Wishwash

by Krista Lester
© 2005

 

            Fretting over her waffles, Louisa tipped her folding chair back on its rear legs and let it thunk back onto the ground.  Her waffles couldn't have disappeared.  They had to be on the table.  She knew when she looked back down from her gaze at the convergence of ceiling and wall, the waffles would surely be there.  But they were gone.

            Wrinkling her eyebrows together, she lifted the edge of the blue vinyl tablecloth and peered beneath.  Brown and tan, black and brown, the cheap wood surface of the table stared back with a single knotted eye.  Her eyebrows relaxed.  She looked left, then right, not seeing, just thinking.  She stood, stepped to the counter, lifted the toaster, and overturned it.  Crumbs sprinkled to the countertop as she shook it.  Then she looked inside.  No waffles.

She opened the freezer door and let a puff of cold white mist spread around her shoulders.  She grabbed the yellow box and picked it up.  The cardboard tab was ripped and frayed.  The sides of the box were streaked with finger marks where the frost had melted.  Inside, the plastic wrapper gaped – torn, wrecked, useless – around the two remaining waffles.

There had been four.  She remembered taking two waffles from the box, putting them in the toaster, and pressing the tab.  She'd watched the red glow melt, toast, crisp them into the sweet buttery carbohydrates that would help calm her stomach.  They'd popped up.  She'd been careful to avoid sticking a metal fork in the slots because it could electrocute her, like her mother had always said when she was a kid.  She'd unplugged the toaster even though she used her fingers to pinch the crusty round slices and pull them from the heat.  She could still feel their warmth on the pads of her fingers as she'd placed them on a plate and carried the plate to the table.

She knew she hadn't eaten them.  She didn't have a dog anymore.  Mike was gone, too.  She pictured him staring blankly at a shining grid of spreadsheets at the office.  In her mind, the glow of a monitor lit up his face, much different from the way his face used to light up every time he saw her.

Two waffles had been there, on the table.  She'd stared at them for a full minute before deciding if she wanted both butter and syrup.  She knew it was a minute because she'd noticed the ticking of the grandfather clock from the living room around the corner.  That clock ticked far too loudly.  It distracted her from the problem at hand.  When the minute had expired, she'd blinked, shaken her head, reminded herself what the question was, and decided on syrup alone because dairy could cause trouble.  She'd made that mistake once.

In the fridge, she smelled onions and reminded herself that the box of baking soda needed to be replaced.  Her stomach gurgled.  She started to gag.  There was no syrup.  Strawberry jam would have to do.

She'd grabbed the jar, closed the door, and welcomed fresh air into her lungs.  The knives were all in the dishwasher.  She'd have to wash one, but she hated washing dishes.  He never understood how she could hate it that much, and truly it was just a knife, so how could it be that bad?  She didn't know.  Maybe coffee would help.

She worried that there would be no clean mugs, either.  But there were several, all mismatched, a dozen different sizes and shapes and colors, standing upside-down in the cupboard.  She thought about taking them one by one and throwing them onto the black and white checkered linoleum, but then she decided against it.  She would only throw the dirty mugs on the floor.  But first the coffee.  She chose a burgundy mug with a white chip on the lip, poured the coffee, and walked to the table.

She could taste the waffles in her mouth as she thought of the commercials, the way the kids all sang a stupid song that made her want to smack them.  Even on TV, she couldn't stand voices of children, the laughing, squealing, high-pitched whining.

The coffee tasted bitter and complex – strong, dark, occasionally sweet.  It soothed and awakened her, prepared her for the day.  The day was already quiet and strange, even before the hunger pain subsided.  Her mouth felt sandy and worn, old like she'd kissed enough times to fulfill a lifetime quota.

The thought of waffles warmed her, made her anticipate bliss.  Food was the best she could do now, the closest she could get.  But her waffles were gone.  Mysteriously disappeared.  The sense of satisfaction subsided to a tingling inside her skull, the mingling of last night's liquor and this morning's waffle calamity.

The mug of coffee pressed against her lips.  She couldn't believe she'd thought of smashing all the mugs.  Mike wouldn't even see the mess.  And what would she drink her coffee from?

Curiosity pushed her forward, stood her up from her chair at the folding table that had stood on its side in the closet for the past four years.  It dipped near the center, warped from moisture and disuse, but she had to use it as a dining table now that the expensive oak one was gone.  She wondered if somehow the nice table had taken her waffles with it, but that didn't make any sense.  She had to remind herself that the table was gone before the waffles.  The table had gone with Mike.

Her headache pressed out from within, blackness dispersed from her eyes before she could move without plunging forward onto the black and white checkers below.  But what if she did fall forward, land on the floor, stay until she starved to death, all because of the missing waffles?  Who would find her?  Not Mike.

She moseyed into the living room.  Looking up at the grandfather clock, she asked it for the time, then wondered why she asked.  She looked into the reflection in the glass to see if she could spot her waffles anywhere.  But why would they be in the living room?  Why wouldn't they be in the kitchen, where they belonged?  Why wouldn't they be in her stomach already, calming the acidic wishwash left from last night's binge with Jim Beam?

She chuckled.  Mike would be jealous if he knew she'd spent the evening with a man, even if it was Jim Beam.  It was his Jim Beam, after all.  Wasn't that why it had tasted so good?  It hadn't even burned on the way down, hadn't left her feeling woozy or sick or tired, just pissed to all hell and depressed enough to drink the remaining half bottle to its bottom.

