And a Dash of Pepper

They were the ugliest salt and pepper shakers I’ve ever seen. Sloppy, handmade things, with a thin layer of paint that hardly covered the lumps of misshapen clay. I passed them every day, sitting there on that bookshelf collecting dust. They were clunky enough to be bookends and if she’d have used them as such, they might’ve served some purpose. No, she wouldn’t use them for that. She wouldn’t use them for anything at all except to look at every now and then, though she was not entirely to blame for that. Modeling clay couldn’t be washed without being ruined; therefore, they couldn’t be used. Decorative salt and pepper shakers are one of the dumbest ideas, but she loved them, so I left them alone. When she looked at them, she saw another life. Sometimes, she would look up over the top of her book from the recliner and get this dreamy, wistful look in her eyes. Wherever she went in those moments, whether a memory or a dream, I wasn’t welcome. That made my hatred for them even worse, but I couldn’t bear the idea of taking that away from her. No one could understand the amount of self-control necessary to keep me from smashing them to bits.

I broke them yesterday.

Well, just the pepper shaker.

Today, she’s gone.

It was an accident, I think. Over the past few months, I could feel her slipping away. Late nights. Quiet dinners. Short answers. Random crying spells with little to no explanation. So, I, being the reformed boyfriend that I am, got it in my head to do something sweet for her. It was supposed to be a surprise.

She has a penchant for collecting used books. Homely ones with shabby covers and pages that smell like decay. Unable to bear the weight of her growing collection, the particle board shelves bowed in the middle. I just knew that one day those shelves would snap and take those awful salt and pepper shakers with them. It was a fantasy that perhaps brought me more joy than it should have.  I’m no craftsman, but I knew that at the very least, flipping the shelves would even out the warped boards.

Why she loved that hideous shelf was a mystery to me, but I couldn’t dare replace it without her approval. They just don’t make them in that color, anymore she would say. For good reason, I would respond, disgusted with the lime green laminate. No doubt a relic from her first apartment, it was among one of the many revolting things she’d insisted upon bringing when we moved in together. Even though I despised it, I complied because I loved her.

Before I took all the books from the shelf, I moved the salt and pepper shakers. That was my first mistake. I placed them on the kitchen table. That was my second mistake. I moved on to stacking the books. It made little sense to me, organized by neither genre nor author’s last name, by neither title nor publication date. They weren’t even organized by color, but surely the system made sense to her. So, I took care not to disturb the order as I placed them in neat stacks on the floor. I tore a few sheets of printer paper in half and labeled each stack by shelf number. Flipping the boards took less than a minute, and in no time, the books were back on the shelf.

I forgot the salt and pepper shakers. That was my third mistake.

Satisfied with my work, I decided to tidy up the apartment a bit before she got home. There was not much to do. I folded the blanket she left draped over the back of the recliner. I moved her shoes from beside the door and lined them up in the closet. I tossed out old leftovers, expired French dressing, and a bottle of yellow mustard. I finished off the soy milk and tossed that carton, too. I ran the vacuum and fluffed the toss pillows. I re-alphabetized my Blu-ray collection.

When I stepped back to admire my progress, the salt and pepper shakers stared back at me from the edge of the table. At the same time, I noticed that the table was no longer centered beneath the dining room light. I moved the table, just about a foot to the left. That was my fourth mistake. The saltshaker wobbled and steadied, but the pepper shaker fell, crashing to the floor with a devastating impact. My hatred for the ugly things must have run so deep that my subconscious, who knew the risk of moving the table, did it anyway.  A part of me was sorry because I knew she would be upset. Only a little, I hoped. It was such a little thing. Mostly, I just felt relief at the sight of it in pieces on the floor.

I swept up the fragments and disposed of them, then moved the saltshaker back to its nonsensical place on the bookshelf.

At first, she didn’t notice anything I’d done. She discarded her shoes by the door, and I pretended not to care. Thank you so much for cleaning out the fridge for me, she said, hanging her arms around my neck. She showered. We made love. We reheated Chinese take-out from the night before. I lay down on the couch and she sat on the ground in front of me. We watched a sad movie. I stood to throw away my box, emptied of its contents of fried rice and pressed duck, but she stopped me. No, I’ll get it. I’m going to the kitchen anyway.

I let her. That was my fifth mistake.

I knew the moment she opened the garbage can, because of the way she screamed my name. Already, she choked on the garble in her throat. She strained to steady her voice, trying to keep calm while tears welled in her eyes. Heat rose from my neck to my cheeks. How dare she? I fumed. How dare she notice the stupid broken trinket but not the shelves I fixed for her? I told her as much. I told her how ugly the salt and pepper shakers were and how much I hated them. I told her how much I hated her ugly books and her ugly shelf. I told her that I didn’t understand why she kept them when she could get something so much better.

She agreed.

She could get something so much better.

We weren’t talking about the pepper shaker anymore.

I didn’t think it was possible to hate those stupid things more than I already did, but today, when I woke up alone, I learned how wrong I was. Turns out, the books, the shelf, and the saltshaker all fit in the back seat of her Hyundai Accent. Her clothes fit in a garbage bag and a box of her shoes fit in the front seat.

Maybe I underestimated how much she loved her things, or maybe I hated them because of how much she loved them. The latter seems more likely. If I apologized, or showed any remorse, she might still be here. I didn’t. Laughing as she cried was cruel, I know. That was my final mistake. Not an appropriate reaction, but crying over a pepper shaker, and an ugly one at that wasn’t a normal reaction either. I’m not the only one at fault.

The carpet is pressed into a rectangle where the shelf was. I pass over it with the vacuum a few times to erase the evidence of its existence. I take the trash out to the dumpster. Now that there is room, I hang a few of my shirts from a basket of my folded clothes. I shower without bumping into four different kinds of shampoo bottles. I drink a beer with breakfast, and I read a few chapters from the book on my nightstand. I scroll through my phone and stop at a name I shouldn’t and send a text that I shouldn’t. A text to a name that I would’ve sent months ago if she hadn’t been here.

In the space between my text and the response, it occurs to me that I never hated the peppershaker.

I hated her.