For All Your Blending Needs

In the early days, back when their arguments were nothing more than petty squabbles, Adrian laughed about her morning smoothie, saying he knew she put extra ice in there the mornings after they fought. Leslie would smile coyly and admit satisfaction at knowing it woke him up, and he’d laugh and wrap her in kisses, being sure to add, a sharpness in his voice, “I’d never do that to you. Make all that noise when I know you’re trying to sleep.” And she’d pout, “I try so hard to be quiet.” He’d smile at her and say, “You’re lucky you’re so damn cute.”

Leslie’s newfound health craze was shifting into the spectrum of lifestyle choice when her mother gave her the VitaBlendz. She’d just started noticing commercials at the beginning of Youtube videos for the blender, touting how long they lasted, that they could be passed down from generation to generation. “I mean, that’s not a very fiscally responsible business tactic.” Leslie leaned against the counter, watching her mother’s smooth motions as she chopped and added vegetables to a huge pot. Adrian had lost his job and was becoming intolerably cranky in their tiny apartment, so once a week Leslie, desperate for respite, spent the evening over at her parents’. “How do they make any money if no one ever needs to buy a new one?”

“I don’t know,” her mother said absently but truly answered the question a few weeks later when she bought her daughter a brand-new blender for Christmas. 

“The commercial says you’re supposed to give me yours,” Leslie laughed.

Her mother scoffed. “Then I wouldn’t have a blender.”

The whole family laughed, except for Adrain, sitting in the corner, who rolled his eyes and groaned. “Great. Just when I thought the other one was about to kick it.” 

The blender worked like a dream, smoothing even the largest, icy masses into gentle purees with the ease of a child smooshing through putty. And with minimal sound. “Did you hear the blender this morning,” she’d excitedly ask him, when he finally made his afternoon appearance, to which he’d cough. “It doesn’t matter if I hear the blender. You make so much damn noise in the morning, it’s impossible to sleep.” By summer, she figured all her cute must have worn off, because his rage was pure and unfettered, and he was out of bed and screaming as soon as he heard the crinkle of the bag of frozen berries, so much so that she gave up on the smoothies. She gave up on breakfast entirely, telling herself that she was trying the new fasting trend, because it helped your body reset, purge toxins. She decided not to eat between midnight and noon.

It was mid-July when she broke her fasting trend. Adrian was sleeping on the couch when the clock shifted to twelve, and her stomach let out a fierce grumble to punctuate the time. She walked back and forth from the bedroom to the kitchen for the better part of an hour, casting her gaze at the sofa each time she passed, monitoring his movement, his breathing, for any sign of waking.

He did not stir. 

Finally, the thrumming of the blood in her temple screamed that she had to eat, but before making a move or opening any cabinet, she mentally walked through everything she needed, visualizing its exact spot behind the plywood doors to optimize her plan while minimizing sound. Not that it mattered, because as soon as she opened the first cabinet, an opened box of pasta cascade down to the counter, sending little bowties flying and skittering, and, as if he had teleported, Adrian was beside her in the kitchen, screaming about her disrespect mere inches from her ear. But she heard nothing, all her senses seemingly honed into one, single objective. Survival. Because she would not survive like this much longer.

Early the next morning, she used the blender for the first time in months, dropping bits into the top and holding her shaky finger on the button. Her fingers were tacky, like drying nail polish, and she left smudges on every surface she touched. She made two batches, pouring each gingerly down the drain, careful not to let any splash. Then she made eggs over toast with avocado that tasted like cardboard, and she cried, because she finally could cry. It would take her a long time to heal, and she wondered if the blender would hold up, doubting the capabilities that the commercials touted, because the company had to make money somehow. Nothing lasts that long.  Everything gives up the ghost eventually. 

Every morning, she’d go to the garage freezer and grab a container, her heart racing as she carried it back into the kitchen and dump the contents into the blender. She’d press the button on the blender down and hold her breath, waiting for the inevitable whine, putter, smoke and smolder of a dying machine, but it never came, and, with each passing month, her eggs started tasting more and more like eggs and her heart beat a little slower. Maybe VitaBlenz had actually created a worthwhile product, she thought, and she started recommending it to anyone who would listen.

