The Table

A husband and wife eat dinner together.

Michelle and Chris had each just grabbed their frozen dinners out of the microwave, and taken a can of soda out of the refrigerator, and now they were both at the dinner table. It was about seven in the evening, and the dining room was well lit. This was a Wednesday, and as the case had been every day, the conversation started with a description of Chris’s day at work.
“I had to drive almost to Chicago to make one of my deliveries today,” Chris stated.
“Wow, what sucks,” Michelle said, feigning interest.
“Yeah, but you know, the drive can be relaxing sometimes; especially on days like today, with the weather being what it was. And if you’ve got your music to listen to.”
Chris was finished talking about his day. That is usually the amount of time Chris would spend talking about work at dinner with Michelle, although sometimes he would pause for a few seconds, think of something else to add, and then say that. Today though, the drive to some house that was near Chicago was apparently the only thing worth mentioning.
“You?” he said, ensuring Michelle fulfill her obligation in this particular conversation.
“A lady came in today with a picture from a magazine, asking me to do her hair like it was in the picture. It looked way too difficult, so I just kind of faked my way through it,” she said with somewhat of a humorous tone. Chris nodded.
“Anyway, she’s probably complaining to her husband right now that it doesn’t look right. Poor b*****d.” She still didn’t get a laugh.
The two of them kept on eating without talking for a few minutes. Suddenly, the woman who came in to Michelle’s salon that day walked into the room. She stood to the side of Michelle, staring at her, complaining about how bad her haircut was.
“It looks like you fell asleep halfway through,” she said to Michelle. Even though Michelle felt a little bit bad for her, knowing the woman would have to walk around looking like that, she mostly just thought it was funny. The woman stopped arguing with her, and eventually she laughed along. Then she stayed in the room quietly for a short while, before she decided to get up and leave. Michelle looked back up at Chris.
“What kind of music did you listen to on your drive?” she asked.
“Well, they were playing a countdown of songs from the 80s, so I listened to that most of the way.”
“What kind of stuff was on there?”
“A lot of the songs you would expect.”
Chris was silent again, and now he had his head down, looking onto the table. He was clearly not in the conversation with Michelle anymore. He had a somber look on his face. This lasted until the drummer from his high school band walked into the room, and sat down next to him. He had a drum with him, and started playing it in the room. Then, the singer from the band came in with his microphone. The bass player, the first bass player they had before they replaced him, came into the room last with his bass. The singer had Chris’s electric guitar in his hand, and he handed it to him. Chris stood up, and started playing. Soon the whole band was together again, playing just as well as they ever did. Chris now had a huge smile on his face, which he kept on until the band left, and then it slowly started to fade away. He turned back to Michelle.
“At the hair salon, do you guys do each other’s hair?” he asked her.
“Yeah,” she said. “I mean, doctors get sick. Hairdressers need to get their hair done.”
“Well, I knew that,” said Chris. “I just didn’t know if you did each other’s hair, or if you guys just all went somewhere else to get it done.”
“Why would we do that when we can just have it done where we work, and for free?”
“That’s true.”
Michelle thought about the last time she got her hair cut from someone who she didn’t work with. It had to have been before she got the job at the salon, which meant she was in high school at the time. She remembers her hair going only down to her shoulders, styled to look casual, yet very feminine. She fit right in with the other girls in her cheerleading squad, who all had a similar style.
The girls she cheered with in high school entered the room at that moment. They had their uniforms on, and started talking very loudly, with high-pitched voices. Michelle started laughing as soon as she heard it. One of the girls pulled out a can of spraypaint, while another had a roll of toilet paper. They invited Michelle to start vandalizing the room with them. She was reluctant at first, fearful of potentially getting caught. Eventually though, they talked her into it. The six girls, Michelle included, started throwing toilet paper all around, and writing their initials on the walls in spraypaint.
Then the girls put on their graduation gowns, and started crying. They hugged each other as they said goodbye in tears. Michelle was crying too. She told them to keep in touch. Then she sat back down at the table with Chris, and the girls left.
“Do we have any salt?” Chris asked her.
“Yeah, it’s right in front of you. I knew you would want it. It’s behind that bowl.”
