Housewife Material

Sabrina has been home for two days.

She sits at the kitchen table, laptop open with a can of Busch Light that went warm an hour ago. There are two empty cans beside it. Dustin lit a candle at four in the afternoon, Vanilla Hearth. The whole house smells like a scented eraser.

In the living room Dustin is sitting in his recliner with a salad in his lap. Three leaves of iceberg sit on the top, like parsley on a dinner plate from Denny’s. Under them is a bowl of Thousand Island dressing, filled to the brim, a couple of croutons bobbing in it. He is eating it with a soup spoon. The television is on mute, playing a documentary about the Western Pacific Railroad, every so often he looks up at it the way most men would look at an attractive woman.

“Salad tonight,” he says, likely to the TV. “Trying to keep it clean this week. Lots of greens.”

Above the television is a shelf with eleven trophies, gold plastic boys and girls frozen mid-leap on fake marble bases. Spring Fling Dance-off Participant. Hawaiian Luau Participant. Most Enthusiastic. Shining Spirit Award. All of them say Marshall on the brass plate.

Marshall is in the middle of the rug beneath them wearing a purple pastel tank top that was bought a size too hopeful. His tablet is propped up against the fruit bowl, playing something with a lot of violins.

“Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom!”

“No. Shut up.”

“You didn’t even hear what I was going to say!”

“I heard Mom four fucking times. That’s four more than I wanted.”

“Sabrina,” Dustin said. “Language.”

“He’s heard worse, DUSTIN. He’s heard you chew. Snore and breathe.”

“You have to watch it from the beginning or it doesn’t count,” Marshall says. “And you have to clap at the end. Miss Tanya says so. Miss Tanya also says there is no such thing as a bad dance move.”

“Miss Tanya is a fuckin’ liar, Marshall. She’s lying to you for sixty dollars a month.”

“Dad, she’s not watching me!”

Dustin doesn’t look up from the bowl of the Thousand Island. “Sabrina, he’s been working on it all week, he just wants to show you.”

Marshall restarts the music video. He begins with his arm crossed over his chest and his head down. Then the violins swell and he throws one arm toward the ceiling, he holds it there, chest heaving, face going slightly pink.

“Did you seeeee? Did you see that? Did you see the arm?”

“...It’s always just the goddamn arm.”

“That’s the opening,” he says, out of breath. He turns to make sure his dad is watching too. “Now there is an interpretive part. It’s called… The Phoenix and Oma Christl says I am the best dancer in the family. She says I’m going to be famous.”

“Christl also thinks that the smug crusty old ballsack of a husband is handsome. She is not a reliable source.”

“I’ll tell her you said that!”

“Tell her. Call her right now, put her ass on speaker.” Sabrina turns back to the laptop. “And then go do your stupid phoenix in your damned room.”

“There isn’t enough room in my room!”

“There is no room anywhere you go, so fat you fill it up.”

On the laptop screen, paused, is the clip from Monday night. Sabrina standing over Lance Dewlock with her hand raised. Behind her, on the stage a man named Drakkon Rikesean is holding a microphone telling the crowd that he got a call from Mr. Landerford and that Mr. Landerford wants his wife at home. He says this in front of the entire arena, that she should be a good housewife first and a wrestler second, then tells her she is fired. She stops it.

“Dustin.”

“Mm.” He says looking at his watch, he taps it twice. “Eleven hundred steps today!”

“Shut up. What is your last name?”

He tells her.

“Does THAT sound like Landerford to you? I didn’t take that shit name at the courthouse. Didn’t take it on the mortgage. And I didn’t take it at your damned mother’s house last Thanksgiving when she walked over just to stand over me and offer me that disgusting fucking turkey leg.”

“She offers it to you because she likes you.”

“She offers it to me every fucking year, Dustin. Every single fucking year, in front of your whole family. Your smug ass dad at the head of the table carving the stupid bird, nodding along like the whole thing was his idea. And your brother, your fucking brother... sitting there with his little quarter zip sweater that ACTUALLY fits him. The idiot ran thirteen miles that morning. On Thanksgiving. Who does that? Who the fuck gets up at four in the morning to run on a holiday so he can sit down to dinner and not have a stomach?”