Sometime in the spring, her next-door neighbor passed a repotted mint plant over the fence. “Little shits went rampant this go round,” the neighbor had laughed, and Leslie took it, marveling at how lush and beautiful and fragrant the little plant was. It sparked in her the idea to not just start an herb garden, but to fill her entire backyard with plants. Within two months, fence to fence was filled with luxurious and thriving plants, and Leslie touted to her neighbor that it was the special blend that she made up in her VitaBlendz every morning and poured over her plants. “It really is a remarkable blender,” Leslie told her for the umpteenth time.

“If I buy that damn blender,” the neighbor rolled her eyes, laughing, “will you finally tell me what’s in your secret little concoction?”

“And have your garden in competition with mine?” Leslie laughed. “In your dreams.”             

 “Well okay.” The neighbor acquiesced, but before ducking back down into her own yard, she asked, probing, “What does Adrian think of your garden?”

“Who? Oh. He’s gone.”

The simplicity of her answer did not satiate her neighbor’s curiosity but rather amplified it. But the vacant expression in Leslie’s eyes warned her not to inquire more.

“Well, good riddance, I say. He was turning into an asshole anyway.”  She shrugged off the discomfort. “Look at everything you’re accomplishing without him.”     

Yes, look at everything I’ve gotten done without him, Leslie thought, as she dumped the last of the contents of the blender at the base of a rose bush. Look at everything I’ve accomplished because of him.   

By the end of the year, the blender was still going strong, the freezer was nearly empty, Leslie soul was nearly full, and she figured it was time to have a party. She’d just seen an add for the VitaBlendz that showcased all the various cocktails it could make—the thin, lithe hostess on the screen swearing her blender made her parties the talk of the town. She would be the talk of the town now, she thought, pushing a cart through the liquor store, swaying her hips jauntily for the entertainment of the young man behind the counter she’d caught gawking. Her and her garden and her blender. Her life would be coveted now. 

A week later, with charcuterie boards arrayed along her dining room tables around mason jars with dripping candles and bouquets of fresh cut flowers, Leslie opened her doors to the whole neighborhood, and friends she had accumulated since reclaiming her sense of self. She hummed around the crowd, cruising in and out of conversations like a well skilled baroness at a ball. 

Her mother watched, wondering at her daughter, who only a year previous would stand with her in the kitchen, bemoaning the woeful husband she had chosen, not seeking advice, but rather seeking solace. If she held the woman she saw before her now against the cusp of a girl she witnessed back then, she’d have sworn they were different people.

Leslie entertained like a pro, advising everyone on what to taste and try, making guests with allergies wary of certain foods, directing smokers to the back patio where she had ash trays expertly placed, and occasionally giving tours of her garden when asked. 

And the most important part: not a single glass went empty. She blended Margaritas and Daiquiris, gushing to everyone about the silence of her blender. “And look at how effortlessly it blends and how smooth,” she beamed. “You wouldn’t believe the things it can cut through.” And they oohed and awed, as she refilled their heavy, glass cups to the brim. 

After the last of the drunken revelers had left, Leslie and her mom skirted around the kitchen, tidying. Leslie was taking apart the blender to clean, when her mother said, while cinching a garbage bag closed, “You know, whatever happened with Adrian, would be considered self-defense.” 

Leslie thought about feigning ignorance or shock—the scandal of her to even suggest—but her finger felt the groove of a chink in the blade, from some missed fragment over the course of the year, and she remembered who she had been, who she was now. She did not cower. She did not cry. Her strength would be passed on from generation to generation. “Yes, mom,” she said, her breath steady. “You know, this really is the best present you’ve ever given me.” She winked over her shoulder at her mom, who smiled back at her beaming daughter.

“Well, I’m glad you like it.” 

Leslie laid in bed that night, the light of her phone screen illuminating her face, as she typed searches into google, queering about the capabilities of her VitaBlendz. She hadn’t dared try it before, but now she wondered if she could blend up bone to dust. The VitaBlendz hadn’t failed her yet.