“Get your hands off my fries, Kelly.”
A couple times a month, Nathan’s wife met him downtown for lunch.
“I just want one,” she says.
Nathan slaps her hand away. “The calories still count, even if you don’t order it.”
“How dare you.” It comes out as a growl.
The same call-and-response had played out that morning when Nathan took a chunk out of the butter instead of sliding the knife civilly over the top of the tub.
“It looks like a wild animal mauled it,” she’d said.
“Why does it matter what the butter looks like, Kelly?”
They couldn’t agree if they were a butter couple or a margarine couple. Red grapes or green. Miracle Whip or mayo. One-percent milk or skim.
As a result, the inside of their fridge was a study in both conflict avoidance and American abundance. Their shelves stocked with double rations of nearly identical items.
When Kelly started eating for two, Nathan’s appetite for real estate grew. They consumed online listings of four-bedroom homes with three-car garages and double vanities. They agreed they wouldn’t compromise on that.
Kelly notices a sheen of grease has transferred from Nathan’s hands to his sweating glass of water. He licks the salt off a fingertip for emphasis.
“I gave you a child,” she says. “You can’t share a fry?”
Josie Cellone started her journalism career in small-town newsrooms, covering cops and courts and church bake-offs. Now a second-year fiction student in the Creative Writing MFA program at the New School, she commutes from Pittsburgh, Pa., where she moonlights as a mom of three. She prefers unsalted butter, red grapes and almond milk.
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