One to Ten

by Hannah Grieco

An Honorable Mention from the 2023 Fiction Contest

I drive to the fried chicken place on the corner of 12th Street. I wait in the drive-thru line, wave to a woman I recognize from yoga, which I haven’t been to in several weeks. She’s not looking very yoga-like, however, as she first pushes, then pulls the heavy glass door open and looks back at me sheepishly. Gives me a “you know how it is” half-grin. She’s kind of messy, agitated, and even from here I can see her jaw clenching, can practically hear her teeth grinding. I think about opening my window and calling to her, asking if she’d like to maybe eat together at one of the picnic tables on the other side. Two girls eating a bunch of shit and talking. It’s been a long time since I’ve had lunch with a friend. It might be nice.

It’s windy and it might rain and now, seeing how rough she looks, like really pretty rough, I’m not sure I have it in me to listen to someone else’s mess. I look back down at my phone. We inch forward. I think about macaroni and cheese or hush puppies as a side. Maybe both. Maybe a Coke for my daughter when she gets home from school.

The woman from yoga, was her name Jenny? Yes, Jenny with the arms, Jenny with the flat stomach. Jenny is already coming back out, carrying a very large bag now and I realize it’s for a gathering, or maybe her family. She smiles at me, like she knows me but isn’t sure from where, but still she’s so nice and she even gives a little wink as she walks by and she doesn’t look rough at all. She’s absolutely fine, confident, taking home a late lunch. Maybe catering for a small dinner party. It’s a lot of food.

Jenny actually looks great. Jenny’s a stunner, really.

I order enough food for two people. Even though I ate lunch an hour ago and my husband doesn’t eat junk food, certainly not fried chicken or macaroni and cheese or hush puppies. Not anymore, and I shouldn’t either, he says. We’re not getting any younger. I sometimes imagine force-feeding him all these foods he hates or pretends to hate. Imagine prying open his jaws, his eyes wide, his arms thrashing. Imagine shoveling the food in, fistful after fistful. Swallow, baby, I whisper, as I scoop out another handful of steaming mashed potatoes.

I reach the payment window. “Can you add another order of hush puppies?” I ask and the young woman rolls her eyes, has to scroll through a long line of orders to the edit option, but she finally takes my credit card and sends me ahead. I pick up my order and drive to the park.

My husband thinks I am turning into a bad mother. He thinks I’m trying very hard, but that I’ve lost perspective. That our daughter is fine now and it’s time to get a life, to remember who I was before Erin was born.

His words: You’ve forgotten how to be my wife. 

My husband thinks it’s been a long time since I’ve let him go down on me and this is symbolic of the enormous, dried-up prune I’ve become.

His words: I wouldn’t care about the weight if you just wanted to be touched.

I remember wanting to be touched, I try to tell him, but he has all these other things to say first. Things he hasn’t been saying, he insists, but actually he’s been saying them and saying them.

I try to tell him: Remember us getting drunk in Georgetown and you tripped and fell into the water and I screamed, thought you were going to drown, pulled you up by the collar of your shirt and your arm and you laughed and kissed me? And I said, “Jesus we’re both going to get cholera from this fucking water” and you kissed me harder, said, “Guess we’ll shit our brains out together?” and I’d never in my life wanted to be touched more?

That was before we had a baby, though, he’d say.

His words: Are you listening to me? 

The park is empty, the clouds low and flat and a thick grey. I pull into a spot at the end of the lot, next to the old willow with its half-hidden picnic table. It’s still warm enough for bumble bees to buzz the white clover across the field. It’s quiet and still, the air heavy in my lungs. Maybe I’m not even hungry. Maybe I’ll just sit and listen.

Maybe I really have forgotten how to be his wife.

After eating, I’m sick. I always feel sick now. The leftover pizza, the Cheetos my daughter didn’t finish at lunch, the Halloween candy, the bag of chocolate chips in the walk-in closet when nobody’s around. I eat these foods and think “Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.”

Who am I fuck you-ing? Her? Him? Me?

My husband wants us to attend couple’s therapy even though the problem is me.

