passed out right after mumbling about milk duds
Yep. I knew it wouldn’t last.
The kids were gone last night, and they’re gone again tonight. Not that it matters; Willwould be “this way” even if they were here. He’s been drinking with the neighbor all day, burning trash and moving shit around the yard.
This morning about 11am, he goes outside to work. I don’t see him all day except for when he asks if I need anything from the store around 2pm. He brought some coffee home because I asked. I thought it was nice.
7:30 pm rolls around, and he comes into the house. He says, “Did you eat?” and I said, “Yes, I had an oven pizza.”
“An oven pizza?!”
“Yes, a pizza from the oven. You can have a pizza or I’ll heat up the pot pies you like.”
“I haven’t eaten all day. Did you eat today?”
“Mostly coffee. Oh – I did have a sandwich sometime around noon. Here, have some fruit salad. It will hold you over until your pot pie is done.”
We sat and watched Monk for awhile. My heart started to pound because I knew what was coming next, and I was trying to find a way to avoid it. When the microwave went off, I got his pie, put it on his plate, and gave it to him. I told him that the second one was in the microwave and I would get it when it was done.”
“I didn’t eat all day.” He said.
“Why not?” I asked him.
“Because no one told me there was any food ready.”
“Let’s not go here tonight,” I said, and went back to watching Monk.
“So, you don’t care that I didn’t eat today?”
“I think if you were hungry, then you should have come in the house and ate.”
“You didn’t think about me all day? I see how it is. You, you, you. That’s how it is.”
“No, I think that you’re a big boy and you don’t need me to come tell you that you’re hungry.”
“How do we do this? How do we do this when we don’t do things like our parents raised us?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, I was raised to expect to be called in for lunch and dinner. Here it is 7:30 and I haven’t eaten all day.”
I stayed quiet. The buzzer went off on the microwave, but I didn’t go get his stupid pie. I got up and went back to the bathroom.
When I came out, he said, “So, what I expect of you doesn’t matter.”
“I don’t think we should talk about this tonight.”
“You never want to talk about it.”
“No, I don’t want to talk about it tonight.”
And then I went and got the digital recorder. I turned it on to record, and it’s in my shirt right now.
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He just found some Milk Dud boxes in a blanket on the couch. “Mm hmm…” he said, walking through the kitchen looking at the boxes like he just struck gold.
My heart is still beating. I don’t want to go here tonight. I don’t want to do this. I hate it when he goes over to the neighbors house, drinks all day, then comes inside to pick a fight with me.
And, just for the record, we’ve had this conversation before. I told him that if he came in the house when he got a break, I would gladly fix his lunch for him. But I wasn’t going to fix him lunch, call him two or three times only to have him put me off and put off his lunch for hours. He wants me to take my time fixing him a lunch (waste my time fixing him a lunch) that he may not even eat. Bullshit. He’s lucky that I am willing to fix him lunch at all.
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