One of this week's writing assignments was to write about what you or your character has had to say NO to. Here's the result so far:
Kathy’s inability to say No was an accepted fact of her make-up, just like the way her hair was flat except for the bump of a cowlick at the top of her scalp or the scar on her eyebrow from a run-in with the coffee table as a little girl. It was something had settled into the residue of her being, the stuff that made her Kathy.
But Kathy still thought about it. She grappled with it silently as something that she knew could logically be trained out of her system yet baffled by her inability to do so. When she looked around, she saw her life comprised of the results of her inability to say No, or mean it when she did say No. Each of her four children were four representative episodes (there were many others) where she had failed to convey No to their father.
The crumb-filled SUV with the $450 monthly payments was another battle she vaguely remembered surrendering to. (Hadn’t she suggested a mini-van?) The deflating pool in the back yard filled with two-inches of scum-coated water was something she had known that she’d be left rolling and stuffing back into the box when they had purchased it. (Hadn’t she suggested waiting for an in-ground next summer?) And just that task was ahead of her one evening this week now that the weather had taken a quick, sudden turn to Autumn. Even now, as she sprayed the granite countertop with Windex, polishing away the streaks of sponge marks with a paper towel she recalled Danny’s insistence on black granite rather than white. Black showed all the marks. A light color would have shown none. Essential, he had said, for the resale value of the house, and he was the expert after all.
When she was done wiping the counter, she discarded the paper towel into the newly lined trash can, put the Windex under the sink between the Fantastick and the furniture polish and straightened the kitchen towel so that it hung squarely on the door. The house had fallen to a silence that was rare. The blanket was folded on the couch; the tray of the high-chair was wiped clean; the sliding door was clean of fingerprints. Just the rustle of trees and the low bark of a dog came in through the screens. Upstairs, the magazines were stashed beneath the bathroom sink, the carpets were marked with fresh vacuum lines, Kimmy’s school papers were tucked into the side of her blotter and the stuffed animals in the playroom sitting upright on the top of the toy chest. She loved the house. The kitchen that opened to the living room. The fine leather upholstery of the couch. The subtle pink tones in the granite on the fireplace hearth.
Another fifteen minutes until the carpool van arrived with the children. Two of them anyway. The baby was sleeping upstairs and Kimmy was going to her friend Rachel’s almost every day now, calling around five to say that she’d be staying for dinner. Rachel was a girl who left cigarette butts wrapped in tissues in the bathroom garbage and sometimes put on a Southern accent when she telephoned for Kimmy. “Why huhllo Mrs. Bay-ree. Is Kee-my at home today? And if so, may I po-lease speak to her?” It was a joke Karen couldn’t help but feel the butt of and one she did not know how to react to so she felt that Rachel was getting the better of her.
Martin and Theresa would be coming in, riling the house into a whirlwind, demanding juice from the refrigerator, permission to play with the neighbors, ripping homework out of their backpacks and then dropping and flinging the bags every which way. And soon they’d have her cutting, pouring, rummaging in the pantry, the freezer, the refrigerator in search of the exact pop or slice of pizza or crackers that they remembered from a few days ago. And she’d watch the clock move, watch the house fall into ruins, wipe the crumbs, scoop up the papers and backpacks onto the foot of the stairs, look at the thawing chicken each time she opened the refrigerator door and wonder about dinner.
She thought about getting Theresa’s hairbrush from the drawer as she’d be wanting to have her hair combed and barrettes straightened straight away. But she stared at her bare toes instead, the little stripe of pink polish on her big toenail leftover from the one wedding they were invited to in July. The polish had matched her dress exactly and she had picked it without having the dress with her.
She pulled the curtain to the side. It was made of a thin, gauzy white fabric that filtered the early afternoon light into something soft and fuzzy. Danny complained that they had no privacy, that their dining room was the neighborhood dining room and that they were just about providing cable for the entire neighborhood by not covering the windows. But Karen had seen the material in a magazine and the same day in the cloth shop and in a rush of enthusiasm she had not known since before Kimmy was born, she had sewn for three hours straight and had the curtains hung that very evening. They were simple tab curtains with a 1/4” hem at the bottom and a 1/2” hem on the side. She had carried the sewing machine out of the garage, set it up in their then empty living room and spent the afternoon getting back into the delicate rhythm of pressing the pedal and guiding the fabric through the beating foot as the needle pecked in and out of the material. Every once and a while, she’d look up at the blank wall and listen for the baby. As if she could stretch her ears up the stairs and into the baby’s room, she thought she heard the faint smack of lips on a pacifier, but that was not possible and she resumed, satisfied that the baby was at least not crying. And now she wondered if it was silly to have the whole downstairs covered in the same drab white linen curtains. And they were, after all, see through. Even the kids complained about the glare on the television.
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