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Apple Dance
I bring the same apple to work everyday. I take it out of my lunch bag, put it on my desk, and look at it here and there,
all day long. Then at the end of the day, I put it back in my lunch bag, take it home with me, and once at home, I put
it back in the refrigerator. In the morning, I put it back in my lunch bag, and well, you get the point. I eat the cookies
and the sandwich and the strawberry milk but not the apple. Never the apple.
I tell you this because I want to hear you laugh at the absurdity. Plus there isn't much to me anymore
so there isn't much to say. I come home and do my thing with the apple and my lunch bag and I do other
things about the house like get the pots ready for dinner and change out of my work clothes, until you
get home. My whole day is waiting for you to come home so I can tell you about my apple and the dance
we share together. You walk through the front door like a hurricane and I pretend not to hear you, and
I don't look up when you enter the room I happen to be in; I don't look up until you're close enough to
reach my arms out to.
I make pasta fagioli. I stir the pasta and beans in its pot and I watch the steam, like I watch a
fire that you make us in the fireplace on a cold night. How you love to make fires. In the fireplace,
out in the yard, inside the barbecue. You are good at making fires. But there was that one night you
and your red-haired friend got so drunk off whiskey and beer that you closed the flue before you doused
the fire. I was sleeping then and the fumes woke me up. You stumbled up the stairs, oblivious to the fog,
and I asked "Did you close the flue?" You said, "Go to sleep. The fire's out. Go to sleep." Then you fell
on the bed next to me and I smelled your breath and listened to your snoring. It wasn't until the next morning
that you saw what you did but I didn't tell you that I already knew.
I'm so hungry, probably because I didn't eat my apple. I sit down at the table without you because you're cutting
up some bread for us. "Go ahead," you say. "Don't worry about me." I scoop up my pasta with a big spoon over and over
so my mouth is always full and I can't reply to you. Remember we got that apple slicer in the shape of an apple and
I told you we have to eat more healthfully and you said, "Sure." So I would cut up big, red apples with the apple
slicer and put the pieces on a small dish and we'd nibble on the pieces as we watched television on the couch.
Then you got your chocolate and I got my chips, and we left the rest of the apple pieces browning in the dish.
I listen to your kind of music while I clean the dishes and you mow the lawn. The buzzing sound of the mower with
the banging sounds of the drums and plates is enough to keep me scrubbing and drying. As I'm doing that, I look
out the window above the sink and I see the shed still needs painted. You said you'd get around to it, like you'd
get around to transplanting those azaleas for me. Perhaps now is a good time for me to learn more about gardening
and painting. You tried to show me once or twice but I didn't listen. You'd say, "I'm trying to teach you something
so you do it right and don't make a mess." I never like to read instructions on anything either, and you tell me
I'm too impatient. Except for when we go shopping.
Remember how we'd go to the grocery store and buy fruit that we'd never eat? My apple, the one I look at
everyday, is the last apple from that last bag you packed. Remember how I threw you each apple and you'd
catch it all different ways, like behind your back, or with two hands like it was a football? You made me
laugh with those faces and those poses, like the one where you caught the apple with one hand, pointed
at me with your other hand, and lifted one of your legs like you were a ballerina. Then you twisted and
knotted the bag closed and we went on with our shopping. That was our last apple dance together.
Dana Verdino initially went to school for business but went crazy in her cubicle,
so then she got an M.A. in Education, and now works as an ESL teacher. Her stories have
appeared in Boston Literary Magazine, Postcard Shorts, and Chemistry and Numbers 2.
Aside from teaching, cooking, and watching horror movies with her husband in South
Carolina, Dana is currently working on a memoir.
Email: Dana Verdino
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