She sits down across the table from him and puts on her smile.
As he serves up the food, she mentally calculates that she must have sat across the table from him over eight thousand times. Three hundred and sixty five days in a year, twice a day on average, fifteen years in total, take away a couple thousand to account for holidays, days out, silent treatment rows. Yes, that’ll be about right. More or less eight thousands times.
As usual, she doesn’t know what the food is. But she knows that she will like it - he is really a very good cook – and that she will eat it up too fast.
As they both start on their food, the kitchen is filled with the sounds of silent eating.
Her plate empty now, she wishes she hadn’t eaten quite so fast again. Now all she can do is watch as he slowly and purposefully finishes his food.
Every single bite is excruciating. The noise as the fork hits the bottom of the plate. The scraping sound as he scoops up too much food. The perilous journey from the plate to the gaping open mouth. The final screeching of teeth against metal.
She notices a tiny drop of fatty liquid tortuously sliding down the side of his chin.
Then all the crunching and slurping and sucking and grinding begin. The squelching as his teeth masticate the food to a swallowable mass. The gulping sound as the mass makes its way down his throat. It’s almost deafening.
Their eyes meet. She tries to think of something to say, but is so hypnotized by the scientific observation of her husband’s eating habits that nothing suitable for conversation pops into her brain.
As he opens his mouth to another bite, she catches herself before she winces as he displays – almost as a threat – bits of food and elastic threads of saliva, attaching from the upper teeth to the lower teeth like stalagmites (or was it stalactites? they always argued about this kind of stupid definition) in a moldy cave.
The continuing silence amplifies every sound and her heart sinks as she considers how much food he still has left on his plate. Will he have seconds?
When he’s finished with his fork, she will have to make a heroic effort to hide her disgust as he uses his finger to clean up the plate, picking up every last bit of sauce, making a screeching kissing sound as he greedily sucks on his index.
More squelching. He’s nearly done.
As she watches him finish his eating, with what she hopes is as close as can be to an adoring look, she remembers when the muscles on her face didn’t have to struggle for the right countenance. There had been a time when all the details of his eating, talking, moving, breathing, hell, even shitting, had been music to her ears. A while ago.
And so, with a final smack of the lips, he’s done.
“Darling, that was lovely. Shall I make a cup of tea?”
