No Carrots

There is tomato juice everywhere, and Leo can’t help but let out his frustration and chuck the tomato at the sink, the knife too. The scent of the sticky red juice wafts into his nose as he wipes the sweat from his forehead, fuming, and steps back, farther, until he backs into the wall and can’t stand to stare at the empty scene of the mess he’s made. Potatoes from the market, once cleaned, have rolled onto the floor. The cabbage is wilting at the edges, he couldn’t pick out the right one. He slides down the wall. The mushrooms still need to be washed, so does the pot to put it all in. At least he could peel the potatoes and the carrots- SHE DOESN'T LIKE CARROTS. He should know that, she told him that, and he curses himself for forgetting. How could he forget?

“Do you want to help me?” she asked. 

He had been watching her from the sofa, peering over the edge of his book which was not nearly as interesting as she was. For an hour, he lounged with it, pretending to read, but never got past the first page, and eventually couldn't manage to fake it anymore. The book slowly drooped more and more as Leo payed more and more attention to her. He always loved watching her work, and she knew that, so it didn't startle her to catch his watching.

She smiled from her place at the counter, and motioned for him to get up, chuckling. He blushed, he knew it, he must have. But it got a laugh out of her, a beautiful hum, as he obeyed.

“I can’t quite cook,” he said, nervously standing across from her at the counter. Behind her was a pot on the stove, but the stove wasn’t lit. On the counter next to it was a pile of tomatoes and a purple cabbage, and in the sink was a bowl of peeled, white potatoes. In one of her small hands was a sweet potato, and in the other was a...well, he didn't know what that was. It seemed to be used to peel the skin.

“Are you so useless that you can’t peel a vegetable?”

He had taken what she handed him, the half peeled potato and the tool, and stared at it. This is not what his hands were for, his hands couldn’t possibly do what hers could. He made remedies. He didn’t cook, he didn’t know the equations. He watches her sew all day, mend clothes, make new ones, and his hands, although skilled in other sorts, couldn't possibly do what she expected of them. Certainly, she would think less of him, that he was incompetent and cruel. But she circled the counter and smiled that soft, playful smile of hers, and began to guide his hands. Learning from her was a blessing of its own, he knew. She had so much knowledge to give.

Soon enough, that became his job, the peeling. He quite enjoyed the position, across the counter from her, able to watch her hands work up close and see the shine in her concentrated eyes as she precisely cut her peeled and cleaned potatoes into perfect pieces. She glanced at him every now and then with her little, perfect smile. When she met his eyes and they softened into a bird song, he cut himself by mistake, distracted. 

He winced and tried to hide the gash even as she circled again. With an eyebrow raised, she stared him down in the determined way that to which he couldn't help but listen, waiting for him to give up the injury. She didn’t like pity and she didn’t give it to him. No warmth was put in this type of mending. Her lips didn’t rise in a soft smile or fall in concern. It’s business to her.

From the first time they met in a city in the rain, and tossed each other into the dirt, she had looked down at him and the blood she conjured as business, indifferent, fixable. Until now, she had never again looked at him that way, as somebody she didn’t know and didn’t care for. He remembered when she cried for him and didn’t like the look on her face now, thinking, contemplating now as she bit her lip. It was clear with that tick that she was concerned, but too deeply, to a point that frightened him even as her determination faded. 

All he did was cut his finger. 

“I thought you liked knives,” she said. “You throw them around all day.”

“Knives, not... peelers.”

She sat him down on a stool, standing while she lightly examined the small cut as if it was a gaping wound. There was dirt from the potatoes around the edges, perhaps that conjured her critically serious gaze, risk of sickness, harder to heal than outside injury.

“Stay.” It took her a moment to return with a cloth, all while Leo stared at the place she vanished into and sprouted from, trying to find a hint of softness.

Carefully, she pulled her own chair forward, took his hand and began to cleanse it. Leo didn't mind this, but he knows her. He knows this wasn’t normal and almost pulled his hand away so her determined eyes would come to him and tell him what her lips wouldn't. His single twitch of retreat was enough for her to cling to his hand and hold his wrist tightly. Silence ensued as he watched her until she stopped holding her breath.

“Leo,” she began, but kept herself concentrated. The cloth laid useless on the counter while she cupped the cut in both hands. It stung a little at that point, but Leo was used to the pain of her mending. “I love you.” The first time she said those words, Leo almost lost her. She hadn’t said them since.

Even as the stinging vanished, she continued to hold his hand as if scared whatever she said next would make him run. It took her a moment to meet his eyes again. She knows she should not have said that if she didn’t want Leo’s mind sky rocketing in seven different directions trying to find out why she would. He began to grind his jaw; her soft, sweet, perfect smile returned when his eyes narrowed. When he wanted, he could resist it, that smile, and he did then, he resisted.

“Saying such a thing in a war is not comforting,” he said. She ignored his tone and rested her chin on his hand. 

“I know, but the war doesn’t really concern you. You can stay here, wait for me.”

