We stood at the stove with our backs to the world, her hardboiling them and me dipping them in dye with a soup spoon. Other people’s kids barged through the kitchen asking when we would start. I told them we wouldn’t until they stopped asking.
Kids, I said, resuming the fight I’d picked since I resented spending this Sunday with her side of the family, who went to church twice a year and were fractured by so many divorces I couldn’t keep their hyphenated names straight. At least my folks had stayed together, even though Dad was as good as gone, as Mom often called him, whereas he called her Woman and me Oops, a nickname that came not from my first words but from his in the waning moments of my conception. We remained vigilant and vague throughout the argument, seemingly cordial, since her uncle kept passing through to pepper his bloody mary.
What if? I asked.
What if? She shrugged.
That’s what I’m saying. What if?
It won’t happen, she assured me.
I know, I assured her. But if it did. Hypothetically speaking.
I don’t want to speak hypothetically. You’re always doing that.
You have to be ready for anything.
You can’t be ready for everything.
You can be ready for this. Mentally, at least. In case it happens.
It won’t. As long as we’re careful.
But you have to know what you’d do.
No I don’t. Not if it’s never going to happen.
Even if it doesn’t, you have to think it through.
Her uncle wandered in for another refill and said he hadn’t seen her since she was this big. He measured to his crotch. My, my, how she had grown. I wondered was he related by blood or marriage. The water had begun to boil over, seething when it splashed and evaporated on the flaring red eye of the stove. She tended them through the boiling. They were toothwhite, trembling and turning over like they were about to hatch. Uncle Whatever stirred the vodka in with a celery stalk.
Even if I did decide, she said as soon as she could see him through the window, I might change my mind between now and then.
Now and when?
Whenever it would happen.
It isn’t going to. You said so yourself.
Hypothetically speaking, she said, and I said there was no need to mock me. I’m just saying, she said.
What? I asked. What are you saying?
She shrugged her shoulders and said things grow on you, you know. By you she meant me. By me I mean her. I told her that was the point. You don’t let it grow on you.
She stopped hardboiling and looked me in the eyes for the first time that day. So that’s what you would do? she asked, but it wasn’t a question.
I didn’t say that, I said, and she said, That’s exactly what you said.
All I’m saying is it’s a necessary evil.
So now you’re calling it evil? she said. Another question that wasn’t a question.
I’m calling it necessary. To consider your options. Just in case it does happen.
It won’t! she yelled, and I knew the argument was over, but I couldn’t let go. I said she couldn’t say for sure, and she stood there silently for a while before saying there was one way to be sure. I didn’t know what she meant, but I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of asking, so I stood there blowing them dry and pastel until I figured out she was talking about celibacy.
You’re no nun, I said.
She tried to cry so I’d feel like a bully but couldn’t and changed tack. I could be, she said.
Be what? I asked, already caught up in what I’d say next.
A nun. I could drop everything and be a nun.
Drop what? Me?
This egg for starters.
I couldn’t care less if she dropped the egg, but I told her not to since we were arguing. Give me that, I said. Don’t make a mess.
You made the mess.
I said there wasn’t a mess. Not yet.
She said there most certainly was a mess and I’d started it. You started it, she said. Not me.
I told her she sounded like a kid. Why don’t you hunt with the other kids, down on your knees?
If I drop them all, there won’t be a hunt.
I couldn’t care less about the hunt, much less the egg, but it gave her leverage somehow. Give me the egg, I said. If you aren’t going to boil it, I will.
I tried taking the egg but she held it above her head but my arms were longer so I caught her hand and pried at her fingers until she dropped it on purpose but blamed me. I knew it was on purpose because I know her and because I felt her grip give up all at once. We stopped arguing and stood looking down at the floor, me in my loafers, her in her heels. The egg was out of its shell in a neat puddle of phlegm that turns white when it’s hot. The yellow of the yolk was still intact. She tried to pick it up without breaking the yellow, but there’s no way to pick up an egg without breaking the yellow, so the yellow broke all over her hands, which she held under the faucet like some failed surgeon, and I knew we wouldn’t be sticking around for the hunt, but suddenly I wanted to. I wanted to stay and start over and be part of her fractured family. I wanted to start over before the first time we ever argued, back when the slate was still clean. I wanted to be a boy again in my Sunday’s best, crawling on all fours until I found one there in the grass my dad hadn’t mown for the occasion.
Image: Bubbling by Vladimer Shioshvili, licensed under CC 2.0.
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