It Needs Salt, Now!

Love was in the air

A Kiss

As the music swelled, she leaned over to kiss me on the cheek, but, at the last second settled on kissing my shoulder. It was the first time anyone had ever kissed me like that and I wasn’t totally sure how I felt about it, but I was fairly sure it wasn’t jubilant or morose.

Similar to being winded, she sat down on the chair that needed to be reupholstered. I knew how it felt sometimes.

After attempting to gaze up at me and failing as I had decided to lay on the floor, she put her head in her hands and seemed to momentarily think about the logistics of juggling it, before fixating on me with a look that was equal parts sad and mad and glad.

It was a tough combination to pull off and she nailed it. True to form, she then allowed for a small amount of smugness to enter her look before almost literally over watering my cactus.

A Bite

“It’s all happening too fast,” she said as she bit her lip. She was always biting something when she was stressed and unhappy: her lip, my lip, crusts of bread, random household objects, and lines of poetry that she had written expressly for this purpose.

She once tried to bite the leg of the postman, but felt that it was either cliched or should be cliched, so she stopped herself. She used the rudimentary, homemade and totally unnecessary stop sign that she had constructed while watching a program about snakes on the television. She both loved and abhorred snakes and my uncle Flynn whom she felt was both the human embodiment of a snake as well as “a bit off”.

I wanted to say something to cheer her up, but I didn’t want it to be overly-transparent as I knew she hated when things were too transparent. Slightly transparent, and she would love it and possibly leap from the chair and keep her promise of making me a ham and cheese sandwich that she promised me hours ago.

Transparency between the two of us usually only made things worse, except when making clear broths and then she was quite dismayed when it was even the slightest bit cloudy, although that didn’t stop her from slurping it down like a sailor who loved slightly cloudy brothy soups.

Blame

I knew that I was to blame for why things weren’t working out between us. For a time, I had blamed everyone else. It was a lot of work, as I systematically blamed everyone else who could possibly be blamed, person by person until my list was exhausted.

Interestingly, I felt quite fresh afterwards and went for a jog only to return to the blaming before hitting the sack. I had to justify keeping that old dirty sack around as she was always clearing her throat and pointing at it when she walked by. I suggested to her sister that she might need some medical help for her persistent cough and involuntary pointing.

After I went through that blaming phase, I drank a lot of cranberry juice and started to wear shirts that others would describe as “smart” or “sharp”, until I was ready to really own up to my role in our declining relationship that I had started referring to as “The Trouble in Paris” even though neither of us had been to Paris in years.

Love

How I wanted to open up to her about my love and also the foot infection that I had on my hands. I felt like such a loser; I couldn’t even get foot infections on the correct part of my body, nor love this woman who had given me everything.

It’s true, she had cut the letters out of the newspaper to spell the word “everything” and had mailed them to me one by one at predetermined intervals over a period of 5 weeks. At first I was annoyed, and then relieved that it wasn’t a ransom note as I had initially predicted and then I eventually settled on a feeling of indifference. I was used to getting ransom notes, although they were usually from my doctor. He wanted the blood back.

“I think the milk is off,” she remarked, shattering the silence which surprised both of us as the milk seemed so fresh when we first purchased it and enjoyed a glass of its coolness together.

Memories of drinking that fresh, non-sour milk together reminded me of the depths of my love for her and of cool, liquid dairy products and drinking them.

Fantasy

I often fantasized, in poorly-lit spaces, of having the ability to drink her, but choosing not to as I am trying to cut back on fantasies that just have no basis in reality aside from ones involving cotton candy-eating unicorns running for political office. I can’t get enough of those fantasies.

She got up and rubbed her temples and, after her temples grew red and sore, mimed rubbing her temples in the air near her temples. She often turned to mime, which wasn’t her fault, as she was raised by parents who were mimes.

In fact, no one spoke at her house not even to ask for more gravy on their mashed potatoes. The only verbal exchange he ever remembered hearing involved her asking for the gravy to not touch the meat loaf for any reason unless it was unavoidable as the gravy was on the loose side, because that was next-to-impossible to communicate through mime.

I loved when she mimed — she seemed so alive and full of spirit, aside from when I just needed an answer or some help, like the time my coat was on fire at the BBQ and she insisted on miming when yelling “fire” would have potentially saved that coat. How we loved our BBQs until someone’s coat invariably caught on fire; usually mine.

Caring

But I just couldn’t stay angry with her. How could I? She was wonderfully caring, and not just towards my cat or any other cats she happened to see during her day. She took caring to a new level that was greatly assisted when her father converted our attic to a reading room that she used for knitting.

I always felt that she should have rebelled more often and in ways that her father would have noticed, but we all enjoyed the freshly-knitted baby scarves aside from their being comically small for all of the regular-sized adults she gifted them to.

I remember the day the bookcase came crashing down the stairs, inches away from my cat. I had tried to forget but she commemorated that scary event with a frame-by-frame comic strip that visitors are encouraged to read when using the facilities.

The Fall

How did the bookcase fall? And how did it crash down the stairs? And what about the role the cat played in all of this? I just don’t trust that cat as far as I can throw it and the distance I can throw it has always remained completely speculative.

In many ways that fallen bookcase came to represent our relationship that was crashing down the stairs in its own way and nearly killing cats. We always promised ourselves that if our relationship ever felt like we were killing or harming animals that we would call it off.

We sat down at the table and had dinner. Tears dropped from her face and onto her plate though some missed and landed on the table next to the plate where most fell. I was struck by the beauty of it all and by the fact that the meal was in desperate need of some salt.

The Look

Her eyes met mine across the table although it could have been over two tables as her gaze was that accurate. We shared a look that spoke volumes and ended with the shared sentiment “It needs salt…now”.

I decided to speak first.

“I have grown tired of you and your complaining, though strangely, not the topics you are actually complaining about as I love hearing about those. I love you and wish we could always be together but I think we both know that it is over. Our ship has sailed and our wild horses have run off and just aren’t returning as they either found better owners or have decided to rough it for a while.”

She allowed a small smile to escape and she responded.

“I agree. We loved. We lived as two lovers should and then we took turns in the shower always being cognizant of the water shortage. We had good times and bad ones and a number that fell somewhere on the spectrum between those two extremes…..I’m sorry but the time has come for me to leave, my sweet.”

It was an abrupt ending. The prophecy came true after all.

We rose and embraced, holding each other as if we were trying to assess the health of each other’s kidneys and then she left. I wanted to believe that she’d be back, and I wanted to believe that I’d still be here waiting for her and I wanted to believe in the ability for regular people like myself to make a difference in the world even when my powers of deductive reasoning were mediocre at best.

The End