Finishing up Chef’s House (Cont. from Raymond Carvers’ “Chef’s House”)

One afternoon Wes was in the yard pulling weeds when Chef drove up in front of the house. I stopped marinating the fish I had been preparing for supper and walked outside to greet him. Wiping my hands on my apron I said “Hey Chef, good to see you. Come on in.”

“Oh no Edna, it’s ok, I wanted to be quick.”

“Is there a problem?” asked Wes, who had given up his futile attempt at ridding the garden of weeds. Why put so much effort into a garden that isn’t even ours? I wondered. Never the less…

“Well, yes and no,” said Wes. “You see, this couples made an offer on the house and they want to move in by the end of July.”

“July!” I said, “Why it’s June now and we didn’t really plan on leaving this place.”
“Our marriage is finally working out” is what I wanted to shout.

“What about the lease?” said Wes, “It’s a 12 month lease!”

“Look, I gotta do what I gotta do, and I’m sorry. You can piss and moan over the broken lease but it’s gunna cost more than it’s worth. I’m sorry.”

“I think you’d better be going now,” said Wes, “you’ve given us plenty to think about.”

Chef walked back to his black Jetta and drove off, one taillight was out and the exhaust was dragging along the road causing sparks. “Maybe it’ll ignite his car,” said Wes. “Maybe” I said half heartedly, “maybe.”

Dinner that night was a sullen affair, it was as though we were at a wake and we were both the mourners and the corpse all at once. Between scraping forks and muttering about fishing and weather forecasts I said it: “Do you really think we can find a place so soon?” Wes, chewing his asparagus said, “Don’t worry. It will all work out”. It hasn’t all worked out though. Until moving here we both barely spoke, didn’t even live together. Under the guise of the soft summer light and fresh lakeside air we’d recharged. It was just us here, and there was hope here. Hope, ha.

That night we made love in the split log bed. It was silent. It was distant. There was no warmth. I could hear Wes’s breathing and I knew he was asleep. He had had his first drink that night in years. Michelob, not even Dom Perignon for an oxymoronic celebration for this “event” of falling off the wagon.

I wrapped myself up in a blanket, counted the stars, and looked at the lake. A black obsidian moorland, rich with the turbid unknown.
The thought of returning to it all, the cloister of suburbia, the liaison accusations, it was oppressive.

“I can’t do it.” I said. I walked over to the closet and reached far, far back. I took out a package, wrapped in dry, crinkly, parcel paper. My mermaid costume from when I was a child. I slowly opened it, determined not to make a sound. I walked out to the lakefront, and slipped on the skin I had just unwrapped. In my new skin I entered the abyss, swimming away into the cold depths of the future.