I remember you when you were just a little kid. I was inside the house, in the kitchen, and there was a niche in the wall shaped just like me, remember? You used me to determine how tall you were getting. Remember when you could finally reach up and pull down your Flintstone vitamins or the steakhouse-pilfered Andes Mint hidden in the Tylenol box on top of me?
Heck, I had your freaking first-grade finger-painted pilgrim on me for like fifteen years.
Summer weekends, you’d get paid ten dollars to clean me out. Soap! Lord, you used soap—I used to shine. I matched the microwave, we were like cute twins. During dinner parties, people would say, “Wow, love the matching appliance set,” and we’d just smile at each other.
But no one would use a garage microwave. I really miss her. What happened to her? Hmm? Taken to the college dorm to warm cups of hot chocolate shared by burgeoning friends? Reheating dining hall leftovers over a companionable study session? Sorry I asked.
It was warmer back then. I remember the sun through the pop-out window, the cat basking in the light, rolling on the rug at my base. Jeez, I had real food in me back then. Real food people ate.
Uncle Dan would go fishing in me on Thanksgiving, digging for the IPA hidden in the back. I haven’t had intimacy like that in a decade, no one to scratch that itch, just small brushes with dad’s hairy knuckles pulling white wine from the door. Sometimes, in the sensuous hours of the night, your mother, God, she was young then, would with slipper padded steps and burglar-hands come down, open me, and stare. For fifteen minutes she’d stare. Did she see me as I was? I was so vulnerable, and so was she: hair hidden away in curls, faded terry robe loosely tied. She never took anything, only looked with hunger in her eyes. Your eyes.
I’m getting carried away, I fear. She eventually shuffled over to the Peter Pan Crunchy and ate it emotionlessly by the spoonful. Those nights added five years to my life, kiddo.
Now I have the surplus from the Costco twenty-pack sous vide egg bites, sixteen sticks of grass-fed butter, off-gassing guacamole cups that expire in three days. Come on, open me up: hard seltzer, maybe a case of tangerine La Croix. Open my cheese drawer. A hundred-fifty dollars of hard cheese in there, easy. Can you even pronounce the names? I didn’t expect to learn French through ink printed on rinds. Il y a trop de fromage dans le monde.
I’m embarrassed, I won’t even dare to say the m-word. Now that you kids are out of the house, I’m practically a care home for the green fuzzy stuff. These opaque glass shelves used to be clear too. They’re foggy now. Think I'm talking about cataracts? I wish. That's dried milk, buddy.
The freezer? Gallon tub of mango sorbet lacquered with ice, dinosaur nuggets in a mangled cardboard box, bag held closed with a rubber band for the past three years. It’s a mess. It’s hospice care for novelty desserts.
When the wind kicks up, I think, ‘Is now my time?” The power flickers and goes out. Someone says, “Nobody open the fridge”… but if it stays off, someone will come looking, trash bag in gloved hand. Maybe they’ll say, “No one ever touches this stuff anyway, this a hundred-fifty bucksa-cheese gone to waste, let’s just get ridda the thing and put in that BowFlex.”
Let me go now, kid. It’s been what? Nineteen years? My life span was supposed to be fifteen if I was indoors only. My seal doesn’t even make that good suction noise anymore. Smack. I’m closed. Come on, back the truck down the driveway, toss me off the freaking highway, drive me out onto a forest service road, and leave me to rust away in the shadows of the pines. I want to smell snow before I go. Some dignity for your old friend. What do you say?
You were such a nice kid. Coming in after school, nibbling mom’s leftover Red Robin salad. I never told nobody, a silent swing open for a hungry little guy. I was there for you. Be here for me.
Shoot, the garage door’s opening. Come back for me soon. Don’t you remember those mini-Gatorades I kept for you? So sweet and so cold?