Maybe it was the stench of Marshall’s morning breath,
lingering like an angry answer to a simple question, it had the ability to take
Brenda by surprise and immediately offend.
Maybe it was Brenda’s insistence on dealing with
relationships, pointed and convicted as a politician’s platform, it had the
ability to cause Marshall’s mental checkout at the first sign of its tone.
This invisible list of “do’s and do not’s” took on a
simmering life of its own, never reaching boil until the participants felt the
burn. And in some cases, this was very literal.
“Ah, sonofabitch!”
pined Brenda, nursing her tiny hand with licks and squeezes.
Brenda retreated from the overstocked stovetop that crowded
she and Marshall’s mini hallway of a kitchen. At about four feet by four feet,
the kitchen served more as a nuisance to the problematic than an escape, which
most kitchens often are. The refrigerator door would hit the dishwasher. The
drain would clog, never as strong as they would like. The dishwasher sometimes
sounded like it was on when it was not on, a source of half-hearted detective
work for Marshall. The wastebasket had a step press – the latest innovation in
lethargic receptacles with the “look Ma, no hands!” capability. The tile was
chipped and battered from the handful of times Brenda thought she was strong
enough to carry something, was not, and proceeded to set it on the floor by way
of dropping it. The faucet was Moen.
“That should not be that hot. I put it on 3…” inspected
Marshall. He eyeballed the stove to find a pot of marinara reaching a bubbly
mess. He continued, “A 9? Really? This thing needs time to actually cook. If I
wanted it hot and ready, I would’ve microwaved it.”
Brenda held her hand tightly, and with a face that expressed
the loss of a relative, she ached with fabricated grief. Did Marshall not see
her wound? Her hand accosted at the hand of that fiery sauce? Perhaps Marshall
was as much to blame. He wasn’t, but then Brenda decided to say, “If you’re
going to be like this, all day, let’s just order a pizza and call it good…”
Marshall’s bare feet sank into the crevices of the very tile
his wife had beaten with jars of pickled baby corn and boxes of new cast iron
cookware. Standing his ground, Marshall leaned an intentional palm against the
refrigerator that immediately caused it to hum and vibrate, as refrigerators
often do.
“I want to cook for our parents, and this sauce is my
mother’s recipe. I would really like it if you would let me do my thing and
help me when I need it. Can we just do that?” he replied, delivered with
sincerity that could potentially mask the harshness of content.
“What’s that smell?” Brenda asked.
Marshall turned to the busy stove and quickly flipped the
ground Italian sausage.
“The Italian sausage?”
Now half turned, both physically and emotionally, Marshall
rearranged the meat pieces like Tetris blocks, rapidly finding the right
combination of moves to place in correct aesthetic. His squirrely, poorly
positioned body language would answer Brenda, who had settled on a cutting
board of bell peppers.
“Are those finely chopped?” Marshall inquired, over his
shoulder.
“They’re finely chopped,” Brenda attested, scraping them
into a glossy pan on the back right burner. The Christmas-colored bits of
vegetable had a quick sizzle and steam that put Marshall at ease, knowing his
time frame…until he got a whiff of the inauthentic.
“Is that margarine?” questioned Marshall, through the same
overdrawn pain that Brenda had earlier displayed in her war wound.
“I dunno. It was from the tub,“ sauntered Brenda, hoping her
lack of enthusiasm would diffuse Marshall’s. Marshall ripped open the
refrigerator door, took a private peek into their inventory of spreads and
condiments, finding the truth he already knew.
“You have to use butter to sauté the vegetables. Margarine
is poison to a real chef” Marshall explained, scraping the peppers into a
separate pan and adding real butter. The way chefs often do.
“Well it tastes pretty good on an English muffin or an Eggo
waffle, and I’m sorry if I don’t have a taste for the finer things like uh…
spaghetti sauce” Brenda said. She threw it to herself and spiked it. She knew a
well-placed remark could shut Marshall up, but as the dishwasher noise melded
with the refrigerator noise, in a brilliant blur of dark auditory nonsense,
along with the odd stir of burnt sausage coursing through his nostrils,
Marshall could not go quiet. The kitchen certainly hadn’t.
“It’s IIIII-talian, not IT-alian…” was all that Marshall
chose to extol, softly stirring the pot of sauce while proving metaphoric. This
led to Brenda making a PPSSHH noise, like a police dispatch, allowing her burnt
hand to cup over her mouth.
“Possible douchebag-ing. I’m gonna need backup” joked
Brenda, but with a not-so-jokey face. Marshall tossed the wooden spoon and spun
around the tile to his wife. It was time.
“This sauce is important to me. It has 17 different
ingredients, it takes 5 hours to cook, and though I have memories of my mother
laughing and twirling and being a Disney princess while doing it, it’s actually
not very fun at all. It’s just a lot of work, and all I wanted today, out of
you, was an assistant” Marshall speeched, waiting on Brenda’s response, which
he assumed would be immediate. Instead, Brenda stood straight and tall, either
letting Marshall’s feelings matter or imagining his mother twirling, who looked
far more fairy godmother than she did princess. Brenda moved the hair from her
eyes, inhale – exhale, and then-
“I didn’t think margarine was that big-a deal. And I liked
the peppers a little bit bigger, not finely chopped, because then you can
really taste it when you bite it, like a chunky salsa or those marshmallows in
Lucky Charms. I use garlic powder for a bunch of different stuff that you eat
all the time, and like… so I didn’t know you were going to use real garlic. And
I heard you say you were worried it wasn’t going to be done in time, so I put
the heat up to hurry it up or whatever. I didn’t know you wanted to take your
time” speeched Brenda, now holding herself with folded arms and a sunken
stature, like the cold of Marshall’s attitude had chilled her small bones.
“And you can say Italian either way. The long “I” sounds
like you’re trying too hard” she added. The machines’ symphony of fritz began
to die down and for the first time that day, Marshall felt he actually heard
Brenda.
As Marshall was once a boy, tugging at his mother’s apron,
he now found his sweet and frail wife to be doing the same – wanting only to be
a part of the process and have her opinions considered instead of punished.
Marshall felt like a douchebag, as men often do.
“Alright… okay…” Marshall thought aloud, pulling open the
freezer door and snatching a bag of peas. He walked to Brenda and folded it
over her hand.
Apprehensive, Brenda followed Marshall to the stove. He
handed her the pepper-filled skillet and a wooden spatula. Side by side, they
worked in quiet diligence, sharing the burden and the idiosyncratic hiccups
along the way. But in the midst of the sauce’s “paint by numbers” placation,
Marshall would slide their spice rack to the forefront of their eye lines. He
rubbed Brenda’s back and prodded for her to choose a new ingredient.
“You sure you wanna tamper with mommy’s sauce?” smiled
Brenda. Marshall didn’t smile, saying-
“New recipe. It’s our sauce, now…”
Marshall and Brenda doctored the sauce to what they hoped
would be to their parents’ liking. It proved affective, as new additions often
do.
|||||
Next time on The
Hindsight Bridge: Justin Thomas Sayen presents his second THB piece, which is
yet to be titled. His last work, “Do Not Resuscitate,” was one of the most well
received THB pieces ever. Do yourself a favor and revisit “Do Not Resuscitate”
and then revisit next week, August 5th, for his follow up.
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