Soliloquies Anthology 30.1

By: Olivia Murphy-Major

Maria had gotten used to Tom’s poor manners over the months they’d been together, but that night, his chewing and general roughness irritated her more than ever. He gestured with his cutlery, pointing a fork in her direction with bits of food on it; he spoke with steak in his mouth, the grease shining on his lips.

“When we visit your parents,” he said, one cheek bulging with food, “let’s bring them some of that apple brandy.”

He pierced a small potato with his fork and brought it to his mouth, but it fell off and into his lap.

“Oops,” he said. He picked it up and popped it into his mouth, then he licked his fingers.

Maria did not want to look at him, so she looked down at her plate. She had ordered octopus. She thought of the fluid, backward movement of an octopus in water. A sorrowful feeling came over her as she studied the suction cups fringed with purple. And what an unnatural color to eat, she thought. It made her think of mold, of blight.

“Hey,” Tom said, “you alright?”

“Yes, fine,” Maria said.

She leaned forward in her chair to make it look like she wanted to listen. Her ankles were crossed under the table, and she felt Tom’s legs squeeze around the sides of hers. She pushed back lightly, playfully with her leg against his. He was quiet, smiling at her. He looked down to cut his steak.

With her elbow resting on the table, she propped her chin on the heel of her hand and looked around, glancing at the gray-green drapes along the walls, the candles flickering in glass cups. She took a long sip of wine. It was her second glass. As she drank, she felt as if she was tilting away from Tom into a distant bliss, as though she was retreating to a secret place within herself.

Just last night they had laid in bed with their faces close, she recalled; they had spoken to one another between kisses.

Tom dug his knife into his steak.

“Today I saw a spider eat a bug,” he said. “It was fascinating. Have you ever seen that before? I didn’t realize they wrapped up what they caught. Kind of freaky.”

“Very freaky,” Maria said. She signaled for the server to come over.

“I think there’s one living in that painting above the couch. I keep seeing one crawl out from the frame.”

Maria said nothing.

“My mom always told me it’s bad luck to kill spiders,” Tom continued.  “I didn’t listen to her when I was a kid, though. It’s funny, when I was little I used to run around and catch spiders and squash them in my hands. Like I was some big giant. Now it’s me who’s afraid of them.”

Maria shuddered. She thought of the nests the spiders made in their apartment—the brown bodies gauzy with silk.

The server came up beside the table. “One martini, please,” Maria said, “with extra olives on the side.”

Tom took the napkin from his lap and got up. “Be right back,” he said.

The server brought Maria’s martini, along with olives in a shallow bowl of brine. Maria stabbed the olives one by one with a red-tipped toothpick. She let the toothpick linger in her mouth and tried to make eye contact with a man, any man, and eventually landed on one who looked back at her. He was nodding as he listened to his wife, whose back was to Maria. Her hair was done up in a neat twist. The man trained his eyes on the wife, then Maria, and her heart beat a little faster before she looked down at the olives, where she kept her gaze.

Smoothing the tablecloth with her fingers, Maria remembered the first time she and Tom visited her parents. She had felt like a teenager. One evening, they walked along twisting roads leading down to the ocean. The closer they got the windier it was, the more Maria could smell the salt. The moon seemed close that night, fat and looming, the white-blue light cast all around them. Tom’s skin had glowed, and Maria remembered looking down at her own arms and seeing their strange luminescence, like something was lit within them.

They walked through the golf course in the near dark and picked up the white golf balls scattered on the grass. They walked through wealthy people’s backyards, stepping carefully, slowly; there were no trees to hide behind—only the long, hilly slope they followed to get down to the water. Some of the houses were unoccupied—they were vacation homes, and it was late enough in the summer that some of the owners had left, but there was no way for Tom and Maria to tell whether there were people inside or not. The lights could have just been turned out and the cars could be hiding in their garages.

They had walked through the strip between the road and the beach, where thin grass brushed Maria’s legs, sharp as the hairs on a cat’s tongue. They held hands. They held each other, pressing their bodies together. Tom ran his fingers under her shirt, up her back, circling her shoulder blades. She had wanted him then. I want you, she had said, her mouth on his ear. The seawater sprawled over the shore and she could hear the seals crying. Then they were lying down; he was on top of her and she felt the impression her back made in the sand deepening with his weight.

After the plates were cleared, the checkbook taken away, their server gave Tom the receipt. Maria was eager to leave. They were among the last customers of the night. She saw the servers cleaning—sweeping behind the bar, emptying buckets of melted ice, laying scarlet napkins in wire bread baskets.

Maria twisted round to take her coat from the back of her chair.

“Hang on a minute,” Tom said, and Maria turned to him, waiting.

She sat and watched as he leant over the table, folding the receipt. He made creases in the paper, his large thumbs moving delicately. When he was finished he held it out to her. A paper flower. It was the size of a quarter. She took it in her own hands and saw the perfect triangles spiraling into the center. Her heart swung. Where had he learned to do this? she wondered, and why hadn’t he done it until now?

“Thank you,” she said. She felt fluttery, quiet, strange; her ears were hot from the wine.

As they left, she kept the paper flower cupped in one hand and held it in her coat pocket. They walked outside, where it began to rain, up the hill to the bus stop. The rain turned to snow. They stood beneath an awning near the bus stop, people passing every now and then but the street mostly empty. She looked out at the dark, shining road.

“Why don’t we walk the rest of the way?” Tom said. “Through the park. It isn’t too far.”

He stepped in front of Maria and pulled her close, his arm hooked around her back. She could feel the heat coming off of him down the center of his body, where his coat was open. She brought one hand up and closed her fingers around his collar. The wool was damp with melted snow. He kissed her, but their mouths were closed; their cold lips touched lightly and let go. Then he looped his arm around hers and led her carefully on the sidewalk over the trails of ice on the asphalt, glossy with lamplight.

The snow was thick, coming down at a slant. They walked through the park, and as they passed the pond, Maria looked out at the water. It was black and sparkling. The ducks were sleeping. They floated silently, as if suspended in the air, their heads bent into their wings. Snowflakes fell and gathered on their feathers. Tom kept his arm tight around hers.

They walked the rest of the way home, and all the while she held the paper flower, tucked inside the right-hand pocket of her coat.