Empty Sheets

(6) The Above "Remedies"

After greeting me with a kiss to the cheek, Geoff proceeds to walk me down the street to the location for lunch. He’s getting right to business. That’s good so far. We don’t even say much until we arrive there. It’s a place called Cilantro, and it had just opened up. It took over for the old diner that we used to attend when I visited Geoff for lunch. The owner couldn’t afford to keep it running any more, so someone else bought the property and turned it into a Central American grill.

                I step in, and the smell of delicious Latin food immediately makes me hungrier. Growing up in an El Salvadorian household, this is the type of food I loved best.

                And Geoff knew that.

                “I wrote the ad for the owner…” he tells me as we stand in the short line. “…the one you saw outside along with some little flyers.”

                “Oh,” I say as I turn my head toward the glass front door. “I must have missed that one outside.”

                Geoff looks up toward the menu and makes no remark. He just mouths some of the food selections to himself.

                I briefly watch him. I just notice that he’s wearing my favorite dress shirt on him. It’s a soft purple one with very thin vertical blue lines. I always thought it brought out the grey in his eyes. He, on the other hand, never cared much for the shirt.

                “My guess is that you’ll go with the breaded steak salad,” Geoff says, interrupting my thoughts. He looks at me.

                I avert my glance and pretend to study the menu. “Is it good?”

                “I don’t know,” Geoff answers while shrugging one shoulder. “My first time here. I’m just guessing because you love breaded steak, and I see you’ve recently been eating a lot of salad.” He grins. “How do you guys call it again? Beestay empansawdow?” He now chuckles.

                Usually I would have smacked his arm playfully for mispronouncing bistec empanizado yet again. But this time, I reply in a calm sort of voice, almost like a mother talking to a child. “No, it’s not how I say it.”

                Through my peripheral vision, I can see Geoff look at me a little longer. Then he shakes his head and steps forward when it’s our turn to order.

                This type of behavior from him comes as no surprise. He’s acting. He’s being fake just to try and pretend everything is fun and games when he knows the truth cannot be more distant. It was usually very difficult to get serious with him. Any time I was upset over something he did, he rarely addressed the matter. He only tried to cover it up with humor, sweet words, or would play the vice-versa game. “If you would have done that, would I get mad?”

                The above “remedies” only worked for so long. After that, it became tiring because the problem would not be solved. It would just happen again. It was as if Geoff thought he did nothing wrong.

                Take for instance this one thing that happened about two years into our marriage. Geoff had just gotten the job at 8 Minutes. He started off working long hours six days a week. I hardly had the chance to see him, especially with my schedule working as an accounting for an interior designer. That wasn’t exactly fashion as I wanted, but we’ll get into that later.

                Anyway, I had planned a weekend vacation with him to a theme park outside of the city. We used to do different things for fun to keep the word ‘mundane’ out of our relationship description. We were both spontaneous: always doing something random at the last minute.