“Oh, David has always been into fitness.” Dustin lifts a crouton out of the dressing and eats it. “I’m into fitness too, though, a different kind. More of a maintenance approach. Dr. Waters says my resting heart rate is excellent.”

She looks at him until he looks back at the trains on TV.

“All you do is rest and David has always been into David. He’s got a handsome face and he knows it, turns his fucking head at the table like he’s waiting for someone to paint him. When he laughs, your mother looks at him like he is the second coming. He told a story about work, and your father put his fork down to listen to him. You’ve never even put your fork down for you.”

“He’s my brother, Sabrina.”

“He’s a Ken doll that can talk, and then there is her….”

“Victoria?”

“Victoria.” Sabrina closes her eyes. “Walks in with her hair down, like it just falls that way. Nobody’s hair does that! She asked me how I was doing and listened to my whole answer. Looked at me and waited. Who raised her? Who raises a woman to be like that?”

“She’s nice.”

“No. Nobody is that nice. One of these days she is going to snap and kill everyone at that table, and I will be the only one that isn’t surprised.”

“I don’t think that’ll ever happen.”

“I pray that it does. I pray her face falls off in the shower. I pray David’s hair falls out all at once, overnight, and he wakes up looking like your father, and Victoria rolls over and screams.” She finishes the warm beer. “And Christl comes around the table and offers the turkey leg to her.”

“It is the best part of the turkey!”

“It is the part you give a caveman, DUSTIN! And their kid. Sitting there with blond hair and big blue eyes, saying please and thank you Oma. That damned child looks like he came from a catalog. Everyone looking at it like it came down from heaven on a string. Then there is ours, under the table, a dinner roll in each hand.”

“He was six, Sabrina.”

“He looked like a fat little foreman. He looked like David’s kid’s accountant.”

“I’m a better dancer than David’s kids though!” Marshall cries.

“David’s kid doesn’t dance, he’s got better shit to do than stand in a living room begging people to clap. People already like him, Marshall!”

“I have eleven trophies!” He points at the shelf. “David’s kid has none!”

“Everybody got those trophies. Now be quiet, I need five minutes to hear this,” Sabrina says, turning back to the laptop. “It’s for work. Keep that shit down.”

Marshall looks at his tablet and pushes the volume slider all the way to the right and starts acting out The Phoenix again.

“Marshall,” Dustin says. “She asked you to keep it down.”

“She talked through mine!”

“You have done it SIX times,” Sabrina says.

“Then… you should know when to clap, Mom!”

Dustin reaches over and lowers the volume, Marshall snatches it and holds it against his chest.

“THAT is not allowed. Ms. Tanya says you have to respect the performer!”

He waits until Dustin has picked up his spoon, then turns the volume back up. He holds his arm in the air and watches Sabrina over the tablet. Dustin sets his spoon on the rim of the bowl. “I didn’t call him, Sabrina. The wrestling guy.”

“I fucking know that. You can’t call Round Table without writing the damned order down first. So who called? My father is the only Mr. Landerford I’ve ever met and he didn’t want me home. Nobody’s ever wanted me home. It’s the one thing everyone agrees on!”

She lets the clip play without sound and watches Drakkon’s mouth move. “He never even said who he was. Does he work there? He fires me on Monday and on Wednesday I get an email that I’m booked for a match. So either he never had the authority or this company is run by whoever gets to the building first. Your mom would love him.”

Dustin wipes his fingers on the arm of the recliner. “Maybe you should be glad you still have the job? Honestly honey, it’s been kind of nice having you home. Marshall seems real happy. And I’ve been thinking, if you’re home, we could start walking together in the evenings. Dr. Waters says it’s good for couples. And this weekend we could drive out to Portola and see the-”

“If you say train I will put this laptop through your fat fucking face.”

“...the depot,” he says quietly.

“A man stood in front of thousands of people and told ME, to go home and cook for YOU. Look at you Dustin. Look at your body. Do you look like a man that needs someone to cook for him? You look like a man that is on a watch list at Costco.”

“That’s not fair, I’m down two pounds this month.”

“You ate fourteen fuckin’ satay at your cousin’s wedding. That is a football amount of pork.”

