Papers for People

Miriam came from the kitchen with the handle of a hot pan in her armpit, the other straddling a newborn, and her legs victim to her two six-year-olds. Dinner was going to happen in fifteen minutes and the potatoes were almost done, but everything else would be late. 

While she thought of the chicken that might have been safe to eat, she balanced bobby pins stuck in her hair.

The phone started to ring. Miriam urged herself through the slush of her kids and their messes, but a wave of potato grease threatened to slip out of the pan, a few drops stinging her arm.

She found her husband on the couch, “Dan! Will you–?”

His fingers tapped the paper, sending a sound similar to when someone strikes sheet metal.

He has had a long day, longer than me. He has to deal with people and stress about money while I don’t. Taking care of kids isn’t all that difficult. He did put Tabitha to bed when she was three. What was I thinking about being so disrespectful when all he does is keep me from real, arduous work? Miriam thought.

But, he hasn’t helped now, he never has. 

I shouldn’t think that. I was lazy because I wanted to take off my clothes once I came back from evening church, instead of putting in the Chicken. See? He doesn’t feel the need to be beautiful like I do. He doesn’t need frilly dresses or expensive makeup. I am immature because I need. His job is to mature me. That, he does.

The family sat down for dinner and ate.

The Chicken was done at 7:56 p.m. Miriam thought it was an organized number to be late with. She almost told Dan, but his reading glasses were on.

Dan took his plate dotted with remnants of Mashed potatoes from the table with his one good hand. 

Miriam put the chicken down. Her kids were looking at their father who was heading toward the kitchen.  

“Oh, I thought we were done,” Dan said. 

Miriam remembered telling him about the chicken not being finished. “Darling, you knew that-”

“I knew what?” 

“Nothing.” 

Dan continued into the kitchen, where he dropped his plate into the sink. “We’re an honest household, aren’t we? You were quite honest when you put the Chicken on the table weren't you? Can’t you tell me what you were going to say?”

“I can’t say it.”

“Miriam.”

“It would be better for us not to talk about it.”

“Kids, it's bedtime, isn’t it? Mother seems to have forgotten.”

The kids followed their father up the stairs. He would joke with them, tell stories, and maybe even let them watch television before Miriam had to go up and put them to bed. He always got the credit for being a good dad. While Dan gave them candy, Miriam gave them veggies. 

She stared at the chicken, losing its heat.

“Miriam,” was all Dan said at the stairs. She looked at him because she had to. When she did he stared back before he left her.

Not tonight. Not tonight. He was going to be easy that night, she prayed for it. 

___________________________________________

Miriam came from a sedan, the one that her friend let her borrow when Dan wouldn’t let her drive. 

The building she entered was dim with few people in it. She found seating at the bar.

She knew the bartender's name as Tim. He was a young man, one who couldn’t grow a beard, one who still had two good hands, and one who seemed fond of her. She knew they were the same age from a conversation she overheard a while back, one of the things she didn’t share with Dan. 

Miriam hardly spoke to Tim, lest for ordering a drink. She would keep her hand up until he came to her, so he could make her feel like there was some kind of thing called romance that was still around.

But, when Tim put her vodka down, something he said was too strong for someone as pretty as her, he lingered a hand on the counter. From what they could tell, the bar was vacant then.

When he put his lips to her neck, she didn’t react much. She wanted to, she wanted to fall into his body over that bar and do the same to him if he would allow it.

At that time, she couldn’t speak, or even have any sense of life in her. She could let Tim kiss her under the neck, where she was sure there would be a hickey.

When Tim came up from under her jaw, he would have kissed her more, but the pinks in her face had disintegrated. So they both left the bar separately.

___________________________________________

Miriam came from the bushes behind her house. She had loosened her pants since it was uncomfortable, her one stiletto held onto her heel, and her stomach poked out an inch from her belt.

Tim had kissed her, something that came more to fruition later when she left the bar. Miriam detailed his features, focusing on the barely shaven stubble near his nose, and started to giggle. 

Night meant that Miriam could pretend that Dan would be upset with her the next day. She knew all too well that he would be waiting in the front room. He would have a cigarette in his hand, his reading glasses on, and the paper. 

And it was just that.

Dan turned a page when she came in. He did not need to tap the paper this time. Miriam’s socks were halfway off her feet and silly. Her neck was full of lover’s bruises courtesy of Tim. She had no intention to talk with Dan, he was too interested in his paper.

“Are you proud of yourself?” He said before she could get to her room.

Miriam’s walk was debilitated with her singular heel, but she was able to make it up some of the stairs.

“Answer me, Miriam.”

“What if I said yes?” 

“And what would Tabitha, Ben, and Chris think?” Dan said.

“They need me happy. Dan, do you ever-” 

“Be careful.” 

“Of what? Daniel, you’re half a man. Do you ever think that what you say hurts me? It hurts Daniel.”

Dan held up the paper again, he put his reading glasses up to the skin of his brow.

In every instance, an issue of the New York Times printed 1996 April 16th was more important than everything else around him: the fact that his wife came home inebriated with a bright red hickey on her neck and that she was positioned precariously on the steps.

Miriam did lose balance, tumbling down the five stairs she made up. The floor hit her temple hard enough for her to excuse the hickey from it. 

Dan flipped another page.

Miriam stood. Her head spun with intoxication and her newfound injury.

Once Miriam got a grip on herself, she stood idle in front of Dan for minutes. It was obvious he wouldn’t be prompt with finishing the paper.

Miriam forced her palm down on the page, encouraging the words to crinkle on themselves and to be as illegible as she could make them.

“I need help with the kids! Please, I worry for them. What will they do if you keep being so good around them? They could get into drugs, Dan. I am the only one that gives them discipline.”

She wanted the pink around his eyes to return or to have him confess his feelings of failure as a parent. He must have felt something. He had to have felt something because Miriam was feeling everything. 

Miriam waited and interpreted his pause as her finally getting through.

“Stop acting like a child,” He said.

Maybe it was that every time she was excited, every time she was upset, every time she had any form of emotion, her words would be hesitant to leave her mouth and that they had been so hesitant that they lingered next to her teeth as hot air which begged to be let out that she said it:

“I want a divorce.”

“Do you think you can live without me?” Dan said.

“If you are that miserable, say it! Say you want to get a divorce!”

Again, Dan lost his words.

“I can’t,” Dan said.

If he only knew that I thought of his love as not enough for me and that I was trying to communicate it through my chores, he would give me the same as I gave him. Because leaving for work every day isn’t enough. It isn’t enough that I have to be patient in conversation with him as he reads that paper. Miriam thought.

He did love me, Didn’t he? If he couldn’t leave me as I so horribly displayed, then he must have thought of me the same as I did him. So why didn’t he love me the way I did? Through the way I wished to tell him? And why couldn’t I tell him? Why can he sit there and take from me so much so that I can’t speak?

Dan spoke again, “So we get a divorce, so you become a single woman with three kids and I become an ugly man with a bad hand. What do we do then? Do I keep making money for no one but myself? Do you go off and make enough money to support yourself with no degree?”

Miriam saw so many possibilities, rather she wanted to. 

“We can-”

Miriam used up all of the words she kept behind her teeth. It was the best they could do and the best they ever will.

Dan let Miriam into his arms. Miriam knew that the moment was centennial. By all means, she had to be content that she couldn’t speak and that Dan loved her in a slow way.