Setting the Table

The table was more in the living room than in the kitchen.  When they’d bought it, Ned stood erect at the Home Depot and promised Marjorie it would fit in the kitchen.  It didn’t.  So Ned placed the table in the doorway from the kitchen to the living room such that a corner poked into the kitchen.  And that’s where he sat.  The rest was angled into the living room, leaving only a small hole to pass through.  Marjorie could fit through, but when Ned gained weight he started avoiding the doorway altogether, transiting between the two adjacent rooms via the hallway that passed their bedroom, bathroom and front door.  Marjorie thought it was ridiculous. 

Every night and every morning Ned sat at the corner of the table in the kitchen and Marjorie sat in the living room—on an angle, parallel to the couch, facing the television.  Ned had nowhere to rest his elbows, but made up for this by repeatedly refilling his milk from the refrigerator, which was only a few feet away, and returning with a look that said: “See?”  So Marjorie started bringing everything she could conceive of to the table.  She enjoyed watching Ned reach across it and wince in pain as the corner dug into his chest.  Then she started watching TV while they ate.  It didn’t bother him.  It reinforced his feeling that he was really in the kitchen.  And he made sure Marjorie never saw him watching TV from the kitchen. 

The kitchen was dark.  The table behind them was unset.  Ned was looking out the kitchen window at the hawthorn and noting how the berries it produced lived in little clusters surrounded by long thorns.  Without the aid of light, one would see the berries and not the thorns.  Marjorie was standing in front of him, wearing a black dress with rose heads: no stems or leaves, just petals, stigmas, styles, ovaries, ovules, receptacles, anthers and filaments. They were cutting cucumbers on a small wooden cutting board in front of the sink.   

            It was difficult for Ned to help in the cutting of the cucumbers—to get to the point where he could.  The dishwasher was below the sink and the door was open.  Both their legs were straddling the door.  There was a small block of black marble about three inches long between the edge of the sink and the end of the counter.  The cutting board slanted toward Marjorie's empty stomach.  They were piling the cut cucumbers, like healthy, fresh green logs, into a round, clear bowl.  Ned’s crotch was pressing against Marjorie’s behind and his arms were wrapped around her to hold the cucumber in place while she chopped.  They got into a nice rhythm.  His legs began to ache.  There were about five more cucumbers in the bowl.  He bent down to give his knees a rest and his face neared Marjorie’s butt.  Ned looked at a flower between her thighs—where his wife’s two legs became one, and turned into something else entirely.  

He looked into the darkness and the floating red blobs and asked her “See the hawthorn budding?” His tone wasn’t right though: it came out as a statement.  She shifted the weight on her feet.  Marjorie’s breathing increased and she pushed her flowers into Ned’s face.  He looked down.  They’d had spaghetti last night, he remembered.  A stringy piece of the angel hair pasta sat translucently against the inside of the dishwasher drawer.  It was shaped like a question mark at the top.  The bottom looked like the tail of a prehistoric sea-creature.  The tip on the squiggly end was red.  Ned loosened his grip on the cucumber. He reached down to touch the creature, expecting it to move.  But it was hard, dead.   "My fuckin' legs hurt," he said and stood up, a drop of sweat falling from Ned’s bangs onto Marjorie's neck, trickling down her spine and disappearing into the empty space between the roses.

 “I can do it by myself," Marjorie replied.

But her knees were buckling.  Her back and neck burned terribly.  The smell from the previous night’s dinner was creeping up her legs.

Ned reached quietly into the bowl and stood over his wife. He breathed down her neck, watched how the fruit divided beneath them.  “We’re done.”  Marjorie said.  He pressed his weight into her.  “We’re done.”

“Keep going.” He said. “I can help.” 

Ned’s hands shook in front of her as if holding a large bowl of water.  She sliced into the unburdened air, the tension in her neck and back diminishing as the knife approached Ned’s fingers.