One Fire May Hide Another

What will it be like when the air quality is bad year-round?

Why am I annoyed? Why am I yelling? I know why, it’s not a question, who am I even asking it to, why am I asking it, I know why, it’s because the air purifiers are too loud, incidentally the husband hasn’t gone to get the table runners yet and I am trying to remind him but the purifiers are too loud, and I have to emphasize

every

word

I’m not actually yelling, I’m talking loud, I’m enunciating, but I can feel my body being ushered into the belief that it’s angry, the cortisol is flowing into these exurban capillaries and I just don’t 

understand

why

we waited until Christmas Day to buy the runners, but I’m not even angry, but I feel angry, and I am angry, because these purifiers are so so loud. And thank you to all the firefighters who have flown in from around the world to put out our blazes, and thank you to the inventors who drove down the cost of air purifiers but why are they

still

so

loud 

Anyway the family is showing up, this Dickensian troupe of grandparents and ragtag friends and step-uncles, I am saying hello to each of them in a stern teacher voice with bared teeth and I’m thrilled to see them I am yelling how happy I am to see them all, and that word Dickensian is with me now and I’m angry about how Oliver Twist isn’t even very good and neither is Little Dorrit, ah the husband returns, and I say finally you’re here, and I can’t tell if I’m mad or loud, which phenomenon has begotten the other, the children are yelling too but they’re always yelling and for some reason they like to imitate the purifiers, why not imitate a bird or a cat or the sound of silence.

Grandma Teneza can’t hear me, Grandpa Lewis can’t hear me, I’m telling them to sit anywhere and it sounds like a threat, the table is set at last, the runners are in place, the house looks beautiful and I say that word as loud as I can beautiful and I feel the joy being sucked from my stomach as if I swallowed poison and am supine surrounded by nurses at the emergency room.

But then

(but)

(then)

as the sun dips below the mountain, that leonine snowy peak, something wondrous happens, and the air rapidly clears and the purifiers turn themselves down, and we crack the windows and smell lilac

(oh)

(lilac)

I thank everyone for coming, and I remember what it sounds like to be thankful, it is a warmth, the husband slices the ham, our friends bring the sides to the table and set them on the runners, the warmth spreads around the room, how lovely, how warm.

But then, but then, after the husband has served the ham, he asks for the mashed potatoes, even though we ought to be passing it clockwise, Jim, not asking pell-mell for whatever food we want. The husband was raised up north, he doesn’t have any manners, so I tell him no, Jim, and he says what’s the matter, I’ve put a lot of work into today, I simply want some potatoes. And I say excuse me, what work, exactly, what work, other than waiting until the last minute to get the runners and needing me to remind you thirty times, tell me one thing you did to make today possible, I say to myself that if he mentions his job or his salary, I will scream, I will turn the purifiers on full blast and scream, but he doesn’t care, he just takes the potatoes from Grandma Teneza’s hands, and I say excuse me, I go over to him and grab a fistful of potatoes and throw them in his face and shout enjoy because of course this warmth was never going to last, already I see the smoke returning the purifiers are whirring and in the distance fire alarms are going off I push the potatoes into the husband’s girlish mouth and say here Jim, here buddy, here are your precious potatoes here you go enjoy

enjoy

enjoy