Crumbs

A muffin crumb sat on her collar and bounced every time she coughed. He couldn’t take his eyes off it. They’d been across from each other, facing each other, knee to knee, on Metro North for twenty-seven minutes already.

He, Joe, also couldn’t write the memo he’d been meaning to this morning and it was due at noon. But she, and her crumb, managed to get through at least a chapter of that trashy paperback with the shirtless beau-hunk riding bareback on the cover. The damsel, gripped by said beau-hunk and draped over said horse, looked ready to swoon, what with her hand brought to her forehead like that.

The blank laptop screen cast Joe’s face in a sickly glow.

And that crumb…

Earlier this morning, his wife, Lanie, had served frozen waffles. Even to him. And he hated frozen waffles. She got up just long enough to put eight of them in the toaster oven and dole out two each to Joe and the kids before trudging back upstairs to shower. No, not shower. To crawl back in bed and sleep until lunch, which is what she did most days now.

“You look righteous, L,” he'd told her every single morning, including this one. “So, hot. So, beautiful.”

Early on, Lanie smiled a little at Joe’s compliments. After a few months, she issued nondescript flat-lipped smirks. After a few years, an eye roll. Recently, maybe a grunt or a shudder. This morning, Eggos cooked dog-biscuit hard and served with a Frisbee toss.

“I mean, so hot. Your body just doesn’t stop! ”

He still meant the compliments, or at least thought they helped. Maybe helped combat her depression or exhaustion or post-partum somethin’ somethin’ or low iron or thyroid issues or any combination there of. He asked her just this morning what was brewing in that pretty little head of hers, and she finally flat out told him: “I’m fine. I just can’t stand you or the kids. You’re all jerks.” She leaned into her hip and picked a cuticle. “I kept thinking each time you knocked me up, ‘oh! Maybe I’ll like this one,’ but no. Every kid was worse than the last. All three of them just suck. Honestly. You bore me. All of you. I’m done.”

As Lanie had said this, she munched the only waffle crust on the table that didn’t have syrup on it and a crumb landed on her pajama collar. When she'd said the word jerks, Lanie had thrown her arms up in the air for emphasis. To show she’d flat out given up. Then her arms dropped to her sides with a slap. The slap had made Lanie’s waffle crumb dance, just like the crumb dancing now on this woman’s polyester lapel. This woman’s cheap spongy collar with the stubborn coffee stain just to the left of where her crumb jiggled, anchored by synthetic fibers. Fibers acting as a five-point harness for the only full-on-carb not sucked into her neon-pink lipstick-lined maw.

Lanie, had never like children. “They’re short, neurotic creeps who cry and scream all the time. Like my Aunt Beverly, but louder and shorter. Sometimes fatter but always more stupid. And they smell.”

But loud, short Aunt Beverly drew up her willwhen Joe knocked up Lanie the first time. And the will said her niece’s kids could have her money. All of it. Nothing for her niece. Definitely nothing her niece’s husband.

Aunt Beverly was the heir to the Velcro fortune. She wore lots of bling, some of which fastened itself around her thick neck, fingers and wrists with actual Velcro. And Joe understood that what rattled Lanie most was that Aunt Beverly knew she held all the cards.

Lanie didn’t have a job. She tried one once and it didn’t stick. She rarely showed and when she did, co-workers hated the sound of her voice.

Joe held a job, mostly to get away from his righteous, sleeping wife.

And the kids? The kids just needed to be plied with frozen waffles, to be kept alive until Aunt Beverly died. Then maybe they could use that inheritance to hire their own nanny. To hire someone to love them. Lanie could at least keep them alive long enough for that. Maybe. Making breakfast was hard. Sometimes the dial on the toaster oven stuck and things burned. But the toaster oven needed to last because Aunt Beverly really wasn’t that old. Or sick.

