Kiss Mommy Goodbye (9 page)

“No, it’s not true.”

“Did you or did you not say, I can’t win?”

“I don’t believe this!”

“Rant and rave all you want. It won’t change things.” His voice was suddenly, irritatingly steady and calm. Donna tried to collect her thought, her emotions, to tie them into a neat bundle. Like so much garbage.

“This is ridiculous,” she said more to herself than to
Victor although he heard and agreed. “What is it we’re arguing about here?” She paused, trying to remember how it had all started. “You said everything around here that you like I change.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“What did you say then?”

“I said that everything around here that I like gets changed.”

“Gets changed? By whom? Obviously, not by you or there wouldn’t be a discussion here—”

“If you say so.”

She stopped. “What’s that suppose to mean? That
you
change these things, whatever the hell they are?”

He shook his head. “You have to swear, don’t you? You can’t even let me
agree
with you gracefully.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I agreed with you that
I’m
not the one who changes things—”

“You agreed with me? ‘If you say so’? That was agreement?”

“You cut me off.”

“What? When?”

“Before. Look, what does it matter? You’ve made your point.”

“What point?” She was yelling.

“Stop yelling. You’re always yelling about something.”

“I’m
always
yelling? There you go again with your generalizations.”

“Well, listen to you. My voice isn’t raised.”

Donna took several long, deep breaths. “You said everything gets changed. Right?” He didn’t answer. “You don’t
do it. Everything obviously doesn’t change itself. So that leaves me, right?”

“If you say so.”

“If I say so. That’s an agreement?”

“If you say so.”

“All right, I say so.”

“Okay. Just so we know where we stand.”

“I’m so confused I don’t know if I’m sitting or standing or lying down,” she said. “But I would like to get to the bottom of this.”

“No matter what it costs.”

“Why should it cost anything?” She felt her frustration growing.

“Because it always does whenever we have a fight.”

“But why should it? Why can’t we just discuss our problems like two normal people? If something is bothering you, tell me. I can’t second guess you. I can’t read your mind. If you’re mad at me for something, tell me specifically what it is you’re mad about.”

“I did. You didn’t like what I told you.”

“My hair? We are really fighting about my hair?” He smiled smugly. “But you said everything? What else do I change that you like?”

“Let’s drop it.”

“No. Let’s get it out in the open and then get rid of it.”

He was furious. She could see the ice reflecting in his eyes. “All right. I mentioned about a month ago that I really liked that shepherd’s pie you made; we haven’t had it since. I told you I thought you looked terrific in that red dress; you haven’t worn it since—”

“It’s too short. It’s out of style. Nobody wears dresses that short anymore—”

“You’re interrupting me. Did you want to hear what I have to say or not?” She nodded silently. “The other night,” he continued, “I told you I liked creamed cheese—”

“We
had
creamed cheese.”

“What we had was creamy cottage cheese, which I hate. I told you I liked creamed cheese, but as usual, you don’t listen to me. You get what
you
like.”

“That’s not so! I thought I had gotten what you like. Is that what you were so upset about the other night?”

“What other night?”

“The night you didn’t say a word to me after dinner? The night you said something was bothering you but to leave it alone, it would go away?”

“But you wouldn’t leave it alone, would you? You never do. Like now.”

“
Now
is happening because I left it alone then! It didn’t go away at all. It just festered and got worse.” She was getting really angry now. “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe you would actually get upset because I made a mistake and got you the wrong kind of cheese! I don’t believe we’re actually having a fight about it two days later.”

“It wasn’t a mistake.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? That I did it on purpose?”

“No. Not on purpose. Subconsciously.”

“Subconsciously?”

“Don’t yell.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Don’t swear.”

“Don’t tell me what to do!”

“Let’s just drop it.”

“No! Let’s settle it once and for all. I feel like I’m drowning in a sea of trivialities.”

“Trivial to you.”

“Yes!” she screamed. “Trivial to me! And they should be trivial to you! Shepherd’s pie, a red dress, cottage cheese, my hair. I can’t believe those are issues worth fighting over! These things are symptoms of a deeper problem. My God, they can’t be the problem itself!”

