Hello! this is the second entry to my series. Ignore the photo, or not :P
She kisses me loosely on the cheek, the pungent odor of her perfume wafting into my breathing space. I inhale deeply, filtering out the airborne Coco Chanel toxins and instead drink in the sugary scent of spiced apples and lemon juice. She always wears expensive scents from catalogs, but my favorite perfume of hers is the scent of the food she makes, and right now she smells like a hot cinnamon-apple fritter.
She picks Delilah up from her chair and readies the toddler’s tiny coat, a shell of pleather with an inner lining of thick faux-fur that makes the child look like a miniature celebrity. Her tight waist, wide hips, and pneumatic chest would make one doubtful of the fact that she is a mother married to a balding, gray, nuclear technician such as myself. She often puts her long black hair up in a bun to secure the liberty of her neck and hands. She wears a permanent smirk on her astute face that communicates “slightly pleased” to the world, and she walks in her heels as lightly as a cat on a nighttime rooftop, or a ballerina dancing loftily to The Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky.
She pulls her own coat over the frame of her shoulders, matching her outfit very similarly with Delilah’s. Clenching our daughter’s microscopic fingers in one hand, grasping for her car keys with the other, she walks with a sway of the hips to her little red car outside. The sound of the two-liter-four-cylinder engine turning over in her Honda came after the chitters of a small debate over buckling Delilah into her seat. I wave to her from the window as she pulls away and speeds off down the recently paved road.
“God I love that woman.”
My faint reflection in the window furrows his brow at me and makes a nasty frown, reminding me that I am running late for my morning routine.
I chug the remaining half glass of orange juice from concentrate, scrape the cold eggs and toast off my plate into the garbage, and toss the dishes in the sink with a clatter.
Into the shower. Knobs squeak counterclockwise, pipes rumble in the walls, and a stream of water rains down from a polished chromium shower head. The steam builds in the bathroom as my skin is scrubbed pink. The many tools of morning maintenance are brandished: a heavy chrome-plated safety razor, a hog-fur brush softened by years of use, a shaving cup with a large chunk of shaving soap at the bottom waiting to be lathered into a thick foam.
I pull a freshly starched, white long sleeved shirt out of the closet and slip my arms through the cotton fabric. The double-Windsor knot is tied around my neck with a fluidity that can only be produced by years of developed muscle memory. I grab for my fading identification card and stare at myself 13 years in the past.
Theodore Greenpiece
San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant, California
The face belonged to a bright young man with a world of dreams trapped inside his noggin. He was ready to fight to the death, to take on the world. Looking at the drooping, rumpled face in the mirror reminds me that I am failing. All the promises I made to myself never saw fruition. I never went skydiving, I never rode my bicycle across the state, I never met any of the famous beings I always idolized. What do I have to show for my life? A house? A wife and child? These treasures lose their value when your perspective changes, when your relationships change. Who is to say that in a few short years all the effort I invest in this "American Dream" of mine won't just go to waste, and my white-picket fence life torn apart before my very eyes?
I wave away the cancerous thoughts with a hand, hanging the lanyard around my neck. No one should think this way, of course my family is the most valuable thing in my life! Even in their absence, even if things head south and we end up with the fiercest of grudges, a broken family in a state of complete and utter disarray, at least I would be able to cherish these fondest of memories. This comfortable morning fits the archetype of a "good morning" in my memory banks.
Glancing at the quartz-movement watch on my wrist, I am reminded that I am running late. I grab the keys to the battered Toyota pickup I hold so near and dear to my heart and head outside.
Why do I allow such poisonous ideas to enter my mind? I run through the motions in my head as I turn over the engine. Surely they are not my own, surely they have been seeded there by some external and malicious beast. I feel reassured by my own comforting thoughts.
