SINGULARITY

Chapter 2

 

                “I think it’s a sunny day to go to the park.” I thought casually. I’ve never seen a 1st grader so remorseful. Kristie kept saying, “No it’s gonna rain on me cause I didn’t listen to my mommy and daddy…” All I could say was; “What?” It’s a beautiful July day, so we’re going to the park.

Then my wife came down the stairs. A golden necklace wrapped in the collar of her sleeveless, teal blouse and tan jeans and those women’s roman style sandals going up to her ankles. Is she seriously wearing makeup? I don’t get females sometimes, it doesn’t matter what age you are, males & females will never come to a consensus.

It compliments her eyes though so I guess it’s fine.

But once she asked me, “how do I look,” of course I said, “Great! Obviously.” I felt my neck roll a little bit! Hope it didn’t seem flamboyant at all. But she had just turned to the mirror hanging over the side table, so I’m good.

                Then she turned from doing her hair in the mirror, back upstairs—just her head. She was looking up at Kristie in camo jeans, but oddly enough, a black t-shirt with a triumphant unicorn on it.

“When did you buy that?” I laughed in a whisper to my wife. She looked back at me—we’re almost the same height, I’m only 6’ so, that makes her about 5’9… and a half. Light green, Vietnamese eyes surrounded with dark eyelashes gazed tiredly.

“It was in the budget.” Something my wife says when she doesn’t feel like explaining finances. Her high ponytail of long black hair was glimmering in the afternoon sunlight. The window was directly behind us. I think she was using the sunlight as a little flicker of light in the mirror while she checked on her face. I subtly reminded her we were just going to the park, not the 95th Academy Awards.

She shooed me away jokingly as Kristie came down. I swept her into the air quickly, and pretended to play airplane. “Air Force One coming through!” I added a terrible imitation of airplane noises to the moment of play. I didn’t wanna mess up her adorable outfit so I stopped, “Who’s my little tomboy?”

“Meeee!” She smiled, missing her two front teeth. Looking in her face she was an exact mix of both of us. My wife’s eyes and hair. My cheeks and chin, and obviously the tomboyness from me.

Resuming my horrible imitation, I dropped her slowly to the tan, hardwood floors as if she was a plane descending from the sky. 

The PrintMark material of her shirt left white imprints of both my hands. She swept down on the prints, and soon enough they faded out. At my wife’s demand she ran cheerfully to put on her sneakers—she likes the Vibrams, the one with the actual toes on them. I could still see the gradually fading, misspelled reminder Kristieleft on the back of the shirt; “Clothes go in the clawset, not the floor.”

She gets her messiness from me too…

I ran upstairs real quick. Wanted to get something to drink. Passing the charcoal colored walls of the small hallway. One wall is draped with our photos of how we met chronologically—my wife’s romantic idea, it was actually her mother’s request as a family tradition to be passed down. You know Asians and their family traditions.

So first it was a buddy of mine that was in my squad, taking a picture of me breaking up a fight between her & some guy that was flirting with her and her sister. It was actually a long story, but she basically knew him already and knew he was just a player, and a loser. She’s the older sister so she got really defensive over her when he tried to grope her thigh. Then he called her some derogatory term in Vietnamese, and she basically warped up on him—I remember when my generation said turn up, now it’s warped up, I don’t know where that came from, I guess the vortechs. My miraculous gentlemanship brought out her attraction to me. And she liked real men—and a soldier was just right for her I guess.