Kitchen Years

“Do you even love me anymore?” 

The question had festered under Nina Paulamaro’s skin for months, aching in her bones and sending ugly pains through her heart. Now, standing in the kitchen of their split level home, drenched in sweat from her five o’clock run in the Georgia heat, Nina couldn’t handle it any longer. 

Her husband, Mark Williams, had just returned from work, a backpack slung over one shoulder and deep purple bags under his eyes. Frozen in the doorway in his cheap suit and a loosened tie, Mark was stuck. As she waited for the answer, Nina’s eyes roamed the kitchen, finding pieces of their life together. Magnets on the fridge from every stop on a road trip they’d taken four years ago. The beat-up, kitchen table Mark’s father made them when they’d left Chicago and moved to Georgia. A wine glass on a shelf by the sink, stolen from their favorite bar in Chicago—the bar where they met. 

Nina closed her eyes, remembering that night. Before it was her and Mark’s favorite place, it was a place her best friend and best friend’s boyfriend at the time frequented. 

She’d only tagged along that night, dressed in a shiny tank top and jeans she’d bought on sale three days before, because Hayley insisted she needed to get out. The bar was full, and she’d stuck close to Hayley and the boyfriend. By the end of the night, Hayley was insisting upon setting Nina up with someone—although, whether it was a true concern or the three-too-many drinks talking, Nina was unsure. 

“Look over there!” Stumbling off her stool, Hayley gripped Nina’s wrist and pulled her toward one end of the building. 

“Hayley, what are we doing?” 

“It’s my cousin. You have to meet my cousin. He’s hilarious.” Hayley pointed. Nina caught a glimpse of someone she thought could be related to Hayley through the crowd; they had the same bone structure and deep red hair of which Nina had always been jealous. Although, it was a fifty-fifty chance Hayley had any clue who the guy really was. “Mark!” Hayley stumbled across the bar, caught herself on his table, and pointed to her friend. “This is Nina. Isn’t she adorable?”

He looked up, nursing a second or third beer in one hand, and caught Hayley’s arm as she stumbled. “Hales? You don’t look too good.”

Nina nodded and helped to steady her friend. “He’s right. We have to get you home.”

Hayley’s boyfriend at the time, of whom Nina couldn’t remember the name, had followed them to the table and took Hayley by the shoulders. “I’ll take care of her.” He pulled Hayley from Nina and Mark. “Coming with, Nina?”

She almost did, but the stranger—Hayley’s cousin—had Nina’s attention, so she waved them away. Mark’s shoulders hunched over the most recent beer, and he sat turned away from the crowd of the little bar. “Nina?” he asked, arching an eyebrow. “She’s told me about you. The teacher.”

Nina glanced at the empty bottles. “Hayley said you were funny, but you look about as depressing as my paycheck.”

“Witty. She mentioned that too. I hate to be a bore, but I’m feeling very sorry for myself, and with the way this evening is going, I plan to do it for a while.”

Nina took a seat across from him. “That’s alright. I’m enough funny for the two of us.” She set her purse on the table. “Girl trouble?”

“You could say that. I told her I loved her.”

“She didn’t say it back?”

He sighed. “She did, actually.”

“Your celebration looks very different than mine would.” Nina cocked her head. 

“It wasn’t the words she said, it was something else.”

“Did her breath reek of onions… or—” she took the bottle from him and waved it in front of his face. “Cheap beer?”

“I wish that was all. It was the wait. The nine or ten seconds between. She tried to mean it, but I don’t think she did.” He snatched the bottle back from Nina.

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright. I haven’t felt sorry for myself for a while.” He tipped the bottle toward her. “This is a nice change. Really. Like throwing away leftovers or buying new throw pillows.”

“You don’t have to brag.” She settled into the seat and crossed a leg. “And… you don’t have to sit here alone.” 

“Are you offering me your company, or suggesting I go sit with him?” He gestured to an older, scruffy man sitting at the table beside them.

Nina grinned. “Mine.”

“Not the answer I was hoping for,” Mark shrugged with a matching smile. “But alright.”

Nina opened her eyes, returning to the kitchen lit by the setting autumn sun streaming through the window. On the sill were little wooden models of buildings—something they bought when they left Chicago together. One of them looked particularly similar to her old apartment where she’d lived with Hayley and another friend from college. Most days, as she cleaned the dishes or made dinner, she found herself staring at that building with its beautiful details and its stained finish, wishing she could go back to a time when things were as simple.

Beyond the sink and the window was a spot of wall just above the counter where an irregular eggshell hue unevenly ran into the cream-painted wall. Repatched years back, after Mark punched the wall in anger, the memory of that evening made Nina grit her teeth. 

“I didn’t take it.” It was the first thing Mark had said when he walked in the door. He had a black backpack slung over his shoulder, then too, mostly full of paperwork and resumes, and he was younger—two, or three years younger. 

“Mark why?” Nina had dropped the pan she was scrubbing in the sink. It was seven-fourteen, and as soon as she’d come home from teaching, she put on sweats and started to make dinner. 

He hung around in the doorframe, giving Nina those pleading eyes that had worked for years. Mostly, Nina thought the look was sweet. “It wasn’t the right job. It was an entry-level position.”

She didn’t find the look as sweet, though. “But you understand that any position is better than unemployment?”

“And if I’m unhappy?”

Nina turned from the sink, tearing her apron off entirely. “I’m unhappy! But I stay in this job where these children can’t even say my name correctly—Mrs. Paula, Mrs. Paul-Mario—I stay because one of us has to have a job and you promised I could look for another once you found a new one.”

“Maybe Williams would be an easier name for them to pronounce.” Mark dropped the backpack in the doorway.

Nina didn’t like to remember the rest. It just got ugly from there, with lots of shouting and bottled up anger on both sides. Of course, eventually, the wall was punched, but that wasn’t the only thing they’d broken that night. 

Mark used to meet her at the school for lunch every Wednesday. They sat in her science room under a mobile of moons and stars—things they’d once promised each other—and shared a small margarita pizza from the family-owned restaurant next to Mark’s old office building. He’d bring it in at the end of her second class and make some science-related jokes to keep the kids from begging him and Nina to share. The class looked forward to Wednesdays as much as she did. But after the argument, Mark stopped visiting and Nina threw out the mobile. 

“It’s not a science, Nina,” Nina remembered her Abuela telling her several months after the incident. They sat in the old woman’s living room, Nina on the floor as if she were a child again, and Abuela in the embroidered armchair she’d had all of Nina’s life.

“What?” Nina asked, checking the time. She’d only stopped by to drop off some groceries on her way to the school. Her grandmother had a way of drawing Nina in and tugging at her heart for answers, so somehow, Nina ended up in the musty house, listening as the old woman lectured. 

“This,” Abuela tapped her chest. “It’s just not. It’s different for everyone.”

Nina’s toes were cold on the kitchen tile, and as she wiggled them, the years fell away, leaving only her and Mark, on the precipice of that question she’d posed. Sometimes she wished they’d just stayed in Chicago. Everything was simpler then. What felt like minutes to Nina was probably only nine or ten seconds, but it was enough. It was enough for her to know. 

Mark fixed his fingers around the strap of his bag, squeezing it tightly. “Of course. Of course, I still love you.”