There are things in life that you say and immediately wish you could take away. Things that you'd swallow half you're face to take back. Stanley did just that after telling his wife, Virginia, that her new dress made her look...a little thick. He cupped his wrinkled bottom lip over his jaw and nearly folded his face in two. He hunched over in his ragged navy blue robe as he sat on the edge of their squeaky old bed.
Virginia thought about when she first met Stanley. 60 years ago things were much different. His hair was neatly slicked back, and his mustache was neatly combed. He was in the middle of a market trying to sell people wardrobes for small spaces. He was what her mother and father referred to as a "city slicker" and she was a slender farm girl aching for change.
Virginia dazed off into a world filled with her past and leaned against the door of her messy closet. The shrill screech of her pet monkey, Langston. It was 5pm, time for Langston to eat. He was bouncing around the kitchen in his tiny bow tie and matching shorts. She poured a banana smoothie into his dish and gave him a squiggly straw. He sat at the table and sucked it down, looking up at her and smiling adoringly from time to time.
The kitchen phone rang and Virginia and Stanley's granddaughter Gail was whaling into the phone about a nightmare she'd had during her nap where skeletons of dinosaurs and dead animals chased her around. Virginia calmed her as much as she could while washing the dishes and pouring the rest of Langston's smoothie into his cup. Virginia settled into her evening, feeling dissatisfied and lumpy. She just wanted to take a hot bubble bath and start all over.
(I hated this story)
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