Behind her the violins start over again. Marshall is crouched down low on the rug with his arms spread out at his sides. He rises, it takes a while, halfway up he has to put a hand on the coffee table. He’s breathing through his mouth.

“For fuck sake, Marshall. That is not a phoenix, a phoenix doesn’t need fucking furniture to get up, it is just a fat kid getting off the floor.”

Marshall’s lower lip moves. His chin starts to quiver and his whole face folds in on itself, and he begins to cry.

“You never say I’m good! Oma Christl says I am. Dad says. Miss Tanya says! Everybody but YOU! Dad tell her!”

“Then… go live with them.”

Dustin heaves himself out of the recliner. “Buddy, come here. Do you want some croutons?”

Marshall goes to him and takes a crouton out of the dressing with his fingers and eats it as he sobs, and then takes another one.

“See,” Sabrina says. “That’s the whole problem, right here. Little shit cries and you feed him. You have built a little machine. Kid has trophies and he’s never earned one of them. Somebody has to tell him and it ain’t gonna be Miss fucking Tanya.”

Marshall wails into his father’s shoulder while Dustin says, “Shh. shh.” and eats a crouton over the boy’s head. Sabrina closes the Drakkon clip and opens her email. The booking is there with no explanation or apology. Sabrina Landerford versus Zolothach. Attached is a link to a FaceTwatter Live video. She grabs another beer, cracks it open and clicks it.

A woman sits at a bar, she has a Coke in front of her and a full glass of sake. She is talking about her childhood. Sabrina gives it about forty seconds until she drags the bar forward. Now the woman is talking about killing people, and about several states.

“Jesus Christ. Twelve? Pick one, lady.”

Marshall’s crying behind her has weakened to hiccups. Dustin gets up out of the recliner, after three attempts and makes the sound of a garbage truck backing up. He comes over and stands behind her with the ‘salad’ bowl still in his hands, so close she can smell the dressing on his breath. Marshall comes and stands on the other side, wiping his nose on the back of his wrist, so that she is flanked.

“Who’s that? What is she talking about?”

“My next opponent. A murderer, Dustin. She kills people, been in a mental institution, she’s got a whole speech about it.”

“Is she a bad guy?” Marshall asks, as he puts his hand flat on the trackpad, the video jumps forward.

“Get your sticky fucking fingers off my computer.”

“I just wanted to see…”

“You wanted to touch. You always want to touch. You touch everything, and everything you touch is wet afterward. You just wiped your snot nose on your arm and then you put your arm on my laptop. Go wash your hands. Twice. Go wash your whole face while you’re in there, it’s a fucking crime scene.”

He doesn’t go. Neither of them leave.

“Why isn’t she drinking the sake?”

“It’s keeping her company… she says.”

Dustin looks over at the empty cans lined up near Sabrina’s elbow. “That’s kind of sad. Smart, though, alcohol is just empty calories.”

“Says the fat sack holding a bowl of mayonnaise. It’s sad as shit is what it is. She’s bought a drink to drink with.” Sabrina looks at the woman’s face on the monitor. “Look at her. She looks like a missing persons poster that got rained all over.”

“Sabrina…”

“What?! She can’t hear me. She’s in a bar talking to her phone, dude.”

On the screen a big man in a red ball cap sits down next to Zolothach. He tells her she isn’t very pretty but she probably makes up for it in bed, he takes her friendly sake and drinks it.

“Oh, this one is a piece of shit.”

They watch. The man calls her butter and Dustin mutters in the background that butter is not too bad for you like they used to say, then goes back to his dressing.

The woman begins to whisper, Sabrina can’t really make it out. Her eyes turn green and she does some weird thing to the man and tells him whenever he becomes aroused it’ll hurt worse than anything he’s ever felt, while undoing her own blouse. The man leans in then screams and folds in half. Sabrina stops the video, then rewinds it and watches again. Dustin is still behind her, chewing on a crouton.

She turns the chair slowly, and looks at Dustin. Then she looks down at his crotch, then back at his face. “Dustin.”

“What?”

“When did your dick stop working?”

