it around my neck like an amulet for good luck — so then is she were to leave me, there would still be the bones of her, from which I could easily connect the rest — the thin line of her upper lip with the thicker bottom one, the hat she wore tilted to the right, where she felt herself most of the time, on the right side of her body. No one had ever told that to him before — probably the only person who would tell that to him, although people, you know them long enough — even just in passing on the street everyday, like the butcher’s daughters, said she could still feel the tool she swallowed when she younger, didn’t just stay in her stomach, but moved all the time — sometimes she could feel it in her left arm, danced from her spleen to her kidney. He thought of that something when he cooked, her standing in the alley, on her way to work, pointing to the various places it had inhabited, solemnly, like at confession, as he watched it simmer, taking a course from her large intestine to the knee but always coming back to the heart, because it is the ocean. The heart, Leopold decided, for the second time, its like the ocean….
He heard her footsteps, and then hand around his forearm. Cold. Why was she always cold?
“Looks almost done,” she said. Not as tight as in the store, but still the tell tale signs of horror. Yes, most actions, he decided, were involuntary.
“A few more minutes.”
“Hmmmm,” she said, “That will give me time to finish my chapter.”
