The Spatula

Joan and Norman sold the old house finally and ended up in a duplex, though it took nearly two years to get there. It was a small, simple place. They'd had to give up a bedroom to afford the yard Norm wanted, so the interior was crowded and felt cluttered already. They had several truckloads less stuff in this new home, but they also had considerably less room. Even worse, to Joan's dismay, the duplex smelled like the old house already. She had loved the fresh, clean smell of the place when they first entered it, the scent of wood and fresh paint and toxic chemicals floating up from the newly laid carpet. Clean-smelling toxic chemicals, though. She'd washed all of their clothes and accessories, even had the furniture cleaned during the move, and couldn't figure out where the smell was coming from. Had Norm snuck in some stinky old thing, hidden in a dark duffle and slipped through a window in the deep of the night? Even that thought was less disturbing than the only other explanation she could come up with: that it was her and Norm's smell--their personal scents spreading throughout the house like creeping clouds, infusing the new carpets and drywall with Eau de Norm and Joan. She shivered, imagining layers of sloughed off skin cells in corners and on window sills, stains of sweat and grease on the couch pillows.

As the joy of accomplishment following the move wore off, Joan found herself dangerously close to winding up right back where she'd started--trapped in a new home as confining and suffocating as the one she had finally gotten rid of. Luckily though, the lightness of leaving the old place behind took several months to wear off and it was nearly October before she began to feel really crowded again.

She had wanted an apartment with no yard at all, and no yard maintenance, but Norm had put his foot down for once and stood firm: he wanted a yard and they were going to have a yard. So they ended up in a duplex, complete with large backyard and a tall young sweetgum tree that hung over their patio and dropped prickle balls all over it. Norm, naturally, hated it, and herded his tomatoes and flowers over to the far end of the yard where the sun could blast them, but Joan had a strange fondness for it even from the beginning. Maybe because it drove Norm crazy. He cursed and crabbed endlessly over the hundreds of prickly balls on the ground around the tree. Joan ignored him and swept them blithely off the patio and into the yard when he wasn't around. He wanted a God-damn yard, she thought, let him deal with it.

Then October came and just when Joan was about to go under again, the tree saved her. Looking out the sliding glass door one early fall morning, she was overwhelmed by the tree's gloriousness. Glowing crimson and purple, orange, yellow and green with bright golden edges, it was every beautiful fall color at once. It had turned seemingly overnight, and as the sun's early rays slanted through its leaves, it shimmered dazzlingly. She slipped quietly out of the house and walked under the branches, where she stood, arms wide and head turned up, and just stared. For a long awe-struck moment she waited there, watching, until one perfect leaf, having just passed the border from plum into brown, came curling down from on high, skating back and forth, skimming close in front of her twice, and then glided down smoothly to a perfect landing at her feet.

She stared at it for a moment, pondering. The feeling of crabbiness and closeness that had been growing on her over the last month grew fainter. This leaf seemed like a sign, a token sent to remind her. Progress had been made, it told her. Things were not perfect and idyllic, but they were better than they had been. The duplex and its yard were smaller and more manageable than the old house. Much of the old junk was gone, and even Norm had parted with a cartload or two of random crap.

Yes, things were better than they had been, and somehow her and Norm's odd combination of poverty, stubbornness, luck and time had given her the bonus of this beautiful tree. "Oh, Norman, thank you for your stubbornness," she whispered.

She bent to pick up the leaf and twirled its stem in her fingers, noticing the ground around her with an ironic smile. Progress had been made, she thought, but it had brought with it a crapload of prickle balls.

She thought about running inside for the camera--where was it anyway?--but knew it would never do justice to the real experience, so she pulled up her white plastic patio chair instead, dusted off the twigs and bugs, and sat down. Leaning her head back planetarium style, she stared up into the leaves and sighed.

For two weeks she had coffee under the tree each morning while Norm snored obliviously. She watched mesmerized for what seemed like hours as one leaf after another suddenly let loose of its moorings and came rustling down to land in the crunchy pile at her feet or sometimes even in her lap. She must have followed dozens of leaves from treetop to ground but she never once saw one just at the moment--plink!--when it let go of familiar safety and set off into the blue of the sky.

When the last of the leaves finally fell, all at once, in a tremendous heavenly crash--how could I have missed the sound of it?--she mourned for her tree and looked up sadly through his bare branches at the gray sky. Moved by the intensity of her feelings, she even tried to explain it to Norman, but he replied blandly with a complaint and a plan to collect the pile of lost souls and prickly balls at the tree's foot. He has no poetry in him, Joan thought, no soul. After that, she didn't try to share her secret with anyone else, but hugged it tightly to her chest, hidden and protected.

Eventually, she learned to love the tree even in the barren winter, imagining it as some sort of knight or protector who shed his cloak of leaves so that the sunlight could better warm her cold bones. But she was happy in the spring when he returned to his full leafed-out glory and even more in the fall when he returned as a glorious, multi-colored, heavenly reminder.

