They Make You Cry

November rain had pressed the faces of dead leaves to her kitchen windows and stuck them there, like Jacob Marley’s ghosts condemned to watch a living existence they could not share.  Beth watched one flap miserably at the glass until at last the wind took mercy or tired of the torture and flicked it away into the more diffuse torments of the maelstrom.

It was nearly five o’clock.  Her eyes wandered to the stove, where the meatloaf had been cooling, simmering in its own heat and juices for the last several minutes, just as her mother had taught her in the years after the war.  Most of the time she dined alone, but she knew at least one night a year she was guaranteed company, and this was it.

One hour.  By six o’clock, she’d be alone again for another year.  But it was as yet only ten to five.

She thought how funny it was that she’d never had the will or the courage to tell him she wanted out.  Divorce.  Even when the kids were grown up and gone, there was some stupid remnant of her mother sitting on top of her head, demanding that a couple stays together for the kids.  What kids?  The grandkids?  But still, through all the drinking, the lying, the spendthrift foolishness and all the other things that didn’t bear thinking about, much less mentioning, she’d stood on his arm for every anniversary photo, every Christmas gathering, every Thanksgiving embarrassment, with that same silly grin… the one that all at once absolved him of his coarseness while beseeching the world not to include her in whatever ill opinions it might form of her by proxy.  She came to think of it as her forgive us smile.

The clock in the hall chimed five.  She didn’t even have to look behind her.  She knew he was there.  “Hello, Clark.”

“Beth…”  His voice sounded more distant, more haggard than it had the year before.  Hell was hard on a man.  Well, that was the idea, as she understood it.  She turned to face him.  Yes, he certainly looked the part.  Tattered flesh and eyes beyond despair, all dressed in an ironic, immaculate, tailored Italian suit that surely had them all roaring with laughter below.  She thought it was a wonder they drew the line at a top hat.  It almost made her feel sorry for him.

Almost.

They stared at one another.  Nothing sprang to the lips of either.  Beth sat, and finally Clark remembered himself.  “How are the kids?”

“Sharon had a baby in September.  A little boy.  They named him Dylan…”

Clark winced; for a moment, he looked every bit the way he had in life, five years before.  “Aw, that’s a shit name,” he moaned.  “Weak-chinned little son-of-a-bitch name.  Why did you let them do that?”  Hell hadn’t changed everything about him.

Beth took a long, deep breath.  “Mike and Tammy are separated, I’m afraid.  I don’t know, but I think they’re going to get a divorce.”

“Divorce is wrong.”  He challenged her with his dead eyes, the suffering having drained out of them, for the moment.

“I know… I know.  But sometimes it—”

“But nothing.  You think I don’t know?  Me?”

“Clark, you’re only here one hour a year.  Do you want to spend it arguing?”  Maybe he did.  Maybe it was his only outlet.  Who knew what happened down there?  He’d tried to tell her once, in defiance of some rule, and his mouth had instantly sealed over.  In truth, she wondered if she could bait him into that again.

He looked cowed.  “No,” he said.  “I want my supper.”

She rose.  “Well, it’s ready.”

“What is it?”

“Meatloaf.”

He looked discouraged.  “I saved your life.”

“I know.  Believe me, Clark, every day, I was aware of that.”  Not to mention, on this day every year.  The Powers That Be had decreed this to be his one just act, and this annual liberty its reward.  It sometimes occurred to her to end her own life, and thus his privileges, but the realization she would condemn herself to eternity alongside him persuaded her otherwise.  She would endure.

But so would he.

She rose, carefully and diligently laying out the perfectly-formed mashed potatoes, the vegetable medley, the steaming slices of meatloaf.  There was a look in his face of a hunger that a thousand meals wouldn’t satisfy.  One would imagine that a crust of moldy bread would be heaven to someone such as him, but Beth had learned better.

She sat.  “Aren’t you hungry?”

He gazed at the plate anxiously.  “I saved your life.”

“Yes, you did.  That’s why you’re here tonight, darling.  This is your reward.”

Clark sighed.  He cut a piece of meatloaf and raised it to his mouth.  The stricken look of realization pinched his features.  “It has onion in it.”

“Oh, dear… I’d forgotten you didn’t like onion.  But my mother always made it that way.  Old habits die hard.  Well, try the potatoes…”

“They have onions too, don’t they?”

“You know, come to think of it, I had some of the onion soup mix from the meatloaf left over, and to spice it up a little… oh, dear.  Yes, I’m afraid they do.”

His eyes strayed to the vegetables.  Two or three little pickled onions, with all their overpowering influence, peered up at him from under the cover of green beans and corn.

They stared at each other across the table, marking the fifth observance of an annual ritual that would persist for the rest of her life… the life he had saved.  Yes, you saved my life.  A life full of you.  And I made you a meatloaf.  A meatloaf full of onions.  There was no need to say a word, but she did.  Her face lit up with that same pleading smile that had seen her through married life with him.

“Forgive me,” she said.