Best Day Ever. Kaira Rouda Sturdivant
Читать онлайн книгу.
what we sell. Me, I don’t care, not as long as I’m making the big money. And I have. It has been a great ride. Even Mia, when we first met, may have considered herself above me. She was a copywriter on the creative team and I was just a client services guy. Now she knows what’s what. It didn’t take long for me to teach her how the world works.
“Paul, I need to use the bathroom,” Mia announces, closing the magazine on her lap as if she could just pop out of the vehicle and relieve herself along the side of I-71.
“Oh, okay, I’ll pull off at the next exit and try to find someplace acceptable,” I say. The facilities on this road are subpar at best.
“Make sure it looks clean,” she adds as if I have X-ray vision capabilities. Typically, we do not take bathroom breaks on the drive to the lake house. The boys know this, Mia knows this. But in her weakened state, and on this, the best day ever, I will make an exception without shaming her. I’m in a loving, flexible mood.
“Right. Gas station or fast food? Your choice,” I offer. I’m not about to be blamed for choosing the wrong bathroom for her. This I say with warmth in my voice although I do not want to stop at all.
“I’ll let you know when we see the options,” she says, reopening the magazine. I’ll let it go, my disdain for the fact that she isn’t more appreciative of my willingness to stop for her. I glance at her, engrossed in the meaningless celebrity drivel opened on her lap.
She should stop reading that trash.
“You know that magazine is all gossip. The stories about celebrities are completely made up. Nobody is as happy or as sad as they make it seem in there. Life is lived in the middle. In middle America, like here, in the middle of nowhere, like now, and in the middle of life, like us,” I say. I’m feeling poetic today, although I don’t believe for a moment that I am normal, or in the middle of anything.
“Paul, I’ve never heard you call yourself middle-aged.” I think Mia is teasing me but there is an edge in her voice.
“I’m not,” I say. “All those guys are older than me in there. They get airbrushed. If you saw them on the street, you’d be disgusted at how old they are. It’s not real. That’s all.” I’m tired of this subject. I’ve never been a gossiper, or a reader of tabloid magazines, of course, but I know how the world works. People are always talking. Heck, a few years ago Mia heard from somebody back home that people think we aren’t happy. And just recently, the rumor has something to do with me flirting with a saleswoman at the mall. Ridiculous. I hate malls. As a rule, I shop at boutiques or online. Not that the gossips care to take a little thing like facts into account.
Anyway, back when the first wave of rumors started a few years ago, Mia launched what she called the “rebranding” effort on Facebook, posting photos of the two of us in various places, laughing and smiling together. Some of the shots are really old, but as long as I look good, I’m fine with it. She says it has worked, because she hasn’t heard the rumors anymore. I don’t tell her I have, and I certainly don’t mention the mall rumor, because she’d ask me when and where, who and in what context and I wouldn’t be able to tell her that, of course. I’m not a gossip.
I glance over and see my wife is reading an article about one of the late-night television hosts. Now, that’s a job I could nail. I mean, sitting behind a desk, talking with famous people about nothing but fluff and getting paid like a king. I don’t even know how you get a gig like that. As I look a bit closer, I realize the guy in the magazine looks a lot like Buck, our neighbor at the lake. Kind of a refined look, I guess you’d say. Lean but muscular build, dark brown eyes, a strong, manly jaw. It’s the type of look you see in New York, on Wall Street, or on television, not something you see around here. That’s what makes it odd that Buck lives at the lake year-round. Hardly anybody does because it’s cold and miserable in the off-season and nobody else is around. It’s like he’s a spy and he’s hiding from something or someone, that’s what I think.
He seems successful, though. I heard through the grapevine that he sold his big home somewhere in Connecticut when his wife died, and now he’s here “regrouping,” whatever that means. The woman who told me doesn’t know much, though she’s the designated neighborhood gossip for our block up at the lake. Every street has one. She’s just not very good at her job. Google knows a lot more about Buck than she does. And that’s not much.
“McDonald’s or BP?” I say as I pull to a stop at the stop sign. We’re in the middle of nowhere. The town of Kilbourne is several miles west down Route 521. A right turn will take us to a McDonald’s, a left is the gas station. And as far as I can see, there is nothing else.
“McDonald’s,” Mia says with that tone of disgust she uses for all things—people and situations—that are below her. Recently, Mia has become a firm anti-GMO, anti-fast-food mom. She was leaning that way before her recent illness, but now she’s militant. I applaud her for the herculean effort it takes to say no to two boys who will, as soon as they are old enough to hang out with friends at malls or go to the movies alone, be the first ones in line at every fast-food restaurant in town, stuffing themselves with all things nonorganic and fried. I also have pointed out, at least once each year as we drive to the lake, the fields as far as the eye can see of Monsanto Roundup Ready corn and soy proudly framing the highway. It’s almost un-Ohioan, Mia’s stance on the issue.
We should embrace what we are, don’t you think? We’re a no-till farming, profracking, pro-GMO, pro-Monsanto state. It’s our heritage, I tell her. Did you know Columbus is a fast-food mecca? It’s true. We are the test market for most major fast-food chains. Us folks are the definition of America. We are the barometers of taste, at least the kind of taste that comes when you can buy an entire “meal” for under a dollar. We’re the hometown of Wendy’s and White Castle and of several others like Rax that have come and gone. Remember Arthur Treacher’s Fish & Chips? Yep, that started in Columbus, too, thanks to Wendy’s Dave Thomas, who made his fortune as a Colonel Sanders Kentucky Fried Chicken franchisee. Makes me hungry just thinking about that battered British fish. Not that I regularly partake in any of these low-class foods myself. When I do it’s just a guilty pleasure. Everyone has his occasional vice.
“Do you want anything?” Mia asks, her hand already opening the door.
“Fries?” I ask, just to get a reaction. It works.
“Honestly, Paul? I meant do you want water or coffee or something. You know how I feel about this so-called food. A poor diet leads to a shorter life, all the studies agree. I’ve been reading a lot about this, remember? I’m trying to get healthy and it wouldn’t kill you to work on that, yourself.” She leans forward and points her finger at me like I’m a child. I feel her eyes on my stomach. I suck in.
The magazine ruffles in the wind from the open door and the blonde female singer on the cover looks as if she’s waving to me. She’s cute, I notice. I reach out and smooth the cover with my hand, touching the cool, glossy paper.
My wife softens her tone. “I’ll get you a water. Hydration is key to health,” she adds and then slams the car door before I can reply. I watch her walk away. From behind, she looks like the same woman I married a decade ago. Her hair still swings halfway down her back. Her butt is small and firm and perfectly toned. She looks very much the same, but she’s not. Not at all. None of us really stay the same, though, do we?
My transformation is more apparent, I realize, as I look down at my middle-aged, small beer belly and sigh. It’s comprised of something called internal fat, I’ve discovered, a fat that appears suddenly, like an army of ghosts, and then digs in to stay. It’s distasteful to think that fat isn’t just sitting in a layer on top of my belly, like I’d imagined, but is actually tucked in beside all of my organs, oozing around them like it’s a part of the whole, not an addition to the top. It’s in the ice cream, it’s not the cherry. Basically, they can’t liposuction it off and they can’t freeze it away. The only way I can shed this thing is through hard work—less food, more exercise.
I plan to tackle this unwanted midsection addition soon. It’s next on my list. I’ll eliminate it as I do anything I set my mind