Something

“Your mother.”
“Your breath after those salads.”
“I have to eat those salads, they’re part of the diet.”
“Your breath still stinks.”
“Look, you need to consider the fact that I’m brushing afterwards. I can’t help the garlic. You’re the one who said I was fat.”
“I never said you’re fat, but since we’re on the topic: you taste like garlic. I mean all of you. All of you tastes like garlic.”
“It’s an antibiotic and antifungal and Ariana says I should make it a part of my daily edibles.”
“Fuck Ariana and her bourgeoisie dietary sanctions.”
“Guess you have opinions on that,” she says after a pause.

With that, Aaron spends the evening in his Wendy Room. He thinks about attaching a picture to the bull’s-eye, but after an hour tossing the one remaining loppy dart, its velcro tip usually attaching (after a wobbly flight) to the inner fleece lining of his raincoat—because he’s a very bad shot—he wanders outside to their garden, where the dirt is freshly overturned. The stars are out, their tools still left scattered throughout the beds—trowel, hoes, weird twirly tool, what is the weird twirly tool good for? As he contemplates the flickering light from their house, Aaron alternates between picking the tools up, stacking them in corners, sucking on his whiskey, talking to himself, and missing her, his arm throbbing with missing her, the smell of garlic in their garden so sharp and fresh, and why doesn’t he like it anyway?

Letty spends this time in front of the television, her arm stretched down her leg, the remote in hand, freely choosing its direction without consideration from her brain. What she can’t get over is how interesting each show independently is, but how little intrigued she is, in the end, by how they end, and isn’t it amazing how she never remembers what happens? What happens is a given. Aaron is out in the Wendy room without her. She pulls the blanket closer around her and pats Darth on the head as he clutches her breast in feline self-preservation. In the Bones episode, someone is at risk. The fridge is humming strangely, which Letty intermittently worries about, and then she gets up, shoving Darth off of her.

Inside the fridge, everything is damp. It doesn’t seem as though the fridge is going to die, but it’s certainly not doing its job. She places a rag on the bottom shelf and turns the dial up to high. Has she ever put her keys in the fridge? No, she hasn’t. Although she’s looked there when they get lost. She despises losing her keys; it makes her cry every time, and one of the reasons she married Aaron is that he can always find her keys. It’s like he has a memory map in his brain; he remembers each step, even the ones he hasn’t taken or even watched, and by tracing back her steps, he solves the key problem even after she’s searched everywhere and cried for awhile, and Letty feels a part of her innards turn to strawberry lassi consistency when she thinks of this feature of Aaron. It’s like… unexpectedly hot, this ability. Goddamn his sexy mapping features.

Facebook is on in the computer room, and Aaron’s signed on and she can see that he’s posted something witty about Sarah Palin, and how dare he hate Sarah Palin. True, she’s a god-awful heinous black mark on female humanity, but shouldn’t Letty stand up for her? Shouldn’t she acknowledge the female hate embedded in most of the comments attached to Aaron’s witty Facebook comment? Is it possible to despise Palin or Obama without being a fucking racist sexist pig? Letty thinks not, and she deletes Aaron’s comment, disregarding the twelve (12!) comments that go along with it.

“You’re grinding your teeth again. Turn over.”
Like she wants to turn over! Like she’s obliged! Like it’s her fault her teeth grate out her angst in her sleep as she dreams about Froot Loops and boats with cereal for live-savers!
“Your momma…”
“No,” he says, “your momma…” It’s a draw and she finds herself grating her teeth and pulling up against him, his skin raw and bristly, errant furs clutching at his nipples and her clavicles, and he rolls on top of her, his breath not-garlicky but sweet like he’s been drinking whiskey and throwing darts. She thinks of the monkey, and his job, and her teeth are chattering by the end.
“Not again,” he whispers against her neck.

Letty’s monkey is a proboscis monkey, and they are very ugly with their ridiculous noses. Hers lives mostly inside her gall bladder but occasionally makes the journey up to her brain, where it makes everything difficult.

