Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Exhumation
I’m off to Denver for a conference. No, really. This one is for work and I’ll be busybusybusy all the livelong day. No reliable computer access, no sense of how my time will be apportioned or preoccupied.... It’s all a grand mystery to me. However, here’s a little story to keep you entertained for 45 seconds of the three days I’ll be away. As for the rest of the time, you’re on your own.
He’d cleared all the furniture out of the kitchen - the chairs, the rolling island, the standing lamp and trashcan - till the floor was an empty canvas on which for him to practice the art of the wetmop. The whole family was cleaning: his wife was putting away toys in the dining room, and even the baby stumbled around in ineffectual support. The music was cheerful; the sun shone through the front windows. He grinned as he gave the kitchen floor a preliminary sweeping.
He slid the broom into the narrow gap beneath the bottom shelf of the big cupboard, recalling as he did it how he never knew what he’d get when he cleaned up down there: a piece of cereal or a wrapper or a toy, all manner of sneaky evasive items that were clever enough to hide in the unreachable dusty precincts under the enormous shelving unit - not infrequently, much older than things under there should have been. A few sweeps of the broom a few times a year - it always turned up something he’d forgotten he’d even lost.
The broom swung a wide flat arc across the floor and re-emerged with a small pile of debris and dustbunnies and something small and hard that rattled under the dirt. He knelt down to look more closely at what he’d brought forth from seclusion, and then stood up, still looking down. “Damn,” he mumbled with the tail end of his breath.
He saw her in the next room, bathed in sunlight, a Madonna of toys and babies, turning to see why he was cursing. He caught her eye. “Kibble,” he told her. Her face froze for a moment, and then she cursed too, but quieter.
