Suppertime

by Payton McCarty-Simas

Elouise adjusted her headband with the side of her wrist and bore down on the knife with renewed force. She smiled when the bone gave under her hand, like a cracked knuckle.

The kitchen was sunny, the windows open to let in the cool April breeze. If the oven hadn’t been slightly ajar, one more hungry mouth insisting she finish dinner before Jerome got home at quarter after six, she might have felt cold. As it was, she could pretend spring had arrived, and that would do just fine.

Harold had been here this afternoon. Interrupted the telephone call she’d been expecting from her sister. But that was typical, he never came when she wanted him to, took up all the space at her dining room table with his big hands and his stomach straining his waistband and his cock pressing up against her side when she came to pour the coffee and he jumped up to catch her, letting her favorite reading glasses shatter on her red and white tile floor.

She waited for the stock to boil, arranging everything in the mold just right, peas first, then carrots, then celery in neat green rows, like teeth. She checked the kitchen clock— Caleb should be home from school soon, but he’d been taking the long way lately. He must have found something dead in the woods she thought, he’ll be watching it decay, day by day until there’s nothing left. She turned the heat off and added the gelatin to the pan, stirring with a wooden spoon.

Jerome had never liked her cooking. When they were in junior high, he had won a contest, going up against all the other boys in their year. It had been a how-many-hamburgers-can-you-eat-before-you-throw-up ordeal she’d felt obliged to watch because he’d asked her, specially her, after class, squaring his narrow shoulders and raising his eyebrows in a mother-may-I sort of way that made her knees weak and Dotty said if she didn’t go he’d take Francine to homecoming instead. So she went and she watched and he ate twenty-three hamburgers with pickles and onions and his face was covered in catsup but he’d beaten the other boys and he’d asked her to the dance with that same innocent expression of lust.

He only puked on the ride home, when the others couldn’t see, and he didn’t make much fuss, just pulled his ‘47 ford over and leaned out the side and let it all out, like a woman. His nose ran when he did it. When he let her out in front of her pink mailbox and she turned around to wave at the door she saw a thick streak running down the sea island green finish of his truck, sticking to the handle he’d touched before he’d touched the shoulder of her white sweater. She didn’t check to see the stain. And she didn’t puke til he’d pulled out of the drive, when he couldn’t see, and she didn’t make much fuss. She stopped eating hamburger after that, then red meat altogether. But the caterer at their wedding served Steak Diane, and she didn’t want to embarrass Jerome or her father, who’d cried like a woman in the church.

She finished putting the veggies into the mold and added ice water to the broth mixture, stirring and enjoying the sound of ice cracking and scratching at the metal sides of the pan. The phone rang, but she ignored it. Marcy would be asking why she had hung up, but then she’d have to explain about Harold and the reading glasses and the dinner wasn’t quite ready yet and Caleb really would be home soon—the little boy couldn’t possibly still be poking at dead dogs with sticks or whatever it was he did with his pals these days, pull little girls pigtails?

Harold had gone to school with Elouise and Jerome but he never won any contests, just cheated. The kind of boy who fed his vegetables to the dog or flicked mashed potatoes at girls at lunch and always had a stain on his jacket. But he worked nights and she saw him in the store buying the paper last week and she’d liked his laugh and Jerome didn’t like her cooking and he’d been taking the long way home lately. She invited him for dinner and he’d taken up too much space at her table but he’d fit inside her better than she’d expected, well enough under the circumstances, under the table and all.

She poured the broth over the food in the mold and considered. Jerome wouldn’t be home til seven thirty at least. She closed the window against the fresh chill and leaned against her countertop. The phone rang again, but she ignored it. Marcy really must learn to mind her goddamn business. She adjusted her headband with the flat of her hand and felt damp across her forehead. Glancing at her nails, she noticed red stains peaking out from under their frosty tips, blushing in the grooves of her fingers.

Elouise sighed and approached the butcher’s block. Her first ever attempt at a pot roast, the one she’d abandoned, lay dripping juices onto the tiles, cracked white ribs smiling jaggedly up at her, gristle glistening in the rose-dusted evening light. What a mess she’d made of her tidy kitchen. She pulled a rag out of her apron pocket and got to her knees.

Harold had me here, like this, a few hours ago she thought. I told him Marcy was expecting my call, and that I hadn’t been expecting him, and that I hadn’t gotten around to getting those new curtains yet in any case, and that someone was sure to notice, but he didn’t seem to mind.

She wiped the juices from the floor, methodically, thinking of his whiteness in her hair, and the knots it made when she’d scrubbed it out in the sink, and how hard it had been lifting him off of her after she’d slit his throat with a shard from her favorite reading glasses, scattered all over the floor. He’d fallen forward with a firm, quiet huffing sound, like a storm blowing laundry off the line, and his neck, a new mouth opened wide, had made sucking gasping sounds, like she had done when he’d pushed himself down her throat.

Getting his body into the trunk of Jerome’s ‘47 ford had been easier than she’d expected, the garage was off the kitchen and the big burlap bags the gardener used for raking leaves were empty, deflated lungs waiting to be filled. She took him the long way, rolling the bag down the leafy greenness of the hill, watching the scene in black and white like a discarded newspaper, listening with satisfaction when he hit the bottom with a sound like a slap in the face. She’d gone to the store on her way home, drinking in the silence where his too-big laugh had been while she studied the inkblurry pictures of celery, the carrots, the peas.

The rest of this roast was a bust, she decided, slipping the pieces of meat she had successfully carved into a tupperware and sliding it into the freezer. It’s a wonder she’d managed to get anything at all into the oven, but her father had taught her never to waste anything she didn’t have to. The Jell-O salad had set nicely as she scoured her kitchen clean, and her second ever attempt at pot roast floated above the vegetables in its bright yellow center. She’d placed it down like a baby, with love. She thought about Jerome’s baby, the other one, the one Marcy had called to tell her about. As if she didn’t know already.

It was dark now, she’d switched on the lights. It’s a quarter to eight, a man’s voice sang from the radio, like an apology. Caleb had made quite a fuss when he came home, vomit down the front of his jeans, hollering about dead things in the woods. She’d cleaned him up and changed his shirt and told him that maybe the other boys were playing tricks on him. Had he ever noticed that they used catsup for blood on television and in those horror films at the drive-in? A woman must do all those horrible effects, someone who does the shopping and considers these things.

By nine o’clock the two of them sat alone at the table, together with big glasses of milk. Elouise set the Jell-O down on the table and watched it quiver, ever-so-slightly, in her shaky hands. It almost looked like Jerome’s heart was still beating, floating there above the vegetables.

Payton McCarty-Simas is a writer and artist based in New York City who loves all things horror. Their essays and film criticism have been featured in The Brooklyn Rail, Film Daze, and Horror Studies among others, and their short films and screenwriting have appeared in a number of festivals including Horror Unleashed and Oregon Screams. Payton is the author of two nonfiction books, One Step Short of Crazy: National Treasure and the Landscape of American Conspiracy Culture and the forthcoming That Very Witch: Fear, Feminism, and the American Witch Film. They live with their partner and their cat, Shirley Jackson.