man.”
Ray’s wife is Catholic. He tells me she has recently announced that she wants their two boys to be raisedCatholic. Which is why I guess we’re talking about all this; also because we both like to talk instead of doing what we’re supposed to be doing, which is operating our wheelbarrows in hell. He continues, in his summation voice.
“I just want to say to all of these religions, What are you
talking
about? Just give me a shred of evidence.
“I mean, all we know for sure is, you go into the ground and worms eat you.”
Right after I talk to Ray, I call Dusty. I can hear his television on in the background. I tell him I’m flirting with the idea of Judaism, after Michael and I are married.
Dusty says that nobody’s doing Judaism anymore, that the new thing in New York is Buddhism, which he says is much more circa 2010.
“Christians were the eighties, Jews were the nineties, and now it’s Buddhism.”
I tell him about Ray’s wife wanting their sons to be raised Catholic.
He sighs like he has just seen a hurt puppy.
“Catholicism is so sad. Very fifties.”
He further informs me that Mormonism is the religion of repressed homosexuality … thus the polygamy. In a high falsetto, he says, “I
can’t
be gay—just ask my wives!”
Dusty thinks that Paul Newman is gay, and Tom Cruise and John Travolta and Al Gore. Also Mister Rogers and the original Captain Kangaroo.
Then he says, “I have to go now. They’re doing
Big Bold Gold
on QVC, and they don’t do that very often.”
• • •
Last night an argument. They come out of nowhere, like tornadoes.
Michael yelled, I cried. I took the ring off, which is my big move now. I don’t just take it off; I take it off, put it in its box, and hand it back to him.
He put it in his pocket and went to the Lucky Penny twenty-four-hour coffee shop on Geary and ate a patty melt.
“Patty melts are good when you’re mad,” he said to me this morning. It was all he said. But he did hand the ring box back.
After he went to work, I looked inside the box to make sure the ring was there. Then I slipped it onto my third finger and called my best friend, Lana, in Albuquerque. Lana and I met in homeroom in seventh grade; we’ve known each other twenty-four years. Lana looks like Linda Hamilton and can crack every bone in her body.
“It was about chicken broth,” I say. “We were out of chicken broth.”
I hear her nod, from the teacher’s lunchroom at the high school where she teaches drama. In the middle of my story she stops me and says, “Hold on …
“What’s going on?”
she screams at her students down the hall. I hear her suede-booted footsteps going toward them. I hear them scatter. In a minute she comes back to the phone and says in a normal voice, “Go ahead.”
I tell Lana everything, which feels great because, for most people, I edit. Most people are definitely getting along on the Cliffs Notes.
It started when I was making a recipe, from Susan Powter’s cookbook, I told her. I started cooking and discovered that we were out of garlic.
I went into the living room and announced this toMichael, who was flopped out on the couch, watching the news. He snapped off the television, put on his coat, and walked to the corner store to buy garlic, with the air of a man about to donate bone marrow. He came home and threw the garlic down the hall, onto the kitchen table. Then he went back to the couch.
It goes without saying that I was never out of fresh garlic when I lived alone.
I got to the end of the recipe and went into the living room and said, “Guess what, we’re out of chicken broth.” He stood up and placed one fist on his hip, like the letter
P
.
“You should have read ahead in the recipe,” he accused.
At that point, I did what I had to do: I implicated him in the missing broth. I said that last time I looked, we had plenty of broth. He must have used it up, I said, and not told anyone.
We both commenced shouting at the
Ray’s wife is Catholic. He tells me she has recently announced that she wants their two boys to be raisedCatholic. Which is why I guess we’re talking about all this; also because we both like to talk instead of doing what we’re supposed to be doing, which is operating our wheelbarrows in hell. He continues, in his summation voice.
“I just want to say to all of these religions, What are you
talking
about? Just give me a shred of evidence.
“I mean, all we know for sure is, you go into the ground and worms eat you.”
Right after I talk to Ray, I call Dusty. I can hear his television on in the background. I tell him I’m flirting with the idea of Judaism, after Michael and I are married.
Dusty says that nobody’s doing Judaism anymore, that the new thing in New York is Buddhism, which he says is much more circa 2010.
“Christians were the eighties, Jews were the nineties, and now it’s Buddhism.”
I tell him about Ray’s wife wanting their sons to be raised Catholic.
He sighs like he has just seen a hurt puppy.
“Catholicism is so sad. Very fifties.”
He further informs me that Mormonism is the religion of repressed homosexuality … thus the polygamy. In a high falsetto, he says, “I
can’t
be gay—just ask my wives!”
Dusty thinks that Paul Newman is gay, and Tom Cruise and John Travolta and Al Gore. Also Mister Rogers and the original Captain Kangaroo.
Then he says, “I have to go now. They’re doing
Big Bold Gold
on QVC, and they don’t do that very often.”
• • •
Last night an argument. They come out of nowhere, like tornadoes.
Michael yelled, I cried. I took the ring off, which is my big move now. I don’t just take it off; I take it off, put it in its box, and hand it back to him.
He put it in his pocket and went to the Lucky Penny twenty-four-hour coffee shop on Geary and ate a patty melt.
“Patty melts are good when you’re mad,” he said to me this morning. It was all he said. But he did hand the ring box back.
After he went to work, I looked inside the box to make sure the ring was there. Then I slipped it onto my third finger and called my best friend, Lana, in Albuquerque. Lana and I met in homeroom in seventh grade; we’ve known each other twenty-four years. Lana looks like Linda Hamilton and can crack every bone in her body.
“It was about chicken broth,” I say. “We were out of chicken broth.”
I hear her nod, from the teacher’s lunchroom at the high school where she teaches drama. In the middle of my story she stops me and says, “Hold on …
“What’s going on?”
she screams at her students down the hall. I hear her suede-booted footsteps going toward them. I hear them scatter. In a minute she comes back to the phone and says in a normal voice, “Go ahead.”
I tell Lana everything, which feels great because, for most people, I edit. Most people are definitely getting along on the Cliffs Notes.
It started when I was making a recipe, from Susan Powter’s cookbook, I told her. I started cooking and discovered that we were out of garlic.
I went into the living room and announced this toMichael, who was flopped out on the couch, watching the news. He snapped off the television, put on his coat, and walked to the corner store to buy garlic, with the air of a man about to donate bone marrow. He came home and threw the garlic down the hall, onto the kitchen table. Then he went back to the couch.
It goes without saying that I was never out of fresh garlic when I lived alone.
I got to the end of the recipe and went into the living room and said, “Guess what, we’re out of chicken broth.” He stood up and placed one fist on his hip, like the letter
P
.
“You should have read ahead in the recipe,” he accused.
At that point, I did what I had to do: I implicated him in the missing broth. I said that last time I looked, we had plenty of broth. He must have used it up, I said, and not told anyone.
We both commenced shouting at the
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