Thursday, August 23, 2007
Digging Earth
Current mood: grateful
Category: Writing and Poetry
Fiction
What I Like
Lena sifts through some of the papers strewn across the wide arms of her overstuffed chair and on the table immediately to her left. She is careful not to tip her coffee cup. She sits cross-legged as she sifts and reads and thinks. Sometimes she makes a few notes so she can review what it is she forgot to do the day before. Or boots up her laptop to check if any of her stranger e-friends have sent her news about anything. Charles reads the newspaper. You pronounce his name 'Sharl'. He does not like to be called Chuck or Charlie.
He eats cashews while he reads the National Post or a new financial planning book. Or the financial page of the National Post. Sometimes he still reads the Rolling Stone and he'll tell her about some new music release they should acquire.
Lena and Charles are peaceful after all these years. They have built a fine life and, in a few more years, they can quit the rat race and move to their home in the country. Charles has done the calculations set out in that book about how much is enough and has decided that in seven more years they will have that much.
Enough.
What Lena likes is that she is no longer bothered by some of Charles' bad habits that, when they were younger, would drive her mad with rage. She no longer gives a hoot that he still slurps when he drinks something with ice. That he still uses the word fuck as a noun, an adjective, and a verb more than anybody she knows. That he still settles arguments by intimidation.
She supposes that's what happens if you stick with it long enough. It is not complacency, it is maturity, she tells her friend, Melissa, who next week will marry the third love of her life. The perfect man, finally, she tells Lena.
They are no longer lovers but this doesn't matter. At least not to Lena. She is through with all that sweating and groping. And she is relieved to know that it appears he is through with it too. They walk naked around the house but it is not because they think it sensuous. It just is.
Lena and Charles. When she says their names like that, it's like she is referring to one thing. They are a lenandcharle. They have forgiven each other all past transgressions. They accept each other for who and what they are, faults and foibles and grace melded together. And there is almost nothing he does now that can make the hair on the back of her neck tingle.
Except this one thing.
He is doing it now and she burrows deeper into the chair, slipping on the earbuds connected to her ipod. As usual, she can't help herself and glances over at him. She is a passerby at a grizzly car crash, moving in slow motion in order to gock at the mess.
He is doing it. Taking his top teeth out and slowly sucking them clean. The way he does it is almost seductive. Almost.
The cashew bits get stuck and he has no choice, he claims. But does he have to do it in public? she once asked. He just grinned, toothless, lips caving in like an old man. You are not the public, Lena.
Oh well, she thinks, when he is done and she can breathe out again. You can't have it all. Charles. Lena. She clicks on the little wheelie thing until the song starts up. 'What I like aboutchu, you keep me warm at niieeeeght.'
Currently listening:
FictionWhat I Like
Lena sifts through some of the papers strewn across the wide arms of her overstuffed chair and on the table immediately to her left. She is careful not to tip her coffee cup. She sits cross-legged as she sifts and reads and thinks. Sometimes she makes a few notes so she can review what it is she forgot to do the day before. Or boots up her laptop to check if any of her stranger e-friends have sent her news about anything. Charles reads the newspaper. You pronounce his name 'Sharl'. He does not like to be called Chuck or Charlie.
He eats cashews while he reads the National Post or a new financial planning book. Or the financial page of the National Post. Sometimes he still reads the Rolling Stone and he'll tell her about some new music release they should acquire.
Lena and Charles are peaceful after all these years. They have built a fine life and, in a few more years, they can quit the rat race and move to their home in the country. Charles has done the calculations set out in that book about how much is enough and has decided that in seven more years they will have that much.
Enough.
What Lena likes is that she is no longer bothered by some of Charles' bad habits that, when they were younger, would drive her mad with rage. She no longer gives a hoot that he still slurps when he drinks something with ice. That he still uses the word fuck as a noun, an adjective, and a verb more than anybody she knows. That he still settles arguments by intimidation.
She supposes that's what happens if you stick with it long enough. It is not complacency, it is maturity, she tells her friend, Melissa, who next week will marry the third love of her life. The perfect man, finally, she tells Lena.
They are no longer lovers but this doesn't matter. At least not to Lena. She is through with all that sweating and groping. And she is relieved to know that it appears he is through with it too. They walk naked around the house but it is not because they think it sensuous. It just is.
Lena and Charles. When she says their names like that, it's like she is referring to one thing. They are a lenandcharle. They have forgiven each other all past transgressions. They accept each other for who and what they are, faults and foibles and grace melded together. And there is almost nothing he does now that can make the hair on the back of her neck tingle.
Except this one thing.
He is doing it now and she burrows deeper into the chair, slipping on the earbuds connected to her ipod. As usual, she can't help herself and glances over at him. She is a passerby at a grizzly car crash, moving in slow motion in order to gock at the mess.
He is doing it. Taking his top teeth out and slowly sucking them clean. The way he does it is almost seductive. Almost.
The cashew bits get stuck and he has no choice, he claims. But does he have to do it in public? she once asked. He just grinned, toothless, lips caving in like an old man. You are not the public, Lena.
Oh well, she thinks, when he is done and she can breathe out again. You can't have it all. Charles. Lena. She clicks on the little wheelie thing until the song starts up. 'What I like aboutchu, you keep me warm at niieeeeght.'
