“I think if you wrote something about, idk, pears, I’d be into it as well. I hope you know the power your writing has! Thank you for letting us enjoy it :)”
I know. I knew when I was a kid, and the words were clumsily effective. I knew as a young adult, when the words flowed gracefully but were insincere. And I know now, when my turn of phrase can turn worlds upside-down.
Artful language is magic; it is intention and revelation and passion, encoded, disseminated, and projected into foreign minds across infinite distances and years. It’s everyday sorcery, taught to children.
Oh, and challenge accepted.
[CONTENT NOTE: Here be dragons.]
The cart’s left-front wheel wobbled as it turned, which led to a rattle in the basket, and a vibration in her hands. She pressed her lips together and pushed ahead, feeling his gaze upon her as she bullied a broken thing through a store.
“Should we go to health & beauty first?” she asked, her helplessness masked by obsequiousness.
“Is there a concealer for your personality?” he replied, making a point of sounding faintly hopeful.
It was only today that he’d told her she was boring, so many months after moving in. Were she slightly braver, she might have wondered if he’d been stricken in the night; he’d awakened, sat upright in bed, gazed down at her squinting, sleepy face, and sighed. “I’m not sure if you’re worth it.”
Those were his exact words. She’d never heard them before, and would never be able to forget them.
And he hadn’t stopped there. On it went, throughout the day. Her every comment was vapid. Her every movement was clumsy. Her every feature was unfortunate. Her every thought was irrelevant. On a better day, with a moment to breathe, with a different man, she might have retreated or lashed out. As it was, she’d been unable to think of anything except how much he hated seeing her cry.
She gripped the cart tighter and willed the submission of a teardrop. It didn’t escape her that she could control little else.
He walked past her, deeper into the store. He would take a half-dozen steps, pause meaningfully, abruptly resume his stride, pause again… over and over. As she followed along with the cart, she was forced through an irregular cycle of starts, stops, and stares from other patrons. She could feel their communal judgment.
Until he spoke, and there was no room left in her world for the petty condemnation of strangers.
“Did we ever replace that remote that you lost? Or do we just not give a shit about my things?” he asked as he scanned the departments and aisles ahead of him.
The remote had gone missing a month ago. It might have been missing even longer; they wouldn’t know, because they seldom used it. They had apps. They had options. It was a cheap piece of plastic with no special functions. One of the buttons was stuck. And if you’d asked her a month ago, she’d have sworn she hadn’t touched it.
Now she was quick to assure him, “I’ve ordered a replacement! From the company!”
He looked at her and she looked away. There was nothing in his eyes she could bear to see.
“When will it be delivered?” he asked with exaggerated doubt, as if he’d just been told an obvious lie by an obvious child.
“No, really! Next— but, okay, so, the shipping was— it was going to be $20 shipping on, like, a $16 remote, so…” She trailed off, as she realized he didn’t want her rationalizations. He wanted a date. “Next week. I saved $12. I’m sorry.”
She thought she saw him smile for a moment, from the corner of her eye. “Whatever,” was all he said. It was the most comforting thing she’d heard all day.
“Do you—” she began, leaping into the first available silence. “Do you need anything from Home Improvement?”
“There’s nothing wrong with our home that a match won’t fix,” he muttered, just clearly enough to be perfectly intelligible.
Without warning, he turned to his right, and marched toward Groceries. She power-walked a step behind him, her mind filled with flames and failure.
Food had always been her responsibility, so she mindlessly rolled ahead into Produce, eyeing the prices and counting the week’s meals in her head. It felt good to feel competent. The day had contained so many things she could not understand, but this was a place and a task she knew.
She only stopped when she realized he had trailed behind. She didn’t need to look. She could feel his eyes, examining her body.
That much was nothing new; she’d always been able to feel his inspection, back when it meant he was about to sing her praises or growl her name. But she felt it even more now, when his gaze had a weight she could scarcely bear.
She took a deep breath, and normality beckoned. She thought to include him, to draw him into this sacred circle of the mundane. “Do you— would you like some fruit, daddy?”
She felt him looking at her, just as he had in bed. She heard him sigh, just as he had in the moment before he broke her heart. She could imagine him making a decision.
“Anything but fucking pears,” he said.
He seemed very sure about that.