"What Life Can Become"

Savannah Price

Published in Dalton State College's Tributaries Spring 2022

Short Story

"What Life Can Become"

“Don’t nobody want to work anymore!” The old woman declared, stirring the boil-and-mix packaged macaroni and cheese as if she were a witch, the veteran bowl was her cauldron, and the potion she brewed would somehow fix all the lazy people in the world. Her husband sat at the old wooden table that her mother had passed down to her, and he mumbled an mmph as he indolently read the headlines on the local newspaper. She understood the man’s low grunt to be his agreement, which riled her up even more, though he had not been listening at all. “I just don’t know what we will do when there ain’t nobody to do the menial jobs in life! Well, I’ll tell you one thing,” she started, and her husband knew she would not stop at only disclosing one thing, but he still held a glimmer of hope. “I don’t work for Walmart! I can’t believe the amount of people this society has fooled into bein’ their own cashiers. I was there today, ya know, and had to wait in line for thirty minutes just be checked out!” She stirred the macaroni so violently that several pieces of the processed pasta flew onto the counter. “When they start sendin’ me a paycheck, I’ll start checkin’ myself out.” She finally decided that she had beat the macaroni enough and moved onto the boiling potatoes on the stove. She preferred instant potatoes, but her husband had convinced her that “real women didn’t rely on no box to make mashed potatoes”—at least his mama didn’t before they dumped her into a nursing home. She pulled the pot off the eye and strained the water out of the potatoes before dumping them into a bowl and taking to beating them with a hand masher. Her husband had grown bored with the newspaper, and now stared blankly at the grandfather clock across the room. After years of practice, he was able to tune out his wife’s voice and focus exclusively on the to-and-fro of the brass pendulum. “And don’t get me started on gas prices!” She spoke in gusts now as the exercise of mashing the potatoes was too great for her body that was only used to the stationary nature of her menial life. “I reckon the good Lord will be here mighty soon with the way the world is now…” Her voice trailed off as if this idea was a scary thought for her indeed, and it should have been as she believed more in the practices and the entitlement of religion than she did in the actual thing. “Is tha food done?” Her husband spoke blandly, interrupting her from her worries. “Naw, I still gotta microwave them their hotdogs,” she rubbed the edge of her forehead with the inside of her wrist before gesturing to several pink hotdogs laid across a paper plate. “Would you nuke ‘em for me?” She asked, resuming her aggression upon the potatoes in front of her. Her husband huffed out a breath. “I work all day, and come home to nuke my own hotdogs?” Despite his anger, he groaned his way out of the chair and shuffled over to the plate of hotdogs. After shoving them into the microwave and setting the time, he poured himself a glass of sweet tea and sat back down in his spot to enjoy the entertainment of the clock. Just as the old woman finished mixing the milk and mayonnaise into the mashed potatoes, the microwave beeped. She set each of the dishes onto the table in front of her husband before glancing up to catch his glance at the clock. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you keep a starin’ at that dern clock just a ‘waiting for it to be your time to head on home to Glory,” she laughed at herself as if this was a highly unlikely possibility, but her husband was quite surprised the woman had been smart enough to guess it. They each loaded up their plates with the food and ate in silence, all except for the steady ticking of the grandfather clock. “I wonder what’ll be on TV later,” she finally said as she watched her husband nearing the end of his second plate. She knew he usually ambled away into the living room after his second fixin’ and remained in his large reclining chair until he shuffled off to bed around 9pm. He didn’t acknowledge her question, so she pressed on, “I hope there’s somethin’ on that home improvement channel! I been wanting to redo this here kitchen for years, ya know. I finally think I’m a gonna do it!” He didn’t glance up at her, just fed himself another spoonful of the tasteless mashed potatoes. She picked at her own, wishing she had just made the boxed stuff because she much preferred the taste. After years of her saying she would improve or update things around the house, and never doing anything at all, the old man knew she was just talking to talk. He figured she just liked the sound of her own voice, but he didn’t much like the shrill she had to add at the end of every sentence. “I think I’m gonna paint these here walls white! I think it’ll make everythin’ look nice and clean,” she gestured around at the cloudy yellow walls that had never changed, or even been cleaned, in the fifty years they had lived in the home. The husband thought, but didn’t say, that it would take a lot more than white paint to make the home feel clean. It was clear the woman was growing ansty with his lack of responses, so he figured he needed to put something in to keep her from getting too riled up. “I reckon that’ll do the trick. What ‘bout the bedrooms?” He scooped up his last bite of macaroni and stretched as the old woman’s face lit up. When she began, he let her voice fade away as he listened closely for the clock’s ticking. “I-I think the bedrooms would be beautiful in a…” She placed a finger on her chin while she thought as she had not considered the possibility of painting the bedrooms too. “Well, I’d say a nice red for the guest room and a romantic little blue for ours. What do ya say?” He nodded despite not having heard exactly what she said as he rubbed his belly while he now chewed on a toothpick. “I reckon that’ll look nice,” he managed in between nibbles on the wood. He felt like they had this conversation every night for the entirety of his marriage, just about different things that he could not have cared less about. But, oh, after so many years, he learned he had to act like he cared in order to shut her up. Now, as she daydreamed about her freshly painted rooms, he slipped away into his recliner to watch TV. The woman joined him soon after, taking to her seat on the large, empty sofa. She sat on the edge of the couch, as if it wasn’t her own and she wasn’t comfortable enough to relax into it. The next morning, the old man got up early for work. When he had first married the old woman, she woke up with him and made him a nice breakfast. Now, she snored loudly in the bed, drool dangling on the side of mouth. He wrinkled his nose slightly in disgust before shuffling out of the room to get ready. He worked all day while his wife did, well, he didn’t know what she did, but he knew that she wasn’t cooking supper or cleaning the house or painting the bedrooms. When he came through the door that afternoon, she was already getting started on something new to complain about. He sauntered past her, groaning his way into his seat at the table. “I’ll tell you somethin’! These young people just don’t wanna work! I went down to the store to pick up some paint, for the rooms of course, and this young man was sitting outside just a beggin’ for money! Can ya believe it?” She was frying some bologna on the stove, and the man was disappointed that she had picked up some potato chips and loaf bread, both of which lay on the kitchen counter behind her. They had sandwiches most days of the week. “I walked up to him, and I said, ‘Sir, there sits a HIRING sign just there in the window! What in the world you doin’ out here a beggin’ when you could be a workin’?’ And do you know what he said?!” She was more excited than he had seen her in a while. He didn’t say anything though, and he found pleasure in the anger his silence enticed. She sighed, but continued on nonetheless. “He said ‘Then, lady, why don’t you go apply for the job if you want is so bad?’ I was so offended that I told the cashier inside that they had a homeless man outside just a beggin’ and harassin’ their customers for money!” She seemed pleased with herself, but the old man was quite amused with the homeless man’s insight. The woman had never truly worked a day in her life. He didn’t want to get her too riled up, now, so he went ahead and asked her a question. “Did you pick up the paint?” He didn’t look up at her, but he could tell by her pause she hadn’t. He had partly hoped she had finally decided to commit herself to something, to solve one of her many complaints. But, he knew, she just liked to complain and continue to wallow in her complaints over and over and over. She droned on about something else now, but he was already gone. He returned his attention to the newspaper and listened to the sound of the clock.