Veronica’s fiance was no Richard. He would be the first to tell you that he daydreamed of comfortable chairs and Food Network personalities as he planned their fancy frozen dinners for the week. Still, Veronica was becoming increasingly distant as the anniversary of Richard’s death approached, so Veronica's fiance shadow boxed plus high-speed running in place on his walk home from work to bolster his attitude. Breathing heavily before his front door he declared himself a winner. He would make a really good father.
Veronica was on the couch dragging the bottom of a Doritos bag. She peeked inside to double check before looking up at him. He sank in beside her, close enough to smell her, and tried to catch on to what she was watching without having to ask too many questions. She hated when he asked too many questions. Especially about Richard and when she thought she might be ready to let him go.
She was critical of his walking, of his slacks and tie and the brown leather laptop bag he slung over his shoulder every morning. His hunching and his mumbling. The stains on the carpet did actually become more pronounced after you vacuumed. That was a fact that made things even more complicated between them.
Once they tossed the facade of the extra pluck and tweeze, he hated to admit it, he would never admit it to her, but she didn’t have good taste in TV. That his programs ran on more sophisticated and specialized cable networks he took as a sign of his superior evolution. He was true crime, earnest narration, re-enacted scenes, gruesome with the soft patina of daytime soaps. She enjoyed prime-time comedies and was as loyal to her major network as her dear, poor Richard had been to his Dallas Cowboys.
She removed his hand from her thigh, leaving tender nacho-cheese flavored prints. It’s too hot, she said without taking her eyes off the TV. It would take him days of personal affirmations to attempt it again. As if summoning a Lowe's commercial from earlier
where people dressed nice and did things, she remembered what she wanted to tell him: “I hate our yard.”
She believed in the inertia, that somewhere existed the equation solving for what a pain in the ass leaving would be relative to the slim reward leaving would provide. She cultivated inaction as a solvent for the vague dissatisfaction she felt for nearly everything.
I guess--
but it's so hot--
And it's windy--
She believed fun should be expensive for someone. But even when she shopped her lips turned forever to the earth in disappointment.
It’s just since Richard’s been gone…
He agreed they were probably too young for kids anyway, and didn’t he notice how her nephews and nieces avoided her? She did not like children. And in fact, due to a careless diagnosis she was made infertile by an unnecessary regimen of antibiotics, information she withheld from him and everyone else except the closest of her Facebook friends.
His knees cracked when he stood up. A fart, which she clocked with a flinch, took up residence in the room. He cut the TV and left them in staggering silence.
“Baby, What the fuck. I was watching that.” Her bottom lip extended in mounting dread for what this behavior augured. Last time he turned off the TV he announced that they should cut down on their drinking.
“Veronica. I know you say you’re not ready. I mean, I try to understand what you had with Richard, but we’re here now”
Richard won her with vague but, in her mind, practical promises of love and fiscal security that even he began to believe up until immediately after he climaxed inside of her. It was only a week that he needed to ignore her calls. Only a week listening from his bedroom while his mom nurtured her optimism. “Um. Well. OK. Could you give him this card that I made?”
Oh Richard, she would say, after he deployed, laughing at a scene left on the cutting room floor.
Richard got away. And Richard suffered for a few excruciating minutes after an IED detonated near the ditch he was shitting in.
This man standing had to block her view for this? To ask, “Vero? Do you love me?”
