American Cookout

Ronnie once envisioned that his life would be a wonderful path to carve, but after the increasingly rough years he spent with Anne, his wife, he realized that his life had instead become an arduous road to travel.
He became accustomed to his hollow days and craved the sanctity they provided. There were indeed some warm memories, but they were preceded in his mind by the famous opening words of Star Wars: “long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away.” He was stuck in the current galaxy, where the priest’s promise of marital bliss became a test of will and sanity that Robinson Crusoe likely would’ve failed. Misery wasn’t in the wedding vows, so Ronnie concluded that Anne was in breach of marital contract, yet he feared confronting her, the queen bitch, goddess of screams and rants—she with the angry, dinosaur walk that could rattle kitchen windows.
Anne began her domineering ways when Trisha and Alicia, their twin daughters, began to grow up. Ronnie escaped her escalating temperament with alcohol. Once a casual drinker, his evenings became ritualistic—his libations in the form of Pabst Blue Ribbon. More years passed, and as his daughters were overwhelmed with teenage angst and anger, his wife followed suit. She coddled them every minute of each day, in turn becoming a distracted, bitter dominatrix of his life and paycheck.
Alcoholism alone wasn’t enough. Ronnie turned to Workaholism, taking a second job at the Bottle Shop, the package liquor store downtown. While he was polishing countertops and dreading the arrival home, Ronnie couldn’t help but recall the quiet nights when Anne was a loving woman, not the evil critic of his ability to provide. On those nights, he found the peace to read, and he encountered the wisdom and foresight of William Blake, who once said, “I sometimes try to be miserable so that I may do more work.” Those words haunted Ronnie—a mantra and a curse. Blake’s truth would’ve been more intense, but with Anne and the twins, there was no need for Ronnie to attempt misery, only a need for work to distract him from it. He secretly wished to be Robinson Crusoe, whose life he shared over the course of three glorious nights in the winter of ’87. During that winter, he was engrossed by the richness of the novel, enthralled by the trials, adventures, and friendship. When finished, he remembered making love to Anne, and then he slept soundly, happily. Oh those Star Wars days—so tantalizing.
Now, he felt foreign, unable to understand the language of Argument, which was native to Trisha, Alicia, and Anne. He didn’t recognize the girls of his family without the raised voices, the stamping feet, the selfish reasoning.
Ronnie was passive in their awesome wake of stubbornness, often forfeiting his logic with one white-knuckled hand wrapped around a can of Pabst. Ronnie knew of no consolation for meeting his doom with such patience. He could hear the traditional advice for being caught in such a trap, “don’t struggle, you’ll sink faster!” Yet he could think of no person that would go down without a fight, no matter how wise. Except for himself.
Ronnie was a passenger in life. His day job as a service manager at Briggman Chevrolet afforded him the pleasant social interaction that his sanity required. Conversations about the weather, sports, or his passion for cars, made the hands of the clock scramble to quitting time. Then, he drove two blocks to After Hours Liquor, where the conversation was full of life and passion. Ronnie found that the most interesting people were either drunk or happily anticipating a stupor of some degree.
Ronnie embraced After Hours. Draped in a loose fitting, kaleidoscope-colored Hawaiian shirt, he would slick his whispery brown hair back, open up a Pabst, and deal booze with an almost-genuine smile until closing time at ten.
And then, the real work—avoiding Anne as he cleaned up and got to bed. Usually, she was asleep early, habitually cleaning the house from five in the morning until noon, when she napped, met with the twins, and spent his money. Anne was thoroughly obsessive—obsessed with order, with herself, with the public perception of her daughters . . . with just about everything but frugal spending and her husband.
But on today, his special day, Ronnie wouldn’t have to endure the routine. He usually acted as a passive man, hiding in the womb of work and beer. He was an enabler, allowing his wife to be a bitch, corrupt his daughters, and put him in debt. On this special day, he wouldn’t be an enabler. He would be a man of action, ready to break routine by having a cookout. The anticipation of his solo barbecue was so great that Ronnie requested two hours of leave, shocking just about everyone at Briggman Chevrolet. Even he didn’t realize that he hadn’t used any of his leave, sick or accumulated, in the last twelve years.
