By: Lizzy Lawrence
A couple quietly eating dinner together.
The following is a fictional piece.
All she could hear was the screech of his fork against the shitty Ikea plates they had bought three years ago. It was starting to make her feel insane.
Music wasn’t an option. If she put on a playlist, it would be like admitting defeat. It would be like saying: we can’t bear to carry a conversation, so let’s make Norah Jones do all the work. Let’s pretend we’re the type of couple that gazes at each other while listening to romantic jazz over dinner.
“How was your day?” she attempted. He glanced up, surprised. Apparently he had actually forgotten she was there.
“Oh, bad. You know. The usual,” he said, looking down to perform his biggest fork screech yet while trying to grab some rice. She winced.
“Do you want a spoon? It might be easier to scoop the rice.”
“No, I’m fine.” He started chewing the rice vigorously, swallowing it in an audible gulp that she could only describe as graphic. When had she become so sensitive to mouth noises? God, was she going to have to tell her therapist she had misophonia, now, too?
She turned to her own dinner, which she had no appetite for. Instead, she moved food around on the plate, the classic Cassie from Skins trick that had informed an adolescent eating disorder she spent the rest of her life trying to squash. Ignoring the food, she focused on the plates — specifically, their color.
The bubble-gum pink felt whimsical at the time; he had laughed when she deposited them in their cart and refused to budge for a color that seemed more sensible. They were deliriously happy at Ikea, with their whole adult lives ahead of them and a tiny Chicago apartment to furnish. She plucked things at random, fake plants, whisks, avocado slicers, and he had humored her. They raced home eagerly with two massive slices of chocolate cake, the very first meal they had on their very first post-grad plates in their very first home together.
“It’s amazing how these plates have held up,” she said, smiling a bit as she sought his eyes. “I know you were skeptical of the pink, but I love looking at them.”
He exhaled quietly, a soft chuckle. “I hate these plates. Always have.” He met her eyes briefly, but it felt like he looked right through her. He wasn’t in the room with her, having this conversation. He was somewhere else.
The silence yawned, like a chasm, between them. At first she waited for tears to come. They’d come at various points over the past six months: during sex, in the shower, on walks around their neighborhood.
But to her surprise, she felt nothing. As the silence stretched on, she grew disconnected from the table, the plates, the fork scratching out an ominous tune. She looked directly at him, head hunched over the chicken and rice, and knew it had to end. She knew she had to start the conversation that would end their life together. It would be uncomfortable, but not as uncomfortable as the quiet sadness that filled their days.
Still, she looked longingly at the door. How amazing it would be to walk out and let the silence between them last forever. The relationship, their connection to each other, never quite ending.
***
Five years later
His eyebrows danced as they brushed their teeth together, sleepy and ensconced in fluffy bathrobes. He seemed to be timing the eyebrow movement to the mechanical whirs of the electric toothbrush. A fun game, so she decided to join him. Soon enough, they were wiggling their eyebrows aggressively at each other, until she burst out laughing, spitting toothpaste all over him. He cried out, cackling and spitting toothpaste right back at her.
Laughing so hard they could barely talk, they shook as they wiped toothpaste off their noses, cheeks, foreheads. He kissed the top of her head, pulling himself together.
“Pancakes?” he asked.
“Please!” she responded.
They waltzed into the kitchen, playing Christmas songs on the speaker even though it was March. Maybe it was sacreligious, but she felt that Saturday morning breakfasts warranted the jolliest of tunes. Besides, the weather outside in ice-cold Chicago was frightful.
He hummed as he mixed batter in the giant silver bowl, clearly in his own world. She gazed at him for a moment, wordlessly letting herself be drawn to him, sidling up behind him and wrapping her arms around his torso. After swaying with him for a bit, she picked up her book and lay on the couch, letting Bing Crosby’s crooning and the smell of chocolate chip pancakes cocoon her. Pretty soon, the book lay forgotten as she lay snoozing.
Strong arms woke her, picking her up and depositing her in the barstool at the kitchen counter. She blinked at him, hardly believing he was real. Two bubble-gum pink plates, stacked high with pancakes drizzled in syrup, sat in front of and beside her.
“Pancakes on ridiculously pink plates,” he said. “All is right with the world.”
They dug in, relishing the fluffy batter and melting chocolate. Their mouths were too full to talk, but they were present. She could feel all of him, and all of herself, in the room.
She was having a moment. Looking around the apartment they’d constructed together, with his vintage jazz posters and her bright collages, she felt a wave of gratitude rush over her. Her previous relationship with its hidden tears and wounding silences helped bring her here, to this man. She broke that silence, finding the courage to end things and start a new, solitary life. And then, three years later, she found someone whose silences she was happy to sit in.
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