There was a bowl of bread in front of Chris that was blocking his view of the salt. He picked up the bowl, grabbed the salt, and put the bowl back down. No one was eating the bread. He felt guilty about the fact that he and his wife could sit down at dinner, and neither of them would be willing to even touch a bowl filled with bread, when there were so many people in the country who would have done anything for even one piece of the bread that was in there. Chris had set out to fix this problem a long time ago. Suddenly, a woman who Chris had never met before walked in the room. She was dressed in a suit, and carried herself in a very formal manner.
“Mr. President, they’re ready for you now,” she said. Chris then stood up, and saw several people gathered around the table. They had cameras, and were flashing them in his face, and they had microphone, which they used to ask him questions.
“Mr. President, how will you justify another potential tax increase?”, one of them asked.
“I believe it is our part as citizens of the United States to watch out for each other. Many of our citizens are lucky enough today to be in a situation where they can worry about high taxes. I believe I was elected because the American people thought I would be the one to make sure we could all be so lucky, to live in a nice house, raise a happy family, and have enough to eat every night. I believe that is not a method of justification for something else, but that, in and of itself, is justice.” Chris said these words firmly and with great confidence. He had solved the problem of famine and poverty in the country, and he would forever be regarded as one of the greatest presidents the United States ever had. He was pleased with himself in this moment.
Soon after giving this speech, and taking in everything around him, all the people started to disappear. The woman in the suit walked out of the room, the press left, and the cameras went away. Chris sat back down, and looked back at Michelle again, as she was sitting in front of him. He stared at the bread still sitting there, uneaten.
“Did you get that package you ordered yet?,” Chris asks her.
“No, not yet. It’s expected to come tomorrow,” she replied. She had ordered a lamp from the internet, just because she was tired of the old one in their bedroom. She sat there for a few minutes before Jake, her old boyfriend from high school, arrived. He was wearing the same jacket he always wore, and still had his hair styled in the same way. He had the same bright blue eyes and the same smile. He was in great physical shape. In fact, looking at him now, Michelle wondered why he was ever interested in her. She looked at him and asked him what she had been curious about for a while.
“If I were to ask to be with you right now, would you accept?”
“I probably would,” he responded. “You shouldn’t have left me in the first place.”
Right then, he moved closer to her, and put his arms around her. He then put his lips onto hers, and started to kiss her. She started kissing him back, smiling as she did it. The two of them were happy in this moment. They started to move towards the table, at which point he threw her on top of it, and then made his way on top of her, still kissing her. She started to slide his hands under his shirt, up and down his back. He took his jacket off, and then she lifted up his shirt. She started to move her hands down his body, and then he interrupted her.
“Do you want to leave with me, right now?” Jake asked her.
“Definitely,” she said. They got up off the table, Jake put his clothes back on, and the two of them left the house. The drove off in Jake’s black convertible. They drove for a few blocks, before Michelle decided to go back to the dining room table with Chris. As she sat down, she was worried that Chris would notice that she was gone, or that Jake had been there. Chris did in fact think he noticed both of these things happening, but he wasn’t positive. It was a long table. Chris ignored his concerns, and now the two of them were sitting at the table again, looking only at each other.
“That’s a nice shirt,” Chris said to Michelle.
“Thanks,” she said. “It was on sale the other day.”
“Yeah, I was going to ask if it was new, because I hadn’t seen it before.”
Chris was about finished his meal. He was thinking about the fact that he was eating this meal, just as he ate his dinner the night before. It was a scary thought to him, because he felt like he was just setting the same tasks for himself every day, and that the world was moving around him, while he wasn’t really moving at all. He looked back at Michelle, sitting across from him at the table. She looked different now. She had the same clothes on as she did just a few seconds ago, but so much else had changed. Her hair was noticeably gray, and her skin was nowhere near as smooth as it just was. She was also missing a few of her back teeth. She was still beautiful though. There was an air of elegance around her. Chris just watched her, silently now. She looked sad, just eating her food, without saying anything. Chris then looked at his own hands, and saw that they too were the hands of an old man. His heart started to beat a little heavier. Chris tried to distract himself from what he was seeing by eating his food more quickly than he had been. He finished his meal very shortly after this. He then looked at Michelle, who looked like herself again.
“Are you finished,” she said.
“Yeah. You?” He replied.
“Almost.”
Chris waited for Michelle to finish her meal. When she did, the two of them grabbed their soda cans, their frozen dinner plates, and their forks, walked into the kitchen to dispose of them properly, and then went on into their bedroom.