He called up Bobby at the Bottle Shop and told him he couldn’t make it in. On the way home from Brigmann’s, he picked up all the herbs, spices, meat, and everything else on his crumbled, tattered list. The list bustled in his pocket each day for the last week, a promise of peace.
It was Thursday, which meant that Anne, Trisha, and Alicia were at the mall, and they usually stayed there until about eight. So Ronnie made a date with the summer breezes he missed so much, the scent of searing meat, the aroma of freshly cut grass, the smoke, the rattle of grilling tools, the pitter patter of his flip flop sandals, and the peace of his country backyard. It was a date, his first since he met Anne twenty years ago, when he was eighteen, and he wasn’t about to miss it.
At three o’clock, with a whole hour left until quitting time at Brigmann’s and two hours before clock-in at the Bottle Shop, Ronnie was in his sandals on his patio. His white legs baked in the sun, jean shorts frayed at the edges, and his topless body basked in warmth. His sandals clapped against the concrete as he padded around his grill, preparing his porterhouse cut of meat.
Although he neared the age of forty, Ronnie was the simultaneous picture of age and youth. His receding hair line was tempered by a short, wiry ponytail teasing the back of his neck. He bore no wrinkles and no gray hairs, yet his eyes were pained and thin, holes of despair in a world of happiness that had somehow eluded him. They appeared tired of looking for it. His body was toned from years of turning wrenches, but his joints were thinly padded from years of abuse. His hands were strong, but gnarled and scarred from his early days as a mechanic.
He worked around the grill with the marvelous quickness and coordination of an oily casino dealer. This was after all, work, only with a much more satisfying reward. Grilling was like any other hobby he had around the house. His days off were filled with activities that allowed him to lose himself in work yet bask in rewards other than money—the reward of completion. The grass was always finely manicured, healthy, and a vibrant green. The landscape was painstaking, each stone hand-placed, each tree and plant constantly nurtured. He built birdhouses. He took on projects in the house such as painting, staining, reorganizing, drywalling, or laying linoleum. Each day off—each second off—allowed Ronnie to take on a project, one that would occupy him and quell Anne. There would be no arguments if he gave her another beautiful room to step into and make her own.
His grill was a homely, inexpensive one, loaded with gray-hot charcoal that was smoldering, greedy for meat. To his right was an outdoor grilling cart with cutting boards, coolers, and drawers. To his left was another one, only with a sink and more space. His tools, ingredients, and meat surrounded him. Like a conductor at the sweetest of symphonies, he turned to one side, then the next, his hands always working, pushing, kneading, rubbing, or cutting. The grill in front of him was an attentive audience, ready to receive him.
With the grill heating nicely under the neatly packed field of coals, he prepared a porterhouse cut of meat that resembled a dark, rich slice of marble. Whole sage leaves, coarsely chopped rosemary, and two finely diced cloves of garlic were perched on the grill cart, along with a small cup of coarse salt and an oak colored pepper grinder. The spice symphony filled the nose, lungs, and soul with faith of their potential. It would take a person with olfactory paralysis or supreme self control to resist sampling the herbs with a moist pinky finger. Ronnie was not that person. As he enveloped a finger with his lips, he envisioned the extra virgin olive oil bringing all the ingredients together, slathering the steak in traditional Tuscan style at the end of the grilling process.
The meat was generously seasoned with salt and pepper, and then put in one of the cooling drawers when Ronnie was satisfied with the preparation. He was almost overcome by the peace of the moment, the therapy he so richly deserved. The optimism came in such thick torrents that he found himself taking a long pull from his can of Pabst and savoring the taste, not just the alcoholic result. Leaning back in his lawn chair, soaking up sun and smell, Ronnie enjoyed the moment—until he was alarmed by the sounds coming from the driveway—gravel crushing, an approaching engine grumbling.
