“Notice the contoured curves.” He’s a genius, this salesman. “Gun-metal stainless steel certified. As solid as the company that built it.”
“Sold,” says my husband, not letting the man finish his pitch. My insides cringe. We were only going inside to browse. Rather, I told him we were only heading inside to browse. I should have known better. In my husband’s particular vernacular, the word browse is loosely translated as certain purchase.
Case in point: Remember the $50 insolated tumbler that came out last June? You know the one; it could keep coffee hot for 10 hours, maybe more. Even the scientists didn’t know.
Can you believe that? That’s what the label said in large quotations. “How long can coffee stay hot? EVEN OUR SCIENTISTS DON’T KNOW!”
When my husband showed me that, I said that the company should either fire the scientists or think up better job titles like, “Intern Marketer”. Of course, it didn’t make much difference to him whether a bunch of crackpot scientists or unpaid interns printed a label on a state-of-the-art tumbler. He wanted it, so he bought it anyway.
“Would you like to buy our 1, 2, or 3-year insurance plan on your new laptop, Ray?” asks the genius. “Keep in mind that 3 years is nearly 4 dollars off the monthly cost it would be otherwise.”
The genius called my husband “Ray”. Oh, how quaint, I think. They’re already on a first-name basis, like two college friends catching up who hadn’t quite been close enough to exchange phone numbers. I roll my eyes because it’s my turn play devil’s advocate—you know, for the sake of our savings.
“Didn’t you say this thing was as solid as the company that built it?” I ask, gesturing to the laptop heralded in my husband’s hands. He’s carrying his new purchase like a royal tiara meant for the next English Queen.
“Yes,” says the genius.
“Then why do we need insurance?”
“Accidents will happen,” says the genius, which doesn’t sound like a very genius thing to say.
“We’ll take 2 years,” my husband says. He caught sight of the eye-roll, the almighty warning that he’s doing something I don’t approve of. “We’ll play it safe.”
Playing it safe, in my husband’s particular vernacular, is loosely translated as pay for it anyway.
Then, that was that. Another $1400 spent on another tinker toy, another thingamajig. A state-of-the-art, modernistic piece of technology with the ingenuity to triple productivity. Would this treasured artifact be shared with his wife and 3-year-old daughter? No. The glistening slab of gun-metal stainless steel will sit on his lap while the rest of us gather on hands and knees to pray to the new false idol.
And forget about the new kitchen floor we desperately needed. Never mind a down payment towards a bigger vehicle. Forget about using our extra savings to find a slightly-better-than average babysitter that gives a care about strict bedtimes and sugarless meals. We could use someone better than Angie, the only neighborhood teen with a pulse and a – somehow – vacant relationship status. Believe me, it’s a blessing to come home and NOT find Angie and some guy with mouths warped together in cosmological mystery, like two colliding black holes that elude the description of modern physics. Thank God for that, but not much else. You want to know why?
Because Angie is the worst.
Angie, the inept acne-prone mess that shovels sugary treats into our sweet little girl’s face. “How was your night Mr. and Mrs. Bidkins? Have a good time shopping? Oh, not to worry! I sent your daughter to bed a few hours ago. Hmm? What’s the noise? Oh, it’s just the springs imploding on your couch. Yes, I did send her to bed, but then she got up, full of energy, and just wants to jump up and down on your already outdated couch. What did she eat? Well, I may have slipped her an extra push-pop. She was being sooooo good! Could I have a tip please? It’s hard for a teenager/future slut-barn like myself without an extra $5 dollars. Don’t you think I deserve it? For just DOING MY JOB?”
“Honey?” my husband says.
Reality has returned. It isn’t pretty.
As far as I can tell, I’ve been standing beside our outdated minivan for some time, clutching a shopping cart that I had, apparently, asked for from a passing shopping couple. I’m in the process of coming up with an excuse for why I asked for it in the first place, but I’m too angry to come up with one. Instead, I see Ray. He’s gawking at me.
No, that’s not fair. He’s concerned.
He’s looking at me like that same boy I knew in college, the one who was too shy to ever come over and say something, so my friend at the time – who has since become a matrimonial slut-bag – drags me across a frat house and introduces me. It’s 3 months before he kisses me, which was infuriating. Didn’t he get that I wouldn’t have stuck around if I hadn’t thought about us kissing? What took him so long? Why was he so stupid!
That’s why I’m standing here, I decide. I’m wondering why I’m so stupid. Why did I ever marry this moron who buys the first shiny object that comes along? It takes me another four seconds to equate that I’m just some shiny object, too. I’m hot off the shelf, the latest thingamajig, and Ray will find someone else once he’s found…
“Honey?” he asks near my ear.
I freeze.