One spring morning, after having coffee under her tree, greeting him in her morning ritual, Joan sat inside waiting for Carla and Michelle to arrive. The three of them were going to have lunch and go shopping. It was going to be a whole girls-day-out event, and Joan had been looking forward to it. Carla was usually trapped in the Mom role these days, but was taking a rare day off from all the kids, and Michelle had been suspiciously easy-going recently, a far cry from her usual sharp bossiness. Joan had begun to wonder if her boyfriend Todd, who'd been pussy footing around her for years, had finally popped the question. The only one who wouldn't be there was Holly, as she was still away at school.

Joan looked down at her watch again, wondering what was keeping the girls. As the time ticked by she felt her serenity beginning to fade. Hearing a shuffle from the hall, she suppressed a sudden impatient thought--couldn't the girls be on time for once?--and averted her eyes. Trying not to wrinkle her nose, she stared studiously at the newspaper as Norm shuffled past with one hand stuck in the waistband of his boxers, scratching his lumpy white belly. He got up a little later each Saturday, spent a little less time in the open light of day. This month he'd arisen steadily at 11:15, which was why she'd asked the girls to pick her up at 11:00. She should have known to give herself more of a buffer.

He ignored her and went straight to the coffee maker, pouring the water in the back then sprinkling instant coffee crystals in the carafe. Only man I know who can drink a full potful of that horrid instant coffee, she thought with a shudder. Next he cracked two eggs and plopped them into a bowl, leaving a snot-like trail of egg white behind on the countertop, and scrambled them. Only then did he remember to put the skillet on the stove, crank it up to high heat and wonk a forkful of margarine into it (that forkful having been scooped straight out of the tub with his egg-scrambling fork, unrinsed of course). She cringed but held her own. He poured the eggs into the still-cold pan and stirred it, pointlessly, with the same old fork, making a screeching, scraping sound in the bottom of her nice non-stick pan. When are the girls going to get her? she thought with a sudden, very un-serene internal wail. Steeling herself again, she took a deep, calming breath.

He set the fork down and turned to his toast. When his two slices of bland, tasteless white bread popped out of the toaster, he placed them on the counter, crushed and mangled them with a tablespoon of margarine each, cut them un-neatly in half, then put them on his plate. Irritation built inside Joan, but she blocked it, breathing deep again and channeling her energy into calm observation. Couldn't he just butter them on the plate and avoid the crumb pile on the counter? she wondered. At least he had used a clean knife, she reminded herself.

By this time the eggs were crackling and popping, little particles flying over the stove top. He brushed a hot egg particle off his belly, then leaving his fork on the counter in its puddle of goo, took a spatula from the drawer and used it to skreek the eggs off the bottom of the pan. It was the metallic screeching sound that finally broke through the layers of calming buffers she had tried to put in place. Exasperated, she jumped up from her chair at last.

"Dammit, Norman, you're ruining my good non-stick pan that way."

He ignored her.

"You're not supposed to use metal on a non-stick pan."

He continued scraping.

She marched toward the utensil drawer, "Can't you for once use a damn plastic spatula like I've told you a hundred times?"

His rubbery, shredded eggs now on the plate, he flung the metal spatula down in the pan and turned to her. "I can't find your God-damn plastic spatulas," he said. "I'm hungry. I don't have time to go rooting through all the damn drawers looking for the one special spatula."

She opened the drawer in front of her and pulled out four plastic spatulas and displayed them in front of him.

"Go to hell old woman," he said, annoyed and humiliated, before turning and carrying his plate to the table.

Joan threw the spatulas back into the drawer and thrust it shut with a loud bang. She looked up to see Carla and Michelle watching sheepishly through the sliding glass door. She felt a blaze of her own annoyance and humiliation--she had asked them to come to the back door many times and naturally this time they remembered--but she forced it away quickly with a long breath. Last time they'd awoken Norm with their knocking while Joan sat oblivious under her tree. Think like a tree, Joan reminded herself, glancing past the girls to her companion outside, calm, placid, implacable. Forcing a smile, she waved them back around to the front and walked to the table to grab her purse.

"I'm going to lunch with the girls," she said.

"Rumph," Norman grunted.

"We'll be back in a couple of hours."

He shrugged.

"I'll tell them you said Hi."

He didn't reply and she slammed the door on her way out.

She had a minute alone in the driveway while Michelle and Carla walked back around the house, and she slumped briefly, sucking in breath and gathering up the energy to face them. By the time they walked up to her, staring questioningly at her closed fist, she was able to look down at it herself with a mischievous smile on her face. Holding a finger to her lips, she walked quietly around the corner of the duplex towards her neighbor's side. She stopped at their trash cart and, looking quickly around, lifted the lid and deposited the dirty metal spatula inside. "C'mon," she said, crooking her arm. "Let's get outtta here. We'll see if he's got the nerve to go through the neighbor's trash." Carla and Michelle turned to each other, shared an uncertain look, then walked to the car.