SALT COMEDY

We watch television in different rooms

while Richard Dawson kisses engaged

women, and through the static,

he congratulates you on winning a

brand-new electric oven.

I scoff and sink deeper into the velvet

flesh. I pet your dog who’s curled

on the other end of the couch–

his breath a consistent lull like

wheels rumbling along a train track.

If I were to be asked about my day,

I would smile and say that

I ate freezer burnt beef in clumped

gravy out of a plastic tray linked to

cancer in the state of California.

I would smile and say that I called

my mother and romanticized you,

and I hung up in a huff when she

gave me all of the right answers.

I would smile and say that

I wandered the house, running a damp

washcloth over the petals of our

plastic flowers, before I dusted the

cobwebs off of my old stack of

textbooks we now use when we need

to even out the wobble of some

antique table. I would smile and say

I paced the cul-de-sac like a tiger

on display, jumping in each hopscotch

square whose chalk was scorched by

September sun, and after fetching myself

a glass of ice cold water, I tore through

your dressers for hidden condoms.

You didn’t ask, but I still smiled.

I smiled and sat at the table, freckled

with candles and dishes of steaming

mashed potatoes and cinnamon-

candied carrots while you lumbered

in like a bear out of hibernation, and

said you were too tired to eat. You still

took a finger, the same finger you used

to twirl in my hair, and dipped it in

the mashed potatoes, and my, oh, my!

Too much salt, love. How silly of me.

Now, I sit on the couch, watching a

ten car pile-up on the news. There are

no survivors, and I find myself wishing

one of them was you–that I would see

your face wedged between singed metal

or your calf tucked behind a wall of smoke–

because we watch television in different rooms.

I don’t like how hateful your apathy makes me.

Richard Dawson is making some kind of

joke, and the audience is drowning out

the names of the victims. I sink deeper

into the velvet flesh, and imagine

I am

an actress

in some

old sitcom.

OPEN:

INT. KITCHEN–DAY

The studio audience dies down as the production

manager tells them that we are about to begin

filming. The stage lights beat down hot on the

set as I stand on an X of blue painter’s tape.

My makeup artist is applying beautiful, pearly

lead clouds of powder on my sweat-prone brow.

She assures me that I look beautiful, so I am

assured that I am beautiful. I smile–assured, happy,

covered in lead. The director yells for quiet on set.

Action!

In this scene, I’m standing at the counter making

brownie for my sitcom son’s (his name is probably

Timmy) science club bake sale fundraiser. Earlier

in the episode, I got into a spat with one of those

PTA bitches about whose contribution would raise

the most money, so I am determined. In my haste

to get the brownies sale-ready in time, I mistakenly

use salt instead of sugar (the studio audience groans in

tandem as I reach to the top shelf of white jars lined up like

pretty little houses, and reach for the one so obviously labeled

‘SALT’.

The show has set me up to fit into the ditzy housewife archetype,

so my idiocy is believable; laughable. At the table read,

I asked the director how someone, even my character,

could be stupid enough as to not realize the container says

‘SALT’.

He told me I was too cerebral. Nobody cares whether

my character fails or flies, as long as I make them laugh.

Nobody would care how unbelievably idiotic I am.

This week, you are at a business conference

in Hawaii, and your suitcase got misplaced by the airline.

Poor you! Poor you has to present the year’s sale data

in sandals, a grass skirt, and a button-up adorned in

gaudy, crimson hibiscuses because that’s all Hawaiians wear

according to us mainlanders. There is not one store on

any of the islands that sells a sensible pair of slacks, surely.

I have raised my dissatisfaction with your seemingly more

consistently interesting storylines, but nobody agrees that

Hawaii is more exciting than the kitchen. Test audiences have stated

our chemistry in recent seasons has rubbed the wrong way–that we are

not believably in love, so the writers have given

us less and less joint screen time. Despite the title sequence where

I peck you on the cheek on the front stoop, handing you

your leather briefcase, we are rarely on the same

soundstage. Saying you’re enthralled in someone’s

spirit is easier than looking like you mean it,

after all. So, you’re presenting sales data in Hawaii, and

I’m at the same old counter acting like

I couldn’t read the giant fucking letters that say

‘SALT’.

People love the absurdity of this all, don’t they,

love? It’s all just pretend after all; all award shows

and appearances. You wrap,

CUT TO:

EXT: STUDIO TRAILER PARK–AFTERNOON

and go to your trailer and call your real wife,

and later today, I will call my real husband, and

our fake son will go home to his real parents.

Our work is the performance.

We are just trying each other on–nothing eternal;

nothing unconditional.

Credits roll,

and I

am on

the same old couch missing you.

We watch television in different rooms