A Typical Morning, Several Years Ago

I woke up and stretched. My knees cracked and my hip popped, and I frowned at the prospect of starting the day. I looked over at my husband, who showed no signs of getting up, although I knew he was awake under the blanket that covered his face. I inhaled quickly and deeply through my nose and arched my head back as far as it would go, savoring my final stretch, then sat up, surveyed the damage from the night before—two dirty glasses and a half-empty bag of chocolate chip cookies—let’s be honest, more than half empty, I thought to myself. Probably why I’m so gassy.

I proceeded down the hall, bare feet on the painted concrete floor that was mostly clean, and settled into the bathroom for my morning movement. Astounded by my own toxicity, which could not have been attributed to chocolate chip cookies by any stretch of the imagination, I remembered my lunch at Lan Pan Asian the day before—chicken dumplings in egg noodle soup with spinach, bean sprouts and what had been described on the menu as Chinese broccoli, but what appeared to be only ordinary broccoli stalks. My husband had accompanied me, but after reviewing the menu, ordered nothing except for a can of soda and then watched television silently. I might as well have come here by myself, I had thought. I watched my husband watch the news and tried to eavesdrop on the next table’s conversation, but couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. Perhaps the only thing worse than eating by yourself, I mused, was eating with someone who both disdained the menu and had nothing to say.

“You know, you can go look around in the shops for a while and I’ll come meet you when I’m finished,” I said, listening hard to my own voice to hear if I sounded sincere or sarcastic, my eyes downcast to my noodle soup.

“What?” He glanced at my guardedly blank expression. “Eat your soup, I’m fine,” my husband replied, looking at me with a half-smile on his lips before he returned his gaze to the television.

“Hmmm,” I sighed to myself, completely unable to resist, “I should have brought a book along.”

“What? A book? Why?”

“Because at least I would have something to do while I eat, since you don’t want to chit-chat with me.”

“Chit-chat? What do you want me to say?” He snorted, not nastily though.

“Well, you could have asked me how I liked my soup, or how was the salad. That is typical chit-chat between people who are dining out. But, whatever. You just watch your news.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he laughed just a bit too heartily (clearly he thought he was driving this thing), “How was the salad? Was it good? How’s that soup right there? Do you like it?”

I brightened immediately. “Well, the salad is just OK, a lot of brown; the dressing though is excellent, and the soup is good. I like it, but it needs about four more chicken dumplings. I’m glad I ordered it though, because I’ve never gotten the big bowl of noodle soup before, and I always wanted to try it. Here, would you like a taste?”

“No.”

As I rested on the commode, I remembered a particularly good jab I had thrown as we amiably winded down our back-and-forth after yesterday’s lunch:

“I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to find a friend and we’re going to eat Asian food together all of the time. And, we’re going to eat at the green Thai place next!”

My husband and I had laughed and laughed. The very idea that I would make a new friend was ludicrous, and if I ever did manage to make one, the threat of me eating out with the new friend could only have been idle.

Relaxed but for the Rug

I began to relax and sat back in the couch. There was nothing good on television. Making my way up the channels, I came across a movie playing on the Independent Film Channel. Pushing the info button on the remote control revealed its plot: “Three Vietnamese sisters keep secrets from one another.”

This’ll do, I thought, at least until the guy comes home.

At first glance the room appeared to be clean, fresh even. But then my eye caught on the dust patches and dog hair matted on the plastic ribbed face of the floor fan. I just cleaned that, I thought with defeated frustration. From the fan my eye wandered to the torn off piece of yarn from the mop that had gotten caught under the free weights on the floor. The yarn tip had attracted its own small galaxy of bits of dust and dirt and fuzz. And the weight, I knew, was stuck to the floor. Jose, I thought, and shook my head. How could Jose have neglected to seal the floor after he painted it?

In his late seventies, Jose was the landlord’s father, who, with his family in tow, had emigrated from Cuba in 1970. So far, his repairs had cost me a good kitchen knife (tip broke when Jose used it as a screwdriver), several gallons of orange juice, and many of my mornings and afternoons. Most minor maintenance tasks required one full day to verify that he had the necessary tools for the job. Work itself usually took several days to complete, what with the warm-up conversation, the task itself, followed by an announcement of the completion of said task, then a detailed recap of how the work had progressed, with the entire enterprise concluding only after the lingering admiration of all present convinced him that he had done well.

At first the concrete floor wasn’t so offensive; with a nice thick coat of grey paint it passed, almost, as polished concrete, the prized flooring in the modernist lofts that were mushrooming in Miami at the time. It had a grid pattern pressed into it, which gave it some texture, and besides, a pretty cotton rag rug covered up most of it. Until—inevitably, I supposed—the dogs had ripped up the rug, and then, in washing the rug, all the fresh spring colors bled together into a light brown-green color. Thank God it was a cheap rug—on sale for forty-five dollars with the Pier One gift card from Mom and Dad. The rug that had replaced it was supposed to have been a quick fix—grey and black stripes, twenty bucks from Kmart. It lasted, however, for months. It matched the floor, a dubious complement if ever there was one, but it was much smaller than the first rug, leaving more floor exposed.

When my darling guy and I rearranged the living room and bedroom, we moved the rug outside, temporarily. The guy said that he was going to pressure clean it, which I thought was pretty stupid. This guy of mine had a knack for complicating small tasks so that they became big tasks that never actually got done. Inwardly rolling my eyes at him and wanting to say, all you have to do is take it outside and beat it, what I actually said was, “Sounds good.” If he really did whip out 3500 psi of water power, that would be one fresh rug. But, after the rolled-up rug lay propped up against the chain-link fence for two nights, I knew that the guy wouldn’t be pressure cleaning shit. Over the next day and night, the rolled-up dirty rug, which by then had toppled over into the grass, was rained on. And then I knew that the rug wasn’t coming back inside, which meant that I had been reduced to no rug at all.

I rotated in two small hallway rugs, but that left the hallway bare. The grey paint became more and more scuffed. Even when it had been freshly scrubbed it still looked dirty. Goddamn Jose. Who the fuck paints a floor? You couldn’t even put in cheap linoleum tile? And the fucking guy—pressure cleaning that rug would be like using a fire-hose to brush your teeth. And now, I shook my head again and exhaled sharply through my nose at the thought, I was going to have to carry that dirty wet thing down to the trash can myself.

Later though, maybe tomorrow, I reasoned, shelving my agitation until the guy came home and I returned my attention to the three Vietnamese sisters who were keeping secrets from one another.