Manicotti Stalemate

Familyish

Photo by Glenn Hansen on Unsplash

They met at Joanna’s cousin’s funeral.

Joanna was there of course, because it was her cousin, and Trent was there because he worked with Joanna’s cousin and everyone at Baxter Welding got the day off for the funeral.

They cracked jokes about the lemon chicken at the Knights of Columbus Hall, and he remembered that she liked two limes in her Tanqueray grapefruit after the third trip to the bar.

They got married because Joanna was pregnant 

When she miscarried a month later she cried a little bit and wondered if Trent would take the ring back.

Trent didn’t seem to know how to handle the tears, so she joked that she “spit that one out,” and they would try again, then she went down to the Gagen Park waterslide and cried all alone up the ladder and down into the chlorinated water, which always made her eyes red anyway.

Eleven years later it was manicotti every Tuesday and chili fries from the bowling alley every Wednesday and blowjobs every Saturday but not in the summer because she hated when her sweaty hair got in her eyes.

The day before her 41st birthday, Joanna puked pasta salad onto the end table they owned that was a chessboard they never played and the little blue plus sign told her she was pregnant.

She swore to Jesus that the timing was fucked up, then felt guilty, so she Googled religions and swore to Buddha and Vishnu and a few more to even it out.

She went to Gagen Park, hoping the waterslide might magically rid her of the creature who came too late, and there was Trent, welding a ladder onto a second waterslide that he hadn’t bothered to mention to her that he was working on.

And if he didn’t love her enough to mention the new waterslide, she was gonna quit making manicotti on Tuesday, and the creature who came too late was gonna stick around whether Trent liked it or not.

***