Marriage — A Short Story

“All I’m saying is that it was a tad overkill,” Jesse murmured, sipping on the coffee in her cracked mug. She grimaced. The water these days only made awful coffee. She took another swig, anyways.

Zach paused from washing the pot in the white bucket of sudsy water.

“You know how I feel about that word,” he said with a raspy voice that hadn’t come from smoking.

“Oh I’m not talking about that,” Jesse said, clicking her tongue. “You’re the one that always brings that up.”

He pressed his lips together under his bristly grey mustache and returned to scrubbing the next pot, his eyes focused very specifically on the washing.

Jesse shrugged and finished the coffee, setting the mug in the pile of dirty breakfast dishes. She ignored Zach’s glare and looked out past their front porch to where the sun was just barely visible over the horizon.

The last tree from their front yard lay in a pile of kindling. Jesse bit down on her lip to keep from saying anything else. She immediately regretted it when the chapped skin broke and a bead of blood filled her mouth with iron taste. It was almost as bad as the coffee had tasted. She blamed all three of these things on her husband.

She glanced over at Zach, who was not being nearly careful enough washing her mug. She’d once had dozens of mugs, tea cups, and glasses of all shapes, sizes, and uses. Now, she just had this one. She hated that she had to care about her clumsy husband breaking it.

Filing the lack of decent firewood in the back of her mind, Jesse tried to smooth things over.

“Looks like the days are getting sunnier. Maybe time to try and plant those potatoes?” she said, hoping her cheerful voice would mask her complete and utter hatred of manual labor.

“What do I look like, a farmer?” Zach spat through his mustache. His laugh turned to a hacking cough halfway through.

Jesse’s temper ignited, just about as fast as Washington DC did when the bomb hit. “Well you sure as hell don’t look like-”

“Don’t you dare say it,” Zach hissed, his hands clenching into fists. Her mug slipped from his stiff fingers.

They both breathed in sharply as it hit the wooden deck and broke into a dozen pieces.

Zach sighed and knelt down to sweep the shards up into his swollen hands.

Jesse breathed in slowly before letting it out. “First you pulverize the tree our last child is buried under…and now you break the last mug. What is wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with me?” He staggered up from kneeling, a groan slipping through his lips before he fixed her with eyes that were uncharacteristically dull in his tired, lined face. “This whole thing is wrong. That’s what’s wrong.” He finally looked out at the sun where it shined faintly through the dark, particulate-filled sky. His sweeping arm took in the barren fields and the row of graves next to the row of Maple stumps. “You’re what’s wrong,” he said, avoiding her eyes.

“Oh, I’m what’s wrong?” Jesse challenged softly, standing tall despite how her back ached. “Tell me just what’s wrong with me, Mister-”

“I would never have married a spoiled brat like you if I’d known we’d have- If this was-” He couldn’t finish. He looked back down at the porch and closed his deep-set eyes.

“And who’s fault is it that we have to live like this?” Jesse asked, her eyes burning like hot knives at her husband. “In this God-forsaken apocalypse.”

“Bitch,” he said, his shoulders slumped and his back bent.

“Yeah, that’s right,” she laughed coldly. “I’m the bitch, Mr. President.”

He dropped to his knees. Jesse turned back to the wasteland that used to be Ohio.

Another day in paradise.