“Janelle.” He says into the phone, with a tired wheeze. He’s leaning on the kitchen counter, his head rested against the receiver and the other hanging languidly at his side. He keeps glancing through the kitchen door into the living room, where he can hear snip its of the Twins game. This conversation will be over soon, he hopes.
“No way.” The voice on the other end says. She sounds tired too. They are both tired of this nightly ritual. This exhausting back and forth they keep engaging in, searching for a compromise that doesn’t seem like it will ever comes.
“Jessica?” He says. He had a long day at work today, all meetings and computer screens and missed deadline, and it’s a Wednesday which means two more days of the grind and then he has a break and she will come home.
“What is it with you and J names?” Her voice, normally high and sweet like a songbird cracks with irritation. He thinks she sounds more like a crow tonight than a sparrow. “How about Harriet?”
He cringes. What is it with her and old lady names? He imagines stenciling in that god awful name on the wall in their spare bedroom.
“I hate it,” Better to be honest, he thinks. “Too old fashioned.” He hears the roar of the announcer as a player cracks one into the outfield, he moves towards the door but stops. She’ll know if he’s watching the game and not paying attention.
She can hear the sounds of ESPN in the background, over his asthmatic breathing that means he’s had a hard day and forgotten to take his inhaler. Amazing, she thinks, all that she can know about him just through a few seconds of static.
“Well I happen to like Harriet, it was my mother’s middle name.” She’s annoyed that he’s forgotten this. She moves away from the window where she’s standing. “Anyways, what would you prefer? Something more modern? Miley, Rhianna or maybe Beyonce?” She moves toward the flat, uncomfortable bed she’s calling home for the next few days and sits on the hard mattress. She feels it sink beneath her added weight.
“Honey, I’m sorry.” He says. She imagines him standing in their house alone, the cuffs of his work shirt rolled to the elbows, his tie loosened, his feet bare. “I can’t talk about this anymore. I want to know about your day. We can figure the rest out when you get home.”
“But this is driving me crazy!” She says, letting herself flop back on the sheets. “I want a decision. How about Mallory? Taylor? Melissa? What do you think about those?”
He is silent. She knows she’s lost him to the all seducer of men, the sports network. She thinks about those whales that end up on the news, about one a summer. How they get separated from the herd and make one wrong move, choose one wrong direction, and they end up stranded on an isolated beach, stuck on their side and unable to move. Calling, braying for their family members, an oceanic farewell song, never heard by those who it is meant for because it is not sung underwater.
“Yeah sure, those sound okay.” He says.
