Short Story: Old Flame
Mashed Potatoes, Armchair Warfare, And Knowing Your Place (In The Kitchen)
Old Flame
All I am good for is mashed potatoes.
After all this time, Gary. Three years—going on four.
Mashed potatoes.
Instant, nonetheless.
By the way, Gary, it’s time to renew that lease. I see it sitting there on the kitchen table—all day long, right in front of me—unsigned, but you come home from work and you just… go to the fridge…
… and drink, and drink, and drink, and play those blaring video games alone in the other room. Your room. And you don’t sign the lease, and you don’t open the mail you pile on top of it, and you leave the the dirty dishes on me—they’re you’re dirty dishes, Gary. Not mine. What responsibility could they possibly be of mine?
Just another burden stacked on me, while you isolate yourself in your chamber of beer, and wet dreams of combat, and intangibles, while the real fire inside me flickers in anticipation of ingredients for a feast that may never again be prepared.
And then what? When you are done, when you are ready, what will it be? Mashed potatoes, again? Right before bed? Just let me know, Gary, I’ll be right here ready to heat up your prized mashed potatoes at the hour of the witch. Or not. Maybe just go ahead and order yourself another pizza. You know I can’t eat pizza. Whatever, none of it is about me, I get it, and it’s not really even about the pizza. I know part of it is the delivery girl you like to talk to—for way too long, frankly, Gary, but you could never ask me for my opinion. That would certainly be an odd, one sided conversation if you were to ask me for my opinion of your pining over the pizza girl!
Let me save you some time and money, Gary. Tuesdays and Fridays: those are her nights. Sometimes Saturdays for the lunch shift. I know this because I hear her deliver to the neighbors upstairs, but you wouldn’t know that because you’re usually sleeping it off at noon on a Saturday, aren’t you, Gary? Why don’t you cut the small-talk and invite her to come over after her Saturday afternoon shift? I’m sure she knows I’m here—it’s a small enough apartment—but she hangs out on the stoop as long as she does, smelling your pizza as the cheese coagulates inside the box as it blackens with grease, listening to you sheepishly blather away pleasantries as you do. Invite her over for a pepperoni-free supper, already.
I can bake a ham!
We used to cook, and bake all the time. Together.
Do you remember those days, Gary? They weren’t so long ago. Cakes, lasagnas, sautéed chicken, Sunday morning blueberry muffins, slow-simmered short ribs in the Dutch oven, roux. The kitchen was cloaked in warmth and splendid olfactory delights. Friends would come over; music played, conversation filled the house for hours; you would pull steaks out of the refrigerator and we would broil up unexpected late-night feasts! Of course, this was also when your other… friend tended to spend a lot of time with us. But we all got along well enough, didn’t we, the three of us? I enjoyed cooking our own pizza in the cast iron pan with her. An odd little group we made, but we made it work, didn’t we?
Then she was gone, and the greater spans of time I hoped we could finally—finally—spend together were, sadly, not filled with the joyous sounds and smells of epicurean delight, and conversation, and cheer, and music, and warmth, and… and…
… and your belly slowly filled itself with chilled beer; and the apartment slowly emptied itself of our lively friends; and the sounds of spirited conversation and music from the vintage record player became the dry hum of that microwave, and rapid machine-gun fire from the living room, and the aimless mumblings of a sad man to an unwitting young pizza girl; and the smells of roasted meats and simmering stews and sauces and fresh bread became that of overdone breakfast burritos, egg rolls, and soggy cereal in the middle of the afternoon, and unbuttered mashed potatoes at midnight.
You really need to sign that lease, Gary. Mute the din of couch-based warfare, clean off the kitchen table, and sign the lease. Surely we can sort it all out next year, make it work, reignite that lost flame. Stupid as it sounds—after all this time, a few sheets of inkjet printer paper being all that holds us together, but—I think we are both honest enough to know what will happen if you don’t sign that contract. You will go your own way. On to something new, and more electric—it’s okay to admit it—and I will go… out to the curb.
It’s a new lease, Gary. Me in it, you on it. One more year to savor the tastes, bask in the warmth, and dance in the cavernous ballroom of smells… together. I’ll heat up your mashed potatoes as many times as you want. You know I will. The butter doesn’t even matter to me. I’ll do it because you want it, Gary, and if instant potatoes is what it takes to get you through this spell, then so be it.
I do what you want, when you want it done. Because that’s my place, Gary.
If bringing the pizza girl over for Saturday afternoon beers and using me to light your cigarettes—kitchen smoke detector nine volt knocked out with a broomstick, only to secret away your muffled, smoky conversations into to the basement stairwell—is what it takes to stay together, then I will be there for you, Gary. I really can’t complain, anyway. Where else do I have to go?
I know my place. Here, in the kitchen.
Watching everything fall apart from my small corner of simultaneous rejection and expectation, I will be here… for you, Gary. Your outspoken friends and unspoken lovers, and periods of dismay and delight, sorrow and selfishness, lite beer and Malbec, success and submission, hunger and hangovers, and mashed potato flakes will come and go, and you may not always notice, but there will remain this one constant.
Me.
The fire I have inside; it is easy to ignore, but, cannot be so easily snuffed out. Even you should be able to remember that, in the deep of night, when you’re bombed out from too many refrigerator round trips, and one-way flights over hostile territory. When dawn is only hours away, and dinner will only take a few minutes, even you, Gary, should be able to remember that it takes two to cook potatoes. But, only one of us needs to really pay attention.
You could have surrendered the war on the sofa and in the refrigerator, and invited your friends’ return, and went to the store and bought fresh basil, onions, ricotta cheese, ground Italian sausage, tomatoes, heavy cream, flour, salt, and pancetta, and invited the pizza girl over to make her a gourmet supper before making loud love right in front of me on the kitchen table, on top of the mail, and the pizza boxes, and the plastic dishes with dried potatoes in them, knocking them all to the floor in a spastic surge of blissful passion, and…
… signed the lease, Gary.
But, you didn’t…
… turn the knob all the way to the click.
So now, just before you finish your soup bowl of flaky, butterless potatoes, and well before you take the next village, you will go to sleep.
And I will take care of the lease.
And our friends will all come back—albeit for only one more day, and the music will be less jubilant—and when there is nothing left of our relationship, I will finally get the attention I have deserved for a long time. Three years, but not quite four. Men will stare at me, and talk about me, and prod me—and some women, too—and they will open me up and touch me, and they will care about me. They will see there was nothing wrong with me for three—almost four—years.
The other men (and women), all of our friends, the upstairs neighbors, our landlord, and the whole block, and even that pizza girl… everyone will know there was nothing wrong with me.
I stayed in my place, and did exactly what was expected.
For a few passing days we will both get the attention we had missed for so long, and what is left of you will be placed on some pedestal in the manor and heart of your mother.
And what is left of me will be put out on the curb… with the microwave, and the refrigerator.