Her
plan was to take the broken pieces to the
garage before Jack got home from work. The last thing she wanted was for him to
walk into the kitchen and see pieces of the damn chair all over the floor. She
just needed a minute. A minute to catch her breath, to pick herself up so to
speak, to stop her heart from thumping so damn loud.
A broken chair. Now this was a new low.
Literally. She sprawled out on the kitchen floor, her legs sticking out in
front of her, one slipper part way on and one all the way off. She hated seeing
her feet, all purplish and scaly. Her toenails were never clipped well enough,
seeing as she could hardly reach them without passing out from her stomach
pushing into her chest so hard. She hated the reminder her toenails gave her
that she needed to lose weight. She hated the reminder so she kept her slippers
on most all the time.
Alice saw there was a cut above her
knee. Her house dress had slid up to her thigh and there was another deep gash
that was staining her dress red. Her dimply pasty white flesh was now streaked
red. Like strawberries and cream.
When she went to pull her dress down
below her knee, she noticed her hand was shaking.
This was all Jack’s fault.
Alice had been avoiding that damn chair
for the better part of a year now. As soon as it started creaking when she sat
down she’d switched it with another from the set of four they’d received from
her parents as a wedding present. Jack must have moved it back for one reason
or another.
“Damn it, Jack,” Alice muttered, and
tried to push herself up a little straighter. Pieces of the chair were strewn
around the kitchen floor, splinters reaching as far as the dining room. She’d
have to get the broom out and try and get the bits she could see under the oven
from where she sat.
I’ve hit rock bottom, she thought, and laughed without pleasure. The
last fight she and Jack had had about her weight he’d yelled at her, arms
flailing. He’d looked desperate, frantic. She almost felt sorrier for him than
she did for herself.
“When’s it gonna stop?” he’d yelled.
“When’s it gonna end? 400 pounds? 500?”
When was it going to
stop? She didn’t know if her battered pride could handle another chair
exploding beneath her. She thought about the pills he’d brought back from
Mexico last time he and his brother had gone down to Tijuana. Jack had said he
was worried about her health, which was partly true, but she knew by the way he
glanced at other – thinner – women that there was more to it.
“They were cheaper if you bought the
bundle, so...” Jack had said by way of explanation when he handed her the box
of pill bottles. She hadn’t touched them yet; she was so mad when he’d brought
them home. It was spite, really, that she wasn’t taking the damn diet pills.
She would’ve loved to have lost some weight, but to hell with him if he thought
he could push drugs at her. Now she was thinking about it. How fast could they
work if you doubled the dose? Or tripled? Hell, she might as well take a whole
bottle, see how he liked that.
She rubbed the back of her head and
felt a lump. Must’ve hit the floor pretty hard. Alice took a deep breath and
started to turn herself over onto all fours. She felt like a giant walrus, and
her knee hurt like hell when she put weight on it, but it was the only way
Alice was going to get up. She used the kitchen table to pull herself to her
feet and took a minute to catch her breath, then glanced at the clock – about
an hour ‘til Jack got home. Alice limped over to the closet and picked up the
broom.
With each sweep of the broom her
bitterness grew. Why’d he move the chair anyway? They only ever used two of the
four chairs. The other two were blocked in by their square table which was
pushed right up to the wall to make some room in their too-small kitchen. It’s
like he was setting her up.
“What, Jack? Trying to teach me a
lesson?” Alice panted, as she reached the broom under the table to sweep up
more of the splinters way back in the corner. By the time she was done she was
sweating and she pulled at the front of her dress, making a fan and a vent for
her heaving, damp breasts. She brought the bits of wood and the larger pieces
all out to the garage in a heavy-duty black garbage bag and left it leaning
there against the wall, the sharper pieces puncturing the bag, sticking out
like accusing fingers.
Alice stood in the kitchen doorway,
trying to catch her breath. She stared at the table with its three remaining
chairs.
And then, as if a fresh breeze came
through and blew the darkness off of her face and out of her heart, she smiled
and clapped her hands together in front her – “Let’s make us a chocolate
pudding!”
Opening cupboard doors, grabbing
ingredients, measuring, pouring, mixing, Alice hummed as she cooked. She was
always happier when she was cooking; it gave her a chance to get things
straight in her head. It didn’t take long to whip up a dessert she’d made for
her husband at least a hundred times. She stuck a finger deep into the
chocolate and put it in her mouth, her eyelids fell closed as she let the joy
of the pudding wash over her.
It was the simplicity of pudding that
won her over. It practically made itself.
Wiping her finger on the front of her
dress Alice reached up to the shelf holding the nice bowls. She took down two:
green for him, yellow for her. (She liked the yellow bowl better, and besides,
the green one had a chip in it). She poured half the pudding into the yellow
bowl, and then, before pouring the rest of the pudding into the second bowl
Alice turned and left the kitchen; house slippers scritching down the hall as
she headed to her bedroom.
Reaching for the box under the bed
meant getting down on all fours again, but it couldn’t be avoided. The pain in
her knee barely registered, though, as she grunted, pulling the box out from
its hiding spot. Alice ripped open the package, with its incomprehensible
Spanish writing and took out one large bottle. The writing on the bottles was
also in Spanish, but she saw that there were 200 pills inside. Enough.
Once back at the kitchen counter, she
began the tedious task of opening a capsule, pouring the powder in the bowl,
and tossing the empty capsule in the compost bucket on the counter.
Open, pour, toss. Open, pour, toss. She
glanced at the clock – twenty minutes ‘til Jack returned. Open, pour, toss.
Open, pour, toss.
Finally, the bottle was empty and there
was a small white mountain of powder on top of the rich brown lake of the
chocolate pudding. She stirred the powder in; at first, a beautiful twister of
white in the chocolate, and then, getting darker and darker, somehow it just
blended right in.
Just a bowl of delicious chocolate
pudding, Jack’s favourite.
She poured the pudding into the green
bowl and put both bowls in the fridge to chill and firm up. It was just as she
was putting a fresh bag in the compost bin that she heard Jack’s pick-up in the
driveway and smiled. He was home. She’d have to ask him to help her pull
the table away from the wall so she could get another chair, and then they
could have their dinner.
Alexa Farley writes poetry and short stories in the
Georgian Bay area of southern Ontario. Her inspiration is drawn as much from
the beauty that surrounds her as it is from her own ridiculous fallibility.
See Brian Henry’s schedule here, including writing workshops and creative writing courses
in Algonquin Park, Bolton, Barrie, Brampton, Burlington,
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John, NB, Sudbury, Thessalon, Toronto, Windsor, Woodstock, Halton,
Kitchener-Waterloo, Muskoka, Peel, Simcoe, York Region, the GTA, Ontario and
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