Suburbia

3am.  Suburbia.  Stars move as planes race universe’s paparazzi across her sky.

3am. City. Noise keeps arteries pumping, alive. Red emergency screaming. Yellow cabbies honking.  Blue revelers wailing.

Silence reverberates suburbia.  Still is news.  Shades hide a girl, one dreaming of her possibilities, her passion.  Science.  Flourish.  Live as a scientist.  Shades hide her face, fifteen sans wrinkles, fate birthed in late night’s kitchen.

Dad lauds over money as a sous chef does over melting butter.  Fortified cereal in bulk.  Whole wheat pasta purchased in multiple pounds.  Fresh fruit, farmstand vegetables picked up as needed, those only on sale.

Chicken parts forbidden.  Expense not worth the convenience, so it was explained. Mom could only grab whole chickens, purchased then parted for frying, baking, broiling, grilling.

Cleaver, dad’s finely honed blade 4 inches wide 6 inches long, its hand-molded black hilt lays in his left hand, angled so 3 and seven-eighths matte silver blade catches what light it can coming off spiral bulbs. In the morning before the bus comes, Katlyn liked to stare at the bulbs lying dormant. Their spiral, twisting up waiting to be charged, mostly remind her of simple virgin vanilla soft serve cones.

Sometimes she thought of their single family trip to New York City when they walk-ran through every site as if middle-aged mothers on a marathon.  The Guggenheim’s spiraling stairs, a long walk well worth it.  Mom said the name of a famous architect.  Correcting her with delusional entitled belittlement, Dad went on at length about his architect.  Ultimately, a plaque on the wall fastened on a main floor wall made the decision mother was correct.  Dad decided the evening’s plans, Cats on Broadway, suddenly became too expensive.

Whole chickens, glistened rubber, color of Barbie, pockmarked as if the ageless beauty had horrible acne scars, were easy to cut up once you had it down.  Dad’s cleaver, even if missing by a half-inch, sliced through cartilage and rib bones with little effort.  

The blade proudly displayed an eighth inch of shiny steel along its edge making potatoes quiver, chicken stiffen.  Shooting redirected light into the corner of the kitchen where the Avocado Amana refrigerator-freezer held court, the edge focused its glint on mother’s eyes.  Morning sobriety disappeared well before this late evening, his left wrist twitching as if suffering from imaginary withdrawals.

Blade’s refracted light went up and down mother’s face, taut skin covered with terrified tears and palmated hands.

Yelling was not Dad’s forte, preferring instead to glower, belittle, plowing into one’s mind as a farmer tills a field.  Never having any fear the neighbors may put two-and-two together, Dad carved away at mother’s self-esteem.

Glow in the dark stars haphazardly stuck upon Katlyn’s ceiling gave her eyes something to focus on as dad’s baritone crept up the oak staircase to the second floor.  The unintelligible murmur rolled under her bedroom door as if smoke, swirling around her head, occasionally interrupted by mother’s muted sobs or profanity-laced scream.

Once, early spring, mother escaped.  Circling the house, outrunning Dad as any long-distance runner as mother once was could, mother’s feet were the second of two sounds Katlyn heard.  What woke her was a slow, deep under breath baritone just loud enough to float four first downs

You bitch.

The sound of April’s frost crunching under the weight of a 105 pound mother deafened exclamation.  Dad must have waited her out.  Sliding screen opened, chairs tumbled as mother’s body flew across the sunroom, taking out a floor lamp mid-flight.  Sounds of moving furniture and broken glass lasted a few minutes.  No one saw mother, not even Katlyn, for nearly a week.

She dared not run again, even if it was perimeter panting.

Evening had begun with a bit of tranquility.  Katlyn set the table for a dinner of fresh green beans, buttery skin-on rosemary potatoes made with baby reds and chopped purple onions, fried chicken.  Katlyn and mother liked chicken skinless. Dad did not.  They compromised by peeling off the skin while eating.

Dad liked dark meat.  Loved it.  Never went dry, was his reasoning.  He picked up a piece, thigh golden splattered with specks of deep brown.  He inspected it, speaking up as he took a bite and chewed.

Babe, chickens sometimes come packaged whole with extra organs.

Dad swallowed, picked up his fork, stabbed a few green beans, wedged them into his mouth.  He slowly chewed eleven times. Katlyn counted.  She always counted.  There were a baker’s dozen roosters lined up on the counter where mother did the least amount of food preparation.  A 2-D black metal cat, standing straight off a black pole with a wooden base as if trying to swat a fly, seemed to have five legs… or four and a large endowment.  The tail curled under the body to create the illusion, but imagination was Katlyn’s best ally.  Her shower curtain contained 17 supposedly unintentional tragic masks within its hodgepodge Cubist design.  Remembrance of her father’s audio brought her back.

