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| The Top of Grace’s Upper Lip |
| by Timothy Gager |
| I hate the situation I am in. I hate my house. It is too
big. Cleaning it is dirty work but someone has to do it and that someone is me. I wish it is as easy as kissing the leftover tomato sauce off top of Grace’s upper lip. It is a long day at the hospital for Grace and sometimes it’s a long night. It depends what shift she is on. Me? I’m gainfully unemployed, but you’d think, it would be peaches and cream doing what I do. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not your typical castrated stay at home male; as I am not a televisionally depressed kind of guy. There are things around the house that can challenge me even in the simplest ways. First, off the top of my head, I take pride in my laundry. The goal here is to catch the timing for the fabric softener, otherwise you need to restart the rinse cycle so everything will feel and smell just right. Grace likes to look and smell good when she goes to work. Also, big secret, I take pride in my food shopping. Cost is not an issue. I know there is money on our debit card. Trick is to buy everything on sale at the end of each aisle and the rest takes care of itself. Grace says, “If I were no longer with you on this earth, you’d have enough pasta for the rest of your life.” True. Pasta is always on sale and we have pounds of it. Grace’s hair twirls like cavatappi. Grace tells me she has a difficult time trusting people. Grace tells me she is a slave for her schedule. Grace tells me not to keep track of her schedule because it’s creepy. Grace tells me she can do better than me. Grace tells me she wonders when the last time I used the vacuum. Grace works too hard. Grace gets angry. Grace works a few days a week at 7 AM, a few at 3 PM and the rest on the overnight shift. It is exhausting. I am exhausted. I look in the mirror and I have bags under the bags under my eyes. I must put a good meal in her when she comes home. I cook. I cook and I cook and I cook. I cook well and she eats. Sometimes she is too tired to eat but she eats anyway. Sometimes…she thanks me. I like the way she holds her fork. It is dainty, yet forceful. She is that way in the sack or I should say she was that way in the sack. I don’t know about that now as we only sleep in the sack. I try to adjust everything so that things remain harmonious between us. Sometimes I take sleeping pills to sleep when she sleeps. Sometimes things are only the way things are. She ends a lot of shifts at 7 AM. She is working extra. There are more patients and the nurses have a crappy contract. That is fine as she is sorry. She is sorry she can’t spend the extra time but the money will help us. The money is good in theory, but there is things that start to confuse me. Things suddenly pop up. This is what pops up at the grocery store: Our checking account isn’t as free and easy as it was a few months ago. I whip out a credit card two weeks in a row to cover the uncomfortable moments at the checkout line and then, on the way home, as I think of the savings I made on Tide this week, there is an epiphany. It is as clear as the word “Declined” I witnessed a few moments ago. There is something that won’t add up no matter how many times I crunch the numbers. It is something I think I she finds in the arms of someone else between 11 P and 7 A. My house is too big. Cleaning it is dirty work but someone has to do it and that someone is me. I wish it is as easy as kissing the leftover tomato sauce off top of Grace’s upper lip. I just wish. |
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| Feb. 2007 |
| 80 |
| ***BIO*** |