Dissatisfied

He sat hunched over, his eyes squinting over the small screen. He could hear her milling about in the other room, tossing about old magazines or maybe a pair of shoes. He reveled in the moment of solitude, which was quickly broken.

“Where are you?” she called. He did not answer. “Damn,” she whispered under her breath. Then “all this work and he is nowhere to be found. Typical! All I ask is for a little help around the house--”

Her words drifted to him like an oncoming storm. He shivered with the thought of her icy gaze and cold demeanor when she was in one of these moods. She was often in these moods, and in the last several months the mood had become more constant a companion to her than he had been the last seven years they had been together. He was not blameless, he knew. Nor was he guiltless. He had done his fair share to create situations that frustrated her--sometimes deliberately. And then there was the affair. Though brief, it cut deeply and opened new wounds. He could not really blame her for being angry.

And so he sat, huddled over his phone, focusing his attention on the blocks that fell from the top of the screen. The immediacy of the task, to put the blocks in some organized way; to make squares and lines and watch them flicker and fade away under the flick of his thumb was a soothing distraction to the chaos that raged on the other side of the door. In the game, everything fit together so neatly. Stray blocks could be captured into new shapes and disposed of in an orderly way. The game universe has purpose. Purpose was contentment.

Outside, chaos was familiar. She buzzed around the house like a hornet, looking for someone to sting. So he hid. He turned up the volume on the game so that he did not have to hear her: “--never even put the laundry in the basket. You just drop it on the floor. Shit stains everywhere. And I keep tripping over shoes. How do you have one shoe in the bedroom and one in living room? When is the last time the kitchen floor was swept? Do I have to do everything myself?”

The woman bent over and picked up a single sock. She scanned the room, but could not locate the other one. She would have looked more thoroughly had her arms not been full of shoes, underpants, bits of string, and towels. Protruding from the mass was a half hidden blue broom handle. As she stood there, she smelled smoke. It took her a few moments to realize that dinner was burning. Dropping everything in the doorway, she tripped over the broom and sprawled in the hallway just outside the bathroom door.

He continued to sit, hunched over the flashing screen. His reverie was disturbed by the sound of her collapse in the hall. For a moment he lifted his head, but it was more out of annoyance than concern. When he heard her curse, he went unceremoniously back to his game.

Ignoring the dropped items, she raced downstairs removed the smoking pan from the stove. Water was boiling over in the large pot spurting through the lid. The smell of burnt chicken filled the air and she opened the window in the kitchen even though it was below freezing outside.
“Now dinner is ruined,” she growled. Scraping the chicken away from the burned pan, she decided to cut the burned bits from the breasts to try to salvage the meal. The chicken was dry and fell to pieces as she cut. She placed the edible chicken pieces in a clean pan and then ran the hot pan under cold water to loosen the blackened stains. She turned the faucet on too fast, and water sizzled in the pan and was reflected out of the sink, trickling down the cabinet and onto the floor. This made the floor slippery, and she was barely able to steady herself as her feet spun beneath her.
Looking in the fridge, she found some vegetable orts, which she tossed into the pan with the chicken. She added some seasoning and a little broth, creatively turning her pan roasted chicken into a stir fry. She checked on the rice and realized that it still had some time to cook. She turned the chicken on low and went back upstairs to recreate the armload of household detritus. She thought to herself, how can the two of them make such a mess? Assessing the pile in her arms, she made herself believe that most of it was his.

“It would be nice to get some help,” she said, raising her voice so that wherever he was, he was sure to hear. He did hear, but he ignored her. He was content with his game, and feared leaving the safety of his sanctuary. He feared the chaos that awaited him outside the confines of the small bathroom. He leveled up in his game, which justified him remaining where he was.

She took the pile of laundry and shoes and threw them on the sofa. She began sorting the items into smaller piles, then remembered the rice. The piles would have to wait if she did not want to burn the rice too.

On her way to the kitchen, she realized there was still a lot of work to do. The dishes would need done, the laundry started, the cat pans scooped, and everything needed to prepare for work in the morning. It seemed to never end. It was overwhelming, and for the last forty minutes she had been handling the drudgery by herself, with no sign of him. Her anger festered, then exploded.

“Dammit,” she yelled. “You have done nothing all day. Can I please get some help?”

There was no response. He was so involved in his game that he did not hear, or chose not to respond. Exasperated, she went and stirred the rice. It had overcooked, and become gluey. Her anger at the failed dinner welled up inside her. Her anger at her own anger forced tears into her eyes. She wondered if anger and frustration were the only emotions that she would ever feel in this relationship; or at least if they were the only ones that mattered.

She went back up the stairs and pounded on the door. Her screams and rants were unintelligible now, twisted by her tears and muffled by the wooden door. Her rage rang the walls like a bell, and shook him from his reverie.

“Come out!” she bellowed. “Come out come out come out. You've been in there for almost an hour.”

Distracted from his screen, he erupted. “Damn it, Grace,” he called back. “I'm taking a shit!” He then reloaded the level and went back to his game.