Once lucked out with a chicken having a packet shoved up the carcass containing three hearts.  Another had enough liver for five yardbirds.  Often they have two necks.

His eyes came up off his plate, searing mother.

Most of the time, one of the necks was broken.  Not so much someone could tell it was done on purpose, but enough a superior sleuth could deduce it was the cause of its demise.

He grabbed another thigh, sticking it with a steak knife as if it was still kicking.

I have never, ever, seen a whole chicken come with six thighs.

Forks feared scraping plates.  Spoons allowed sugar to lie on the bottom of glasses filled with ice tea.  Napkins ceased waving.

Six thighs, Katlyn.  You’re a science freak.  Can you imagine how difficult it must be for a chicken to walk around a barnyard with six thighs?

Dad sliced into the second thigh.  Juice, as perfect as a restaurant commercial, oozed out of the opening, the meat exiting steam.

Six thighs, yet only two drumsticks. Must have come from a farm near a nuclear power plant.

Dad said “new-cue-ler.”  Katlyn was dying to open up, but too smart to shut him down.

It’s the only explanation I can come up with.  Does science have another reason as to why a chicken could possibly have six thighs – six thighs – and two drumsticks?  Anyone? Katlyn?

Katlyn looked straight at him, her melancholy eyes into his pupils after briefly glancing over at the center-part of mother’s hair, mom’s gaze currently glued to the chicken goading her from her plate.  Katlyn parted her lips just enough to allow a single syllable swoop.

No.

Didn’t think so.  Babe, what we seem to have here is some kind of phenomena.  Amazing.  Truly a wonderment.  Freak of nature. Got to be the answer.

Katlyn stirred a potato half.  Yellowed, the potato meat held tight to tiny specks of rosemary simultaneously allowing its maroon oil-slick skin to peel off.  She played with the skin, trying to peel it off whole like her dad de-labeled any number of beer bottles, no matter how many were killed.  Part of the skin held on around a small eye, a scab not fully healed.  She took half of the half off with her fork, popping it past her front teeth.

Steroids.  How about that?  Gotta be right.  Right? Nothing else comes to mind.  Katlyn?

May I be excused?

Not convinced we’ve solved this mystery, Colombo.

Mother never intervened.  Occasionally she’d look at Katlyn with a “what can I do?” expression from her eyes, but as Katlyn got older the stare became increasingly rare.  Mother never had an argument. Dad never argued about education.

I have homework.

Don’t you usually have tests on Friday?

It’s Thursday, Dad.

I have a mind.  Yes.

Need to study for my Friday tests.

OK.  Fine.  Go.  Your mother and I will certainly figure out this “whodunit.”  I think we have enough clues, right babe?

Mom may have murmured something.  It’s what she usually did to dad’s rhetorical inquiries.  Wooden legs, their feet covered on the bottom with stainless steel sliders, slid across the oak as Katlyn shoved herself away.  Enough groaning came from the chair to mask any utterance mother could muster.

As her feet took her up one flight to the second floor and the second door off to the right beside the hall bathroom, she could smell dessert.  Enticing were the sweet berries, but they could not make her clamor for blueberry pie.  She loved the scientific aspect of baking as opposed to freewheeling inexactness known as cooking.  Helping her mother with the pie when she got home, Katlyn’s exacting measurements surely produced a perfect pie.  The brilliant deep purple gooey mess was dad’s favorite. She soured on any taste tonight.  Perhaps tomorrow after school before he got home.

Katlyn laid down on her bed, propping up her physics book, Conceptual Physics, atop her long body deep maroon body pillow. As she landed on her mauve sheets, the text landed open to the back pages of the chapter on Projectile Motion. Half-heartedly, her eyes followed the crib notes traced by her right index finger.  She knew this stuff by heart, but it never hurt to re-visit effects of motion.

Dishes ran into each other, clamoring for space on the right side of the double sink next to the dishwasher.  Their Corningware clank covered the house with a faint echo.  A baritone backdrop fell right behind, not loud enough to disseminate verbiage or overpower the snare-style dish clanking.  Triangle sounds coming off drinking glasses introduced into the kitchen clean-up orchestra. The baritone fell further back as it moved to the living room, TV room, couch potato nirvana, den of intellectual dearth, whatever anyone cared to call it.

Mother’s tonal inequality competed with fresh drones coming off the big screen.  No doubt Fox News or some conservative think tank show ready to tell everyone what ails America and how the rich can save our free market economy flashed the room.