He stops chewing. On the rug Marshall has a pen light aimed at the ceiling. “Mom, look, I’m a witch too! Look. Mom. Mom. MOM.”

“Sabrina,” Dustin hisses. “Marshall is right there!”

“Marshall is always right there, that is the whole fucking problem with Marshall. Answer the question.”

Dustin glances at Marshall, who is now waving the light in circles and humming. He lowers his voice to a whisper. “I don’t know five years? Six? Dr. Waters says it’s probably vascular and it’s connected to my blood pressure, the lisinopril can sometimes… but other than that I am in very good health. I guess it was twenty nineteen, maybe.”

“And where were you then?”

“Here.”

“Did you go to any bars?”

“I went to Chili’s…”

“Did you ever meet a woman with a face like a wet paper sack whose eyes lit up?”

“No.”

“Would you remember?”

Dustin opens his mouth, thinking about it. “I’d hope so.”

Sabrina turns back to the screen and looks at the man in the red cap lying on the floor of the bar. She looks at Zolothach buttoning up her blouse ordering another sake.

“It was her. Six years. Six years I thought you were broken, like the garbage disposal. I thought it was just one more damned awful thing about you. Your knees, your back, your feet, your sinuses, your gout, your dick.” She turns the laptop towards him so he can see the woman’s face. “And it isn’t you at all. That woman did something to you.”

“...Sabrina. She didn’t do anything to me, I’ve never met her, ever. I would remember. And it’s not gout, it was one flare up.”

She takes a drink, emptying her warm beer and sets it down hard.

“I bet your brother doesn’t have that issue. And… fucking HOW? How are you two even related? Same mom. Same dad, same house, same food. She must have made you, looked at you and decided to try again.”

“That isn’t why people have second kids, Sabrina.”

“Oh but it is. I have seen the baby pictures, Dustin. David is a normal cute baby, you are a ham in a bonnet. You both had the same chances at life.”

“We just have different body types…”

“Yeah… he uses his.”

Dustin sets his bowl down on the table. “Listen, Sabrina, her curse makes it hurt when a guy gets one, mine is I don’t. Those are two different problems.”

She looks at him. “If you say two different problems to me one more damned time I swear I will strangle you with your own stupid ass train documentary.”

“Sabrina. I am just saying, it doesn’t add up because it’s not the same symptom, it is actually the opposite. Dr. Waters showed me a pamphlet…”

“Dustin. For ONCE in fourteen years I am in a good mood. Let me have it. Do not explain your fucking penile problems to me. I have seen it. There ain’t much to explain.”

Marshall comes running back over with the pen light and shines it directly on the laptop screen onto Zolothach’s face. “Is Dad cursed? Like a mummy?”

“Exactly like a fucking mummy.”

Marshall’s shirt has ridden up over his stomach. “Can she make me better at dancing?”

“What? No. She is a witch, not God. And God already looked at you and fucking hard passed. You are beyond mortal powers to help.”

Marshall’s face starts to go into cry mode again. He throws his head back and howls at the ceiling, eyes squeezed shut as far as he can get them, the pen light clutched in his fist shining up his own nose.

“WHY ARE YOU SO MEAN TO ME?”

“Isn’t it obvious? You are standing right next to me. Go stand somewhere else, far away from me and I’ll be mean to a wall instead.”

“I’M TELLING OMA!”

“Like I care. Tell her I said you dance like a dropped casserole. Use those exact words. She’ll probably know what I mean, because she has seen you.”

“Sabrina, that’s enough,” Dustin says, then adds, “He’s improved a lot and my mom doesn’t need to be brought into this. You could be-”

Marshall sits down on the rug where he stands and begins crying with his whole body. Dustin walks over and lowers himself down to him, in stages, and pats him on the back saying ‘hey, hey, hey, it’s okay’.

Sabrina stands up, walks over to the fridge to grab another beer. Chugs it, waiting for it to be over. When it is over, Marshall looks up at her with a red wet face and says, “Can I show you the Phoenix one more time?”

“Fuck. No.”

He shakes his head and runs down the hall, still crying, with the tablet clutched to his chest. His bedroom door slams. A moment later the violins begin again, loud enough to hear from the kitchen. Dustin stands back up.

