The Case of the Missing Conversation

My husband rattled his keys and checked his back pocket for his wallet.

“Okay, let’s go.”

Surely the shock on my face could be seen from space.

“What are you talking about? Go where?”

My husband made that face he makes when he thinks I’m being obtuse or uppity. He makes that face a lot.

“Sherwood, I’m in my bathrobe. I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about or where you think that we are going,” I yipped.

I was, in fact, standing in my bathrobe—a great fluffy yellow bathrobe affair tied with an old purple poke-a-dot bathrobe belt, because I had lost the belt to my present fluffy yellow bathrobe affair and had to go back to the default belt from the purple poke-a-dot bathrobe affair. I happen to know that I looked like an out-of-work circus clown.

“We talked about it.” He was insistent.

The furrows between my eyes became deep-sea trenches.

“We talked about it? In this life? Were my eyes open?”

“Sure, you know, that time when we talked about it?”

“Honey, look at my face. Ignore the fact that I don’t have eyebrows.”

He looked at my face.

“See this?” I said, pointing at my face. “This is shock. I could not be more shocked. Do you think that if we had talked about this I would look this shocked?”

I pointed to my feet.

“See these?” I wiggled my toes in my No-Nonsense socks from Walmart. “These are socks. I’m in my bathrobe and I have no idea what you think we talked about or when. I am not dressed for going to anywhere, nor will I be anytime soon. Keep in mind it takes me twenty minutes to draw on my eyebrows with a crayon.”

For the first time he seemed unsure of our alleged conversation.

“Well . . . maybe . . . you forgot.”

Retying my purple poke-a-dot furry belt, I tipped my eyebrowless furrowed forehead at him.

“Maybe, and maybe you have conversations in your own head that you think I can hear because you’re thinking really loudly.”

His brow furrowed.

The conversation deteriorated from that point.

I appreciate that my husband and I have been cheerfully wedded for more than thirty-plus years. I appreciate that he thinks we have reached a state of sync that means we can read each other’s minds. I appreciate ESP. I just wish that it were real. Well, maybe next year.

Here’s to conversations that happen in real time and with audible words.

Linda (Read My Lips—Out Loud) Zern