Oh, how I hate him—he knows how to press my buttons. He whispered because this is private, this is intimate. We’re apart from the world now and it doesn’t matter who might be watching our family Soap Opera take place outside the passenger door of our quaint minivan. Well, I’m not falling for it. He flushed $1400 for no reason today.
“Is this about the laptop?” he whispers, even softer than before.
Something in me purrs, like I’m some pathetic alley cat that’s been fed by a benevolent human with access to cat food. And benevolent why? He has opposable thumbs and offers hard food that cracks beneath my fangs, which isn’t altogether healthy. Or, so I’ve gathered from the twang of pain after every bite. I’m just a cat and don’t know much about cat dental hygiene. But this cat is well off on her own and can decide for herself when food is benevolent. Oh, I’ll hiss. I’ll hiss so my “benevolent human savior” knows that I don’t appreciate such hard food on my sensitive fangs!
I shake out of it. I’m so angry that I’m actively pursuing metaphors about cats.
“Honey,” he says a bit more gruffly. He’s serious now.
I look at him.
Yes, Dearie, it’s about the laptop. The putrid piece of hardware that is sure to ruin plans for our next family vacation and force us to keep our incredibly unqualified babysitter on staff for the coming months. Yes, the freaking laptop! How can I put it best, Dear? Here’s a few suggestions:
- You’re an idiot who doesn’t care about the future of this family!
- Remember your friend Martin Shoresman? Right, from college. I thought he was a bigger idiot than you ever were, mind if I give him a call?
- You are so stupid. How stupid? “EVEN OUR SCIENTISTS DON’T KNOW”!
I refrain from any of those suggestions. Something is tugging at my heart, and it is more piercing than any of them.
“Min?” he asks again, sensing something is more wrong than usual.
He’s right.
So, I ask him: “Do you love me, Ray?”
“What?” he scoffs, transitioning into an incredulous laugh. But this isn’t funny, and he knows it. “Of course, I do. What kind of question is that?”
“Yes, I know that you love me,” I say, stumbling over the off-limits thing I implied. I didn’t mean that and hopefully Ray knows, too. “What I want to know is why?”
“Why what?” he asks.
I look up at him. “Why do you love me, Ray?”
He’s concerned. “I married you, Min. We have a beautiful daughter. We have a home.”
I keep silent. It’s not what I wanted to hear, and I can feel my eyes welling with the beginnings of tears. Only, I don’t know why. This is all silly, I think. This conversation is silly. Cats are silly. The laptop is silly…
He bends down and puts the laptop bag on the muddy, salt-sprinkled parking lot. He hugs me, which helps. Then he reaches out and holds my hands in his and says this:
“Do you remember the night we first kissed?”
I blink—which he knows, in my particular vernacular, means yes.
“I was going to kiss you first,” he says, “but then you attacked me. I might have been seconds away from kissing you, but you puckered up your face – much like you are now – and accused me of not wanting to. Ever. I never told you, but I remember thinking, ‘If I didn’t want to kiss you, I wouldn’t have stuck around all this time.’”
I start crying now. Don’t judge.
“Do you remember what happened after that?” he asks.
“We kissed,” I say after a large sniffle.
“We kissed a lot,” he corrects in his own way. “From then on, I think we’ve kissed more than any couple in the history of planet earth. You might ask, ‘How much have we kissed?’”
That’s my cue. “EVEN OUR SCIENTISTS DON’T KNOW,” I say.
He smiles and kisses me. We eventually stare down at the ground, at the laptop bag. “You don’t like the laptop?”
I blink. “No.”
“Ok,” he says and stands back. He scrapes the toe of his boot across the pavement, flinging bits of mud and salt against the bag, staining the opalescent exterior. “I don’t like it, either. We’ll return it.”
“No,” I say, surprising myself. I don’t feel differently about the laptop, but I keep on talking, “But you love it.”
“No,” he says. “I just wanted it. You are what I love. And our daughter. And our home. And I didn’t kiss you for three months because I made sure to know our future was what I really wanted.”
I wipe my nose on my sleeve, hiding a smile. “You really want to return it?”
“No,” he says, and means it. “But I really hate Angie. Maybe we could pay her off with it?”
“Angie is the worst,” I say.
He looks down at the laptop, like he’s about to leave it there in the parking lot.
I clear my throat. “Well, then,” and bend down, brushing off the mud and salt from the bag. I present it to my husband with a dramatic bow. “Your tiara, Sire.”
“My what?” he asks.
“Nothing,” I say.
It made sense to me. You know, because of how he held it before in the store. I forget that he’s not in my head. Only, he is, which is probably why we kept the laptop.
We get in the car and drive home, dreading what sugary food Angie fed our daughter while we were away. I look over at Ray and I know he’s thinking the same thing.
So, I reach across the shifter and hold his hand. I blink and he keeps driving.
