Seventeen Years
The floor was warped but he tried to fix it. He was always fixing things for me. Kneeling over a hole in the floor, squatting next to a bike. Pulling, pounding, wrenching, turning, twisting, putting all the things back together that over a marriage can fall apart.
The brick fireplace was empty, but we liked it that way. Empty is good as often as it is bad. Cement countertops, a built-in bookshelf, and a bright blue wall. Mornings in that kitchen and this one, basically the same. NPR, stone fruit, a curious cocked head. Weimaraner nails clicking on the hardwood floor. Only now I don’t have to leave for work anymore.
He cocks his head when he eats his favorite things. Tomatoes, plums, nectarines, apples, kale, sardines, killer bread, eggs, anything coconut, pears. But he doesn’t drink coffee, only tea. “What a fucking dick,” he responds to the newscaster. He doesn’t cuss nearly as much as I do, but when he does, it’s usually politically related.
I sometimes wear him out. I know I do.
I don’t really know where he keeps his tools. I just know that whenever one is needed, it magically appears after some tinkering, shuffling, banging. In that beautiful townhouse, red brick and marble-staired and nine years ago, the toolbox was downstairs, I think. In this little blue box, the tools’ resting place has been upgraded to a metal cabinet on the south side of the house, under a tarp and the bamboo. On that side of the house that smells like jasmine and white privileged lies.
I enter the garden to the back of his noble, curly head. Way more silver than the first time I saw it. By the way, pandemics beget curls, in case you didn’t know. He’s talking to Marcus about numbers and receipts. He’s good with those, too.
“I’m getting Marcus some lemonade,” he said.
I love the way wrinkles frame his merry chestnut eyes.
I don’t really know where he keeps his emotions, though. I worry because it’s been six or seven years since his beloved mother died and I never saw him cry. Her pewter waves burnished in the Pacific Northwest light.
Are they stuffed into his toolbox drawers with his screwdrivers and pliers and nails? Left at the door of the tie-and-jacket boys school? Or another patriarchal door long before that? Does he hide them for me or because of me or in spite of me? Do they waft with the winds that carry the scent of jasmine through the kitchen window and back out again? What are the emotions of a man, and where do they live and die and go?
