A. Homes: Safety of Objects: Stories

Elaine picks out items that are strictly for adults only, foods her children would never let her buy: smelly cheese, pâté, crackers with seeds, wine. It adds up to thirty-nine dollars and somehow fits into one bag.

“My mother called,” Paul says as she walks into the house.

He is on a ladder in the hallway, changing a bulb that burned out three months ago.

“Is everything all right?” she asks, thinking of the shark dream.

“Sammy misses you. They’ll call back.”

She crosses under the ladder and goes into the kitchen.

“Bad luck, under the ladder,” he says.

She makes herself a huge plate of food, takes a bottle of wine, and crosses back under the ladder on her way upstairs.

“Are you planning to share?”

She doesn’t answer him. She knows he can’t imagine her eating all that. She hates food, and yet she is hungry; she is so hungry that she can’t wait to get upstairs where she can be alone with the food, where she can dig in without an audience.

“I’m changing the bulb, didn’t you notice?”

She knows she’s supposed to think he’s wonderful for finally doing something. But as far as she’s concerned, he’s wasting time. Elaine throws a grape at him. It hits his chest and falls into his shirt.

“Grapes cost three dollars a pound,” he says. “I thought we agreed not to buy them. The boys just squish them between their fingers and leave them on the table.”

“The boys are away,” she says, and continues up the stairs.

She sits in the middle of their bed with her plate. Something is missing: olives, onions, garnishes. She carries the plate back downstairs.

Paul is sitting in the chair in front of the TV, in broad daylight, with a glass of Hawaiian Punch in his hand. He looks like a demented version of the suburban man, the Playboy man, the man in his castle.

She takes a sip from his glass. It is tainted. There is something wrong with the punch. She thinks about supermarket tampering, murder in the suburbs, and how much she hates food. She thinks she’s going to die.

“There’s something wrong with the punch,” she says, coughing.

“There’s vodka in it,” he says, taking the glass back from her.

She takes her plate and goes into the kitchen, planning to pile it higher, then go back upstairs and never come down. She stands inside the refrigerator door, snacking. She hates eating in the kitchen. It makes her think about cleaning up and then she loses her appetite.

She carries her plate into the living room.

Paul is on the floor two feet from the TV, sitting cross-legged, his drink in his crotch, playing with Daniel’s Nintendo. There’s a driving game on the screen. He crashes again and again. Paul’s been driving for more than twenty years. He should be able to get through a game; she’s seen Daniel do it a million times.

In a way it’s cute, Paul playing like a little boy, falling into the TV. But there’s also something incredibly pathetic about it.

“Could you turn it down a little?” Elaine asks.

Paul’s car slips off the road and crashes into a billboard. The car bursts into flames and Game Over, Game Over flashes across the screen.

“Can’t you see I’m doing something?” he screams, pushing the restart button.

“You’re playing a game.”

“Leave me alone.”

Elaine goes back upstairs. She can’t stand him. She can’t stand anything about him: the way he thinks, talks, looks, all of it. She knows he hates her too, and that makes it even worse. It makes her nuts. She should be able to hate him without any backlash.

She sits in the middle of their bed with her plate and turns on the TV. She sits in front of it, staring at it, and then gets upset when she realizes that she’s been watching golf for at least a half hour.

She pours herself a glass of wine, puts a piece of cheese on a cracker, and leans back on her pillow. She drinks the wine and then pours herself another glass. It’s so nice, she thinks, to lie in your bed and drink and not worry about drinking too much, about having to be on duty, like a nurse in a ward, so fucking responsible.

She feels like she’s floating. She feels wonderful. She wishes she could do this every day. It would make her life so much better. The phone rings and she ignores it. It rings and rings, and finally she has to pick it up.

“Mommy,” Sammy’s small voice says. “Mommy, why did you leave me here?”

She sits up in bed, spilling the glass of wine all over her shirt.

“I didn’t leave you there, sweetie, I brought you there to be with Grandma, to go to the beach, to swim. You’re on vacation, honey.”

She can’t believe how drunk she is; she’s trying to be normal, to sound like herself.

“I don’t want to be on vacation,” he says.

There’s a silence and then nothing. She wonders if her child has hung up on her. She wonders what kind of a mother she is.

“He’ll be fine,” her mother-in-law says. Her voice is deep from smoking and she sounds like Milton Berle. “I gave him some chocolate milk and cookies. I told him he has his brother and me. We’ll see how it goes.”

“If he’s not hungry don’t make him eat,” Elaine says.

She doesn’t want her child growing up with an eating disorder. She doesn’t want him fat or thin. She wants him just right.

“Make him eat? How could I make him eat? I put it on the plate. If he wants it, he eats it, my little prince. And Daniel, I think he’s starting to like girls. All around the pool, they crowd around him. Hold on, I’ll get him that misses his mother so much.”

Elaine is nauseated. Her mother-in-law is too much, too strong. She waits on the world hand and foot. Compared to her, Elaine is nothing.

“Mommy,” Sammy says, “why did you bring me here and leave me?”

“I just told you, baby, you’re on vacation.”

“When are you coming to take me home?”

“Grandma is bringing you home next week. You’ll be tan and beautiful.”

“I want to come home now. Come and get me now.”

“I can’t do that, sweetie. I’m here with Daddy. Have a good time with Grandma and I’ll see you soon.”

He starts to cry. She is annoyed. She’s annoyed, and then she can’t believe how selfish she’s being. This is her child, her baby. How could she be angry? How could she have gone to the grocery store and not bought anything for him, no animal crackers, Ho-Ho’s, nothing he likes?

“Oh, baby, it’s all right. I miss you too, you’re my boy, I’ll call you again later. Tell Grandma to give you another cookie.”

In the background Sammy is crying and Daniel is laughing. Mixed messages. She hangs up the phone, takes off her wine-soaked shirt, and tries to remember what you do to get wine stains out. She drops the shirt onto the floor, lies back on the bed in her bra, and pours herself another glass of wine.

Paul comes upstairs and asks what’s for dinner. She hands him a cracker with cheese. He lies down next to her on the bed.

“Did you take a shower today?” she asks.

He looks insulted. “I’ve been working all day.”

“You didn’t take a shower. You smell.”

He kisses her.

“Your face hurts,” she says. “I can’t kiss you when you don’t shave.”

In the old days when they were on vacation, they would shower together, make love, and then change into good clothes and go out for dinner. Now Elaine is lying half-naked on a crumb-covered bed, smelling like cheap rosé. Paul pulls off his shirt and sticks his nose into his armpit. “It’s not so bad,” he says.

“You must have a blockage in your nose. Maybe you should see an ear, nose, and throat man.”

He lies down next to her. She picks up the platter from the floor and puts it between them. They eat and pass the wine glass back and forth. When the plate is empty and the bed scratchy with cracker crumbs, they roll over and fall asleep.