Chapter 2
925 Words
A quarrel would be followed by a sweet truce. Erick would call me at work twice a day to make sure everything was okay. We talked all the time. - I want us to always tell each other everything, he said one evening as we drank wine. - My parent has always kept something a secret. You and I should be completely open. This was theoretically possible, but in practice, it affected my self-confidence. Complete honesty is not always the best thing. - You are so beautiful, Erick said one night after we made love. He stroked my body and stopped at my chest. I had small breasts, I wore a deuce. Erick used to joke before marriage about my poor giftedness and said he would buy me implants, but he is afraid big breasts would look ridiculous on a short and petite person like me. He ran his fingers over my face and cheeks. - Big brown eyes ... a snub nose ... beautiful lips. It does not matter that you do not have a2 body.- I have a body, I said.- I meant the chest.- I also have breasts they are just not big.- I still love you. I wanted to tell him that he did not have a perfect body either, but I knew it would cause an argument. Erick disliked criticism even when it was harmless and well-meaning. He was never criticized, while I was growing up with a hefty dose of complaining and criticizing. My mother would always tell me how her friends' daughters behaved well, sat quietly at the piano, made paper flowers for their mothers, and showed off new ballet steps. I wished that I too could be one of those lovely girls, but I still could not help but oppose the imposed role in which I was supposed to play little Ava Knight. And then she died and left me with a mountain of things that I blamed myself for and that I could not fix. Our first holidays - Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year - passed without much celebration. We still did not go to church, and Erick’s friends were busy with their own families. I approached cooking as an experiment in a chemistry class. I read cookbooks, compiled lists, set clocks, weighed ingredients, and cut meat to a certain size and shape. I knew he would want something edible, but far from great. Despite that, Erick said it was the best turkey, the best-mashed potatoes, and the best walnut cake he had ever eaten.- I must look ridiculous with oven gloves, I said. Erick started kissing me loudly on the arm. - You are the queen of the kitchen. I worked overtime over the holidays because there was work over my head in Darlington as Erick’s work subsided until after the New Year. Since our schedule did not match, it got on our nerves that we had to waste time driving me back and forth. We would never finish anything ... the house was always a mess, the fridge empty, a hill of unwashed laundry. We can not afford to wear shirts to the dry cleaners, Erick announced after Christmas. - We will have to take care of it ourselves.- Me - I have never ironed anything in my life. For ironing shirts was one of the biggest puzzles in the world, similar to black holes and black matter in space. How come you can not iron your shirt yourself- I need help. Am I asking a lot if I ask you to help me- No, of course not. I am sorry, but I do not know how, I am afraid I am going to ruin them.- I will show you, you will learn, he smiled and patted my butt. - You just have to free that housewife who is trapped deep inside you. I told him that I kept my inner housewife tied up in the basement, but that I was ready to release her because of him. Erick patiently, step by step, showed me how to wash, starch, and iron them. He was detailed. At first, it was about like gluing tiles ... until you realized you had to glue the whole bathroom. The basket would always be full of dirty shirts. No matter how hard I tried, I could never5 iron them the way Erick asked. My ironing has become the subject of the daily inspection. Erick would open the closet, go through the ironed clothes, and point out where I went wrong. - You have to iron the edges slowly to get rid of all the folds. - Or - You have to iron the seams around the sleeves. Put smaller starches. The back is not soft enough. Exhausted and defeated, I ended up using my own money - everyone had the same weekly amount for their expenses - to decide to pay for washing and ironing his shirts. I thought that was the best solution, but when Erick saw a row of packed shirts hanging in the closet, he went crazy.- I thought we agreed, he snapped, that you would learn how to do it.- I paid with my own money, I laughed calmly, because I suffer from a lack of ironing skills. Maybe start taking a multivitamin. - You are not trying hard enough, he said grimly. It was amazing to me to argue about unimportant things like shirts. But it was not really just about the shirts. Maybe he thought I was not contributing enough to our relationship.
- Writer
