I Labeled Everything I Paid For

The Saturday that did not happen

But the labels were nothing next to that Saturday.

At two o’clock, right on schedule, here they came. Wanda’s sedan first, Kurt’s dually behind it, doors slamming, three kids spilling out, Tammy last with her sunglasses pushed up in her hair. Wanda came through my screen door with her tote of empty Tupperware swinging on her arm, already talking.

And she stopped cold in my kitchen.

Because the stove was off. The counters were clean and bare. No roast, no potatoes, no rolls rising, no cobbler on the sill. And I was on the couch in the front room with my feet up, a glass of iced tea sweating on the side table, watching an old rerun with the volume low.

“What’s all this?” Wanda said. “Dinner’s not on yet?”

“What dinner?” I asked, pleasant as could be.

She gave a little laugh with an edge under it. “The Saturday dinner, Diane. Same as always.”

“Oh, that,” I said. “That was back when I was carrying it by myself. We keep our money separate now. Roy’s idea. I would not want to go supporting anybody I am not supposed to.”

Roy came out of the back hall with his face already pulling tight. “Babe. You seriously didn’t make anything?”

“With whose groceries?” I said, still smiling. “Mine are labeled. You are welcome to cook for your family with yours.”

The bologna sandwiches

What happened next I will remember to my grave.

The kids were hungry. They always were, that was half the reason for the feast. And there was no feast. Wanda banged through my cabinets and found them mostly bare, because I had stopped stocking the pantry like a grocery store. Roy, red to the ears now, pulled out a package of bologna and a loaf of white bread, the only things in that refrigerator without my name on them because he had actually bought them himself on a beer run, and he made his three nephews cold bologna sandwiches on paper towels while his mother watched.

Tammy said, to no one, “This is so weird.”

Kurt said, “Roy, man, what is going on with your wife?”

And Roy, my Roy, the man who was done supporting me, said nothing. He just kept laying bologna on bread with a look on his face like the floor had tilted under him.

Wanda tried to reroute it the only way she knew. She turned to me and put on her wounded voice. “Diane, honey, this isn’t like you. Family is family. You’ve always been so generous.”

“I have,” I agreed. “For years. Nobody ever noticed until it stopped.”

She packed up her empty containers still empty and left within the half hour, the whole crew trailing out behind her, the kids fussing, Kurt shaking his head. The dually kicked gravel out of my drive.

The house got quiet. I refilled my tea.

Roy sat down across from me and stared at the wall for a long time.

“You made your point,” he said finally.

“I have not even started making it,” I said.