Upstairs, the babies are bedded down, and warm and flush in their jammies. Henry is in his dinosaur PJ’s, which are footed, which he hates, and so he has one leg dislodged and waving about nude under his sheets. His other foot is still inside the pajama bottoms, a compromise he will maintain until the morning when he wakes up, pulls back the covers, and slips his one loose, errant leg back inside so that he can pad down the hallway to his parents’ room where he may or may not sleep with both, but at least certainly one, of his parents.

Jonica, on the other hand, is lucky with her nightgown, which is an ancient hand-me-down with Rainbow Bright on the front (along with several stains, no doubt ice cream). She sleeps with all of her stuffed animals piled atop her, and it is her style to slip through the entire night, without wavering, or half-undressing, or rolling—all of which makes her the favored pack member of Hebrew, their Jewish dog, who tucks himself up against Jonica’s legs, and keeps her content and safe. She sucks her thumb, and sinks further and further amongst the animals, not a monkey in sight amongst the pile.

“You forgot…”
“There is no…”
“Do you really expect…”
“Are you listening…”
“There is no easy answer…”
It’s like he has three-quarters the deck, and she is still waiting for the royals to arrive. It would only be fair.
“How many times,” he asks, “Do I have to tell you it’s not about fairness. There is no fairness in life, only humanity.”

Aaron is very business-like this way; his pragmatic vision of culture versus nature. In nature, he thinks, we’re fucked. But we are a part of a group of thinkers, he would like to believe, who have decided to rise up above evolution and create civilization. Aaron rhapsodizes on civilization as he tends to their garden. He pulls the buttercups, which are just about everywhere, always, and thinks about how humans have decided to be more than science. How evolution has taken a back seat to civics and ethics and compromise, but there is Sarah Palin, and the tea-baggies, all of whom eschew scientific evolution, but embrace the social version, which involves the disintegration of society and culture and humanity. How is it possible, he thinks as ruffles the dirt around a very healthy squash, to believe humanity sublime, but embrace everything that makes it base? Aaron has taken to crying while weeding the peas. His wife’s monkey is back. His children play at her feet like they are waiting for the minutes in between.

“You don’t believe me.”
“Have you ever noticed how Six Feet Under is theatrical in a filmic way?”
“You don’t trust me.”
“Do you think Joni is too attached to Mr. Possom?”
“You wouldn’t give up everything to be with me.”
“Are you coming to the school meetings tonight?”
(“Yes.”)
(“I would, but I won’t.”)

He has the Kings, all the Jacks, some of the Queens, one Ace still in the pack. He rakes on the upper lowers, and all she seems to get is the threes against his twos. Aaron loves her, Letty knows, but he doesn’t feel it, he doesn’t listen, he says one thing but he believes another. He’s pushing her towards the primate doctor. He tells her the monkey is loose. Throwing dung, but not picking the fleas. The fridge is doing better though. She takes out the rag, turns down the dial. The carrots are crisp, but not frozen. What if she has all the rest of the royals? What if her ace is just around the corner? She watches him in the garden, tidying all the tools. When he goes to the Wendy Room, she goes outside and looks at the stars. Below her, the garlic seems ready to harvest although the rest of the veggies are just getting started. She smells them, tells the monkey to climb the apple tree—its blobby fruit just getting started, already a little crusty in a way that she can imagine will taste nice.

“Your job takes you away from us.”
“So does yours,” he says, nodding to the pile of research books she has stored on the kitchen table.
“No, I mean if you cared, you’d…”
“My heart is a gorilla,” he interrupts, as he stares down at the pile of leeks and chard piling up under the sink. “Your monkey is trumped.”
Letty sits at the table, her hands buried in the giant-sized puzzle pieces Jonica and Henry have gathered and placed on the kitchen floor in no particular order. “Perhaps,” she says and pushes an edge-piece towards the center.