Your worst Nightmare

teapot

The old woman running the roadside antique stand spoke with a heavy eastern accent. She skirted the table with two limping legs, hidden by loose, draping leather pants and no shoes. John couldn't help staring at the woman's black toes, as if she had once suffered frostbite.

     Everything about her seemed to have once suffered an altering cold.

     Alice and John were on their way home from visiting their oldest daughter in college. They had only stopped so John could stretch his sore back. Alice had been sleeping the entire drive, or pretending to sleep, while thinking about all of the money they had given their daughter as a loan. They had secretly had to scrap the idea of a small vacation so she could retake her algebra in the summer.

     The old woman approached John's wife. With her long fingers she pushed a brass teapot into Alice's hands. The transparent skin on her arms swung with the momentum of her tiny motions.

     "Thank you," Alice responded politely, not knowing what else to say.

     The old woman's stand consisted of one green table, overwhelmed with useless things from the past. Heavy, iron mementos.

     John rolled his eyes when his wife set the brass teapot in the backseat of their Ford Festiva. The car was noticeably struggling as they drove down the interstate, burdened by the small weight of weekend suitcases.

     On the drive home they argued about money. Wasted money. With two children in college, neither having been able to maintain their scholarships, not only was John and Alice's retirement dwindling but also their ability to make ends meet.

     There had been mention of a second mortgage.

     As the car pulled into their house each went to collect a suitcase. John slammed Alice's finger in the trunk, accidentally, before she could snatch her hand away.

"I'm sorry...." He started to say as he took her hand to kiss it. A clanging emanated from inside the car. Like someone tapping on a brass kettle.

     When Alice's finger stopped throbbing she picked up the teapot, removed the top and saw that inside was five quarters.

     "Practically paid for itself," she remarked.

     Still, John was annoyed when she insisted on setting it on the stove.

     For days he felt disrupted by its presence in their otherwise modern kitchen. They had overhauled everything when the children moved out. They got a fridge with two doors and a self-cleaning flat-surface oven. If they had known the children were going to lose their scholarships and that Alice would be demoted, they would have never done it. In three years it would all be paid for and the warranties would simultaneously expire.

     John was most aggravated when Alice decided to make their morning coffee using the brass teapot.

     "The electric one's broken," she reported.

     John watched her, standing in her business suit; her graying hair pulled into a neat ponytail, as she clumsily boiled water and added coffee grounds.

     "I've never done it this way," she said, stirring with a plastic spoon that bent in the boiling heat. John tried to show her the right way to do it, but it was too early to be giving orders. Neither was in a good mood until they had coffee and breakfast. Kisses, hugs, any affections came after food and caffeine.

     "You've got to stir it...like this," he said. He dipped a metal spoon into the cavernous depths of the darkening teapot. She looked away, like she always did when John was correcting her.