A Splash of Color

“I forgot what I remembered to tell you,” Lauretta said to Ben as she unpacked groceries from the brown paper bag on the kitchen counter.

“Excuse me?” her husband asked without looking up from the sports section of the newspaper.

“As I was leaving the grocery store, I remembered something that I'd forgotten to tell you, and I meant to tell you as soon as I got home. But now that I'm home, I forgot what it was.” The classical radio station was playing a light, airy piece by Vivaldi, creating the impression of a lush green meadow with a nearby lake on which overdressed people were boating.

“It'll come back,” Ben told her, engrossed in an article about the previous day's baseball game in which his home team was slaughtered.

“Not after it went away,” Lauretta said.  It rarely comes back after it goes away.”

Lauretta's handsome, high-cheekboned face registered frustration as she took two fist-size heirloom tomatoes from the bag, one in each hand, and placed them in the empty fruit compartment of the side-by-side refrigerator. In her off-white sweater dress, the honey-blonde homemaker blended in with her utilitarian kitchen, almost disappearing into its washed-out palette.

“Did it have anything to do with Daniel, or Dartmouth?” Ben asked.

“I told you I don't recall.”

“No,” he corrected her. “ You told me you forgot what you recalled. So you did recall at a certain point.”

“Well, not at this point,” Lauretta said, grabbing a package of lean ground beef with such force that her fingerprints became etched in it.

“Did something at the store bother you? Was there an unpleasant encounter at the counter?”

“No”, she said. A few strands of hair fell over her eyes and she pushed them away with harsh annoyance, accidentally hitting her forehead with the bottom of her wedding ring. The gray was invading gradually, like crabgrass on the front lawn, and she wondered if Ben noticed. “ You don't think of me as forty, do you?” she asked.

“Of course not,” he replied in a reassuring tone. “ I think of you as forty-one.”

A missile pierced Lauretta's heart even though she knew this was her husband's feeble attempt at humor. “I look years younger, don't you think?”

“What's important is how old you feel,' he replied.

That wasn't the respond she'd hoped for. “ Will you go shopping with me next time?'

“Of course. But let's go to the regular market instead of the health food store. I need a change from those sprouts and greens.”

“Greens,” she quietly said. “ It had something to do with greens. She was chopping greens.”

“Who?” Ben asked. “ Who was chopping greens?”

“Valerie DuPlexis Rose.” The pleasant classical piece playing on the radio came to an abrupt end, allowing the mournful moan of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto #3 to float through the air.

“When did you see Valerie DuPlexis Rose chopping greens?” Ben asked, suddenly alarmed.

It was coming back to her -- slowly, clearly, each detail revealing itself in succession. “This morning I stopped off at her house. On Swansdown.”

“I know where her house is,” he said, his spine stiffening.

“I realize that, Ben. I've realized that for three months.' She took a tense, quivering breath. “You know that unique smell of water on the sidewalk? Her sprinkler was going at full blast, hitting more cement than grass,” Lauretta said, deeply annoyed. “The front door was unlocked so I wandered in and followed what sounded like chopping. Sure enough, Valerie was chopping celery on a wooden block in her cerulean-colored kitchen.”

“Why did you go there?” Ben sternly asked.

“I don't know what you saw in her, with that frosted hair and those plumped lips. She had a plastic sheen, like processed cheese. And she was just as artificial.”

“Why are you talking about her in the past tense?”

“I devoted myself to you Ben, every day for twenty years. We raised a son, and now that he's in college I thought we'd have time for ourselves,” she explained. “ You and me. Instead, you found time for you and Valerie DuPlexis Rose.”

“Lauretta, listen.¦”

“She was surprised to see me,” Lauretta interrupted, “ so she put the knife down and asked what I wanted.”

“What did you want?”

“A cup of coffee. A pot was brewing and it smelled so good. 'All right', she said in that throaty voice. When she turned toward the stove, I grabbed the knife which was heavier than it looked. Then she turned back in my direction, fast, to fetch a cup I think, and she impaled herself on the blade.”

“Then what happened?” Ben asked, barely able to move.

“Then I turned the knife clockwise, halfway around, and pulled it out. She looked at me with this odd expression: confused, quizzical, but impressed, like she admired me for having the guts to do such a thing. You won't believe what happened next. Next, she gathered her remaining strength and punched me in the stomach.”

“What did you do then?” he asked, slowly standing up.

“I drove home. The knife is in the back seat, so there's blood in the car.” Lauretta's eyes lit up like lanterns. 'That's what I forgot to tell you, Ben! The car needs washing!”

“Oh God,” Ben whispered.

“What time does the car wash on Witch Hazel close?”

Ben gazed at Lauretta with darts of hatred shooting from his eyes. Then he reached for his mobile phone as he blasted out the front door.

Lauretta stood perfectly still, dazed but oddly content, enjoying the surge of adrenaline her body produced. She wasn't proud of the startling, immutable event she caused, but she felt a sense of accomplishment, the way she used to feel at the end of a productive workday.

She didn't realize she had one more item to unpack, a fist-size fist, until its blood began seeping through the paper bag and dripping on the white-tiled floor, like thick raindrops splashing on a windshield.

Garrett Socol's fiction has been published in The Barcelona Review, Ghoti Magazine, Underground Voices, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, HobartPulp, 3711 Atlantic, and 3:AM Magazine. His plays have been produced at the Berkshire Theatre Festival and the Pasadena Playhouse.

Email: Garrett Socol

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