She sits on the lounge with her partner, sharing an unfulfilling jar of jellybeans. For the first time in her life, she dares to dream of something more.
If only she could find the courage to act.
For everyone who dreams of freedom, and of being truly loved and known.
Also includes the short story Understanding.
The Remarkable Insight of Jellybeans
They sit on the lounge they bought together, curled up in opposite ends while the TV blares. He sounds like the TV, droning on, talking with monotonous fervour about his job, his friends, his bike—and she can’t make herself care. It’s like ads, like prime time, like seeing the same reruns month after month after month, and what was clever and funny once is now mundane. It makes her think of canned laughter and dishes, taking out the garbage and catching buses. Forever, it’s been like this; he talks, she listens, never interrupting, never interjecting, the perfect girlfriend, the perfect listener, perfectly selfless, an empty vessel just waiting to be filled—and he’s never asked about her day, not once.
He pauses for a breath and, carefully, she lifts the jellybean jar from where it has been resting against her tucked-up ankles, out of sight but not out of mind, cool glass pressing against bare skin, ice in a beige desert storm. She unscrews it with perfect, measured movements, not too quick, not too loud, not wanting to interrupt his train of thought.
He glances over. “Can I have some?”
He hadn’t wanted her to buy them, called them a frivolous waste of money, and as soon as she got them home she felt like he was right; jellybeans had no place in their pantry, nowhere to sit that didn’t highlight their out-of-placeness, garish in the cool dim company of potatoes and garlic, practical tinned tomatoes and stockpiles of penne pasta. He hadn’t wanted her to buy them, but she’d known all along he’d finish most of them, because that’s just how it was, and she’d never interrupted.
“Sure.” She peers down at a jar full of sugar, bright colour and empty calories, flavour that kisses the tongue then vanishes, leaving the mouth cloyed with generic sweetness. Bright colours, like fruit, or hummingbirds, or hope.