A Meaning For Wife. Mark Yakich

think your grandma and grandpa loved me too much as a kid. Me? Yes, I love you too much too. But I assure you I am extra-careful on the stairs. Your grandma wouldn’t let your grandpa carry me after that little incident for a couple of years, which, yes, now that you mention it, may have influenced my relationship with him subsequently.”

      Wheeling around the parking lot in a cloudburst of rain, you finish your discourse just in time to find a spot near to the front door of the grocery store. You lift Owen out of his seat and shuttle him inside. It’s impossible to tell which one of you is more relieved to be out of the car.

       4.

      There he is again taking photos. Your father loves the camera and you have to admit that over the years he’s gotten some good candid shots. You show him your digital camera. He’s never used one before, so he takes it to the kitchen table, and says he’s going to figure out how it works. You and Elizabeth bring the little ones into the family room. You sit on the carpet since the armchairs and sofa are piled with newspapers and magazines.

      Pearl is showing Owen how to flip pancakes in the play kitchen set, sitting on the fireplace’s hearth. You eye the copper tub. What if Owen has a copper allergy? You’ve been meaning to get a whole work up of skin tests for him.

      After a couple of minutes your sister says, “Owen looks happy.”

      “He is.”

      “His hair,” she says, “it’s so much lighter than yours.”

      “Lighter than his mother’s was too,” you add.

      There’s a predictable silence.

      “Did Mom yell at Dad all morning?”

      You could tell her that you think Dad is doing even less housework than usual. You and your sister are used to Mom’s nagging him, and though you would never tell Elizabeth this, she and George have a similar pattern of arguing.

      “I don’t know,” you say, “I ran some errands.”

      “You left Owen here?”

      “No, he came with me.”

      “You can leave him here, you know. Mom and Dad babysit for us once a month. Mom made homemade play-dough last time. Pearl loved it.”

      “I remember eating that stuff,” you say, “extra salty.”

      “Like the cat food you ate.”

      Pearl has moved on to flipping plastic hamburger patties, making Owen lunch.

      “I only ate the hard stuff,” you say, “never that wet mush, and I remember especially liking the chicken and egg triangles.”

      “That’s disgusting,” Elizabeth says in a tone like Mom used to use. You both laugh.

      No longer interested in Pearl’s cooking show, Owen is playing with a couple of Fisher-Price people, who appear to be mostly bald from a lot of use.

      “How do you think Dad’s doing?”

      “Same, I guess.”

      “I didn’t want to tell you this,” you say, “but I found some of his scribblings again.”

      “Scribblings?”

      From your pocket you pull out a couple of the photocopies. She looks at them and doesn’t seem surprised. Maybe she found some herself years ago. One of those hundreds of afternoons she spent sitting, after school, watching TV with him, neither of them saying a word. You still feel guilt for going off to college, but you also know escaping this house saved you. Finally she says, “These look pretty innocuous.”

      “Really?”

      “I’ve seen worse.”

      As a social worker she probably has.

      “The stuff about using coconut and olive oil to prevent wrinkles,” she says, “that’s kind of funny. And this thing about meat causing fifty-seven different diseases—hell, that’s probably true.”

      “What about these,” you say, pulling out another page.

       When Martha is home she cannot bother me with projects or I will have to get an apartment. We cannot live together without malice so we have to get a legal separation by the law of Illinois. No one can fool around. This is so that no one can claim abandonment.

      “Well,” she says, “that explains Dad’s not fixing that hole in the ceiling from the bathtub leak.”

      “Are they getting a divorce?”