The Lunch Lady

I’ve watched these children file through this line for years now. I’ve fed them and seen them grow. Most of them don’t even know my name. To them, I am a joke, something to mock. They’ve never paid me a ‘thank you’ or even a thought after I give them their food.

The vibration of a tray against the trashcan echoes in my ears. An untouched burger flops into the garbage can along with an unopened fruit cup and a serving of corn. The corn I came in early to perfect this morning.

More trays bang. The line leading up to the trash cans dwindles and all that is left are the slow eaters. My feet shuffle toward the sinks with dishes stacked on the catty-cornered counter. The repetitive motion of washing dishes takes me over. Grab, rinse, turn, rinse, and into the washer. Over and over again. I don’t know how much time passes as I do this, but when I next look up it is to Gretchen, one of the other lunch ladies. 

“I’m heading out. See you tomorrow.” My head is nodding before I have the time to decipher what she’s said. Her head pops back into the kitchen, “And tell Melvin I say hi.” Melvin. The name sits in my mind for a moment. Ah, yes Melvin, my husband. Melvin. My lips pull up into a smile. I should get home to him. The last tray rests in my hands. Grab, rinse, turn, rinse, and into the washer. 

I’m coming up to the lounge now. I expect to see Gretchen there, but she has already come and gone. I sign out before climbing into my car. The route on the way home is the same as always. Out of town, around the curve, left, left, left. I’ve driven it so many times that the trees are each familiar and the dips in the road are expected. 

As the door creaks open, the smell of sweet pumpkin and cinnamon fills my nose. The pie I baked this morning is still sitting on the counter. As I approach it, however, my eyes catch on the break in the crisp orange of the pumpkin. There is a piece missing. No, not just one, two, maybe three.

“Melvin,” I exclaim, “Melvin! Are you home?” I round the corner to see him, with a full mouth and a piece of pie in his hand.

“Hello dear,” he says around the pumpkin in his mouth. 

“That was for the children at school. I had a lot more to make tonight and now I have one more.” Emotion weasels its way into my voice, although I try to keep it out. 

“I’m sorry, I’d assumed you had just made it because of the season.” He takes another bite out of his slice. My mind runs through the math again. The pies are cut into twelfths, there are roughly 30 kids in each class. That’s thirty more pies. 

“That’s alright,” I say to Melvin, “I’ll just have to cook another.” There is a sigh in my voice that I hope he picks up on. He doesn’t. My eyes follow him as he turns and walks to his chair, pie still in hand. 

I set to work on the pies laying crust in pans, mixing pumpkin, and adding cinnamon. That has always been my favorite part. The way that the powder covers the pumpkin in the bowl and then is lost within the orange as it’s poured into the pie pan. I make the pies 6 at a time.   Over and over the pans go in with an assortment of ingredients and come out something cohesive and recognizable. 

“Hey Melvin,” I start from the kitchen, “would you like to go and grab something in town? We could stop and eat it at the park.” I find myself smiling at the thought. 

“I don’t know, honey.” He says. 

“It would be nice to do something a little out of our schedule, don’t you think?” I ask, pulling another round of pies out of the oven. I set them down and walk into the living room to look at him, oven-mitt in hand. He is still sitting in his chair, although the pie he once carried is now gone. The fire flares in the fireplace next to him.

“I’m tired, Marlene,” He says.

“Come on, it’ll be fun.” He inhales deeply, closing his eyes as he does. 

“I said I’m tired.” I stand, trying to find anything to convince him. His eyes open again and meet mine. 

“Don’t you have some pies to bake.” Rage flares in the pit of my stomach. A vein in my neck protrudes and my jaw tightens as I stare at him, but he has already closed his eyes again. I turn, shoulders tense, back to the kitchen. Heat burns everywhere from my feet, hitting the ground hard, to my hair, standing on edge. I come back into the kitchen to find all my finished pies. Most of them are in pie pans but some farther down the counter are in bread or cake pans after I ran out of pie pans. It seems like a fairy tale with the smell wafting and the late afternoon light streaming in the windows. 

