Between Two Edens

[Alexandra Lebensburger]

This is a scene closer to the end. Even though it's a flashback scene, it's pivotal to the story since it informs the reader about what is holding Eve back in the present day. 

     “Honey, I’m home!”  

     I busied myself with grating the parmigiana until I heard his footsteps in the kitchen.  His loud, clunky footsteps.  I told him a million times to take his damn shoes off when he came home.  So unsanitary.  It was a state of mind I picked up in Singapore that always stuck with me.  

     “Eve?”

     I glanced at him and then picked up the salad bowl. 

     James moved closer to me.  “Are you even going to say hi?”

     I scoffed, avoiding his eyes.  “Are you going to keep leaving your socks next to the hamper?  Or did you not bother to toss them in because you knew your maid would take care of it for you?  You have so much initiative at work.  Where the hell is it when you come home?”  

     He turned me around to him.  “Whoa.  What the hell is going on with you?”  

     “How would you know what’s going on with me?  You don’t even check in with me from work anymore.  Not a single call all day.”

     “Because every time I call you, all I get is some crazy tirade about how I left a dish in the sink or my boxers on the bed, or some other trivial bullshit.”

     “Well that trivial bullshit happens to be my life now.”  The usual spot on his clavicle started to pulse.  Watching its slow steady rhythm used to calm me down during a fight, but now it just aggravated me further.   

     “Taking care of me, of us?  That’s trivial bullshit to you?”

     “This is not what I signed up for!  A woman gets married and suddenly Bob Barker appears and says, ‘Congratulations!  Let’s see what you’ve won!  Here’s your new office!  It’s a fucking kitchen and if your husband really treats you right, there’s a brand-new laundry room waiting for you!  And you get a lifetime supply of dinners to cook and toilets to clean!’”  I felt myself unhinging, like my nuts and bolts were coming undone.  

     James looked at me, stunned.  “I feel like I have no idea who you are right now, Eve.”  He shook his head.  “You’ve been acting crazy for months.”

     “I am not crazy.”

     “Well, you’re certainly acting crazy!”  His voice was louder now, more frantic.  “You don’t even kiss me when I come home, let alone greet me. And sex?  I practically have to beg you.  You show no affection to me whatsoever.  Everything is just routine.  Robotic.  And you’ve become obsessed with cleaning.  I just…”  He takes a deep breath.  “I just feel like I’m shouldering the load for both of us.  I bust my ass in the office morning till night, and you can pretty much do whatever you want.  I’m doing everything I can to support this family.  You.  Me.  This family.  And all I ask is that you support me in doing that.  Is that so bad?”

     The nuts and bolts were loosening further.  “I am more than that.  I am not just the goddamned support staff!  You assumed that because we come from similar backgrounds that we’re similar.  But we’re not.  I’m not going to be satisfied with what our mothers had.  With what Tiffany has.  What did you think law school was for me?  Just a passing fancy?  A very expensive dating site?  Did you think I was going to be barefoot and pregnant at your whim?  I don’t even want a kid!”

      We looked at each other, both of us stunned silent.  

      And there it was.  He put me in a situation of his own creation and then he had the gall to accuse me of letting him shoulder the load.  The load he wanted to carry.  But it wasn’t his creation.  It was mine.  By getting swept away in the gold and the glitter and the stomach flutters of love, I had become my mother, not my father.  High on the satisfaction that I’d met approval, on the congratulations.  But then came the gnawing at the pit of my stomach, foretelling that this satisfaction would last as long as people cared, which was never very long.  As soon as the congratulations had stopped coming, stripping my bright future of its artificial glow, I’d remembered that all that glittered was not gold.  I felt bile rise up in my throat.  I ran to the bathroom and spilled my guts into the toilet.  The toilet I had just cleaned this morning.  And I knew right then that my body had betrayed me. 

 

[Natasha Williams]

Definitely drawn into this scene.