“Doesn’t it bother you,” he says, a little out of breath, “that you think a woman cursed your husband? I mean it should, at least a little.”

“Does. It. Bother. Me. What? It is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for this marriage.”

She plays the video again from the curse and watches Zolothach’s face when the man falls to the floor. She’s not smiling, she’s got the face of a woman that fixed a broken thing.

“I love her,” Sabrina says.

Dustin chokes on a crouton.

“Not like that, moron. I married you, I clearly don’t know shit about what I want.”

She keeps watching the video. “Dustin. Go deal with that snivelling little shit of a monster you created. I have to figure out the FaceTwatter thing so I can reply to this woman.”

Dustin looks at her, he coughs up the crouton into a napkin and inspects it. “I guess I should, you were pretty mean to him. He’s probably calling my mom, you know? Which means she’ll want to FaceTime with us later…”

“Piss. Off. Go to bed.”

In the morning there is a strawberry Pop-Tart sitting on a paper towel at Dustin’s spot at the table. Sabrina is at the counter with a can of Busch Light. There is another can crushed beside the toaster. Dustin walks in wearing a robe with the Orient Express logo on the pocket, his hair is flat on one side. He is looking down at his phone.

“Seven hours and twelve minutes,” he says. “Sleep score of eighty-one, that’s good…”

“Hello, Dustin.”

He stops cold in the doorway while Sabrina finishes her beer.

“You said… hello?”

“Yeah. I know what I said.”

He walks in slowly, he looks at the Pop-Tart then the beer can and shakes his head. He sits down in front of the Pop-Tart and picks it up.

“It’s not toasted or buttered.”

“Do you want me to chew it for you? Chew it up and spit it in your mouth like a little baby bird? Eat it for fucks sake.”

“No. No. No, it’s really good. This is nice, honey.” He takes a bite, reading the side of the box. “Strawberry is actually a real fruit, so… but they come two in a pack, though. Where is the other one?”

“I ate it.” She tips the can toward him. “With my first beer.”

He finishes the Pop-Tart and folds the paper towel into a square. Then gets up and comes around the table, Sabrina understands, with real horror, he is going to attempt to kiss her on the cheek. She puts a flat hand against his chest and holds him at arm’s length.

“Do not fucking push it. You are cursed, for all I know it is contagious.”

“You smell like a brewery,” he says.

From down the hall comes the thud of Marshall landing on the floor in a succession of thumps, then the sound of violins…

“MOM! MOM! MOM! MOM! I ADDED A NEW ENDING! IT’S A WITCH! I’M THE WITCH NOW! COME WATCH MEEEEEE! YOU GOTTA COME WATCH OR IT DOESN’T COUNT!”

Sabrina closes her eyes. “Eight minutes. I have been nice for eight minutes, and that fat little shit just had to go add an extra ending.”

“MOM! MOM! ARE YOU COMING? IF YOU DON’T IT MEANS YOU DON’T LOVE ME!”

She doesn’t move or say anything.

“Jesus, Sabrina,” Dustin says.

“What?! Kid set it up, I only answered it. Go deal with it.”

She opens up the fridge and takes out another two beers and carries them to the table, and sits back down at the table, cracks one and opens the laptop. Dustin goes to Marshall’s room.

Sabrina looks into the laptop camera, just as awkward as a DMV photo. She downs her beer.

“Tabitha Osborne. Zolotwat. Tabs. Whatever you decide to go by today. I saw your video. Well… I mean, I watched some of it. I skipped the childhood shit, who fuckin’ cares? We all got one. I skipped most of the murders too, and really, you need an editor. Lady, twelve states? By the eighth one I was ready to kill myself. BUT, I watched the part with the douche in the hat.”

She cracks the other beer and takes a long swig.

“I want to thank you. But, before you say anything, yeah, it’s seven-thirty in the morning and I am in fact on my fourth beer… come live here for two days. You’d be drinking booze out the gutter by the end of the first day.”

She takes a long drink of her beer, then lets out a burp.

“I don’t know when you met my husband, really don’t give a shit. He said he’s never been to a bar without a children’s menu, so it probably was an Applebee’s or Chili’s. Maybe he said something to you, the idiot says a lot of things to strangers. I understand, entirely, and frankly I am surprised all you did was curse him.”