Anne, Trisha, and Alicia were home early. The Bitches of Eastwick who spoke fluent Yell. He could feel his aura of peace fading, and a knot of concern began to swell in his chest. Breathing became a labor that required concentration. Impervious to labor, Ronnie quickly found air.
He expected them an hour later, and Ronnie wanted to eat and clean up before they got home. This would maintain the illusion that he only skipped work at the Bottle Shop, which he informed Anne he would do. The clock was nearing four, however, and it would be obvious he left Brigmann’s early. With this new turn of events, he decided to put the meat on.
The porterhouse hissed against the bars of the grill. Ronnie turned his complete attention to it, savoring the meaty smoke and how it dominated the air.
Anne, Trisha, and Alicia came around the corner of the two-story, brown-shingled house, shopping bags bustling in their hands. Shoulder to shoulder, they sauntered up the sidewalk as if a red carpet were strewn before them.
The twins looked like spoiled rich girls. They were far from rich, but richly spoiled. Excellent looks, perfect blonde hair, and rapidly developed breasts made the twins just as spoiled by the boys at school. They had never been exposed to the real world that Ronnie knew intimately.
“But she got it last time! I never got the car two times in a row,” Trisha squealed. He could tell them apart by their voices, but only barely by their faces. Trisha had a voice that dripped with complaint. Everything about her could be perfectly described as whiny.
“The fuck you have. The fuck you have, you got the car twice in one week las month. I don’t see what the big deal is anyways, have Todd over to the house tonight. You guys don’t have to go out somewhere to fuck anyways.”
Alicia was less whiny, bossier, with the foul mouth of her mother. She bore the same good looks as her sister, with slightly smaller breasts—their only physical difference.
Ronnie closed his eyes and breathed deep, trying not to hear them. It didn’t work.
“I’ve heard it for the last twenty miles, I’ll be damned to hell if I’m going to hear it anymore. Alicia, you can have the car. Trisha, just have Todd over tonight. Your father won’t mind. You can have the car twice next week.”
Anne. The queen bitch that could’ve been a sculpture called “Aged Beauty.” Once a goddess, her face was now craggy, the wrinkles filled with pasty beige makeup that looked like a shoddy drywall repair job. The hair was no better, strands of gray, black, and deep red intertwined in a strange collage. Anne’s eyes still glimmered, once with youth and hope, now with the predatorial shimmer of a hawk.
“Your father won’t mind,” she had said. Ronnie heard it despite his best efforts to shut her out, and despite his patience, he began to seethe with finely aged hatred for this woman who would dare to say she knows what he would and wouldn’t mind. He almost blurted out, before they came around the corner with their bags bouncing and breasts jiggling, “yes, I do mind when Todd comes over and promises you that I can’t hear, when you think I’m fast asleep and your futon squeaks, when I get up for a glass of milk and I can hear the unmistakable sound of flesh on flesh or Todd moaning as you slurp, slurp him up like your mother used to do for me years ago,” but he didn’t. He turned the steak.
“This isn’t fair. We were going to see a movie tonight, does anyone understand that? You can’t walk to the movies from here. This extra sucks. Downright gnarsty,” Trisha said, her voice teasing tears.
Gnarsty, her cute compilation of gnarly and nasty without expending the extra two syllables. Ronnie found it amusing that a girl who talked so much worried about streamlining her language.
“Life sucks sometimes dear,” Anne said. Ronnie was about to concur vocally, but he instead turned to one of the grill carts, picked up a rag, and began to needlessly wipe it down. Ronnie had prematurely turned the steak, but the raw meat and flame joined, swallowed the air with power, lending him strength.
“Yeah, life sucks,” Alicia added. “Trisha and life would get along, both sucking and all.”
“Mom!”
“That’ll be enough of that Alicia,” Anne said with a smirk.
