The Ever After
She did everything she would normally do, in case she changed her mind. She cut the banana into thick slices and quartered the strawberries. She dropped them in the blender and covered them with a handful of waxy blueberries, a dollop of plain yogurt, a splash of almond milk, a squirt of honey. She stared at the mixture and, if she left right now, she decided, it would not miss her. She clamped the lid tightly and pushed the button vreevreevree and the fruit was pink frothy soup, no pain, not like boiling a lobster, no anger at her for her betrayal. And if she did not drink it? Someone would come behind her — he would come behind, and put it in the refrigerator, thinking she would drink it later, or even pour it down the sink, if he’d ever had a thought to housekeeping, and no one would be any the wiser.
She touched the marble counter, its coolness spreading across her palm. She moved her hand the length of the marble, caressing it, rubbing it. Had it ever been touched like this, she wondered, with such longing, with care? She bent toward it and pressed her lips to it, turning and letting her cheek, wet with tears, rest on it. She could give it so much love and it would not even know it, would not return it.
She walked from the kitchen to the dining room, touching the glass of the breakfast table, remembering where Twiggy the Cairn terrier would sleep under it, and how sometimes the girls would torture him, putting a milk-bone on the glass tabletop and he, stupid but ever-so-wanting-to-please-and-ever-more-wanting-that-milk-bone, would jump up and smack his face on the glass.
The girls were mean. Sometimes, at least she thought so. She did not raise them that way, at least she thought so, and now they barely spoke to each other, each angry at something — her? Had she given them the love they so desperately wanted, especially Jennifer, who, while accepting, devouring of her mother’s love, never seemed satiated, never nourished. Always convinced Emily had more, more love, when in reality, at least she thought so, Emily did not require quite so much love and therefore appeared satiated. They could hold grudges against each other for months, even years. The girls did not know that time was not infinite or maybe they did not care, who cared about blood, really, lord knows she had never found her family in her own family.
She sat in the breakfast chair that faced the living room. The girls always wanted to face the French doors and the deck, to look around her, through her, at the swimming pool, the neighbor boys, the trees and the whole world outside and she, sitting between them and it, asking them to please finish the crust of the toast, and why had she not birthed daughters who would just take this request reasonably, who would eat their crusts and not talk back, would not raise heaven and hell because they had to eat something slightly unsavory, think of all the homeless children in the world or even the ones here at home. She had eaten her crusts as a child, had not questioned why, had thought it a small sacrifice to her mother’s happiness but her daughters sulked and moved the crusts on their plates and looked at the pool, the chlorinated blue, thought of putting lemon juice in their hair to bring the summer blonde out until their father, irritated with their squirming, their eye rolling, their snorting at each other, told her to just throw the goddamn crusts away — don’t make the girls sit at the table all goddamn morning just because they won’t eat them.
The girls would come home in a few days for Christmas, with dietary restrictions but no alcohol restrictions. If she brought up the crusts, they would laugh at her, ask why she remembered the most meaningless things. You can be so maudlin, Emily would bite into a flax seed English muffin with honey spread on top, what about the times Jennifer and I made you breakfast for Mother’s day?
She thought she would remember the good things because at times it seemed there had been so few. Or maybe she had only thought of the bad times because no one had been forthcoming in apologizing for them — her husband for being so dull, so capable, but so dull in that autistic way that men sometimes are, concentrating on the wrong things, lecturing her, presenting lists of ways that she could be happier, if she ate more salmon and quit sneaking cigarettes, but never apologizing for his part in her unhappiness and only touching her in that way, that way when he wanted sex, not with any tenderness. Her daughters for taking her for granted, for holding grudges, for feeling as if she had failed them in some way when they had swimming lessons and flute lessons and prom dresses like everyone else. And kisses that they took on their cheek perfunctorily the way one takes sugar in one’s tea. If no one closed the lid on the bad times, how could she be grateful for the good ones, few that they were, appearing like albino cardinals or locusts or rainbows?
She put her head on the glass of the breakfast table, her skin spreading over it, conforming to it, another impenetrable thing that did not love her back. When she lifted it, an oily print on the table, her cheek. She picked up her keys and her suitcase and left the smoothie on the counter, pink like Pepto Bismol, a theriac, an anesthetic. A potion only a princess would drink, waiting for someone else to save her.
