The Absurdium

Mary sat on the chesterfield, browsing slowly through the newspaper. Somewhere a basket of laundry sat awaiting a wash, and the work she had brought home from work still sat in her briefcase waiting to be worked upon. Dinner, well, it was only three o’ clock in the afternoon and too early to start worrying about dinner yet.

Mary flipped a page.

She began absentmindedly humming along with the classical music emanating faintly through the ceiling from the attic above. Dave was up there painting, which was good, for he was after all a painter by trade. An artistic one at that, and that was how he made a living.

His most recent show had fared only fairly, even though Dave regarded the works he had showcased as better than his previous and more successful paintings, and he had been working harder than ever for the past month.

Mary did not identify herself as a connoisseur of the arts by any stretch of the imagination. She liked most of Dave’s works, though some she found pointless and they evoked no reaction in her. Vain though it may be, her favourite painting featured her as the subject, although that one was not for the public’s eye.

Mary flipped a page and folding the paper to a more manageable size, she started on the crossword puzzle.

It was cold and dreary outside; good painting weather Dave called it. Mary chocked it up as good couch weather.

‘Not science’, 3 letters.

Mary penned in ‘A-R-T’. That was easy. But is it not? Mary wondered who gave the crossword puzzle the authority to make such claims.

She leaned against the armrest and curled her bare feet up on to the couch, her toe nails gleaming black like little flakes of obsidian. They were cold and she shoved them under a blanket.

Dave had said he was really ‘feeling’ this new piece he was working on and thought it was going to turn out well. She had told him that if he kept up these new hours much longer he wasn’t going to be feeling anything at all pretty soon. She had emphasized the point with the hammer she had been holding at the time. Mary was, after all, his wife and mother of their future children. The kids, who as of yet had only been conceived in their minds, were to be named Pathos and Eunoia. Ah, the tough lives of an artist’s children…

They had finally made the decision to ‘breed’, a Dave word that she disliked, a few months ago and they were both very excited now by the prospect of parenthood.

‘Great cubist artist’, 7 letters.

Mary already had a ‘P’ and an ‘S’ so the remaining I-C-A-S-O came easily. She scrawled them in, arguing again with the crossword puzzle. Frankly, and she had told people this while taking advantage of the free wine at one of David’s art shows, Mary thought Pablo sucked as an artist and needed his perspective on life realigned. No one had contradicted her.

The music from the attic changed, another classical piece but this one was by a different composer. It was one she liked and she da-da-da’d to herself along with it. Sometimes she would make up her own lyrics, often about whatever she was doing at the time, and sing them loudly in time with the songs – a narratorial opera that the neighbours had front row tickets to whether they wanted them or not. Occasionally Liz, their neighbour on the east side of the house, would applaud while leaning out the window that looked into their kitchen.

The afternoon ticked by.

David had not come down from the attic since eleven o’clock that morning. Even while busy he would usually come down every few hours for something to eat, a bit of exercise or stretching and would spend some time with Mary. She knew he was not facing imminent deadlines of any sort and this was becoming an unusually long stint for him to be working away. She had long since put the crossword aside and taken up stretching on the living room floor by the south facing windows. Squares of pale light inched silently across the carpet, slowly morphing into rhombuses of light. Mary thought of the fleeting nature of one’s perception of image and shape, and also of how damn early the sun was setting these days… Rhombi?

Thinking like that meant it was high time for a glass of wine and a start on dinner.

“Old, fermented grape juice? Check.” Mary took a sip and hummed to herself as she pulled open the refrigerator door and stood before it peering into the cavity. She scanned the shelves, feeling the cool air flow over her bare feet, and reflected on the liquid behaviour of air. Somewhere in the back of her mind she could hear her father asking if she was trying to cool down the whole house. This made her smile and she sipped from her glass.

“Pickles… celery… nope. Hmm…” She was speaking to no one in particular; in fact, to no one at all. “Old chicken, hummus, oranges…” She rattled off a few more of the refrigerator’s contents before finally closing the door, no further ahead than when she had opened it. Mary was not inspired to prepare anything at the moment and not particularly hungry, so she grabbed the bottle of wine from the counter and another glass and headed for the stairs. It was time to remind David that she was home today too and to make sure that he wasn’t dead on the attic floor or escaped out the window and fleeing to France, as he occasionally threatened to do.

There was no longer any music coming from the other side, so Mary gently drummed her fingernails on the studio door.

Hearing no reply, she pushed the door open and walked softly, almost cautiously, into the room. What she saw before her stopped her in her tracks and the bottle slipped from her hand.

“Oh my God!” she whispered slowly.