The Pantry.

Sabrina made her way down the stairs still in her nightgown. It’s Sunday after all, she thought, a day of rest and relaxation. Except for the items on Fred’s, “To Do List” waiting to be crossed off, the critical voice inside her added.

It had taken her thirty minutes to do the stretches the chiropractor had recommended, the stick figures all perky and perfect on the sheet of paper he handed to her following her last appointment. “Now don’t lose this one,” he had said to her, eyebrows half-way up his forehead, as though she were a child.

Sabrina contorted her body into this pose and that, all the while doing her best to remember to breathe. She resented having to do all the work on herself and wished she could summon a healer with the ability to magically remove the ache that had settled, like an unwelcome relative, in the center of her back, reminding her with every twist and turn that she was middle- aged.

Fred had been up since six that morning and she felt the familiar rigidity rise to attention at his joie de vivre, his get-up-and-go, in face of her saggy derrière, her breasts that demanded the extra support bra with underwire, and ovaries that had laid their last egg sometime last June.

At first, Sabrina didn’t think she’d miss the monthly visits from aunt Flow, but now, having crossed over to the other side, she wished to experience, if only once more, the tug deep in her abdomen that reminded her she was still a woman. Men remained men. They could get it up at eighty and impregnate an eighteen-year-old. Look at Clint Eastwood for god's sake—the man’s ancient (although still a hunk, Sabrina had to admit) and his wife, half his age. He’s got seven kids. Seven! That last one—a girl—he fathered when he was sixty-nine.

Maybe it’s better to be in menopause, Sabrina mused. At least I don’t have to worry about my sex drive getting me in trouble. She chuckled at this last thought, because she couldn’t remember the last time she and Fred had actually done the deed.

Sabrina knew Fred was an early riser since before they were married, twenty five years ago. But despite the passage of time, she had never gotten used to hearing him putz around the kitchen, the door of the dishwasher opening and closing, the cutlery clanking as he separated the forks and knives into their separate slots in the drawer. The man didn’t understand the concept of sleeping in. "Early bird gets the worm," he’d chide in a sing-song voice, each time she’d try to persuade him to stay snug under the covers and delay the demands of the day just a few more minutes.

Sabrina eyed the four slices of Texas toast that sat on the kitchen counter, defrosting. She picked up the two slices meant for her and with a sneer, shoved them inside the plastic bread bag Fred had rinsed out and left in the sink to drip dry. She opened the fridge freezer door and reached in for her gluten free, brown rice and sunflower seed bread.

“I prefer this bread over the white fluff,” she mumbled when Fred entered the kitchen, sweaty and sour smelling from his morning run on the treadmill. “The white flour plugs me up,” she added, silently wishing that after quarter of a century of living with the man, he could manage to remember her likes and dislikes.

“Oh, sure,” he said, nonplussed, wiping the sweat off his face and chest with a wash cloth. “Sorry.”

Sabrina turned her back to him and began the ritual of preparing coffee.

“Oh, I can do that,” Fred walked up behind her and wrapped his hands around her waist, gently moving her out of the way.

“I'll do it!” she snapped a bit too quickly. Fred had a knack for making the perfect cup of joe, but this morning, Sabrina needed to do it herself. She stood on tippy toes and with the tips of her fingers, fumbled for the filters in the cupboard above the stove. “Damn it!” she muttered under her breath.

“Can I at least get those for you?” Fred asked, watching her with amusement from the kitchen chair.

“No thank you.” Sabrina stomped into the dining room and with exaggerated effort, dragged the heavy oak chair into the kitchen. She climbed up, retrieved the filters and slowly, careful not to put her back out, stepped off the chair.

“I saw the funniest thing the other day,” Fred said over the whirr of the coffee beans in the grinder.

“What?”

“You know those fish markers religious people like to glue to the back of their cars, the ones that say Jesus on the inside of the fish?”

“What about them?”

“Well Friday, on my way home from work, I saw a similar thing except instead of Jesus, the fish said Darwin and had two legs underneath its belly.”

Ignoring him, Sabrina placed the filter into the coffee maker and began to count the scoops of coffee.

“Well, don’t you think that’s even a little bit amusing?” Frank said, expectantly.

Sabrina turned around slowly and shoved her hands inside the pockets of her robe. “To be perfectly honest,” she began, “I could never stand people with a need to plaster their religious beliefs, or in this case, evolution beliefs on the back of their cars for everyone to see. What if I got off on devil worshipping, or if I was a closet white supremacist? I wouldn’t plaster the sign of the beast or the Ku Klux Klan figure on the trunk of my car.”

Fred stared at Sabrina, opened and closed his mouth as if he wanted to say something that would explain his wife’s outburst, but then thought better of it. He slowly placed his palms on top of the table and pushed himself up, the legs of the chair scraping loud against the hardwood floor. “I just thought you’d get a kick out of it, that’s all. I guess I was wrong,” he said and headed for the shower.

This is how it was. Every day, Sabrina watched as she disappeared inside her mood swings where middle ground didn’t exist, where she merged with this other self she didn’t recognize. Every weekend, she counted the hours until Monday morning, when the front door would click behind Fred and she could stop pretending that everything was alright, that she was alright, that their marriage was alright.

When the kids still lived at home, she would limit her reward, as she liked to call it, to a glass or two of Merlot at five o’clock, before Fred got home from work. But now that there were no schedules to adhere to, no piano lessons for Jeanie, no hockey practice for Scott, the line defining when it was appropriate to drink resembled the squiggles on a heart monitor.

Some days Sabrina would walk to the back of the pantry and reach behind the stewed tomatoes and boxes of spaghetti for the mickey she stashed there. She’d take a quick nip, wipe her mouth with the top of her hand and back out of the pantry, the burn of the liquor as sweet as a caress. But lately, she’d open the pantry door six or seven times in an afternoon, during commercials, while watching Oprah, and take two or three satisfying swallows. Some women get fat eating chocolate chip cookies, she reasoned with herself. I limit myself to a nip or two of Smirnoff. It’s perfectly civilized.

Still, every morning she’d wake up, reach for the yoga mat and vow not to enter the pantry that day and if she did, it would be to snatch the bottle and pour its contents down the sink. She’d make these promises while lying in the Savasana pose, breathing deep into her belly. “Today,” she’d whisper to the empty bedroom, “I will take extra care with my hair, maybe even try the lipstick Jeanie picked out for me last time she visited. Today, I will get out of the house for sure; maybe walk to the drug store and pick out some post cards and then head over to the Jangle Café and order a skim milk latte, extra hot, no foam, and fill the backs of the postcards with news of our wonderful life on the coast. I’ll buy festive stamps, the self-adhesive ones, and stick them perfectly inside the little squares.”

Sabrina poured herself a cup of coffee and took the first satisfying sip. She walked over to the junk drawer, slid it open and reached to the very back for the Ziploc bag that was filled with at least two dozen postcards she had written on many such resolution days, as she learnt to refer to them. She pulled a few out and admired her penmanship, which, by the way, was impeccable; no mail person could misread her perfectly written addresses. It was the messages that lacked. She would get as far as the salutation:

Dear Barry and Patricia….

Dear Greg and Adriana…

My dearest Jeanie…

and then her mind would draw a blank, unable to summon one true sentence.

With a sigh, Sabrina shoved the postcards back into their plastic sanctuary and buried them at the back of the drawer under the wrapping paper and bows left over from last Christmas. “Who am I kidding?” she said and headed for the pantry.