A loud quiet settles in the kitchen.
The morning sun finds its way through crowds of whispering pines and stoic oaks before crashing onto the skylight, splashing the inhabitants below in ghostly shadows of needles and oakleaf.
Peering over his coffee cup, he clears his throat – brushing aside the silence.
“We don’t fuck in the shower anymore.”
He takes a sip.
She raises an eyebrow, but not her eyes, working her butter knife methodically, like a skilled artisan, covering every nook and cranny of a slightly burnt English muffin.
A second passes.
“Fuck in the shower?” she scoffs incredulously, “Hell, I’d settle for a dry hump in the driveway.”
“Hmm. Interesting.” He takes another sip and studies his wife across the table. “Still pretty without makeup,” he thinks to himself.
Lifting her head, she takes a bite and shoots him a toothless smile, which he returns instantly (with a wink) before heading to the sink with his coffee cup.
“So,” he says, “What’s the plan today?”
She floats across the kitchen floor, meeting him at the sink, “I’m thinking of going to Mom’s to help in the yard.”
“After that, I’m free as a bird.”
“Maybe we can shower then?”
Standing directly behind him, she places her hand lightly on his lower back and slides her plate onto the kitchen counter before walking away.
He marvels at how she’s kept her figure. With his hand on his belly, he begins to second-guess his shower comment.
It’s their anniversary.
“By the way,” she says over her shoulder. “We’ve only done that like twice – maybe 3 times – in 30 years of marriage.”
He detects a hint of disappointment, and that famous quote from Cool Hand Luke, “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate,” plays on a loop in his head.
He wonders momentarily how many shower opportunities he’s missed out on.
The space between them has grown exponentially since the kids left, and lately, he wonders if it’s even navigable.
The kids were a bridge.
Now, the person he fell in love with is this spotty, blurry-edged figure on a distant shore, and he’s pretty sure that’s how he appears to her as well — spotty and distant, lost in his coffee, fantasizing about fucking in the shower.
In a strained and slightly desperate tone he pushes his words towards her “Strange how time clouds our perception of reality,” as if words can fix what feels irrevocably broken.
bendingtheneedle 