A Quiet Saturday Night (Part 1 of a short story)

By Paul Clark (aka motomynd)

“There’s just nothing good about 36-degree rain.” That was what the man thought, as they left Builders Depot with their two gallons of paint and trudged through the dark parking lot toward their car. “Enjoying your birthday?” he asked, glancing at his wife with what he meant as a smile but realized too late was likely a smirk.
    “Yes, actually,” she said, a little too cheerily, a bit too forced. She hated this weather, and she knew he knew how much she hated this weather, but damn if she was going to let on, because she was the one who had made the decision not to head somewhere warm for her birthday, and to spend part of her birthday shopping for paint for the next project at the old house. When they were dating, he always took her someplace warm for what she always considered her miserable January birthday: to their favorite beach at Hunting Island, South Carolina, or to one of his old favorite beaches at Key Biscayne, Florida, once even to his all-time favorite secret getaway, at the edge of Cienaga de Zapata in Cuba.
    “So how exactly does an American own a place in Cuba?” she had asked him. ” By being a Canadian,” he had answered. “You aren’t a Canadian. You grew up down the street from my dad and went to the same high school.” At that he just laughed. “I am a Canadian at heart.” She rolled her eyes: “What does that even mean?” Trying to get her to let go of the topic, he said, “It means I’m not into all that American dominate-the-world bullshit. I’m more about win-win, people getting along, not going looking for trouble. Here, as a Canadian, I can do that, and here I am a Canadian because it says so on my passport. Same as it does on the one I got you for this trip. So all we need to do here is be happy Canadians, enjoy our trip, and not think about all that rah-rah flag-waving crap we have to listen to back home.”
    And so they enjoyed their trip, the fantastic fly-fishing for bonefish, the late-night fires on the beach, the sex. Two things she remembered vividly from that trip: watching an eight-pound bonefish pluck her imitation crab fly from the bottom in only inches of water, then rip 200 yards of line from her reel as it charged away across the salt flat, and the sex. Before those nights on the beach she didn’t know men could have multiple orgasms; she didn’t even know she could have multiple orgasms.
    But that was then. Now all she wanted was quiet and normal. She came into this relationship bored and fed up with life; after 15 years she needed some boredom, or at least some rest. All she wanted for this birthday was a quiet Saturday night, a nice, normal, boring trip to Builders Depot for paint and then to Lots of Stuff for a 20% discount on curtains. Now they had a five-year-old son, also cursed with being born in January, and life had to be different. Not because her husband wanted it to be different, or her son, but because she felt it just had to be different; it just couldn’t go on like it had for so many years. Someone had to make it real, someone had to realize life couldn’t be that simple, that much fun, that fast-paced all the time. It had to be more difficult than that; she had to set it straight.
    Winter was always tough for her, and she wanted this winter to be tough for all of them. She loved snow, but only if she was inside, warm and dry, watching it through the window. This winter was when she wanted them to buckle down, stay inside, get things done they wouldn’t want to waste time doing in warm weather. But their son loved winter, loved to run in the snow and freezing rain with his dad and splash in icy puddles, screaming in delight. Sometimes she would watch from the window, a man old enough to be her father, with a son so young people always assumed it was his grandson, and there they would be, running through the snow, throwing snowballs at each other, shoveling the driveway together for six hours at a time. She worked very hard at not hating them for it.
    How could anyone be so happy, so excited, about running around outside, practically freezing to death, and coming back inside laughing about how wet and cold they were? When they could be inside, warm, painting the living room, finishing remodeling the kitchen. Just pick a project and stay inside! Okay?
    She had two teens from her first marriage, and her five-year-old son from this marriage could run them both into the ground in a matter of minutes. In fact, this man old enough to be her father was the only person in her family, or his, who could keep up with their son. Freaks, she would say to herself, while waving and showing a forced smile through the snow-tinged window. My son is a freak, just like his dad. Just my luck.