“I have never met her,” Dustin says from the fridge.

“He is obviously in denial. That is probably part of it. For six whole years I thought I had married a defective fat ass cuck. Now I know I only married a cursed one. Massive step up. A cursed man has a whole story. A defective cuck is just Dustin. You have done more for my marriage than my mother, his mother, our pastor, and my therapist combined. I said hello to him this morning after actually making him breakfast. I haven’t told him to get out of my face, you fat fuck, in nearly fifteen minutes. That’s you. You did that for me.”

She picks up the can, shakes it. Nothing left so she tosses it behind her, hitting Dustin.

“But, Tabby… I am worried about you, to be honest. Girl, you ordered a drink for company. You know how that looks? Get a fucking cat. It can be a dead cat. It can be one of those taxidermy ones with glass eyes if you can stand looking at it. But girl, a glass of sake ain’t a person. Also, really… you look like something that was pulled from the lake. You look like the before picture in a true crime special. Girl, moisturize, get a hairbrush. Your ass walks into a room and peeps start checking the exits.”

She goes to the fridge to grab yet another beer.

“While I got ya. Do you take requests? I got a brother-in-law and his annoying ass wife, actually I have a whole list. You mind if we talk after Thanksgiving? Because we got a match. I need to be sure you don’t take my thank you for nothing else. Last Monday… a man I have never heard of told everybody in the arena and watching at home that I belonged at… home. Well, I have been home for a couple days, Tabs. You can probably hear my kid crying and throwing his body at the floor in a sequined vest, leggings and Crocs calling himself a witch. You probably see my husband, behind me, eating shredded cheese from the bag while he tells me it is mostly protein. I have spent almost forty-eight hours in this house doing exactly what that rent-a-boss motherfucker Drakkon Rikesean thinks I should, and I want to murder every person here.”

She shrugs.

“I can’t. So I’m going to take it out on you.”

Dustin’s arm appears at the corner of the frame, reaching past her.

“I heard you, you are the monster that wins? I also watched Sadie prove you wrong there, but I’ve seen lots of movies. You know why the monster wins? Everyone in the movie is an idiot. They go check the noise, split up, go back for the dog, go back for each other, morons.”

She points at the hallway without looking.

“Ha. If some monster came to my front door, I would hand it my son and go out the back door. Wouldn’t even think about it, wouldn’t even feel bad. I’d stop for gas and a cheeseburger. That’s who lives, the girl that doesn’t give a fucking shit about who’s behind her.”

“Sabrina,” Dustin says.

“That tub of pudding behind me would go too, second. He’s slower and more of him. You are violent and crazy, fine. You talk to booze and it probably tells you shit. People tell me nothing, I found out from a stranger supposedly my boss I’d been fired, and I found out from FaceTwatter my husband’s dick was cursed. I’m real used to people who don’t make sense. Curse me if you want. Make my eyes bleed, make my teeth fall out. I’m married to Dustin. My kid thinks pointing an arm out and looking like a fuckin’ full sized ham is choreography. You can’t make my life any worse, sweetheart, Tab Tabs…”

Behind her, Marshall walks into the kitchen, his face blotched red and shining.

“Mom. Is that the witch? Can she watch my new ending? I made it for her. It’s called The Curse. I’ll bring my trophy so she knows I’m real good! Mom. Mom. Can she watch?”

Sabrina ignores him.

“Tabs, if you’d like to know what REAL suffering looks like… I’ll send you the video.”

“It’s like less than two minutes,” Marshall tells the laptop, leaning in so close his breath fogs over the camera. He holds up a trophy beside his face. “Hi! It’s real short! I got this trophy for my shining spirit!”

“Yeah… less than two minutes that will FEEL like twelve of your states, Tab Tab. See you on Vanguard. And, if you see that ignorant fucking cock wart Drakkon before I do, be sure to tell him I tried the housewife thing. It was unbearable, and now… I’ll go back to beating the shit out of people. You first, Tabby.”

She pauses and looks at her own reflection on the monitor screen. Then to Marshall and Dustin.

“Now. Get OUT of my face you fat fucks.”