His words: Dr. Rogers comes very highly recommended.

My husband wants to discuss how I parent our daughter, since she’s doing pretty well now in eighth grade and doesn’t need me to helicopter like this anymore.

His words: She’s better, Cass. She’s almost a regular kid.

“I was up with her three times last night,” I say. “I slept on the floor next to her bed. You don’t know who or what she is.”

And this pisses my husband off, of course. He leaves the room, then the house, and I eat the rest of the chocolate chips in the closet. 

Every afternoon my daughter gets home from school and shrugs when I ask about her day.

Are you okay? Are the kids nice to you? But I know my daughter doesn’t have any friends and I know the kids aren’t nice and I wonder, every day, if it was a mistake to push her into our neighborhood school this year. I know she must miss her old teachers and the kids more like her, but I also know that she’s getting good grades, taking a class in robotics, that her teachers say she’s quiet but doing fine. And she hasn’t started cutting again, at least not anywhere I can see.

But what if I’m missing something? What if I look away and when I look back, she’s gone? 

My husband’s words: It’s like I don’t even exist. All you are is a mother.

I pull up to our house and kill the engine. My husband is out front, mowing the lawn in perfect rows. He’s taken the day off to fix up the house and he’s working through his list, 1 to 10. It’s probably still on the kitchen counter, or maybe in his pocket.

1 - Living room shelves 

2 - Mow and edge 

3 - Revisit therapy convo with Cass

He waves to me with one finger as he hits the sidewalk, nods like I’m a business acquaintance, and turns the mower sharply, pushing it back up toward the house. I have a list, too, I want to tell him. 1 to 10, starting with figuring out what product will smooth out this dry, greying halo of bedhead on a woman who hasn’t had an orgasm in over a year. 

Starting with that, and then what? 

2 - Ask Erin about after-school robotics club

3 - Cancel Noom account

4 - Kiss your husband on the mouth

I roll down the window to call his name, to say, “Baby, you’re right. Let’s see Dr. Rogers on Tuesday.”

To say, “Maybe we can fix this.”

But before I can say this to the man who used to write me poems, who ran his fingers so gently up my pregnant belly, who sang our wedding song to me every time he got drunk, back before he quit weed and drinking and went paleo and started lifting with the guys at 6 a.m. while I got our daughter up, made her go to school, went to her every appointment, every meeting, checked under her tongue for hidden pills, checked her arms and legs for long, thin scabs, before I forgot what it meant to have a life outside this house— 

Before that, my husband turns off the mower and pulls his phone out of his pocket. He wipes the sweat off his forehead and heads inside, phone at his ear.

Remember walks? Remember dates? Remember poker nights and that time you taught me how to smoke a cigar and when you told your dad to fuck off, that I was your wife and I came first. Remember that?

Remember when we slept, you curled up behind me, and we spent the entire night like one organism, breathing in and out in unison. One mashed-up human heart. One mashed potato heart. Remember when you ate mashed potatoes?

My husband is right. Erin’s doing great, really.

5-10 - Open road open sky open chest cavity where my heart used to be god damn it.

My phone rings and it’s the school. But the bus should have come forty-five minutes ago. My husband was home today, which was why I could go get food. Because he was here and could meet her at the bus stop on the corner.

Why would the school be calling? Did she miss the bus? Did the bus break down? Did something happen and he didn’t notice?

If they’d called him, then my husband would be running toward the car. His face white, his eyes all round, black pupil. His body a flicker, a ghost, a casket where my mashed potato heart used to be.

He’d cry, Cass, oh god oh fuck Cass.

But they never call him. They only call me.

“Hello? Hello?”

Remember kissing my fingertips, one to ten? Remember the clouds on our honeymoon in Puerto Rico, the tidal wave across the sky? A tornado, I whispered, or aliens. We should go. And you said no, no, it’s a special kind of cloud. A roll cloud, baby. They never touch the ground, Cass. 

Your words: You’re safe. I promise.

Your words: Nothing bad will happen. 

Published August 27th, 2023