21 hours ago
3
My wife came in from work to find a funereal hush. ‘Hello?’ she said tentatively, perhaps thinking her entire family had been abducted or, worse, were attempting an insipid practical joke at her expense. My wife doesn’t care for surprises. For years, she’s made it very clear that if I ever threw her a surprise birthday party, she would simply scream, exit the building, and our next communication would be via the law firm managing our divorce.
‘We’re in here’ I said, eventually, in a tone that suggested things were not going well. As she entered the kitchen, she found us at the dinner table, me glowering and our daughter in tears. Our son immediately leapt from his seat to hug her, and was soon sobbing into her dress.
At this point, she knew exactly what had happened, with one look at the two untouched plates of fish fingers and mash, with peas visible in every possible location around them. There were scatterings of the unloved legumes everywhere; on the table, on the floor, under the fridge. Some had pooled in a plant pot by the window, others were still in motion, slowly rolling toward the sink by the back wall.
I had endeavoured to introduce some vegetal variety to their dinner, in the hopes that their – in fairness, long-established – distaste for peas had worn off. This was folly. The moment I’d sat the offending orbs down in front of them, their grief-stricken faces told me that their hatred for peas had not abated. Absence had not, in this instance, made their hearts grow fonder. No, since their last exposure to the concept of peas, they had clearly spent every waking moment seized by torrid nightmares of their return.
My daughter merely burst out crying and threw her plate asunder, casting the spherical projectiles everywhere around. My son looked at me like I was forcing him to eat human flesh. ‘You can’t be serious’ he said, scanning the room for hidden cameras. For the next 20 minutes, catatonia reigned, as they wailed with such ferocity that my heart began to harden. Gone was the gentle urging and soft, coaxing voice. I became as implacable as a tax collector, glaring at them dead-eyed while they sobbed into the table, trapped in one of those pathetic parenting standoffs to which one instantly regrets committing, until there was naught but silence and stifled, sniffled sobs.
At which point their mother arrived, and they ran to her as if freed from a dungeon. If I’d hoped she would row in behind me, I was to be disappointed, as she cradled their heads and decried my cruelty with mock disgust.
She told them, not for the first time, about an incident from her childhood, when her dad had put peas in her spaghetti, causing her to cry for an entire evening – a story that usually plays to laughter, but which they greeted as a worthy trauma shared by a fellow victim. While they cried, and she laughed, I sat with this betrayal, trying my best not to laugh myself.
I scooped up some peas for myself and stared her down. In a few short months, it will be her birthday, and I’ve decided she’s in for a surprise. The peas were sweet. My revenge shall be sweeter still.
