I am on the verge of lunging across the display counter, grabbing Bethany by the neck, and squeezing her tender throat until her eyes bug out.
And this is odd, because I'm not a violent person. In fact, I'm ridiculously soft-hearted. As a kid, when I accidentally popped one of my Cookie Monster's bulging eyeballs off, I tortured myself with guilt and prayed that God would heal him.
At some point, my Mom, possessed briefly by the twin demons of humanity and sobriety, bought me a new Cookie Monster and threw the old one away. I spent one golden afternoon praising God for what I sincerely believed was a Muppet miracle. And then, while scraping dinner dinner scraps into the garbage can, I spotted my old friend Cookie -- his glassy eye staring up at me, his mouth frozen open in a silent scream.
I wept for weeks, and in my diary -- in the big, sprawling, sloppy letters that only a nine year-old can muster -- I wrote: "There is no God."
You might think my early flirtation with atheism would have rendered me a cold and calculating human being. You would be wrong. I'm still soft-hearted and emotionally vulnerable as ever. I have pulled over on the side of the road to aid animals in peril -- or, at least thought about pulling over to help them, which is, if you think about it, almost the same thing.
Every time I refuse to give spare change to the crazy homeless man on Capitol Street in downtown Jackson, my heart aches. When those commercials about swarthy children with no food or clean water come on during Oprah -- you know, the ones featuring those big-headed babies with flies circling their mouths? -- I have to change the channel to the Food Network and cleanse my mental palette with some Rachel Ray.
So, knowing all this about me, you'll understand why it's unusual that I'm making a scene in the middle of Capitol City Jewelry and debating whether or not to do bodily harm to a bottle-blonde teenager I've known for all of seven minutes.
Especially since, just two hours ago, I was the embodiment of Spring. I woke up to sunshine, bird song, and the mouth-watering smell of Briggs frying up a batch of real bacon.
That's real bacon, mind you -- not those nasty vegetarian strips we switched to briefly after my little heart scare a few months back. Listen, honey: when it comes to breakfast, vegetarian bacon misses the point. Breakfast is meant to be visceral. When a bear hibernates, he wakes up ready to eat an animal. When I sit down to breakfast, I don't want to wrap my molars around strips of textured soy -- I want something that was, until just recently, alive and kicking. When I bite into my morning protein, I want to taste some fear.
I stumbled into the kitchen and plopped down at the breakfast table. I yawned. I stretched. I ground my knuckles into my eyes. I reached out my hand and looped my fingers through the handle of my favorite green mug, which Briggs, bless him, had already filled with coffee, three Splendas, and half a cup of Half and Half.
Briggs stood at the stove, teasing the bacon with a bright red spatula. Every morning, he rises early, pulls on a pair of sweat pants, fetches the paper from the end of the drive, and makes me breakfast. He did this the morning after our first night together, ten years ago; he's done it every morning since.
Nothing gets in the way of this routine. Mississippi rarely gets snow, but even when the front yard is blanketed with icy whiteness, Briggs pads out -- barefooted, bare chested, steam trailing from his nostrils -- and sticks to his schedule.
The neighbor lady -- twice divorced, liquor-thin, and apt to minister to us heathens by sticking Chic Tracts in our mailbox -- likes to watch this ritual. And I like watching her watch it. I like thinking about her, alone in her cold bed, thinking about us, naked and warm in ours.
[pause]
Comments