Peace Talks
by Clifford Garstang
Every day it’s the same—we wake up angry, eat burned toast in fuming silence and growl off to work. You’ve been there—you know. Then we come home and have nothing good to say.
Tonight she complains about a patient who gagged in her face while she scraped his molars. I gripe about the rookie who brought a kid into my classroom just because he’d wet his pants. What was I supposed to do about it? I have my own little pissers.
We nuke frozen dinners, hers ham, mine turkey—hard peas, gray potatoes, a gummy square of apple crumble. I pop a beer. She mixes a highball. We watch the news while we eat.
A Palestinian blew up a bus in Israel, and there are pictures to prove it—a body turned to gore, the charred exoskeleton of the bus, victims wailing and mopping blood from their eyes.
She’s crying.
“It’s hopeless,” I say. I point at the news with my beer. “They’re hopeless.”
“Not them,” she says. “This.”
I fix fresh drinks. She drops the remains of our dinner into the trash. We sit at the table and sip.
A Palestinian blew up a bus in Israel. There are more pictures. The family of the bomber sobs into a microphone; the father of a dead schoolboy vows revenge. Arafat denounces the violence, but not fast enough to suit Sharon.
“Shut the damn thing off,” she says.
The refrigerator rumbles. I brush table crumbs into my cupped hand. The faucet drips, relentless.
“I’m watching the news,” I say.
A Palestinian blew up a bus in Israel.
She throws her drink at the television and hits the blender. Glass scatters across the counter and spinning ice cubes skid to the floor. The faucet drips.
I retrieve the shards of glass. I pick up the ice. I wipe a dish towel across the spill, inciting the smell of whiskey.
A Palestinian blew up a bus in Israel.
I turn off the TV. I step behind her and rest my hands on her shoulders while she sobs.
You want me to say this makes a difference. You want me to tell you we kiss and make up, that we get over our petty squabble in the face of that tragedy. But you don’t just kiss and make up when you’ve been at war as long as we have.