About a month ago, Aunt Beverly discovered Weight Watchers. The lifestyle lessons featured at the meetings really resonated with her. “Frozen waffles are empty calories, Lanie. Empty. I have three, sweet-but-savory slow-cooker porridges that will set them up right for the day ahead. Your children look like lump crab. With the right start, they’ll glow. They’ll have enough energy to tackle any challenges thrown their way. Or at least enough oomph to stand, or crack a book.” Aunt Beverly dropped five pounds in the first two weeks.

Joe thought she looked pretty good when she stopped by most Sundays.

Lanie thought Aunt Beverly looked a little too healthy and considered sprinkling arsenic on her pressed fruit snack bars.

The garbled announcement startled Joe. The doors behind him slid shut and the train jerked to life again.

“You’ve got a crumb. Right…right there by that stain,” Joe said to the woman across from him.

“Huh?” She looked down at her slightly larger boob.

“No, up. Right there.”

“Huh?” She looked at him, confused. Lipstick covered her front teeth now. Then she followed his finger to the collar flat against her left clavicle. “Oh!” Her smile flashed pink and white zebra stripes. “Thank you.” Their eyes met. Joe shook his head in disgust. Her smile dissolved into an uneasy frown. “What’s the matter with you? You okay or not?”

“Not,” he said and closed his laptop. Joe spoke quietly. “It’s my wife. I hate her. I mean, I really, really hate her. I’m not just saying that.”

The woman ran her tongue over her teeth, hard, scraping off 70% of the lipstick while she bent to pick up her purse, her paperback and leave. She moved without nodding goodbye and took another seat five rows back.

Joe kept talking to the space where the woman had been. In particular, to the space where the muffin crumb had been. “Even if Lanie does poison Aunt Beverly and actually gets away with it—I still have to live with her. The kids still have to live with her. None of the money will go to me.” He laughed out loud. The woman peered over five rows of bowed, phone-reading heads to keep an eye on him. “I’ll still be stuck. Maybe more stuck.”

The woman called the on-board ticket agent over, whispered, pointed.

Joe continued talking. “She’s such a bitch. And a lousy mother.” He re-crossed his legs and picked at one of the scabs on his forehead.

Other people around him started to move away. Joe didn’t notice. He pictured that crumb still bouncing on that polyester lapel. Except now the crumb had arms and legs. It wore glasses that made it look smart, and an earnest expression that made it look concerned. The crumb took notes.

“She always thought we were jerks. It’s so obvious now! If Lanie fucking loved us at all, she’d make real waffles. With homemade batter and one of those irons, ya know?”

The crumb nodded and asked, “And how does this make you feel?”

“I feel duped!” Joe screamed. The ticket agent spoke quietly into her walkie. “Lanie’s a babe, but one day she’ll be old and ugly, right? I should go. I should just take the kids and go away.”

“Is that prudent?” asked the crumb, re-crossing its legs, leaning back in its ergonomic office chair.

“Well, I can’t sit around waiting for Aunt Beverly to die!”

“Nobody is telling you to do that.” Where did the crumb get the bottle of sparkling water? “There are other options that we can discuss. For now, take a deep breath. Go to your happy place like we practiced. Calm yourself.”

“Me? Calm myself? You calm yourself, you fuckin’--”

“Sir?” The Ticket agent approached, flanked by two armed men in civilian clothes. “Sir, you need to come with us.”

“Huh?” Joe didn’t realize he’d been crying, his face flushed and ruddy. “Why? What up, officer?”

“Just please come with us, sir.”

“Don’t worry, Joe. I’ll make some calls.” The crumb turned back to its desk and reached for its phone. “In the meantime, I can prescribe a little something to help.”

“Yeah, okay. Okay,” Joe mumbled both to the crumb and the men escorting him down the aisle towards the first car.

At home, Lanie snored and shifted under her skunky, unwashed comforter. The dial on the toaster oven downstairs? Stuck. Waffle crumbs charred and smoked beneath the reversible wire wrack.

At the Weight Watchers meeting, Aunt Beverly nodded in agreement. The moderator’s idea that weight loss lead to empowerment really turned her on. So, she tucked the uneaten half of that pressed-fruit snack bar into her purse and brushed the crumbs off her sweater vest.

The End