My feet are moving before I can fully form the thought. I pull open a drawer and grab out the long thin sheet of silver. The handle is cold in my sweaty palm. It is the oldest knife in the drawer, given as a wedding gift thirty-seven years ago. I wait there for a moment, entranced by the beauty of the blade. Light refracts off of its soft angle, making the dark steel feel lighter in spots. 

I amble back to the living room. He is there, reclined in his chair, eyes still shut softly. The hilt of the knife presses into my spine. I’m careful not to let the tip of the blade touch me. 

“Melvin, honey,” I whisper, “I’m sorry,” I wait, standing in front of him, for his eyes to open. He inhales sharply before opening his eyes. 

“What was that?” He asks. 

“I’m sorry,” I repeat, “I shouldn’t have pushed you when you said you didn’t want to go out.” Melvin grins but it doesn’t reach his eyes. 

“I accept your apology.” he says. He accepts my apology?! That’s all! No ‘I’m sorry too,’ or ‘there’s no need to apologize’! I close my eyes, afraid the anger flaring behind them will show. 

I smile, “Thank you.” He moves to stand up. I take a step closer to him. We move our arms around each other and instead of the cinnamon from the kitchen, I smell the forest where he spends most of his time. He takes a deep breath and before he lets it out I thrust the knife into his back. It gets caught halfway in and I have to lean into him to impale him farther. 

He hits the ground with a sound hollowed by the grey rug. His eyebrows draw up in shock as I pull out the blade and bring it across his throat. I repeat the line until the knife drips crimson onto the carpet and his blue button up has been overcome with deep stains. 

They say when someone dies the first tell that they are gone is the light leaving their eyes, but that’s not true. Before anything, his skin paled. All the red drains from his cheeks as all the blood leaves his body until the veins under his skin show through a turkish blue. The light brown of his eyes stays, even when his mouth falls open and the blood in his shirt becomes stiff. 

I stand over his body. I’m not sure how long I stay there. Just long enough to enjoy the spontaneity of what I’ve just done. Of course I’ve thought about it before, but I had not made up my mind until that moment. The edges of my lips draw up as I admire my work. 

Now comes the clean-up. As many times as I have thought about offing Melvin, it has never been with a knife. I have always pictured it with a well placed bullet or maybe a rope, never in such a messy way. I survey the floor under me, making sure none of the blood has yet made it to the wood under the carpet. It hasn’t. My feet slip out of my shoes before I throw them into the fire. Next, goes the rug with his body atop it. I wrestle it toward the fireplace, but before I heave it into the flame, I press the knife down on the valley in his neck one more time. The neck severs cleanly, leaving the head to roll. I let it as I shove the rug and what it holds into the fire.

The skin on his head is pushed up where my fingers touch it, leaving his teeth exposed from where his cheeks pull back. It is lighter than one would expect a head to be. I suspect from the lack of blood. I set it on the cutting board. There are still 6 more pies to make. Slicing thinly, I saw through his eyes, ears, lips, and cheeks until they all become part of the pumpkin for my last batch of pies. I am careful not to allow a great amount of blood into the pie. That would darken the pumpkin color too much. 

Once they are in the oven, I go back to the living room. My eyes scan over the chair he spent so much time in, the coffee table with dulled marks where his feet rested. I toss what is left of his head into the fire to join the rest of him. I find myself easing my body into the chair. It is comfortable in the way old chairs are although it has not been shaped to me. I feel the hard angles of Melvin defined in the chair. The fire crackles as I sit. If you look closely, you can see his crumpled outline in the flame, mostly gone. Soon, there will be nothing left of him.

The familiar ring of the alarm vibrates in the kitchen. 

“Ah yes, the pies are done,” I say to his figure, being eaten by flames.