She had insisted time and time again that this is where they would be safe, not for her own sake, apparently. He liked it better when he thought he wasn't scared alone.

She released his hand, the cut nonexistent, and moved back to her work. Instead of working, her eyes lingered over him. He stared at her, his chest slowly beginning to ache, knowing she was right. The war had long forgotten him.

“I am prepared to become involved again-”

“I’ll chain you up again, Leo, don’t think I won’t.” She would. He remembered the first time she did, when he was just a stranger, and the second time, when he was prepared to hurt whoever hurt her and she stopped him. She thought he was passed such actions, but no.

“You don’t want to get involved.” She sounded almost pleading, but sure of herself. Oh, she was always so sure of herself, but Leo was determined to win this compromise. He was going to make her stay here, where she insisted time and time again the war could not find them.

“You stay, too. It’s safe here, is it not? You can stay here, too.”

Her brow furrowed. She almost scoffed. “I know I said once that we might not be on earth here, but if we are, and we lose, then bye-bye cottage. Everything will burn.” She averted her eyes. “They need me.”

The stool fell back when he sprung up with protest, but he instantly froze with his fingers curled against the counter. She braced herself against the bang and continued to stand rigid. Both stood and stared.

“You know I’ll make it back,” she said, the disgust of his reaction sprouting in her voice. 

He hated that voice, and cursed himself for believing the worst, and making her see what he did. Behaving at her will, he picked up the stool, set it right, sat down.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But you are going to stay here and wait for me. Now pick up the peeler and don’t cut yourself this time.”

She began to cut vegetables and throw them in the pot, and she washed and chopped what he peeled. She guided his hand over the tomatoes, and soon enough, the conversation never happened, and they were laughing again and he got to hear the beautiful hum. Wind chimes, he thought, not the same.

“I think you’ve put every vegetable in the world in this pot, Love,” he said, dumping in the last batch of cabbage.

“Nope. No carrots, hate ‘em. Do you like carrots?” Like always when she spoke in the kitchen, she gestured toward him innocently, almost cutting him by accident. She laughed and set it on the counter, but again turned critically to him, waiting for an answer.

Again, he could stand there and stare forever. She was small, even smaller with her hands on her hips attempting to look intimidating, and he would scoop her up and take her away if she wanted him to. 

“I don’t hate them, no.”

Her jaw dropped playfully. She pretended she would never talk to him again, the only silence he was able to bare.

The ladle fills the second bowl with soup. The squares of vegetables are slightly uneven, and the soup is darker than when Leo had her help, but it smells the same. Delicious.

He sets both bowls on a tray with silverware and napkins, and uses his hip to open the door, balancing the dishes as he walks down the porch's front steps and through the tall grass, toward the tree at the far edge of the field.

Their table and chairs overlook the cliff side and the ocean. He puts the tray down carefully and takes his seat, and he watches the far off waves. She liked the salty smell, and he liked the noise, and they would sit here and enjoy it everyday.

Another part of that day plays back in his head, unexpectedly the last day before the war, when he noticed her explicitness as she told him how to turn on the stove and not burn down the house. But it wasn’t that she thought he was incapable, but that she did not know if she would ever have another chance to teach him. 

“I know what you're doing. Stop.”

“I’m making soup,” she said, holding her knife to the light so he could see exactly how her fingers curved around it. “Actually, I’m teaching you how to make soup.” Unlike with others, her eye contact didn’t scare him away.

“You are teaching me as if you won’t be here next-”

“What? No, no I’m not. I- Men need to know how to cook too, you know.”

“Evelyn.”

He knew he made her mad. She didn’t like him to use that name that never really belonged to her, but he didn’t know she was tense enough or strong enough to stab the knife into the counter and have it stand straight up.

“You sat on that couch-'' her voice never boomed and it didn’t then, hissing instead in a way he hated, threatening, which she only used for the people she didn’t care to save, and he could have sworn she had just said she loved him. “And you stared at me like if I wasn’t here you wouldn’t be able to function let alone cook a meal.” But tears began to boil in her eyes and the hiss had an origin. His beautiful hum had been scared into the submission of the end of the world. The world had scared the beautiful hum into conforming silence. 

Once again, Leo cursed that world. He would do it once more as he circled the counter.

She stepped away. “Why do we have to start this? We can just be happy and perfect until I have to go. And you’ll wait for me, and I will come back, hopefully... But you know I might not.” He stopped pursuing her, and both stood frozen with a boiling pot between them. “When you would leave each day, I never knew if you would come back, and I survived, I dealt with it.” She took a breath, a long, horribly long breath. Leo tried to stop the pounding in his ears, but he couldn’t when he was staring at her and both of them, for once, were feeling the same thing, the same dread, and he hated that he made his beautiful hum dread the future she always loved. “I just want to teach you how.”

Leo smiles softly at the sea, and sighs, and listens. Just how she taught him, he listens to the beautiful hum, but without her here, he sincerely doubts he will ever learn to make it sound the same.