Super Bowl Sunday

James cries during commercials, his 6’4” frame folded at its midline, wracked in sobs.

He says he feels the unmet needs of the advertiser and the consumer. They move him.

It had become uncomfortable — undeniably awkward even — during our Super Bowl parties, so we’ve stopped having them. Our friends occasionally text to see if we’re watching the game.

For 4 years now, James and I, and our beloved white wiry terrier Sparky have watched on our own. Just the three of us seated in a row, we line the couch with our legs up, our bodies shaped like Ls. Sparky is more like a lowercase N.

Players pepper the vivid screen, which is so large it dwarfs the wall across the room. They are alternately dots then nearly true-to-size. We jump up and shout at them in their shimmering uniforms. I vehemently cheer, calling numbers out instead of names. “Just throw the ball, #10!!” reverberating across the room. James is more composed, earnestly and steadily compelling his team to the requisite ten yards with cajoles.

I wonder whether this tenor will last.

When the halftime show begins, James clasps his hands and stands. Sparky and I wait. As the performances come and go I imagine that we are in the clear.

When the next commercial break threatens, I see her. Sparky gives me side-eye, slinking back then away on four paws, exiting through the door frame and rounding the corner. She pretends to sniff, on a quest for kibble or crumbs, but we both know she is making an escape.

I close my eyes, head bowed. Then I reach my long arm, tangled in tattoo lines that coalesce into vines and flowers toward him, not yet for an embrace but simply to catch the edge of the metallic bowl, which is filled with popcorn, and remove it from where it might be seasoned by saline instead of caramel or table salt.

In a fluid dance, I replace the kernels with a box of Kleenex. I’ve learned to keep them on hand, adding cases rather than boxes to our red plastic shopping cart at Costco. I renewed my membership when the pandemic began, never concerned about toilet paper, only these. I imagine Kleenex would collapse, were it not for us. Well, him.

Perhaps I was right to worry.

This afternoon it is the beaming smiles of a father and son, brown faces shining from the interior light of the refrigerator, with the sweet refrains of a Stevie song, Wonder or Nicks, overlaid. United in intent, the two actors reach for a 20 ounce plastic bottle of Coke glistening with its own perspiration. They unscrew the caps and are transported to a world of joy, love, and satiety as if carried by a melodic capitalistic time machine. I see through the veil of needs-met-through-purchase as if it is transparent.

James does not.

I look over to catch his bright blue eyes glaze over with desire and an inappropriate depth of connection. It is a preview of what’s to come, the inevitable waterworks.

Away from screens, James is implacable. In other contexts, he is eager, loud, and confident, able to pivot from one seemingly labile conversation topic to the next without a downward shift in mood, tone, or tears. His MBA is a passport, and his winding career in marketing provides him a deft and dexterous path through difficult interpersonal dynamics. It is his superpower; commercials his kryptonite.

I cannot help but love him more for this vulnerable underbelly where he hides his softness, his unabashed emotion at the lure of acquired well-being, and the empathy he expresses in rivulets of tears for those who feel the same. It’s among his most lovable traits — unless of course, you’re Sparky. I hear her now, whimpering for a walk. She is uncertain what she’ll find in the great, albeit leashed outdoors, but we both know that the trunks of trees are ripe with smells and free from the sounds of his sobs.

Silently, I excuse myself, and James smiles, tears streaming down his face even as his eyes form joyful upside down crescent moons. He needs no additional comfort. We both know I’ll return, leash in one hand, fresh box of Kleenex in the other.