The rafters shook.  Timbers stayed in place, but it was as if a single shockwave ran through the foundation, shifting the house to a newer location.  Katlyn’s scientific mind knew they were nowhere near a fault line.  That damn baritone could move mountains.

I SAID NO FUCKING PIE!

More motherly murmur.  Katlyn figured her response, but it was repeated in the baritone’s answer, albeit much quieter this time.  Dad has a knack of using the full baritone only once in a while for effect.

Personally, I don’t really fucking care it’s my favorite.  I know it’s my favorite.  I don’t need the reminder.  I just don’t want it.  Goddamn stupid.

Before Katlyn’s eyes finally succumbed to weariness, before Of Mice and Men fell to the side, its paperback taking on another wrinkle as it landed propped up sideways leaning against her nightstand after sliding off the Conceptual Physics, Fox News fell silent.  An undistinguishable beep shot the big screen into darkness.  Twisted bulbs, slow to brighten, shut off in milliseconds.

Stairs never creaked.  No one came up to bed.  Screech owls snapped open dead of night as they performed a freefall into long cheat grass, snatching up errant rodents desperately trying to zigzag home after a long feast.

Night was deepening its R.E.M. when a projectile bounced off a kitchen wall, settling somewhere near toaster and gas stove.  Careening long enough Katlyn’s eyes came open, the motion didn’t last quite enough for her to figure out exactly what it hit.  A spoon, serving spoon.  Probably one of those had spread its wings courtesy of her father.  He was a thrower, preferring things taking a longer trajectory having ability to dish out more damage.

Shuffling.  Scooting of slippers across the floor like a Geisha girl in a too-tight kimono.

I am not an idiot, babe.

When she was little, Katlyn thought Dad was silent late at night so she wouldn’t wake.  At fifteen, she knew better despite barely discerning it.  He was in full mode faux-superiority belittling.  2:50am was the ideal time to belittle.  Having been on the end of it a couple times, she knew.  Katlyn felt as if she was a political prisoner enduring ceaseless interrogations by an ideologically delusional lemming.

Six thighs?  Jesus Motherfucking Christ.

Her mind rolled through the pie.  Careful measurement of flour.  Dripping of water on rolled crust just enough to keep dough flowing off the roller without crumbling. Exact measurement for sugar to mix with a tablespoon of flour and fresh blueberries picked off the neighbor’s bush. Lattice top crust.  Not necessary, but the science of weaving strips of fresh crust grabbed her.  Setting the time.  Placing foil along crust edge to prevent burning.

Thought you were smarter than that, babe.  You disappoint me.

There was enough to satisfy her scientific inquisitiveness in the kitchen.  Her inner Einstein could be sated among sugar, mixed in with a good dose of logic and semantics.  Besides, she knew her oratory skills were exemplary.  Debate team trophy sitting on her dresser garnished last spring was proof.  Closing arguments were her specialty, she reasoned.

Mother rose up just enough for the refracted light to flash off her upper breasts.  He couldn’t get the light any higher up without some adjustment to kitchen lighting.  Before this chandelier was another, a bit lower.  Successful at his adjustment, he had shattered fluted raised tulip adornments for easier access to bulbs.  Or so he claimed. Eventually, he replaced it, but only after taking the whole thing down with an errant toss of her sterling silver serving spoon.

Such a piss-poor human being you are.  Why be a bitch?

The queen’s box springs, giving way in slow motion, couldn’t pop back to squeak and give the princess away as she arose.  Katlyn’s toes crept down the stairs.  Ears gained clarity.

Ought to.  Really should.  She’d get over it.  Not much of a mother.  You couldn’t even pop out more than one.

Katlyn, through many an experience, had full knowledge the front door, little used, had no room to complain.  Hinges, virtually stagnant, pointed away from the west.  No weather hit them directly.  Creaking was at a minimum, level zero if you opened the door slowly enough.

The knife dangled in his palm.  Mother dangled in his mind.  Blade nearly too sharp for safe cutting, it slammed a full inch into the table before bowing, wavering back and forth twanging like a Jew’s harp.

Grass crunched under steps, October’s cold blades causing her to tiptoe across the front lawn. Standing flush in sight of anyone up at 3am to witness, Katlyn stripped off her gown.  Bathed in lamplight, quiet murmurs and measured profanity, she watched the easement maples casually wave, their perspective scientifically tapered to the horizon.

Tags: baritone, blueberry pie, Broadway, cabs, Cats, chicken, cleaver, Conceptual Physics, Corningware, Cubist, Guggenheim, Mice and Men, new york city, R.E.M, sous chef, surburbia, whole chicken
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