Yellow Grass

by Carly Storm Bortman

He was the kind of man who was always moist. It was summer now, and therefore socially acceptable to sweat, but there were always two dark rings under his armpits, even in the coldest part of winter. His wife forced him to avoid wearing pastels; gray, of course, was also strictly forbidden. She was embarrassed to be seen with him at the grocery store because his sweat dripped on the produce; it would spoil the tomatoes, and the carrots, and sometimes even an apple or two. She made her husband wait outside while she paid. She always paid for the wet produce and Steven, the kid at the register, always pretended not to notice. Today, he seemed particularly bashful and pubescent.

“Good morning,” he said nervously, his hand reaching shakily for an apple. It was too sweaty for him to get a grip. Steven apologized profusely, eyes bouncing around, lanky body hunched over the conveyor belt.

“Mornin’, Mister Steve,” she said, pulling a tissue out of her purse. She wiped the apple like a baby’s bottom, giving it a good smack on the ass before setting it down on the scale in front of him. “You mind throwing this here tissue out, hon?”

“Oh, of course not,” he stammered, gently plucking the sopping tissue from her hand. He managed to ring up the rest of the produce without dropping any more fruit. “How’s your husband these days?” he asked, handing her a thin receipt. The question squirted out of him like lemon juice.

His wife smiled. “He’s doin’ just fine, Mister Steve. Some days are, of course, better than some others, you know how that goes. We’re all just shufflin’ long til we die, ain’t we?” She cackled.

Steven nodded solemnly. “Of course,” he said, and they exchanged goodbyes. He promised to say hi to his mother for her.

Meanwhile, her husband was waiting, a puddle collecting on the sidewalk beneath him. He was watching people park their cars in front of the market and thinking about his daughter, who was trying to be an actress in New York City. His wife said people didn’t even need cars in New York City because they just took trains or taxis everywhere. He hadn’t asked his daughter to confirm. They hadn’t talked in a while.

His wife came out of the market and smiled again, all sweet and close-lipped. “Well, we best be gettin’ on home,” she said, taking his moist hand. They began to walk towards the trailer park when she stopped to look at what he was wearing. She scolded him, gently, but also firmly, like that slap on a baby’s ass.

“Hon, what have I told you about wearing gray?” He shrugged, thinking about how long it would take them to get from here to New York City.

Later that day, while he was out buying cigarettes, his wife snuck into their bedroom and opened his dresser. She chewed her bubblegum very, very quietly, like a spy. Carefully, she removed all of the gray from his T-shirt drawer. She put it in a trash bag and buried it in the backyard, which wasn’t really a backyard but rather a little patch of yellow grass between their trailer park and the McDonald’s off I-93.

He came home later that afternoon with three packs of cigarettes. The apple from the market sat with the other produce in a big wooden bowl on the kitchen table. She was making a casserole, which was difficult because she had gotten her nails done the day before. The nails kept falling into the bowl and mixing with the mushroom soup and the green beans and the little crispy things. She was angry because the Korean woman at the salon had assured her that these were acrylics of “very, very good quality.”

“And they’re not!” she spat, sifting through the casserole with her pinky finger. “They’re cheap as hell, I tell ya, I’m never going to those damn Orientals again, they probably can’t even see through their eyes when they glue on the nail! Hon, you listenin’?”

He was listening. He was also sweating, sitting on a lawn chair at the kitchen table. His forehead glistened and he was breathing heavily, staring at a picture of his friend Pete on the refrigerator. Pete died a few years ago from a heart attack; their daughter had left a few months after that. She used to plead with him as he lie in bed, sweating. “Dad,” she would say, “Dad, it’s been months since the funeral, please, it’s beautiful out, Dad, please you have to get up, you’re going to drown in your own goddamn sweat.” He wouldn’t answer her. Instead he would stare at the wall, thinking about nothing in particular. He had ruined all of his sheets by just lying there, perspiring.

“I think I need to change my shirt,” he said suddenly to his wife, fanning himself with a magazine.

“Well then, change it yourself, I’m makin’ casserole, you know I got gravy hands.”

He looked at the picture, again thinking about nothing in particular. “But not gravy fingers?”

She chuckled. “Well, I s’pose I got gravy fingers, but I don’t got gravy nails, they’re in this here casserole.”

“Right, of course.”

When he got up he left another puddle on the chair. His wife sighed, sliding the casserole dish into the oven. She looked at the picture of Pete on the refrigerator, then popped a piece of gum in her mouth.

“Babe?” he called from the bedroom, which was actually just an extension of their kitchen. They had traded their big trailer for a smaller, more humble one after their daughter had left home.

She couldn’t answer because she was blowing a very big bubble with her bubble gum. When it popped she smacked her lips together. The casserole clock chugged away.

“Yeah?” She decided to cover the picture with a takeout menu (Chinese food, mostly sweaty lo-mein).

“I can’t seem to find that T-shirt Pete gave me.”

“Hon, just wear a different shirt then, whaddya even talking about, this thing with Pete and the shirt?”

“He gave me a gray T-shirt for my birthday a while ago and I want to wear it cuz it’s lucky.”

She threw her bubble gum out the window. “Lucky my ass!” she screeched. “You, sir, ain’t ever gonna get lucky if you don’t stop drip- pin’ sweat all over my mother’s carpet.”

