It Stinks in Here, a Love Story
“It stinks in here,” she says, deadbolting the door. He hears derision in her tone. But he does not react, apart from looking up from The Atlantic and reaching for the remote to lower the speaker volume, to quell the clamor and bombast of Holst.
“Don’t you smell it?” she asks, setting her purse on the shoe bench, her keys in the dish. The greeting sounds accusatory. That he stinks; but if that were the case, he’s sure she’d have said it differently. Still, it’s an imputation of ineptness. That he lacks sensitivity. That he is getting old, losing his faculties. His olfaculties. She might appreciate the pun in a different mood. But not now, not while she’s shedding her day, hanging her raincoat on the peg with a scowl.
For as long as he’s known her, she has derided the aged for maintenance issues, the way she scorns a mother for a crying baby. Not to their faces, of course—she’s not a monster—but in side-eyed comments to him. Quietly. Sometimes, lately, not as quietly as he would like.
“Smells old,” she says. Yes, there it is, he thinks. A charge in the emphasis. She puts several pears on the kitchen pass-thru counter, folds and slips her reusable bag into her purse. Technically, she is older than him. She is also healthier. More in touch with her body. On this they’ve always agreed. Such as when she reproaches him for not taking better care of himself. Not seeing doctors. Not stretching on her green yoga mat, as she does morning and evening.
At best, it’s an indictment that he notices less than she does, that his standards are not as exacting as hers. That her stylist’s eye for detail and culinary-school perfectionism are superior to his absent-minded idea-guy approach to life. She slips off her shoes, saying, “You really can’t smell it?” Less a question than a scorecard notation, he thinks.
At worst, what she smells is the marriage itself. That’s his bigger concern. Because he can’t imagine life without her, even if she returns home on fire about the incompetence of others, or beside herself about her own inefficiencies, or simply peeved to have noticed something oft-neglected. He sets the remote on the coffee table, eats a cashew, and takes a little swig of his five o’clock scotch, savoring nut and peat, senses unimpaired, he notes.
“Did you bring the winter clothes over from mini-storage?” she asks, stepping lightly to the bathroom to let the umbrella dry open in the tub. A lose-lose question, he knows. If he didn’t retrieve the winter clothes, he is derelict in his house-husbandly duties. The Honey-Do List, favors she asks since he works from home, which lately, she barely acknowledges as working. On the other hand, if he did get the winter clothes, he will have failed to air them out properly and they will be what she smells. Musty mini-storage, thin walls shared with hoary strangers’ ancient belongings. Old dust. Others’ must. Must be. Must we?
“No,” he says. “No time.” He sees her survey the room—his makeshift office in a corner, him in his club chair—for signs of busyness, change. Movement. He can feel her wondering, Has he even moved from that spot since I left him there when I went to work this morning? He has known her nearly forty years, and can often read her mind. Never as well as she can read his. And sometimes she wonders this—has he moved from that spot?—aloud. But not today. Today she is obsessed with a smell, not the indolence and dishevelment he sometimes feels he exists within since his semi-retirement. And yes, he has moved, thank you. Many times: consulting prospect meeting at the Bean, signing for 2B’s packages with the UPS man, grocery sortie—Bustelo, milk, eggs, thin spaghetti, fennel bulb, thighs, Bounty, Comet—he remembers the whole list. Competencies intact. Ol’ faculties all fine.
She sniffs. “It’s this place,” she says, scanning the walls, the ceiling, the floor, him. She sighs. There’s a water spot on the ceiling above the terrace door that they’ve ignored for over a year already. The baseboards are an embarrassment. Her eyes narrow with thoughts of discovery: “Or it’s Walter and Eugene! The ‘antique shop,’” she says, rolling her eyes. And he thinks about the old couple’s ground floor apartment, its Tiffany lamps, walnut secretaries, roughened leather of an original Eames, a credenza he covets for its tambour doors, and the rugs, the rugs upon rugs. He remembers how he once saw himself—themselves—living among similar possessions. But she grew to detest old furniture (“smells like old owners”), and he has almost forgotten that he once liked it. Some days they agree that Pepper’s smell permeates the entire building. Pepper being Walter and Eugene’s Portuguese water dog. Other times, it’s just that everything and everyone smells old. According to her. He and she are not—it should be said—spring chickens. They are over sixty, the marriage is in its late mid-thirties, the twins are twenty-nine!
She is still talking to him about the smell but she is in the other room now, her head deep into the closet where she is choosing some once-worn inside-clothes. Directed into the hamper, her voice cannot be heard clearly, but he picks up every third or fourth word, so he knows she is using “moist” when he would use dank or damp, maybe even oily. He can’t get up and go to her because he knows there is nothing worse than being followed around one’s smallish apartment by one’s retired-ish husband. She is talking about the walnut secretaries, the credenza, and two oddly carved wooden Renaissance chairs that Walter and Eugene put plants on. If he thought she was introducing new ideas, he might call out some variation of “Say what?” It remains, for him, a loveable annoyance that she continues talking, even expecting a response, when she is arguing into a muffling closet, or over the gushing tap while washing up at the bathroom sink. He knows that when she returns to the room where he sits, “What were you saying, Dear?” will elicit another eye roll, maybe even huffy outrage. Accusations of hearing loss, with its inherent insinuation of aging, or some other comment on his general decrepitude. That’s what he thinks, and so he doesn’t call out to her to repeat the point she is making about Walter and Eugene’s furniture. Instead, he looks up from his magazine and gazes out the window. The rain has stopped, clouds are parting, the golden leaves of a white birch shimmer in the last of the light, and he thinks, How magnificent the city, especially in the autumn glow.