The empty bottle sat on the floor where the coffee table used to reside.  Four squares where the legs once stood were still matted into the carpeting, waiting to show her where to replace the table after she vacuumed the carpet beneath.  She didn't mind vacuuming, didn't mind cleaning up after his dog, Rosco, the puppy he'd had to get because he was too dependent on her to stay home alone when she went out to dinner and drinks with friends.  Maybe if she hadn't given in, hadn't allowed him to get a dog – she was allergic, after all – maybe he would've been too dependent on her to leave.  Now, he didn't need her.

The carpet where the coffee table had stood was perfectly clean, not a crumb or piece of lint in sight.  But he never thanked her for vacuuming.  Never thanked her for cleaning the bathroom, the bedroom, the living room, even the front porch.  Never thanked her for taking care of him when he had a temperature of 99 degrees and couldn't go into work because he whined like a lost cat when he had even the slightest cold.  She walked over to the bottle and kicked it onto its side with her toes.

She curled her toes under and pressed them down into the carpet, tried to put pressure on them to cover the pain, but it didn't do any good.  Maybe if she broke the bottle into jagged chunks it would help her understand how Mike felt.  And maybe it would help her remember where the hell she'd put those waffles.

She started to wonder if maybe she hadn't taken the waffles out of the freezer at all.  Maybe she'd dreamed that there were four that morning.  Maybe he'd taken two before he left.   Maybe even in his hurry to leave, he'd stuck them in his briefcase before climbing into the driver's seat in dress shoes, boxers, and a blue flannel robe.  Maybe truck stops had toaster ovens and he'd secretly been hiding out in truck stops for years without her knowing.  He could've been doing anything.  She wouldn't have complained.

She'd trusted him.  She'd trusted him not to cheat by moving the pieces when she got up for a drink while they were playing chess.  She'd trusted him not to betray her to his friends, not to admit to a mistake he didn't believe he'd made, not to tell her their relationship was great when it wasn't.  She'd trusted him as much as she could trust that her breakfast would remain where she put it.

She walked in circles around the tipped bottle, veering off after fourteen mindless laps and heading back to the kitchen.  She wondered if maybe the waffles were actually there, something was just so wrong with her that she couldn't see them.  There had to be something wrong with her.  Why else would he have left?  Maybe she should try to eat them anyway.  She opened the jam and slid the knife inside the jar.  A squishing sound made her mouth water.  There was nowhere to put the jam.  She couldn't pick up a waffle that wasn't there, couldn't spread jam on it without spreading directly onto the plate or her hand.  She didn't know what to do with it.  She had so much jam, glopping over the sides of the knife, viscous and gelatinous, sugary, sticky.

If she really wanted to, she could make some toast and say to hell with the waffles.  She could go get the two waffles that were still in the fridge.  But she couldn't just forget.  She didn't want to live in a house where breakfast foods disappeared.  Maybe she would have to sell the house.  Inexplicable occurrences weren't entirely unheard of in the house, what with Mike losing a toothbrush right out of the toothbrush holder.  She never had found that bra she'd been looking for since last Christmas.  It's not like a bra is something you leave across town in the supermarket.  It had been her favorite one.  She'd lost one of her favorite socks, too, and it didn't happen in the wash.  It went into the drawer rolled up with the other, but it came out alone, unrolled, a strange new hole in the toe.  She'd wanted to blame it on Rosco, but Mike said a dog couldn't get into her drawers.  He wasn't a magical dog.  He wasn't even any good at tricks.  Occasionally, he'd chase after a Frisbee he really wanted, but, in general, he was lazy.  Telling Rosco to roll over was usually about as successful as waking Mike up when he didn't feel like going to work.

The past few weeks, she hadn't had that problem.  He'd started waking up before the alarm, leaving it on so it would wake her up an hour too early.  She'd planned to get up in the middle of the night to set his alarm for two or three o'clock in the morning one day, but she never got the chance.

Chimes clanged.  It was ten already, and what had she done?  She'd contemplated lost breakfast foods and wasted two hours of her life.  She'd reminisced about what she'd prefer to forget.  She wondered if she'd eaten the waffles and just forgotten.  But she was still hungry, so that couldn't be it.  Could it?

She was too young to be getting Alzheimer's, too smart to forget little thoughts.  It had always been the little thoughts that had stuck with her, written in permanent marker in the creases of her brain, ever since kindergarten, ever since she learned that safety scissors aren't that safe when someone is cutting your hair against your will.  She remembered the day she learned what an exclamation mark was, the day she learned that clouds weren't really created by swishing dirt around in your mouth and blowing bubbles, the way her sister had told her they were.  She remembered the shirt Mike was wearing the day they met at school, the one that buttoned on the wrong side, that he never liked to wear because he thought he must have accidentally bought a woman's shirt.  She remembered the first time he blew his nose in front of her, the way he'd apologized for being rude, even though they were just watching a bad movie on TV.  She remembered so much.

But she couldn't remember if she'd eaten her waffles.  She wondered if this was what it felt like to go senile.  Was this why her grandmother had always said she didn't want to talk about her childhood?  This was why.  She was sure.  Forgetting was too painful.  The memories she didn't want to think about were always the ones that meant the most to her.  She kept them to herself as if the saying of them could make them fade more quickly than with time alone.

She sat at the table and lifted her knife and fork, prepared to sink them into the warm flesh of waffles.  Surely, the clink of metal against ceramic wouldn't come.  The waffles were there, somewhere, in folds of memories she couldn't access at will, in troves of futures she couldn't yet envision.

They couldn't just disappear.