She started to feel nervous that he was catching on to the fact that she had buried all of his gray. She got another piece of gum from her purse and popped it in her mouth.

“Babe . . .”

“Hon,” she begged, “please go change already, I gotta put my nails back on.”

“If I don’t wear Pete’s shirt . . .”

“Yeah? What’ll happen, huh? What’ll happen if you don’t wear Pete’s shirt?”

He didn’t answer. She slammed the oven door shut, put her hands on her hips, and looked at him. “I buried it, aight?” She smacked her lips again. “I buried all of your gray in the backyard, under the yellow grass in the back by Margie and Tom’s place. You sweat so damn much and it’s embarrassing for me, it’s embarrassing, when we go to the market and things, and people notice it more when you’re wearing gray, and if we’re ever going to go visit goddamn New York City to see our goddamn daughter then you need to throw it all away now! You’ve had it for too long.”

He looked at her, his forehead glistening. The trailer was silent except for the slow tick of the casserole clock.

“How could you do this to me?” he whispered.

“Do what, I did nothin’, I did ya a favor.” She had the glue out and was carefully re-attaching a thumbnail. She paused and looked at him. “Hon, don’t be mad,” she said, softer now (soft, apple-flesh-and- baby’s-butt soft). “It’s casserole night, you can’t be mad on casserole night.”

“I am,” he said, “dammit I am mad, I am mad on casserole night!”

“I did it for your own good.”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he ripped off his soaked T-shirt, threw it to the ground, and marched over to the nightstand. He picked up a pill bottle and studied the label.

“These are old,” he declared angrily, his sweaty brow furrowed. “I know, they were for the cat before it got hit by that delivery

man. Throw ’em away if you want.” “How many years ago was that?”

“I don’t know, hon, it was a long time ago.”

He didn’t answer again. The casserole clock was steadily approaching completion. She noticed his stomach had gotten fatter since she had last seen him naked, which was about six months ago. She demanded that he be fully clothed whenever they had sex, which was also about six months ago.

He finally put the pill bottle down and looked up at her. “I’m getting my gray.”

“Hon, please, it’s buried in the backyard, for Christ’s sake just let it be!”

“Pete’s shirt is lucky and I have to dig it up.” The casserole clock chimed, exasperated.

“Look hon, I—I’m very busy right now, and frankly I don’t give a damn no more what you do. I tried to help you but if you need gray, if you want that gray in your life so bad, then go dig it up from the damn backyard, I don’t give a shit.”

He walked to the trailer door. “I’ll be back for dinner,” he mut- tered, putting a cigarette between his lips, and left. The fruit in the bowl shook as the door slammed. He grabbed the rusty shovel on the ground by the grill. They used to make cheeseburgers on that grill for family dinner every Wednesday night until one time, when she was on the phone, the whole damn thing caught fire. He lit his cigarette, staring at the charred mess, then marched over to the patch of yellow grass.

It was excruciatingly humid despite the fact that the sun would be setting soon. He was sweating, his entire body drenched in perspiration, as he slowly and painfully dug up the gray. It took longer than he thought it would—many times he questioned why he was doing it at all—but then he would remember Pete’s shirt, and how lucky it was, and how much he wanted to feel it again on his body as a part of him, again. A few years ago all he ever wore was gray and for that reason alone he couldn’t stand to keep it all buried under a patch of yellow grass. Fuck his daughter and his wife and Steven from the supermarket for being so goddamn concerned.

The sun began to set and the planet began to cool. He kept dig- ging. He could hear his neighbors in their homes; some were cooking dinner, others had already turned on Jeopardy. Margie and Tom were making love on the checkered sofa. He could hear her wailing as he plowed into her, and then the aching silence. They always read the paper after sex; it comforted him to see her bedside lamp flick on through the trailer window. The air smelled of cigarettes and apple pie and nakedness.

Finally, he saw the plastic. The trash bag was lodged deep in the earth, a cadaver covered in soil. He looked at it for a long time, think- ing about how his gray was sitting, waiting, so far beneath the surface. If he really wanted to, he could probably ask Tom for his really big shovel—the one he used for his fancy new construction job—and with that, sure, he could very easily retrieve his gray and bring it home. But that was so much effort, and he didn’t want to burden Tom, and he was so tired. He was the kind of tired that made living seem impossi- bly distant, like the faraway land of New York City. He didn’t want to carry that heavy trash bag all the way home. He had no idea how his wife had managed. He decided that, for tonight, it was best to leave the gray in the ground; he could get Pete’s shirt another time.

He walked back to the trailer. She was sitting at the kitchen table, chewing her bubble gum and reading the magazine that was previously a fan.

“Hon,” she said, surprised he had come back empty-handed. “Where is it, where’s all the gray?”

He shrugged. “I decided I didn’t want to carry it home.”

She nodded slowly. A pause. “Do you want some casserole?” she offered, twirling a strand of hair.

“Sure.”

She went to the refrigerator and poured two glasses of lemon- ade. Then she cut a piece of casserole for him, dropped it on a plate, and put it on the table. She served herself before sitting down across from him.

She raised her glass of lemonade in the air. “To casserole night, right, hon?” He clinked glasses with her. “To casserole night.”

They ate their dinner in silence. A picture of lo-mein eclipsed their dead friend Pete on the refrigerator. Their daughter was living in New York City. They drank lemonade.