And so, on her birthday, the normal, boring birthday she craved, they were trudging through the dark, through the freezing rain, heading for their Volvo, when a man came out of the dark. With the umbrella pulled low over her head, she didn’t see him, but she felt her husband start to spin away from her, to his left, and she lifted the umbrella to see her husband pushing their son toward her before he moved toward the man. Her husband had a gallon of paint in each hand, and she drew a tight breath when she realized the man in the dark would think that made him vulnerable. She grabbed her son by the hood of his sweatshirt and started backing toward the car, knowing that in fact she was probably married to the only man in the world who had no doubt thought through every possible scenario for disabling or killing an attacker with a bucket of paint. And now her husband had two buckets of paint.
    She pushed her son into the backseat, slid behind the wheel, started the motor. The headlights came on automatically, lighting her husband from behind and shining into the other man’s eyes as he took a tentative step forward. She felt a glimmer of sadness for him, then quickly replaced that with “You SOB, you deserve whatever the hell you get.”
    This is just like at home, she thought. Her husband had spent years trying to teach the deer that lived in their backyard not to run from the coyotes that sometimes invaded. Never run. Never look weak. He even borrowed their neighbor’s Belgian Shepherd and attempted to train the deer, to drive home the point: never run, never look weak. One day a coyote targeted a 3-month-old fawn; instead of fleeing to safety, its mother, Little Spot, came to the rescue. As the coyote closed on the fawn, Little Spot attacked from the side, landing on the coyote’s back and snapping its spine; it yelped once and died. She had never seen her husband so proud; she knew she had never done anything to make him that proud of her, and she probably never would.
    She knew that her husband, despite now being gray-haired, would stick with what he had always taught himself: never back down, never run, go for the kill when you must, just as he had taught the deer. Just as he was no doubt already teaching their five-year-old son. She had grown up country club; she wasn’t sure she wanted their son to grow up fight club, as her husband had. But she also knew she didn’t want him to grow up wimp, as her teens had, under her first husband’s influence.
    She eased the Volvo forward; the man who had appeared out of the dark turned and started walking away, toward the Builders Depot they had just left.
    Her husband watched until the man was almost back to the store, then turned her way, smiled, walked past her to put the cans of paint in the trunk, and climbed into the passenger seat. He said nothing.
    “Problem?” she asked.
    “Nope. He was just asking if Builders Depot paint was any good. I told him yes.”
    “Do you really expect me to believe that?”
    “I can only hope. Right?”
    “Well, I believe this just like I believe you ruined your suit trying to get a stray cat out from under the car, that night you walked to get it after we went to dinner in DC.”
    “You never said you didn’t believe that.”
    “I assumed you knew I wasn’t stupid enough to believe that. Do you think I’m that stupid?”
    “Uh. No.”
    “So, what really happened just now?”
    “I’m really not sure. Guy asked if I could lend him some money. I said, ‘Sure, how much do you need?’ And he said, ‘All you have’.”
    “What!”
    “So, I asked him if he needed a few bucks as a favor, or if he was trying to rob me. And then I told him I could always spare a few bucks for someone who really needed it, but if he was trying to rob me, one of us would need an ambulance when it was over.”
    “What! We need to call the police! What did he do then?”
    “He said ‘F u, old man,’ and walked off. I almost bashed him with a paint bucket for that.”
    “Seriously, I’m calling the police.”
    “To tell them someone tried to borrow money in a parking lot?”
    “No, because this sounds just like what happened at the mall over there that time, when a guy asked to borrow money, and whoever he asked said no, and the guy shot him. It happened right across the street, just last week.”
    “Well, this guy never showed a weapon, and never said give me the money or else, so I don’t see the point. Let’s just go on to Lots of Stuff for your curtains.”

These things burned inside her every time they happened, and they seemed to happen way too often. She hit the gas and headed for the highway, toward home.
    “I thought you wanted to go to Lots for curtains.”
    She jabbed the brake pedal. “Really? Lots is right there, right across the damn parking lot. That fool could watch us drive from here to there and follow us. No thanks.”
    “Mommy, you aren’t supposed to use that word.”
    Her husband laughed, turned toward their son in the backseat, and said, “High five on that. That’s right, don’t use words like that.”
    Her son giggled. “I love Lots of Stuff; I want to go.”
    Seething now, she held her breath, counted, counted some more. “Fine, let’s go. Happy freaking birthday to me.”
    “Yes, mommy, happy birthday. This is what you wanted. Let’s do it!”

Copyright © 2019 by Paul Clark