The Idea
Michelle Ross
One morning, as Stevie walked by her husband’s dresser, where he’d left four out of six drawers open, she had an idea. Instead of feeling irritable, she could just push the drawers closed. Doing so required little effort. And if he were to do the same regarding the habits of hers that annoyed him, then they’d both get what they want, she thought. No arguing. No trying to change one another. No resentments festering. Such a simple, elegant solution: she wondered why she hadn’t thought of it before.
She presented the idea to Carl while he poured himself a bowl of cereal. By the time he sat down at the table, he’d left the pantry door open plus three cabinets and one drawer. She closed all of them.
Carl said nothing.
“It’s brilliant,” she said.
“I guess.” He spooned cereal into his mouth.
They both looked out the window where birds flapped and squawked over the suet she’d hung from the tree. Not quite the peaceful scene she’d imagined when she’d bought the feeder.
She was disappointed by Carl’s nonchalance. But she often disappointed him, too. Like the other day when he was going on about his idea to rent a weed whacker to tackle the weed problem in their yard, and she said, “But if you don’t get them at the roots, they’ll grow right back.” Carl said, “Well, I could buy a weed whacker. I could whack weeds once a month.” And she said, “But chopped off weeds won’t look any better than full grown weeds.” Also, were weed whackers even safe to use on xeriscape yards? She pictured rocks flung every which way. Carl said, “Fine. Hope you enjoy pulling up those roots.” And the thing is she had. She’d been at it for three hours, and her only complaint had been the stiffness in her knees. Then later, the way that the weeds had imprinted on her retinas. For two days, she saw them every time she closed her eyes. She worried they would never die.
She decided not to dwell on Carl’s nonchalance. She put on her running shoes and went for a run.
After she showered, she left her sweaty clothes on the bathroom floor, assuming Carl would pick them up. That was his thing—annoyance at dirty clothes on the bathroom floor.
But her clothes sat there all day.
That evening, while they brushed their teeth, the dirty clothes by her feet, she studied Carl in the mirror. By her calculation, she had closed 22 things he had left open that day—drawers, cabinets, doors, the toilet lid. If he would do even just one thing for her, she thought she would be OK with the imbalance.
After she rinsed her toothbrush, she said, “Aren’t my dirty clothes bothering you?”
Carl spit. “What?”
“My dirty clothes,” she said. “I left them on the floor. You’re always saying I should put them in the hamper.”
“They don’t really bother me,” Carl said. “I only say that to make a point. That you’re not perfect, either.” He wiped his mouth on his hand towel, an unsanitary habit she’d pointed out to him many times over the years, to no avail. When he kissed her, she sometimes imagined he was one of the yip-yip Martians on Sesame Street.
Carl left her alone in the bathroom, got into bed. She turned out the bathroom light and followed him.
She said, “My idea only works if it’s an exchange. If you don’t clean up after me, too, then I’m the only one doing any cleaning up. Do you want to know how many things I closed today?”
Carl groaned. “I thought the point was that we should each tend to the things that bother us instead of asking each other to tend to the things that bother us. Like deal with your own issues, right?”
Then he added, “See, this is what annoys me. How do I push in this drawer?”
Stevie closed her eyes. What she saw was a bird’s eye view of bull thistle. Its radial shape bloomed and faded against the dark, only to be replaced by another bull thistle, then another, like endless fireworks.
She felt disappointed. Maybe a little ashamed, too. But what bugged her most of all was that yet again, what she’d thought was a great idea had turned out to be, at least in the case of this particular marriage with this particular man, stupid.
Table of Contents
|
