Kaira Rouda - Best Day Ever

We should embrace what we are, don’t you think? We’re a no-till farming, profracking, pro-GMO, pro-Monsanto state. It’s our heritage, I tell her. Did you know Columbus is a fast-food mecca? It’s true. We are the test market for most major fast-food chains. Us folks are the definition of America. We are the barometers of taste, at least the kind of taste that comes when you can buy an entire “meal” for under a dollar. We’re the hometown of Wendy’s and White Castle and of several others like Rax that have come and gone. Remember Arthur Treacher’s Fish & Chips? Yep, that started in Columbus, too, thanks to Wendy’s Dave Thomas, who made his fortune as a Colonel Sanders Kentucky Fried Chicken franchisee. Makes me hungry just thinking about that battered British fish. Not that I regularly partake in any of these low-class foods myself. When I do it’s just a guilty pleasure. Everyone has his occasional vice.

“Do you want anything?” Mia asks, her hand already opening the door.

“Fries?” I ask, just to get a reaction. It works.

“Honestly, Paul? I meant do you want water or coffee or something. You know how I feel about this so-called food. A poor diet leads to a shorter life, all the studies agree. I’ve been reading a lot about this, remember? I’m trying to get healthy and it wouldn’t kill you to work on that, yourself.” She leans forward and points her finger at me like I’m a child. I feel her eyes on my stomach. I suck in.

The magazine ruffles in the wind from the open door and the blonde female singer on the cover looks as if she’s waving to me. She’s cute, I notice. I reach out and smooth the cover with my hand, touching the cool, glossy paper.

My wife softens her tone. “I’ll get you a water. Hydration is key to health,” she adds and then slams the car door before I can reply. I watch her walk away. From behind, she looks like the same woman I married a decade ago. Her hair still swings halfway down her back. Her butt is small and firm and perfectly toned. She looks very much the same, but she’s not. Not at all. None of us really stay the same, though, do we?

My transformation is more apparent, I realize, as I look down at my middle-aged, small beer belly and sigh. It’s comprised of something called internal fat, I’ve discovered, a fat that appears suddenly, like an army of ghosts, and then digs in to stay. It’s distasteful to think that fat isn’t just sitting in a layer on top of my belly, like I’d imagined, but is actually tucked in beside all of my organs, oozing around them like it’s a part of the whole, not an addition to the top. It’s in the ice cream, it’s not the cherry. Basically, they can’t liposuction it off and they can’t freeze it away. The only way I can shed this thing is through hard work—less food, more exercise.

I plan to tackle this unwanted midsection addition soon. It’s next on my list. I’ll eliminate it as I do anything I set my mind on. It’s just a matter of willpower and mental fortitude. I’ve got those, don’t worry. When I suck in my stomach, as I did for Mia, it doesn’t follow my command, not nearly enough. I’m on it, soon.

Unlike me, in the last six months or so, Mia has really thinned out. She’s shed the baby fat even though I swear she eats more, and more often, than I do. And though she looks fit, she’s also a bit worried about the weight loss. I tell her that’s crazy, most middle-aged women would die to have their weight melting away despite eating anything they like. And she looks good. She took up jogging a year or so ago, but cut back on that. Just doesn’t have the stamina these days. Mostly, she uses the free weights in our basement. Sometimes she’ll still walk around our block, if she has the energy.

Maybe she’s so thin because she stopped eating meat—excuse me, “animal protein.” That could be, but I attribute it more to stress; you know how parenting can take a toll on your intestines sometimes. Worry ties your system up in knots, or so I hear, not being prone to worry myself. They checked for ulcers, but she didn’t have any. Just a mystery, I guess.

She even went to this one doctor who had her hold different vitamins and minerals in her hand, and then pushed on her arm. I mean really? What does that do? Spend your money is what. Mia came home with hundreds of dollars’ worth of herbal treatments. None of it has helped, of course. She’s big on drinking water now, too. Staying hydrated. She tries to drink only from glass bottles. Good luck with that here, honey.

Mia has pulled her hair into a ponytail, I notice. I can see her standing at the counter, placing her order. The other thing I see is the other customers, the men, checking her out. Yes, guys, she still has it, I confirm with a nod to myself while watching them all watch her. She is walking toward the car now, a plastic water bottle in each hand and a big tooth-whitened smile eclipsing her face. She was voted best smile in high school, and it’s still there, that smile. Although it’s bigger now, I suppose. Our gums recede with age, making all of us long of tooth, and Mia especially. But don’t get me wrong, only I would notice such a thing. Her bright blue cotton sweater, blue jeans, and white tennis shoes make her stand apart from the rest of the people going in and out of the McDonald’s parking lot. Everyone else seems more muted, a black, gray and navy composite of people dressed for business, farming or trucking. It’s an eclectic yet monochromatic bunch this morning, except for my wife and her bright blue.

Mia pulls open the car door and slips inside. “Good choice. Cleanish bathroom. Short line. Here’s your water,” she says as she hands me the cold bottle. The plastic is cheap and crackles in my hands. It’s the type of water bottle that will spill out half its contents when I open it, I know it is. The bottle will have a label explaining why this cheap, shitty plastic is better for the environment than any other, more sturdy plastic. I know it’s just cheaper. I also know I should have gotten out of the car to open the bottle. I should have gotten out, just to stretch. Perhaps I should have gotten out of the car and opened the door for my wife. I’ll do that when we stop for gas in a little while. We have all day and she could use a reminder that chivalry is alive and well thanks to Paul Strom.

“So you think Taylor Swift is cute, huh?” Mia asks as I pull out of the McDonald’s parking lot.

“Who?” I ask. I know who the pop starlet is, everyone does. I even like her song, “The Story of Us.” But why would my wife ask such a random question?

“I saw you checking out the cover.” Mia holds up the gossip magazine while tilting her head. Her eyes are shining as if she has caught me drinking milk out of the jug. I love drinking milk out of the jug, but alas, if my wife catches me, it’s that same disappointed, shiny-eyed look I receive. Usually, she adds a hand on the hip, but that’s hard to execute in the front seat of a Ford Flex.

“Why would I check out some magazine when I could be checking out my beautiful wife?” I protest, pushing the accelerator hard to merge back onto the highway. I’m glad they finally finished the fifty-million-dollar project to widen this freeway to three lanes on either side. I slide back into the flow of traffic without a problem. They have spent more than a billion dollars on this road since it opened in the 1960s. What I would do for a billion dollars. Taylor Swift has a billion dollars, I’m sure. “She’s a very talented young woman, but I had no idea that was her on the cover. They all look the same with the makeup and airbrushing and all.”

“You’ve got a point there,” she says. She has opened the magazine on her lap, to a different story now I see. She twists open her bottle of water and, as I could have predicted, spills a fourth of it on the magazine. “Darn it.”