The Better Half of a Century
After the morning walk, Sam will rest for a while in the bedroom and watch television. He only watches two things: news stations and black and white movies, especially old westerns. “Everything else is crap” he says. Since his hearing is nearly gone, he has to turn up the television to the highest setting. Bev sometimes wonders if her neighbors hate them for it. After about 15 minutes, he’ll usually fall asleep until it’s time for lunch.
“I live a good life,” Sam said recently to a couple of guests he was entertaining in the living room.
“Are you kidding?!” Bev shouted from the kitchen. “He lives the life of a king!”
But Sam didn’t hear her; he didn’t have his hearing aids in.
When company comes over, Bev offers red wine which she keeps chilled in the refrigerator (she thinks it tastes better cold) and sets out cookies, milk, coffee, a sandwich, eggs, a steak—everything. She’s kind. She wants nothing more than to please her guests and get them to take something for the road.
Bev cooks all of Sam’s meals. She’s an ace in the kitchen and never seems to stop cooking. Her cabinets are stocked with years-worth of food, and her refrigerator is packed with so many things that every time she opens the door at least four items tumble out. She is an obsessive food hoarder; a stranger to their home would think for certain there must be at least 10 or 12 inhabitants in this one-bedroom apartment. In the freezer, literally hundreds of cooked dishes are tucked away, wrapped in tin foil, covered with a plastic bag and marked in black pen with the date on which they were made. She is frantic in the kitchen, often cooking 4 or 5 meals at once and then shoveling them into the freezer like a squirrel burying acorns for the winter. If she were ever to leave Sam, he wouldn’t go hungry for years.
When not cooking, Bev spends her days knitting and reading the newspaper, sometimes cutting out a clipping or two to send to a relative or friend. Because of Sam’s poor hearing, he never answers the phone, so she deals with all the calls. It’s not only food that she hoards. She likes to go out and buy second-hand furniture and cheap antiques. Their apartment is cluttered with lamps, end-tables, picture frames, plants, poorly-upholstered chairs, newspapers and books. She’ll even take in furniture she finds in the garbage. “People throw away such nice things!” she says about a worn-out couch she just asked a building employee to bring up to her apartment.
After Bev serves Sam his meals, he always thanks her (”thanks,Bevy”), and plants a wet, loving kiss on her cheek. Sometimes he’ll rub her shoulder and tell her he loves her.
“Yeah, how many girls did you say that to today?” she jokes. Grinning, he’ll retreat slowly back to the bedroom, to his side of the bed, and leave Bev to her cooking.
If Bev and Sam ever want to go out together, they call a dog-sitter, but it seems that they rarely do anything together outside the apartment. They go to doctor’s appointments alone, to the grocery store alone, to movies alone. They have their own friends and their own interests. It’s not that they don’t love each other anymore, but it’s as if after 50 years of doing things together, they’re finally bored of one another. Or maybe it’s not as simple as that. Maybe they’re just training themselves to be alone.