“If you say so.”

“I say so!”

“Then why ask me what I think? Why bother?”

“You really believe I deliberately bought you the wrong kind of cheese?”

“Subconsciously, I said.”

“There’s no room for honest mistakes in your world?”

He was suddenly very quiet, his tone unmistakably patronizing. “Honey,” he said, taking her hands in his, “I don’t say you mean to do these things. But don’t you think it’s funny that you always manage to do the things that you like the right way and somehow the things that I like either never get done or get done wrong?”

She shook her hands free of his with a force that surprised them both. “Goddamn you,” she shouted, “you S.O.B., I never heard such a load of crap in my entire life. You stand there like some little dictator and tell me what I should do and not do, what I don’t do, what I do subconsciously. I never heard such bullshit.”

“If you’re going to swear, I’m going to go in the other room.”

“Don’t you dare go anywhere.”

“Now who’s telling who what to do?”

“You rat!”

“Sure, now start with the insults. First, I’m a dictator, a ‘little’ dictactor you said, you seemed to put special emphasis on the word ‘little,’ why, I’m not sure. Then you called me an S.O.B., and now I’m a rat. Go on, what further damage can you do?”

Donna was crying hard now with frustration. “What about the damage that you do?”

“I haven’t called you any names. I haven’t sworn. I asked you to drop this whole discussion. You wouldn’t. Now you’re insulting me, calling me names. What’s on the game plan next, Donna? Do you throw darts?”

He started to walk from the room. “Don’t you walk out on me,” she called after him as he continued to walk away from the living room and into their bedroom.

“Leave me alone, Donna,” he said wearily. “Haven’t you said enough?” He flipped the remote control unit, which turned on the television set.

“Please turn it off,” Donna said quietly.

“What, so you can yell at me again? No, thanks.”

“Please.”

“No.” His eyes were glued to an episode of
All in the Family.
She recognized it as one they had already seen.

“I just want to get this settled.”

“I don’t want to talk to you anymore tonight, can’t you understand that? Can’t you get that through your thick skull?”

Donna began crying again. “Now who’s being insulting?”

“Oh, okay. You got your way. Now I’ve insulted you too. We’re even. I’m the world’s worst husband. I’m a rotten person.”

“Nobody said you were a rotten person. Nobody said you were a bad husband.” She paused. “Please turn off that damn TV.”

“Here we go again with the swearing.”

“Oh come on, Victor. Don’t be such a prude.”

“That’s good, Donna. Keep it up. Now I’m a prude. Go on, what else can you call me?”

“Will you turn off that TV?”

Surprisingly, he pushed the button and the television flipped off. “All right, Donna. It’s off. Go on, but go on only when you understand that you take full responsibility for whatever happens from here on out. I asked you to drop it. I have begged you to drop it. No, you’re intent on doing real harm here. Okay, you’ve bruised me so far, but I can still walk. You have five minutes to finish me off.”

“Why do you say it that way? Nobody’s trying to hurt you.”

“I guarantee that within five minutes you’ll have carried this fight into an arena I can’t even imagine yet. But go on. Say what you want to. I’ll listen for five minutes.” He looked at his watch.

Donna frantically tried to organize her thoughts into words. They refused to unjumble, becoming clogged at the roof of her mouth, sticking to the sides of her gums like peanut butter, emerging as a confused rehashing of what she had already said.

“I just don’t understand how we get into these stupid arguments,” she began feebly, impotently.

“We get into them because you won’t let go. You push until it’s too late.”

“I don’t think I do.”

“Obviously. What would you call what you’re doing right now?”

“I’m trying to get to the bottom of this.”

“The bottom of this is that you don’t really like me very much.”

“That’s not true. I love you.” He raised a doubtful eyebrow. “I do.” She had raised her voice and immediately checked herself. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry that you love me, I know.”

“Not sorry that I love you,” she yelled, “sorry that I yelled.”

