The television was muttering something she couldn’t quite hear over her husband’s soft snoring. She tossed the newspaper on the coffee table, the one she’d thumbed through twice tonight already, and pried the remote out from under his fat fingers. Rolling her eyes, she turned the volume up a few clicks and started idly surfing what their basic cable package offered in hopes of finding a more pleasant diversion. As was often the case, the man of the house had been watching one of those extreme weather shows that were of no interest to his wife. Why anyone who lived smack dab in the middle of Tornado Alley would want to watch idiots chase their own deaths, then retrace the swaths of devastation left behind, was baffling to her.
Loretta and Cyril Meyerson had lived in Sioux City, Iowa, their whole lives and been married exactly twenty-eight years and one week to the day.
The oldest of their three children, Wayne, was an Air Force pilot stationed in Colorado Springs and Dorthea was in Chicago working as a waitress while she finished art school. When the baby, Mary Jo, left for Cedar Rapids a month and a half ago to attend Coe College, their modest three-bedroom ranch house in the suburbs became the proverbial empty nest. It sure felt like it. This was going to be the night they finally ‘talked about things’, so as Cyril sawed logs, Loretta began to rub her head and took deep breaths to quell the surging mob of emotions pounding on the temple doors. Keeping them at bay was something she was quite good at.
Their anniversary a week ago Friday was to be a celebration of being married these many years and raising three fine young people with bright futures who they gave as good a start in life as they could afford.
It was also the night originally earmarked to talk about what they wanted to do with the rest of their lives, but after a big dinner at Red Lobster and a little more wine when they got home, that plan went out the window. Even a half-hearted attempt to make love ended up being just some clumsy pawing and giggling. After that, despite her persistant reminders, the talk had been pushed aside every day since in favor of football on Saturday and Sunday and Monday nights, and then Loretta’s book club on Tuesday, the weekly Elks Lodge dinner on Wednesday, and Cyril’s bowling night on Thursday.
Any shared hopes and dreams over the past three decades had been along the lines of buying a Dodge minivan, adding a carport to put it in, taking that big summer road trip to Yellowstone, Wayne winning a high school wrestling state title, fixing Dorthea’s crooked teeth, and Mary Jo making rally.
Life happens and neither one of them had thought much about it. But here it was another Friday night and after all this time together they still had no idea what they wanted from each other, or for the rest of their days. Not even an inkling.
That didn’t seem to trouble Cyril much, but it ate at Loretta’s soul, and the less it bothered him the more it did her. This night, like so many before, she receded into a photoshopped past and stepped into a fantasy future.
Often, she thought of Harold Hardwick. Back in high school Loretta could turn the boys’ heads, especially when she wore what her mother would rather she not, and Harold was always the first to take notice and compliment her. And not always in a way appropriate in polite society. With piercing blue eyes and a full head of slicked brown hair, he looked more than a little like James Dean and had an air about him she could neither explain nor ignore.
If she hadn’t been steady with Cyril their senior year, Loretta was certain she and Harold would’ve been Prom King and Queen. And what a dashing couple they would’ve been.
But Cyril had pinned her their sophomore year back when she was still a skinny wallflower and they’d grown comfortable together, even talking about marriage and kids a couple times when there was a beer party, and though something tugged at her almost every day, she couldn’t jilt Cyril because she knew it would break his heart.
Cyril Meyerson was no James Dean, but back in school he was far from ugly. By his senior year, he stood six feet tall and ran track and played basketball, so he was lean with a pretty good build. He was raised proper and very polite, was nice to everyone, and her mother and father treated him like the son they never had. And he was easy to explain.
Cyril was the one reason Loretta had never gone out with Harold or any of the other boys who were a mystery to be solved, and the only reason she’d passed on a dance scholarship to the University of Iowa because he was dead set on going to State.
Obviously, he was the reason she’d gotten pregnant and given up being anything other than a mom and a suburban housewife. And because Cyril lost most of his interest in sex after Mary Jo came along, she also figured he was the reason she’d gotten fat and lazy.
But thinking about the future was what really got her worked up. Mostly because there wasn’t one. Not one she could see right now, and not one with Cyril at any rate. They shared a house full of empty passion and a life together with too many things left unsaid.
To be fair, Loretta deserved some of the blame and she knew it. Mostly because she wasn’t good at telling her husband how she felt or what she wanted. She knew how to get certain things when it really mattered, like most women do, but thinking back she could only remember being clear with Cyril when it came time for the carport or a new paint job.
The things she kept at the bottom of her heart somehow never made it out of her mouth, and overly clever conversations hinting at them fell on deaf ears. Still, she couldn’t understand how he could not know.
Finally, the mob beat down the doors and stormed her castle keep. How could he possibly not know that she desperately wanted a new house? They sure didn’t need all this room and such a big yard anymore. Plus, the kids were independent and even if they visited would probably stay in a hotel. And why was it so hard for him to understand that she wanted to travel?
In 28 years, there was that big trip to Yellowstone, one to Epcot which got cut short because Mary Jo got chicken pox, the family reunion in Colorado after Wayne’s graduation from the Air Force Academy, a couple extra days in Chicago after dropping Dorthea off at school, and summer after summer after summer staying with Cy’s parents in Eau Claire.
None of the trips were anything to write home about and other than that where the hell had they been besides Sioux City? Truth was, Loretta was sick to death of Sioux City. Seemed like everybody there did the same goddamn thing every goddamn day.
Loretta swore at Cyril under her breath. She looked hard but could see no sign of his high cheekbones or the square jaw she fell for. And what had for many years been a little roll around his middle was now a full-blown beer belly. Not that she was in swimsuit shape either. Looking down at her own stomach made her want to cry.
She imagined both of them going on a diet, losing forty or fifty pounds and seeing if that wouldn’t put some excitement back in their lives. Sure it might, she thought, but what she really thought about was Harold Hardwick. And life after Cyril.
A sudden pang of guilt snapped Loretta out of her reverie, back to the couch and her husband. She realized she’d stopped surfing channels at some point and flashing before her eyes was the image of a couple on a couch with an announcer claiming that “TV Ears saved our marriage!” Cyril woke with a snort loud enough to rattle Loretta’s teeth. She looked over wearing a practiced smile.
“Well, look who’s up. You wanna watch The Voice, Cy?”
“Sure, Mommy.”