All Joe Knight by Kevin Morris

Author:Kevin Morris
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 2016-11-29T14:56:02+00:00

39

The minister, Steve, was married to a woman called Cindy, who, just as her husband, was hard not to like. We were making dinner for them at our house. She was stuck talking to me as Janice and Steve held a sidebar about the church’s construction steering committee—not its work so much as the members of the committee. Cindy knew I didn’t come to church, and she wasn’t judgmental. She had a face that was cleared of worry. I did not then as I do not now find it easy to talk at dinner parties, but she was so nice in a serene way that I could relax. After the obligatory talk about kids and schools and the hectic workloads of daily life, I poured us a second glass of wine.

“You must do this with near strangers every weekend,” I said.

“Pretty much,” Cindy said.

“Okay,” I said. “How do we make it not boring?”

“I don’t know. Let’s talk about something not boring.”

“Like?”

“Like what do you guys do when you’re sick of each other?” She had a comfortable way of being inquisitive. Neither of us was flirting. She was easy.

We were situated around the counter in our kitchen, marble finishes, stainless steel stoves, Sub-Zero and wine refrigerators. One of the many conformist behaviors I had adopted was wine loving. Getting into wines seemed to me to be more or less a way to feel better about drinking, and I was all for it. I mastered matching the very basic wine-food combos. I was working on vineyards, trying to elevate past knowing what a Bordeaux was to knowing the difference among Bordeaux.

“Janice,” I said, interrupting her conversation with Pastor Steve. “What do we do when we’re sick of each other?”

She and Steve laughed, surprised but genuine.

“Irritated or fatigued?” Janice said.

“Let’s go straight to irritated,” Cindy said.

“We bicker,” I said.

“Over small things, you mean?” Steve said.

“We do not,” Janice said.

I didn’t get it, nor did Steve, but Cindy did a spit take. “Nice!” she said, and toasted Janice with a lifted wineglass.

Steve said, “We do the usual thing. I try to get to the actual things we are doing to make each other feel angry, and Cindy wants to talk about how I make her feel.” He smiled at her. “No, I’m kidding. That’s terrible. The problem is that it’s hard to make Cindy angry.”

“Oh, that’s not true,” Cindy said. “But the big thing is not to stay angry.”

“Joe stays angry,” Janice said. With that they were all looking at me.

Cindy waded into it instead of changing the subject. “I know that feeling. I can stay pissed about something for weeks.”

“Nah,” I said, walking toward the fridge. “You’re sweet to try to rescue me, but you don’t have to.” Then, “I’m going to open a bottle of white. Maybe we’ll have some red with the pasta when Janice is ready.”

I brought the bottle back to the counter. Everyone had stayed in the conversation, and there was surprising ease that facilitated candor. “To be angry, you have to have expectations that aren’t being met.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.