Summer, 1959: Dayton, Ohio.
Ermal was mid-groan when his eyes stayed closed in an emphatic blink for a moment too long, and so went angrily through a pothole the front left tire of his Neptune Green Bel Air. He, along with his wife Martha, and the picnic basket and cooler on the bench seat behind them, all kathunked in tandem.
Robbed of their intended coordination, Ermal’s top and bottom jaws collided. He checked his teeth to ensure none had chipped.
Martha let out a sympathetic oof for the vehicle and glanced over her shoulder to make sure the picnic basket was upright.
He continued: Something about how no one could possibly understand the weight of the pressure of entrepreneurship… Martha was half-listening. For ten years, he had owned and operated the Dayton Reliable Tool & Manufacturing Company. A company he had established with the help of a loan from she.
Billie Holiday crooned on the radio scoring his pitiful quarrel with no one. Martha knew her mirror for him had dirtied with the news of Holiday’s death just a few weeks prior. His self-confidence suffered without her adulation, but she couldn’t seem to manage an uplifting word. Instead of pep, she offered advice:
“Maybe you should ask for help.”
“... I sit in my chair
Filled with despair…”
“Help! I’ve never needed help from anyone. What’s different now?”
Martha smiled inside. A semblance of pleasure at his pain would do nothing to bring his laments to an end.
In preparing for the picnic, as she always did, she slipped the churchkey can opener between an untrussed weave of wicker in the picnic basket’s wall. She pictured the motion she could take to retrieve it from beneath the seat where it now sat, its resting place after it came loose and landed with a small tink as the car plummeted through the pothole.
When they pulled in at the park, Martha left the car in a swift motion to greet her boys. They had arrived ahead with another family and were already sweaty and smelling of grass. Through half-hearted hugs and over the top of her sunglasses, she watched Ermal. A beer clutched in one fist, he transferred the picnic basket from its place in the back seat to sit atop the trunk of the car. He began to rifle through its contents. She saw the jerk of impatience in his body.
She saw him give up and, moments later, came to sweep the basket away. She ferried it across the lawn to the already well adorned picnic table, placed it upon the lower bench and cleared some space on the table’s top. Her eldest son stood next to her as she removed the lid. His face reflected a pot of gold. She began to remove containers one by one - cubed pineapple, sliced wheels of kiwi, peels full of soft mango flesh, bananas and melons, thick to thump; tiny beads of pomegranate freed from their web and pink, spiked lychee; figs to tart and dates to delight.
“What’s with all this strange fruit?” her youngest chirped.
“You got the right stuff, Mom,” the oldest reassured.
“Exactly,” Martha replied.
Ermal was still planted right where she had left him, at a loss. He watched from afar, his cold beer taking on the heat from his hand. He knew she knew where the can opener was. She always knew where everything was.
If he hadn’t been so pathetically netted in the misery of his autonomy, perhaps if Billie hadn’t perished, she would have retrieved the reliable tool from under the seat as she left the car and put it right in Ermal’s hand on her path to greet the boys. He would have been none the wiser to her perception or assistance.
He paced in small circles and traced the toe of his shoe in the fine dirt beneath the car’s rear. After some time, he came upon a sharp portion of the bumper that had angled leverage he figured could pierce the flat top of the can. For the rest of the afternoon, he held court from his bumper bar, puncturing open cans for all their friends. He quoted oversight for the forgotten can opener with a genial and blameless laugh.
After the picnic, they drove home in the quiet of Sunday dusk. The boys dozed in the back seat, heads heavy atop the now hollow basket and cooler fixed betwixt them. When they arrived, Ermal went straight out to check on the chickens.
He was hungry and drunk and the aftertaste of a request for help gone stale in the throat crept into his mouth.
The chickens roosted peacefully and didn’t need him to check on them.
He returned to the house and as he stepped in from the lingering red light of the day to the white light of the kitchen, Martha ascended from the basement with a heap of laundry in a different basket in her arms. She gave him a blithe smile and he didn’t take it as punishment.
“Marty,” he started.
“Hmm?” she replied, milking her own long blink on the way to meet his gaze.
“I suppose I need all kinds of help, don’t I?”
“Oh, Ernie. Is knowing it so bad?”
She patted him on the heart side of his chest, and he clasped her sturdy hand with both of his.
After peeking in on his sleeping boys, he descended the steps to his workshop in the basement to do some further thinking on the subject. His path was illuminated from across the space by the lamp at his workbench, and he wondered if he’d left it on the night before. He didn’t have a specific recollection, but the suds of fresh humility allowed his mind to wash past the incongruence in memory.
As he drew closer though, something glimmered in the lamplight. Proximity revealed the churchkey can opener.
That night, Ermal Fraze stayed up developing the pop-top can opener until the chickens crowed and the sun rose over his dewy yard. One less thing for Martha to have to keep tabs on, he mused the while.
I thought this was just a lovely story about a challenging relationship. The penultimate paragraph was no surprise, but the final paragraph floored me. I did not see that coming. Beautifully done.
I also looked up Ermel. I enjoyed the story and especially liked the tidbits of culture of the day thrown in, like Billie Holliday singing on the radio.