Everything But The Kitchen Sink
When Mary Little walks into her kitchen on Tuesday morning, the sink is under the window.
At first she can’t even find it. She looks at the space where the sink is supposed to be, at the end of the island, and the sink is gone. Her son, Ben, sits there, spooning cereal into his mouth with one hand while his other rocks an empty mug. His long, sweaty legs stretch out past the edge of the cabinets. At the very end of the island his bowl sits on smooth counter-top, right where the sink has always been, and the mug he is rocking is hers, her favorite Seurat mug. She had left it next to the sink last night.
She always leaves it next to the sink.
Always.
Mary stands there, perfectly still, trying to puzzle things out. The only possibility is that Chris hired a contractor to move the sink during the night. What an odd and disconcerting joke. The situation reminds Mary of a nightmare reality show, where they replace everything in a woman’s closet with identical skirts and jeans and shirts, all exactly one size smaller, so that when she wakes up in the morning, absolutely nothing fits. And then they shove a camera into her face as she starts crying.
Is there a camera in here?
Mary half-turns to look behind her, sees nothing unusual, and starts wondering how Chris and Ben could possibly have pulled it off between them. A contractor would have made an enormous racket, working all night. Granted, Mary has always slept soundly, even on nights when Chris crept into bed fresh from San Diego or Singapore or Austin. But she must have been absolutely exhausted not to hear a team of men removing the cast iron sink and installing a solid piece of slate-gray granite.
Looking around her, still searching for cameras or a hidden group of friends or strangers waiting to surprise her, her eyes shift to the California live oak tree outside, and from there down to the counter in front of the window.
Her sink is there, under the window, in the middle of what had been an unbroken countertop.
“Dad’s gonna be in trouble,” says Ben, still fidgeting with her favorite Seurat mug. Mary thinks this is quite the understatement, given that her husband seems to have remodeled the kitchen without even bothering to ask.
“So this was his idea?”
“Well, I’m not stupid enough to move your mug.” Instantly there was an odd feeling in her stomach, and a pressure at the base of her neck. Ben was doing an unbelievably good job of playing the straight man.
With a strong sense that she is asking the wrong question, Mary says, “He moved my mug?”
“Well, I didn’t,” Ben says. “It was right here when I came in from practice, and I know you always leave it over there.” He glanced over at the window and the sink underneath it.
Mary never puts her mug anywhere other than
