English 15B
Smile
Life as a housewife is such a bore. How can I live like this? Every day is the same routine. First, I get up in the morning at 5:30 to have breakfast ready for the children and my husband. I then send them off to school and work, and I’m expected to clean and have everything nice and neat when they get home. I know I shouldn’t complain; I have a loving husband that provides for me, although he does not please me anywhere else. He’s not bad looking or anything like that, but he has let himself go a bit. Where once he had a flat and muscular chest it is now replaced with a beer belly. Oh, and then there are my two babies. Well, I guess I can’t call them babies anymore . . . a boy and a girl. Johnny is sixteen and Melisa is fourteen. They grow up so fast.
“Mom!” my daughter yelled from upstairs.
Hmm, I wonder what she wants now. “In the kitchen, honey!”
I can hear her running down the stairs. I remember when she couldn’t even walk. Those were happier days, I was naïve, young, and in love. I remember the house to be a lot brighter then. The kitchen that was once a bright cheerful yellow is now a dull brownish yellow. The cupboards are old laminated wood ones that were “in” when my parents had gotten married . . . enough said. Where I once thought it was cute, I now find it to be my cage.
“Mom!”
“In the kitchen I said!”
“Mom, have you seen my favorite shirt?”
“Which one would that be dear?”
“The one with . . .”
I guiltily listened because I knew which one she wanted. She had been wearing that shirt since the sixth grade. Hmm, I wonder what I did with it? Oh, yeah I used it to clean . . . oops.
“No, sorry dear. I don’t know what happened to it”
“Mom I neeeeed it,” Melisa whined.
“And why would that be?”
“Ugh . . . Mom you don’t understand . . . .” And there she goes throwing another tantrum, back up to her bedroom.
I cringed when I heard the front door slam. “Hey, hon!” My husband yelled as he walked through the door.
“Yes?” I said without moving from my task.
In a more civilized voice he asked, “Is dinner almost ready?”
“Almost, I’m just cleaning in here a bit.”
“Good, I’m starving,” he said as he rubbed his beer belly.
When he smiles, it reminds me why I married him. He has always had this boyish charm to him. He came up behind me and wrapped his arms around me, and a sharp pain of guilt hit me. I looked out the window and saw nothing but darkness . . . or is that just me? A happier me would have probably seen the twinkling stars and the fireflies and thought it beautiful. But not now.
“Hmm, you smell good,” he said.
“Probably the pot roast,” I murmured.
He chuckled next to my ear, but all I could feel is cold. This once would have had my heart racing, but not now. I put the last dish out to dry and dried my hands, moving away from him. I knew he was looking at me to see what was wrong, so I put on a smile to not worry him. I had to recover, so I moved up to him, and, grabbing him by his face, I kissed him. “Why don’t you get the kids while I set the table?” I gave him another peck and smiled again. The suspicion left his eyes.
“Sure,” he said.
I looked at him as he walked away and wished I could be happy . . . .
I took everything into the dining room. I could hear my husband knocking on the kids’ doors, saying, “Hey, food’s ready.”
“About time I’m starving!” Johnny exclaimed.
Typical, same routine. My son, he looks and sounds just like his father. I could hear a door opening from upstairs, and I laughed to myself.
“Dad! Knock before you come in!” Melisa yelled irritably.
“Dinner is ready. Hurry up! You know your mom won’t let us start without everyone.”
“Ugh!”
And SLAM! Yup, same routine as every night. You would think that she would catch on by now. If it wouldn’t irritate her so much, he would stop doing it.
“Hey Mom, what’s for dinner?” my son exclaimed as he passed beside me, grabbing a dinner roll from the basket in my hand.
Hmm, yes just like his father . . . speak of the devil, here he comes.
“I wish you wouldn’t tease her so much,” I said, exasperated.
“Why not?” my husband asked.
“Because she is a teenage girl, that’s why!” I exclaimed. Then I yelled upstairs, “Honey! Hurry up before these two eat everything.”
And finally she came down running again. Why did she have to run everywhere? She’ll learn that there are some things you don’t want to rush. We all sat in our usual spots: my husband at the head of the table, I on the other, and the children on each side of us. I passed all the side dishes around one by one, and then straightened to cut the roast. Grabbing the knife, my hand shook.
“Here honey, let me do that,” my husband said.
I hoped he didn’t see my hand shake.
“Thank you.” I remarked unemotionally. I sat back down in my seat, holding my hand to stop the shaking. The room was silent, except for the sound of the knife cutting through the meat. It was so loud, over and over again.
“How was your day?”
Oh God, he knew. I looked up and saw it in his eyes. And everything came back . . . .
I was in the kitchen, cleaning everything from breakfast when the phone rang. Picking it up, I knew who it was.
“Is he gone?” he asked me.
“Yes…but we can’t do this anymore.”
“I told you everything will be ok,” he said calmly, as if what we were doing wasn’t wrong.
“No . . . we can’t anymore . . . . That’s final!” I cried out.
“I’m coming over so we can talk.”
“No—” I started to say but he had already hung up. I went back to the kitchen to finish up cleaning. I knew he would soon be here. It was too quiet, I had pretty much finished everything I had to do already. It never took me long, which is probably why I did what I did.
“Susan”
I hadn’t heard him come in. Startled, I turned around to face him and said again, “We can’t do this anymore.”
“Yes we can . . . leave him,” he said.
When I looked into his eyes, I saw that he meant it. “No! . . . I can’t.”I should have known he was up to something, but I ignored what else was in his eyes. That’s when he lunged for me. His grip was so tight it brought tears to my eyes.“You’re hurting me!”
“I can’t let you go—I won’t let you go!”
That is when, from the corner of my eye, I saw a syringe. Somehow, I tore from his grip. Frantically, I looked for something, anything . . . . He was almost on me . . . . I grabbed something from the counter. I had to . . . .
I plunged the knife into his heart . . . .
“Honey, I asked, are you ok?”
“What?”
“I asked how your day was.”
It was just my imagination. He doesn’t know . . . . He can’t know.
I looked at my adoring husband and children as if not just a few hours ago . . . I had killed a man.
Somehow, I said, “Just fine, just fine dear” and smiled.