“Please don’t yell at me anymore, Donna. I’ve had enough. Really, you don’t have to yell at me anymore.” He sounded like a prisoner-of-war being tortured by the enemy.

Donna looked to the ceiling. “What is going on here? Somebody help me.”

“Is this how we’re going to spend the next five minutes. Because if it is, I’d rather watch
All in the Family.
At least their fights are funny.”

“Damn you,” she cried. “You tell me to talk, and then you don’t let me. You interrupt. You manipulate the conversation until I’m so mad I’m screaming.”

“That’s all you ever do, Donna.”

“And in the end I never get a chance to say what I want to say.”

“Just what is it you want to say, Donna? Do you really know?”

“It’s just that you seem to have such a low opinion of me.”

“
I
have a low opinion of you?”

“Yes. You always assume the worst.”

“
Always?”

“That I change things that you like, deliberately, subconsciously. However. You seem to feel I’m always against you. But you won’t give me a chance to defend myself. Half the time I don’t even know you’re upset because you don’t tell me what’s bothering you—”

“Why should I? You just dismiss it as trivial anyway.”

“Shit, we’re just going around in circles.”

“And you’re still swearing. Tell me, does it give you an extra charge to swear because I’ve told you how much I object to it. Because you know it bothers me?”

“Why do you have to take everything so personally? Why, if I say ‘shit’ out of sheer frustration do you automatically assume I’m saying it to upset you?”

“Because you are.”

“That’s paranoid, Victor!”

She had gone too far. She knew it as soon as the words were out of her mouth. He had held out the gun and she had supplied him with the necessary ammunition. He had been waiting for the slip, pushing for it, the one word he could use to blow them both to smithereens. Her five minutes were up and she had given him his word.
Paranoid.

His voice was quiet.

“Well, you finally said what you wanted to say, didn’t you, Donna.”

“I just meant—”

“I don’t want to hear anymore of what you have to say. You’ve said it all. You’ve hurt me enough. Do you want to see blood? Is that what you want? You’ve taken a simple little disagreement, a stupid little statement I made, for which I apologized—”

“You apologized? When did you apologize?”

“You don’t listen to me, Donna. I keep telling you that.”

“You never apologized!”

He suddenly screamed. “All right, I never apologized! If you say I didn’t, then you must be right because, God knows, you’re always right. I thought I did. But I guess I was wrong. Again.” He paused. “What difference does it make?”

“It makes all the difference. If you’d apologized, this whole fight wouldn’t have happened.”

“Of course it would have, don’t you see? You were so determined to tell me what a rat I am, how
paranoid
I am, how wrong I am, you would have found a way regardless of whatever I did or didn’t say. I think I apologized. You say I didn’t. It doesn’t really matter. What’s important is what you said later.”

Donna tried to clear her head. Something was wrong with what he was saying, but she was just too confused and tired to figure it out.

“I don’t understand.”

“No, you never do,” he said sadly.

Donna felt the pangs of guilt beginning to congeal inside her stomach. Why didn’t she understand? Why did she always yell? Why did she have to swear so much? She knew he didn’t like it. She knew he liked shepherd’s pie—why didn’t she make it more often? Had she deliberately, subconsciously, bought him the wrong cheese? No, damn it, she thought suddenly, no, she hadn’t.

“You’re always so intent on being right,” he said slowly and with such quiet conviction that Donna, already struggling with her guilt, felt compelled to listen. “You don’t understand that it doesn’t matter ultimately who’s right or who’s wrong. What’s important is what’s said in the interim.
You didn’t hear
me
insulting you.”

“You don’t call telling me I deliberately change everything you like insulting?” she exclaimed.

“You’re interrupting again.”

“Sorry, I thought you were finished.”

He raised his hands in the air in mock surrender. “Okay, if that’s what you say.”

“No, please, Victor. Go on. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“You’ll let me finish what I have to say? You won’t interrupt?”

“What is this? An organized debate or something? People have discussions; they interrupt each other.”

“But you do it all the time. You never let me finish a thought.”

Donna bit down hard on her lower lip. “All right,” she said slowly. “I won’t interrupt again.”