Love In The Time of Salmonella by Stephanie Johnson

Stephanie Johnson lives in Madison, Wisconsin. Her fiction has recently appeared or is forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly, Quay, Lily, Verbsap, Fickle Muses, Boston Literary Magazine, R-KV-R-Y, Idlewheel, and Keyhole Magazine. Her essays, including the first publication of “Love in the Time of Salmonella,” have regularly appeared in The Rambler in her column “No Do-Overs.”

Sometimes, I like to fight with the man in my life. I don’t go out of my way to manufacture excuses to spar with him, but if the opportunity presents itself, I’m not of the disposition to look the other way.

Take, for example, the time a rancid odor permeated our kitchen. Ben used to be a chef, a part of his history that is of particular interest to me because I like to eat. He’s like a magician in the kitchen. When he pulls six random ingredients (two of which are condiments) from our nearly empty fridge, employs his enchanted spatula, and makes a meal appear that’s not only edible but also actually enjoyable, I never fail to clap wildly and gasp how did he do that?

It should be noted that I’m a natural groupie for people who possess practical skills. I love my dentist, my auto association’s tire changers, my city’s snowplow drivers, the people who invented Swiffer dusters, and the waste management employees who magically make my trash disappear. No small part of this unwavering admiration is probably because I completely lack practical skills. When Ben applied for a job as an engineer and scheduled five interviews in forty-eight hours, I was amazed. After I relocated to live with him, I spent months looking for a job. When I mentioned this discrepancy to one of my colleagues in the English department, he seemed astounded by my naiveté. “What,” he said, “no one called you up? Hey, Steph, I have a warehouse full of parts of speech hanging out here. We need you to come over and sort them right now!”

However, living with a former professional chef also has drawbacks: he’s used to having a professional team of kitchen help to wipe his counters, sweep his floors, and wash his dishes. A small price to pay, you might think. But sometimes the demands of everyday life keep me from immediately attending to the mess in the kitchen. Sometimes, a glass of wine with dinner and an early bedtime are just what the doctor ordered. Sometimes, the dishes sit.

Hence, the story of the rotten meat in the sink. While I’ll spare the graphic details of my quest to uncover the source of the stench (it involved wondering if one of our cats had been wedged behind the fridge for a week and I’d been too absent-minded to notice), I was horrified to discover that a piece of chicken skin had been tossed into the sink, gotten wedged under the dish basin, and failed to slide down the garbage disposal.

I felt an overwhelming urge to scream—the good, blood-curdling kind like Janet Leigh is capable of—but I was afraid if I opened my mouth to get the lungful of air such a scream required, I’d inhale twice as much of the funk. I don’t know how long I stood frozen, staring at the blob, which looked part low-budget movie monster and part greenish-gray cytoplasmic science experiment.

When Ben tapped me on the shoulder, no doubt curious about why I was hermetically sealed to the floor in front of the sink instead of making coffee, I pointed helplessly.

“Are you crazy? Who leaves meat in the sink? Have you lost your mind? Why would you leave that in the sink?”

At times like these, his practicality becomes his biggest liability. When enraged by the thoughtlessness of a person who leaves a piece of chicken skin to fester in a sink, what person wants to be met with a simple, logical solution? Where was the apology? Where was the remorse? Where was the earnest promise to change his less-than-hygienic ways because he couldn’t stand to lose me?

“The stink,” I said, still clinging to the fact that he may have scarred me, made me unable to have a healthy relationship with chicken ever again.

“Wash it down with some bleach,” he said. He shrugged, moved me out of the way, and fixed the problem. “Ta da,” he said. “No more chicken.”

He shrugged again, his standard response when he’s done something uncivilized. He stopped short of actually asking the question on his mind: do you really think chicken warrants this level of drama?

