We fought about vegetables last night, proving that nothing in marriage is sacred. Anything can set you off. Laundry, parties to which your brother in law and in his wife must be invited because otherwise what would they think, and now even the innocent.
Beets
I said, “The beets are wilted.”
He said, “No they’re not. They’ll perk right up in some cold water.”
“You’re thinking of celery,” I said. “Beets don’t ‘perk up.’”
Javier went back to reading Chess Notes.
“Don’t you care?” I said. “We pay to get these beautiful organic vegetables delivered and then they wilt in the fridge!” I got no response.
I collected my villainous thoughts, then threw the dagger: “They wilted under your watch. You’re the one in charge of the cooking. This is wasted money.” I held the beets in my hand, their formerly plump purple bottoms shrunken, their leaves drooping sadly. Javier dislikes being told that he’s done something wrong, especially if there is readily available evidence to prove it. I shook the beets.
It was damning that he’d let the beets go under (what kind of father would be he be if he couldn’t even mind the vegetables??) but the accusation that he’d wasted money was worse. “Maybe about two dollars, Elizabeth,” he said sneering, trying to draw around himself a cover-up that it was only a little money. But I knew my dagger had landed in the desired soft spot. “It adds up,” I added. “Plus you bought that overpriced digital camera…”
“What does that have to do with the vegetables?”
“Nothing!” I yelled, stomping out of the room. “Everything!”
Five hours later we were in each other’s arms, apologizing and promising to do better.
You’ve probably already figured this out, but the fight wasn’t about beets, the poor neglected things. It was about responsibility, about how we delegate who takes care of things in the crisper—and in our married life. And we’re figuring it out, sometimes sloppily. We’re under the wire. In April we’re going to have a baby and I don’t want to say to the little guy, “Honey, you’ve got to eat your vegetables.”
“Why, Mommy? I don’t like beets.”
“I know. Your daddy and I don’t either. In fact, before you were born we used to let them wilt in the crisper. But we realized that we pay for the very leftist, metropolitan service of organic vegetable delivery, which is good for us, our marriage, and, according to the marketing material, insures the health of the planet, too. It’s about responsibility, boy.”
“Oh.”
“Now open up.”
Higgins
Last night I met a newborn named Ryan Higgins. Ryan Higgins is not a baby name, it’s the name of a member of Parliament. Or a 1930s British anthropologist. Higgins, old boy, have a look at this bone.
Elizabeth Miller Bastos, a displaced Pittsburgher, currently lives in Cambridge, MA with her husband Javier and an assortment of fish and plants. She daylights as a mid-level fundraising executive and moonlights as a freelance writer. Her work has appeared in McSweeney's, The Appalachian Mountain Club Magazine, JewishHistory.com, Poetism.com and in Inkwell Magazine. She can be reached at seapup_3@juno.com.
