Chapter 2 #3
He wiped off some shaving cream that had dripped down his chest and finally granted me a response.
In a placating tone, he warned, “Nice try, Margot. Please don’t try to entice me by making owning chickens sound like a political issue.
I see right through it. You can’t bullshit a bullshitter.
You know that.” He sighed. “I’ll tell you this right now.
A few birds in our front yard will not put me in a senate seat.
It would be just another distraction for both of us.
We already have plenty going on. Honestly, we both know you’ll never stop.
I let you adopt a dog and now it’s chickens.
After chickens, it will be a horse. Eventually, you’ll want a damned elephant.
I have no intention of allowing you to turn this place into a menagerie, and I’m putting an end to this whole idea of yours before it goes any further. ”
He sliced his hand through the air and continued, “I’m drawing the line, honey. I’m sorry. It seems like a fun little thing to you, but you’re not thinking of the downside.”
What I was thinking of was how all he did was slice and chop his hand through the air, cutting off any hope I had to find the light in this dark Dream Killer world I’d come to inhabit.
“Having chickens,” he continued, “means feeding them and collecting eggs. Cleaning out the coop is easy enough in the summer, but what about when it’s freezing cold and icy outside like today?
What about when it’s pouring down rain? And forget about predators.
You won’t swat at a fly. What are you going to do when a coyote comes after them?
Or a snake? Ask them politely to go on their merry way?
You don’t need me to tell you you’re not a farm girl. ”
His last comment infuriated me more than anything he’d said in weeks. Especially since he was now chuckling at the preposterousness of the idea.
I could be a farm girl. He just wouldn’t allow me to become one.
In his mind, he didn’t see me as an equal…
as an independent woman. He was reducing me to child status.
I wasn’t afraid to get my hands dirty. I wasn’t afraid of the cold.
Come to think of it, I wasn’t afraid of making him sit out there in the cold at night to guard the flock.
I started to argue, but the Chicken Hater wasn’t finished and plowed ahead.
Wind him up and he can go all day, even if it’s in the wrong direction.
“Worst of all, you can barely handle the death of a bug. You’ve been known to spend nearly an entire day trying to catch a spider in the house to set him free outside.
How are you going to deal with a dead bird?
These chickens…they die all the time. I can’t have you going through a monthlong mourning period every time a hen kicks the bucket.
I can already see you needing to have a funeral every time you lose one. ”
Wow, he wasn’t coming around at all.
The Dream Killer strikes again.
My jaw tightened, and I pressed against the walls of the tub with my feet and hands.
As my dream of chickens died in my heart, my blood simmered.
I wanted to stand up and yell, “Why are you not having sex with me right now! How is that possible? I look better than I ever have, and you don’t even notice me.
You could have me every morning.” I wanted to point to my body and say, “You could have this every morning! Look at me! Look at me!”
I remained quiet, though. I already knew how he would respond to such an outburst, and I didn’t need to be further humiliated at that point. He’d tell me he didn’t have time to make love and didn’t have time to argue. Tonight was important. We could make love later.
Once he’d finished shaving and had patted his face with aftershave, he left the bathroom.
We both knew silence was the best option at that moment.
Sometimes it’s best to walk away. Hearing his footfalls smacking the steps, I climbed out of the tub and slipped into my robe.
The pressure inside me was building, and I had to find a release.
In the bedroom, Philippe rested on his doggie bed by the window. I patted my bed until he jumped up. That felt nice. One small step for womankind.
The pressure was still building, though.
My eyes went to the television, and I realized what I could do to make the anger go away.
Remote in hand, I navigated to the recordings he’d made of his Buffalo Sabres games.
Perhaps his only indulgence outside of work was his love for the Sabres.
The Hen-Hating Hockey Lover would rewatch the matches several times and scream at the coaches and players as if he could have done it better.
He had played hockey as a kid, which certainly didn’t make him an expert, but he was absolutely obsessed with the Sabres and knew just about everything there was to know about them and their sport, and he never ran short of ideas of how they could improve.
Rory was a master of conversation, and I’d noticed that when he scrambled for something to say, the Sabres skated in to save the day. “How about those Sabres yesterday…?” By the time he’d finished a rant, you’d have thought he could single-handedly win the coveted Stanley Cup.
His team was off to a good start this year. Rory had been busy though, so the games were stacking up in his digital library. He hadn’t been able to analyze them like he’d wanted.
Guess what. He would never get that chance.
Never.
Ever.
I deleted one game. The pressure eased out of me. I deleted another. A smile surfaced. Another. My shoulders dropped. By the time I’d deleted them all, I was suddenly in the holiday spirit and pranced to my closet whistling “Jingle Bells.”