Fiction: Still Life With Potatoes

By William Taylor Jr.                                         

 

She paused from the chopping of carrots to gaze out the kitchen window. It was late afternoon in early November; the day was bright and cold. The grass and the small trees were in various stages of dying. Looking out upon them gave her a feeling of pristine desolation, and a yearning for something lost. Something she had no name for. Henry, her five year old son, was playing in the dirt beneath the sad little apple tree. He seemed to sense her gaze upon him and paused from his game to look her way. He gave a little wave. She smiled and waved back.

Despite the coldness of the day she opened the window. She took a pack of cigarettes and a book of matches from a drawer, and took the old glass ashtray that had belonged to her mother from its place on the kitchen table and put it on the windowsill. She poured some cheap cooking wine into a mug and set it on the windowsill alongside the ashtray. She stood there drinking and smoking and watching her son.

She could hear the sound of the television in the other room. When her husband was home the television was on.  The constant noise of it frustrated her. It was always there, and she believed it had the power to prevent her from thinking about things she could be thinking about if the television wasn’t on. She felt full of stillborn thoughts. She wasn’t sure exactly what things she would be thinking about if not for the television, but she imagined them somehow worthwhile.

Her husband’s voice called from the other room: “Are you smoking in the kitchen?”

“No.  The window’s open.”

“It makes everything taste like ash.”

“I’m done,” she said, “I’m done.”

She stubbed out the remnant of the cigarette in the ashtray, and then emptied the contents into a plastic pail that sat on the patio beneath the window. She closed the window and turned back to her cooking. She dumped the chopped carrots into the pan with the roast and started in on the potatoes. She remembered sitting in the kitchen as a child, watching her mother chop potatoes.  Her mother always made nice, nearly perfect cubes to be boiled or cooked with the roast. She looked at her own potatoes. They were cut haphazardly in random shapes and sizes.  Her potatoes were ugly and made her feel inadequate but she dumped them in with the roast nonetheless. She chopped some onions in a similar fashion and added those to the pan as well.  She poured some more of the cooking wine in her mug, and into the pan with the meat and vegetables. She put the lid on the pan and slid it in the oven.

She sat at the kitchen table with her wine and the noise of the television drifting in from the other room. She stared at the oven, trying to think about something. Henry walked into the kitchen from outside. She looked at him. “Are you done playing?” she asked.

“It’s cold,” Henry replied.

“Yes, it’s cold.”

“Will you make Megatron talk?” Henry asked, holding out a dirty plastic robot.

“Not right now,” she said.

“Why?”

“Mommy’s busy.”

Henry looked at his mother, and surveyed the kitchen, slightly confused. “Busy with what?” he  asked.

“I don’t know. Go get ready for dinner.”

“Is dinner ready?”

“No.  It’s going to be a while.”

“Then why do I have to get ready now?”

“Stop asking me questions.  Go to your room.”

“Okay.”

She watched him leave the kitchen then turned her gaze back to the oven.  Again, her husband’s voice called from the other room. “What’s in the oven?”  She didn’t immediately reply.  “What’s in the oven?” her husband repeated, louder.

“My head,” she said, not truly loud enough for him to hear.

“What?” he asked.

“My head,” she said, louder now.  “My head's in the oven.”

“I can’t hear you.”

“Do you want another beer?”

“Yes, please.”

She sat at the table for another minute, and then took a can of beer from the refrigerator and brought it to the living room where her husband sat with the television. She put the full can of beer on the table by the reclining chair among the four empty cans that were already there. 

“What are you watching?” she asked.

“What?”

“What are you watching?”

“Oh.  I don’t know.”

“Then why are you watching it?”

“I’m tired.”

“Okay.  I’m cooking a roast.”

“Remember not too cook it too long, like you did last time.”

“Okay.”

She went back to the kitchen, opened the oven and checked on the roast. She poked at it with a fork. It still felt very tough. The smell of it was not as appealing as she imagined it should be.  She closed the oven and drank the rest of the wine from her mug.

She walked down the hall and into Henry’s room.  Henry was sitting on his bed, looking at a book.  She picked up his robot from where it sat on the dresser and stood it before Henry on the bed.  “I am Megatron,” she said in her robot voice, “from the planet Megalopolis. I am here to destroy the earth.  Who would dare oppose me?”

Henry looked up from his book and smiled.  He rolled over and took an action figure from the table at the side of his bed.  He made it leap from the table to a place on the bed in front of the robot.  “I am the Incredible Hulk,” he said in his Hulk voice, “and I am here to smash you!”

“Foolish mortal, I will crush you!”

“Hulk is no mortal!  Hulk smash!”

The two toys then engaged in fierce combat for a few minutes, until the robot finally fell before an exceptionally mighty blow from its nemesis. 

“Hulk is the strongest on there is!” said the figure, as it leapt back to its place on the table by the bed.

“Curse you,” groaned the robot as it expired.

She put the robot back on the dresser and kissed her son’s forehead. “Is dinner ready yet?” he asked.

“No,” she said, “soon.”

She returned to the kitchen and poured another mug of wine. She sat back down at the table and resumed staring at the oven. When she eventually checked on the roast once more it was still tough. But the potatoes and carrots seemed overdone.  She turned off the heat and left the roast inside. She went into her bedroom and opened the closet, pulling a bag down from the top shelf.  It was somewhere between a large bag and a small suitcase, heavy with the things packed inside it. She took a winter coat from the closet and put it on. She went back into the kitchen and set the bag on the floor. She took the roast from the oven and set it on top of the stove. She went into the living room and stood behind the recliner the held her husband. “Can you tell Henry that dinner is ready?  I’m going out for a bit.”

Her husband grunted in reply, and then asked, as an afterthought, “Where are you going?”

“Cigarettes,” she said.

“Okay,” he said, not looking from the television.

She stepped out the front door and into the shining coldness of the day. At first she had to shield her eyes from the sun, but the crisp air felt good in her lungs. It felt good to be away from the smell of the cooking meat and the sounds of the television. She walked the three blocks to the liquor store. She went inside and put her bag on the floor as she took money from the ATM. She bought a pack of cigarettes and walked back outside. She stood on the corner, smoking and breathing in the cold air through her nostrils. She flagged down a cab and rode it to the downtown Greyhound station. She went inside and looked up at the departure schedule upon the wall. The next bus was leaving in fifteen minutes, to Galveston. She approached the woman at the ticket window.

“Can I get a ticket for the 4:30 bus to Galveston?”

“Round trip, or one way?”

“One way, please.”

She paid for the ticket and boarded the bus. She took a seat and sat with her bag in her lap, waiting for the bus to move. In a few minutes it pulled from the parking lot and soon they were on the freeway. She breathed the winter air and listened to the sounds of the engine. She gazed out the window and couldn’t think of anything to think about.

 

 

 

 

William Taylor Jr. lives and writes in San Francisco. He is the author of numerous books of poetry, and a volume of fiction. His work has been published widely in literary journals, including Rattle, The New York Quarterly, and The Chiron Review. He was a recipient of the 2013 Kathy Acker Award, and edited Cocky Moon: Selected Poems of Jack Micheline (Zeitgeist Press, 2014). His new poetry collection, The People Are Like Wolves to Me, is forthcoming from Roadside Press.