Friday, June 21, 1991 | Summer Solstice | Waxing Gibbous Moon
Hand-drawn Illustrations
Waxing Gibbous Moon
Lily of the Valley | Return to happiness
The timer rang, drawing her back inside to stir the beans and start the rice. She fried a few eggs, and warmed up the arepa she had on hand, a Colombian flatbread Maria had also taught her to make. After removing the dry denim from the laundry area under the stairs and tossing them on the sofa in the living room next to the pile of linens with plans to fold and hang them after dinner, she called Len to come down for dinner.
He appeared without hesitation and parked himself at the kitchen table in front of his plate of food. He shoved the Lily of the Valley to the back of the table.
“Any chance we have a spare bottle laying around?” he asked as he broke the yoke on his egg, fiercely jabbing his bread into the yellowgold river that flowed toward the pile of beans.
“No, sorry,” said Miranda, as she moved the flowers to the counter near the back door, a show of protection.
He stopped without looking up. “I thought we had an extra,” he said. “The one my mom gave me.”
Sensing his level of agitation, she made her best on-the-spot decision, quickly running down the possible consequences and outcomes, depending on her response. “That’s the one you have in the loft. Is it gone?”
“What do you mean, ‘Is it gone?’,” he said. “Of course, it’s gone. Why would I ask if we had more?” He resumed eating.
Thinking she may have bypassed a confrontation and not wanting a replay of the outburst from six months before, she asked, “How’s it going?”
“How’s it going?” he mocked.
Like an emotional ninja who sensed subtle alterations in the air, the way horses or cats know when a storm or earthquake is coming, she was accustomed to reading the smallest change in him. A pang of angst surged through her, an electrical shock to her chest. She didn’t comment, pushed the food around on her plate, her appetite vanquished.
“How the hell do you think it’s going?” he snapped. “You, in and out, in and out. Washer and dryer going all goddamn day.”
“I’m sorry, Len, but I haven’t been able to do laundry much since we got here. I haven’t wanted to disturb you.”
“So why today? Why’s today the day Miranda gets to disturb Len?”
“Because we were out of clothes and clean sheets and towels,” she said, feeling a momentary jolt, a barely negligible rising of her young Firecracker Self: You. Bastard, she thought. And before she was able to filter her words, she said, “I can’t do it at night because that’s when you sleep, if you even do.” As soon as the words left her mouth, she regretted them. She saw it. The miniscule shift in the position of Len’s head.
He looked up at her, vacant, the way she’d seen him other times in the recent past when he’d been drinking all day, a dark void behind his eyes, his soul departed. He put down his fork. The air held a stillness, more threat than reassurance. “What did you say?”
“Len, I’m sorry… I.. I just—“
“You just what?”
“I don’t know. I’m just frustrated, I guess. I’m trying to do what I can to help you—“
“You can’t help me!” he barked. He stood in a flash, his chair tipping over, its wooden back bouncing on the floor a few times before coming to rest with its two front legs in the air. “You wanna do laundry, Miranda? Is that what you want?” He marched into the living room and snatched up a shirt, holding it out in his clenched fist. “Here,” he challenged her, “come do the laundry.”
“I’m eating right now,” she said.
“I’m eating right now,” he mocked again in that whiney voice she had gotten too used to hearing. “Get in here now,” he ordered. “Fold the fucking laundry.”
To keep the situation from escalating, she went to the living room and started to fold a pair of his jeans. He stood close to her, watching, his breath on her bare shoulder. He walked around to the front of the sofa, picked up an armful of sheets and flung them into the air. “Yeah. Let’s. Do. The laundry!” His jaw bulged and receded. As if jerked here and there by a mad puppeteer, he flung laundry in the air, denim shirts floating up then falling around him, draping across the coffee table, the sofa’s padded arm.
“Len, don’t. Please. I’ll do these. Go back upstairs if you need to.”
“Go back upstairs…” he mocked. He took a deep breath, and his demeanor calmed and quieted in an instant. Rather than take it as a good sign, Miranda knew from experience he was picking up steam. “You wouldn’t be trying to get rid of me, would you, Miranda?”
“No, I’m not trying to do that. I just don’t want to fight with you.”
“Too late for that. Once again, you had to open your goddamn mouth.”
She stood there, a pair of folded jeans in her hands, telling herself this was the alcohol talking, not her husband, not knowing whether to engage and try to talk him down or to carry on as if he weren’t there. Whatever she did, she knew it would anger him more.
“I have an idea,” he said, feigning an epiphany, index finger in the air. “Let’s go to the lake.”
Miranda looked out the window. Daylight had dimmed. The sun would be setting soon. “It’s getting late,” she said.
“Aw, come on big baby, Miranda. Let’s go…”
She knew not to challenge, so she complied and went to the back door with him. With a subtle push of his hand to her lower back, he moved her in front of him on their way out, bumping the Lily of the Valley with his elbow, knocking it to the floor, unearthing the plant from its pot. Miranda stopped, wanting to pick it up and recover it to safety. Len pressed his hand on her lower back again. She moved forward.
The temperature had dropped. Goosebumps sprouted and tingled on her skin. In the few minutes it took for them to feel their way down the long flight of stairs and over to the lake’s shore where a canoe was tied to a fat, wooden post, the sun had completed its fast sink to the other side of the world and washed the sky with a deep blue grey. Twilight. The time between daylight and darkness. The moon began to materialize, waxing toward full, offering partial illumination. Len unknotted the rope and threw its end into the vessel. He grabbed the canoe’s edge and motioned Miranda to get in.
“Len, I don’t think we should. It’s dark.”
He leaned over, whispered in her ear, “You wanted to be at the lake. Let’s be at the lake.”