Quickly coming to the realization that my meltdown over chicken was unlikely to garner me any additional pampering in my own home, I turned to my girlfriends, many of whom have partners who are also perfectly capable of doing distasteful things. I sought sympathy, but I lost out to my friend who once drank the last swig of soda only to discover her husband had deposited his toenail clippings in the can. Another told me of a bowl of leftover pasta salad that her boyfriend left on the porch for at least three seasons (my biological nightmare was nothing compared to hers). And my own mother suggested that perhaps I should try being nicer about things like this. She questioned what would happen if I ever had a child. “Children,” she said, “are capable of producing grosser things than Ben could concoct in his wildest dreams. Perhaps you’re seeking conflict where there is none.”

Another practical person. Was there no one who could appreciate the depth of my trauma? I was angry because no one took my anger seriously. Didn’t a person have a right to be angry? Wouldn’t the absence of anger be taken as acquiescence that people could leave meat to turn rancid wherever they chose?

And isn’t there a practical use for impracticality? Doesn’t good-spirited conflict have a role in our lives? A standard exercise in beginning fiction workshops is eavesdropping on a conversation, recording it, and examining it for tension and conflict. What are the people talking about? How does their discussion of a commonplace object or activity reveal their larger desires? What is the subtext of their conversation? What kind of example would Ben and I have provided for a burgeoning fiction writer if I had not assumed the role of a squeamish, indignant, clean person opposite his steel-stomached, nonchalant, dirty person? Imagine the following scene in a story:

“There was a nasty piece of chicken skin in the sink, but I washed it down with some bleach. Please don’t do that again because it almost made me throw up.”

Pretty boring. Most readers wouldn’t be interested in knowing more about these people.

While living in a home where conflicts are solved so neatly might be paradise for some—an indication of a healthy, mutually respectful relationship for others—I can’t imagine it. If I didn’t have a minor irritation to obsess over, what would I do with my free time? I come from a line of outspoken, loud, and expressive people for whom conflict and tension are regular occurrences. I don’t mean to suggest I have a genealogical need for anger management classes, but in my family arguing is a fundamental and healthy part of being human and, most importantly, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.

My grandmother provided my healthiest role model. When angry, she transformed into five feet of roiling tempest—part screaming banshee, part drill sergeant bark, and all swirling hands and arms. Although I wasn’t around to see it, rumor has it she once pitched a plucked chicken at my grandfather’s head. She could slam doors hard enough to make pictures on walls three blocks away shake. As soon as her balled fists hit her hips, you had approximately fifteen seconds to back up before her Italian gesturing put you at risk for an inadvertent slap to the head. She’d fight in her kitchen, in the yard, in the grocery store. It didn’t matter.

And, mind you, none of this was unprovoked. My grandfather was a consummate joker, a natural storyteller, a likeable and charismatic man. He liked to wind her up. He teased her mercilessly. He ruined her bourbon cakes by sneaking into the kitchen and saturating them with no less than half a bottle. He hand-fed the nuts she used for baking to squirrels in the yard. The madder she got, the harder he laughed. I suspect the pleasure he took in winding her up came from his confidence that she was crazy about him. As quick as her temper was, she was twice as quick to forgive for love. My grandparents lived in one of the happiest—if loudest—homes I’ve ever seen.

Once, after I had crossed the threshold into late adolescence—a time when I thought I knew everything—I approached her after one of their fights. It had ended when she threw a few handfuls of dishwater at him and he had, according to script, retreated snickering to his lawn chair in the yard to wait for the paperboy. I asked her why she let him make her so angry.

“Because it’s tragic to be in love with a fool.” She sighed and wiped her hands on her dishtowel. “You can’t love someone without hating what he does sometimes. If I didn’t love him, I wouldn’t care what he did.”

She mopped the water from the floor with the dishtowel. Then, she sat with me at the kitchen table.

“Listen to me. The time is coming when you will find someone. God help us, but you will likely choose a fool.” She pinched my cheek between her fingers. “When you decide whether to marry this fool, make sure he has a strong hand to hold. Make sure he likes to eat. Don’t trust a man who doesn’t like food. Then, make sure he’ll let the dirty dishes sit so he can dance with you in the kitchen.” She gave me a soft pat on the cheek and returned to the soaking dishes.

“And,” she said as she began to rinse plates, “make sure you yell at him. If you can’t yell at him, how will he know you love him?”