we played spoons

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at last sunday arrived, all twenty-four hours of it, nothing missing, nothing undelivered. Claude had worked hard all week. So hard he couldn’t even remember when it was the last time he had not worked that hard. It had been hot, it had been dusty, it had been colorful hand shaking times, it had been counting and re-counting and now Sunday had arrived. He had slept long enough, even though his legs ached from standing up for so long, his right ear hurt when laying down, his head hurt on the right side. He still rolled over and let himself sleep. It didn’t matter what time he got up. He knew they wouldn’t let him sleep past mealtime. God, no. Missing a meal for sleep was completely tantamount to a capital offense: disallowed. So he slept until he woke up, popped two headache pills and one prozac. That would take care of the aches and pains and curb the appetite of his disordered brain for catastrophic events of the imaginary kind. Most unkind, mind you, because exploding power posts that careen into your windshield to cleanly slice off your head are not very kind at all, albeit imaginary.  He knew he needed to take care of some routine business around the house before the visitors arrived. So he did. He avoided talking too much, avoided putting on his sleepers, avoided picking up a book, avoided the newspaper, he avoided the peanut butter jar and the xylophone, he avoided the crossword puzzle, he even avoided picking up the cats, lest he become distracted and fail to take care of the small business tasks already on his plate.
 When they arrived Claude was happy that he wasnt sitting on his big chair, doing nothing. He had managed to stay busy and hadn’t even thought much about the visitors. The thought of the spoons game had helped. He knew he would laugh and he was ready for it. He looked at his reflection on the mirror while he cleaned the bathroom and practically laughed without a sound. Then he almost laughed with the eyes only. While nearly laughing from both sides of his mouth, Claude smelled the bleach and dropped the near-laugh rehearsal. No real big deal. the vision of the gleaming spoons in the middle of the table lay right beneath the platters of ribs, bowl of sugar plums, terrines of mac and cheese, the frozen pewter salad dish, and the basket of hot french bread. He didn’t taste the food and missed entire paragraphs of the conversation around the table, transfixed as he was by the 7 silver spoons reflection underneath all of that table spread made to feed people who don’t know each other and must keep company because it is Sunday. At least here he could see the people eating and he knew what they ate because  it was the same things he ate, nothing left for angel food, nothing left for angels, nothing left for the fisherman or even the dog.