But silence is not without risk. He knows it can easily backfire. His eyes are back on The Atlantic in his lap, his fingers hold a roasted cashew from the little dish he allows himself with his one scotch, when she emerges into the living room with a startling question:
“Are you going to answer me?”
He looks up, sees her, fresh-faced, hair pulled back, mouth twisted beautiful, eyes alight. How he loves that fiery look in her eye, and the moments it smolders warmly, only for him. He loves how she can read falseness, obsequiousness, better than she can read truth, how she trusts no fawn or praise. Whatever her mother did to her, however her father ignored her, through all the slings and arrows, she turned out like this: ever on the edge of anger, but quick to assuage when the cards are played right, ever there for him, always available for the twins, never kinder than with a stranger in need, all of it he loves. So, yes, yes, he will answer her, and he will answer to her, and for her, and with her, he will answer her all the livelong day, day and night, til death do they part.
“Maybe it’s the radiator,” he says. “I saw Carlos doing the garbage earlier. I mentioned we haven’t had heat yet this season, and by the time I got back from Fairway, the radiators were all on.”
His gambit works. She strides across the room, eyebrows raised, and tentatively touches the radiator with her three girl-scout fingers, confirming that it’s still warm. It’s no longer on, no longer spitting or hissing, and she stands by it, gazing out at the dusking. He eyes her sniffing, so subtle it’s almost imperceptible, and exhaling slowly, deeply—yoga training—and he sees her catch now the lavender sky, how it has turned and deepened since her head-down commute home under the umbrella. They always agree it’s wondrous, the city in this hour, in this season, but they seldom agree about his one scotch in the evening, or his nose in the opinion pages while she is trying to have a conversation with him. They used to have a drink together but she saw how it led to two and three, and when she started yoga, she eventually quit drinking completely. Seems like ages ago. Pre-Obama. Now there are days he worries she will quit him, or worse, that she has and he hasn’t noticed.
“I’ll just crack the door for a bit,” she says, stepping over to the glass slider that opens to the small terrace. “For the smell,” she adds, needlessly. He admires her arm as it flexes, her lines and shapeliness, even in loose leggings and that ancient Barbara Kruger t-shirt. She looks out over the flowerboxes, one foot inside, the other outside in the awaiting yellow Croc, rosiness in the cheek of her profile, wide-eyed in the moment of setting sun glinting off the glass of apartments across the gardens. He wonders whether she tries to smell it, wants it to be there—whatever it is—yes, she hunts for flaws and imperfections, to find rational reasons for her anger at the day, or something to hold over him, another of his many failings as a spouse: that he cannot even notice, in all its obviousness, this thing she is so averse to, how numb to the world has he become that he can’t smell that.
She slips into both terrace Crocs and steps out to to the pots and planters to pinch off a few brown geranium leaves. He sees her gently untangle the clingy passion flower tendrils to prevent the strangling of a curly willow, her face glowing in twilight. And as he raises his glass to his lips, a thought occurs to him: what if he is the desperate one, trying his hardest not to smell it—whatever it is—not to notice the stench or the flaw, the slippage, the imperfections of their life.
Now, he is no longer interested in The Atlantic’s take on traffic studies in Holland or accident rates of self-driving cars. He sets the magazine atop the pile on the end table. He takes his glass and empty nut dish to the kitchen. He dumps the ice cubes in the sink and rinses the glass and while he waits for the tap to run its coldest, he pauses, and breathes in...
…and there it is: the smell! Something dank, or damp, maybe even moist. Noticeable here in the kitchen, by the front door, undetectable in the living room, where he’d sat working, then reading. Very like the smell of Walter and Eugene and Pepper: of apartment or dog or furniture or wet mat plopped out there in the shared hallway. Or maybe just the smell of Old, as she says. Walter and Eugene have been “married” for 50 years. He fills his tumbler and guzzles the cold water, nose in the glass, smelling the tasty tap water. And suddenly she is there, standing behind him, her arms around his waist, pressing her cheek to his back, listening to him gulp and swallow, then slipping a hand down his waistband to cup him.
“Did I forget to kiss you when I came in?” she asks, her voice cracks with quiet huskiness, and he hears sweetness and regret, age and devotion. She lets go his growing warmth as he sets his glass down in the sink and turns to face her. Bodies tight, arms around each other, he looks down at her eyes, softening now in the dim gray light, and she closes them, smiles, and they kiss.
“Aren’t you hungry?” she says sharply as they part. And again, in the spark of it, he hears allegations. That anyone would be hungry at this hour, that he could have already had dinner prepared, warming, ready for her. But no. She smiles and reaches for his lips with hers, kisses him again and her eyes are alive with the fire that always melts him happy and she says, “I’m ravenous!”
“Have some nuts,” he says brightly, flipping on the overhead light, opening the fridge to rummage in the vegetable drawer. “I’m making that pasta—with the chilies and the fennel.” She reaches for the almonds and taps out seven into the little dish, still sitting on the counter. “Oh!” he says, “Sally left you a hilarious message on the machine in her Kamala voice.” She takes her almonds to the living room, picks up the remote, and when the apartment fills with the drama of The Planets, he wonders for a moment which movement it is, the magical or the mystical. He’s unsure but it doesn’t matter. “I bet if I toast the pine nuts, it’ll overpower that smell,” he says.
On her way to the answering machine in the bedroom, she detours back to the kitchen. “Maybe toast the pine nuts,” she suggests. “To overpower the smell.” She kisses him on the neck and leaves him to the pots and pans, the fire and salt.
