The Remark
by Juliette St Jacques
The boxing match blared from the television. Norm was transfixed, oblivious to the conversation that his three friends were having around him.
‘What do you guys want for dinner?’ Jane asked.
Ben and Amelia looked at each other, shrugged, and answered in unison, ‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, let me see what I’ve got...’ Jane rummaged around in the refrigerator for a few seconds. ‘How ‘bout burritos?’ she yelled into the cold cavity, ‘I have all those dried pinto beans I can cook up, plenty of salsa makings, even a hunk of Monterey Jack. We would just need to run out for some tortillas.’
‘Sounds great,’ said Amelia, ‘I’ll run to the supermarket down on 20th.’
Ben said ‘Cool,’ and nudged Norm who took the cue and repeated mechanically, ‘Yeah, cool.’ He kept his eyes glued to the screen and had no idea what he was condoning.
As Jane began organizing her ingredients on the kitchen counter and Amelia was gathering her coat and purse, Ben became acutely aware ot the situation : the two women were taking care of the dinner preparations while he and his friend sat dumbly in front of the television. He sat, feeling increasingly guilty and useless. Why was it that all the women in his life -- his over-achieving older sister, his single mother, and now his new girlfriend, Jane -- always took charge of the day-to-day activities while he sat passively by? Why was he so helpless? He wanted to participate, but they were so quick and efficient. They didn’t need him. It was a well-established pattern by now, and he was incapable of breaking it by volunteering to run the errand or chop the vegetables.
Self-hatred overwhelmed him, and he said, with bitter sarcasm, ‘Good thing you women have us guys around to take care of you.’ He put his feet up on the coffee table, placed his hands behind his head, and pretended to focus on the fight.
Ben’s sarcastic tone had eluded Jane, and her heart sank. She had come up with the dinner plan no thanks to any of them, male or female. She had been looking forward to preparing them a nice meal, but the unfairness of his comment caused a ball of anguish to form in the pit of her stomach. She felt like screaming at him that it was her idea to have burritos, and that he had nothing to do with it, and that she was in charge around here, and that she didn’t need him or any other man to take care of her.
But their relationship was still young and she didn’t want to make a scene. They would talk about it later. She pressed her lips together and bravely held back the tears of rage that were welling up. She chose to cut the onions first, so that she would have an excuse if anybody noticed a few escaping tears. She began chopping furiously.
Given the circumstances, Amelia realized that Ben had intended his statement to be ironic, perhaps even humorous. However, she personally did not find it funny. During the first twenty years of her life she had witnessed the slow, steady destruction of her mother, at the hands of her controlling and abusive father. She currently spent a lot ot time and energy combatting stupid macho attitudes through counseling women. Although Amelia suspected that Ben was not one of them, there were plenty of men out there who would still make similar remarks and be perfectly serious. The battle for women’s independence was still being fought and should not be joked about just yet. Thousands of years of repression were not to be taken lightly.
But she didn’t know Ben very well, and, for Jane’s sake, did not want to get into a discussion about all this with her new boyfriend. ‘You’d better watch what you say, Ben,’ was all Amelia allowed herself to say. She shut the door behind her.
‘Yeah,’ added Jane, a bit too loudly, her voice revealing her pain.
‘Yeah!’ yelled Norm, jumping up from the couch and punching the air in front of him. His man’s opponent had just been knocked out.