Ronnie thought of Todd moaning, that zitfaced little rich punk with the huge Adam’s apple. And that hair, intentionally messy, spiky, with platinum tips, as if there were a low, wet ceiling that Todd had walked under, standing tall, his chest puffed out and prick waving. Moaning. In his house. His young daughter on her knees, her bra pushed down by her waist, looking up with wide eyes and full mouth. . . “turn the fucking steak over. Cook evenly, like Steve Raichlen says,” Ronnie thought. But it was too soon to turn the steak.
Ronnie’s mind was burning hot, like the grill before him. He waited for an “oh look, daddy’s home,” “what are you doing home early?” or “is something wrong?” But there was nothing. They were too consumed with doling out possession and aggression.
“Well,” Trisha said spitefully. “for you it wouldn’t be life sucks. For you it would be life sucks Ryan off and gets it from behind from Logan at the same time.”
“You little fucking bitch,” Alicia swung her Dillards bag across her body. Anne was between them as they walked, and with one swift move knocked away most of the blow. The bag was full, and not one item escaped.
“Something new,” Ronnie thought. He marveled at how their tongues seemed to be saturated with hatred. Before he could reflect on the sight of one of his daughters starring in her personal porn, he recited, “I sometimes try to be miserable so that I may do more work.” Blake’s curse was with him. It was indeed a curse—a sedative as he was led to slaughter, but the pride of the cooking meat was waking him up, refreshing him.
“That’ll be enough,” Anne said. “E-fucking-nough! Both of you go to your rooms, unpack your shit, and settle down. I swear to God if I hear one more word out of either of you no one is going to get the car for a month, no one is coming over, and no one is going anywhere, and I fucking mean it! Maybe that’ll teach you to say shit like that! Your private lives should stay that way!”
They shuffled into the doorway and the walls began to muffle their voices. Ronnie anticipated a golden silence as Anne glanced over her shoulder and said, “smells good hon,” as she went inside, without the slightest hint of question or concern.
Anne had seen him, and said nothing to quell his suspicions or potential anger about the sexual escapades of his daughters. He mildly expected them to ruin his cookout, and had prepared in advance.
Sitting in his lawn chair, Ronnie turned to his friend, Pabst, and raised the can to his other friend, Steak. He drank, looked into the sky that was a hundred hues of blue, white, and gold, and whispered aloud:
“Ungrateful. Disrespectful. Whorish. Spoiled. Thankless. Selfish. Whiny. Bitchy. Greedy.”
And that was just the twins. In the time that he listed his daughters’ adjectives in his mind, the steak was close to being done to the rarity that he preferred. Ronnie figured that he had no time to list all of the adjectives that described Anne, unless he was planning on slow roasting another cut of meat. Clutching the beer can, he leaned forward to rise, but paused. It wouldn’t be fair, not if he didn’t at least try to think of some qualities first.
After a few seconds: “Beautiful.”
He immediately rebutted himself: “Vain.” The word escaped his lips, but barely. Hopelessly. Hope was gone, but replaced with the power of the sizzling meat.
Now standing, he breathed, drank, and looked into the sky again. “The prosecution rests, your honor. Don’t be too hard on old Ronnie.”
Ronnie kept his can raised in a toast to himself and the sky, hoping that someone was listening above. He could think of nothing more to say, nothing with the power and resonance of William Blake or Robert Lewis Stevenson. He tidied up his grill companion carts and plopped the steaming cut of meat, which was neatly tattooed with hash marks from the grill, onto a plate. He doused it with olive oil and the prepared herbs and spices with eye-narrowing concentration. For Ronnie, grilling was a craft—he missed doing it daily.
With his porterhouse steaming and ready, he grabbed the knife.
Stuck in their own little world where Ronnie barely existed, Anne, Trisha, and Alicia hadn’t noticed that he was only cooking a single steak. Ronnie was convinced of this—their selfishness wouldn’t allow them to go into the house without asking where their portion was.
Because of their ignorance, he was sure that when he entered the dining room, they wouldn’t notice the knife either.
Shimmering under the playful summer sky, the butcher knife was eleven inches in length—a pristine, virgin blade, purchased brand new just hours earlier.
Ronnie went inside, determined to eat in peace.