Water Resistant, But Not Flame Retardant
by Eliot Li
I.
I’m shopping for men’s aprons on Amazon, but they only have silly ones that say things like “Mr. Good Lookin’ Is Cookin’” or “I Like My Pork Pulled.” There’s one that says “I Don’t Know What I’m Doing,” which is fairly accurate, but I’m looking for a simple, black, water-resistant one with a place to tie a towel, so I can wipe my fingers after rubbing corn starch onto the chicken breasts. I want to be a good role model for Kevin and Millie, especially Kevin, in this case. I want to normalize this. Real cooks wear blank aprons.
II.
I’m peeling snow peas when the text alert rings. Julia always texts before she leaves the clinic. Twenty minutes for her to drive from hospital to home. They double-book her patients every day, so she doesn’t get to eat lunch. She comes home dizzy. Dinner on time keeps her upright. I get home from work 45 minutes before she does, so that’s when I velvet the chicken, slice the water chestnuts, proportion out the Shaohsing wine, combine everything in the wok, and dip my fingers in to taste. It’s ironic that for the last 15 years, before she decided to go back to work, I was the one texting her. She’d spin around in her flowery apron, setting steaming plates on the table, just as I walked through the door.
III.
“The snow peas are soggy,” Julia says. “Next time, add them last.”
“Thanks for trying,” Kevin says.
“Yeah, thanks Dad,” Millie says.
Maybe I’m not modelling anything for Kevin and Millie, except how much I suck.
Time to watch some YouTube videos about how to stir fry vegetables.
IV.
When my father died suddenly twenty years ago, I woke up thinking he’s gone, really gone. You’ll never ever see him again, you’ll have to do everything by yourself. Marshall your strength for the new reality.
Marshall your strength, I’m thinking, as I drive to Safeway in the darkness before sunrise, before driving into work. This is my new routine. I need chicken broth, carrots, celery, thyme, Dijon mustard, pie crust. My chicken pot pie tonight is going to be fabulous.
V.
Even when Julia was at home nearly full time, moonlighting occasionally to keep her skills up, I wanted to do my part. So for the past 18 years, I’ve been scrubbing dishes, washing clothes, tidying the house (“Where did you put my special Taiwanese hot sauce?” she’d say. “I’ll kill you if you threw away my hot sauce!”), everything except the cooking. But even though those things take time, they’re easy and brainless. Turn on some music, and they’re more therapeutic than draining.
“Millie has Summer Research applications due Friday,” Julia says. “Did you remember?”
“Thanks for the reminder,” I say. I had a great short story idea, and was looking forward to writing tonight, but of course I’ll put it aside. Helping Millie write her application essay for something that may change her life is way more important than me writing some flash fiction piece that will just get rejected thirty times.
“And did you schedule Kevin’s doctor’s appointment?”
“Oh shit,” I say.
“Why do I have to be the one to remember everything?! I knew that me choosing to go back to work wouldn’t mean you’d pick up the slack and do more. I want to turn my brain off, like you do. I wish I could just have someone else tell me what needs to be done all the time.”
Marshall your strength.
VI.
I’m driving Millie to her evening fencing lessons, or rather she’s driving on her learner’s permit, and my elbow’s slung tight around the passenger door armrest. Approaching the red light, she eases to a halt, so smooth, like gliding on silk.
“Do you think Mom’s happy,” I say, “now that she’s back at work?”
“It’s not about happiness,” Millie says, old soul that she is.
“Self-esteem, right? Self-worth.”
Millie squints, twists her mouth around. “She told me it’s more about independence.”
My heart sinks. “Does she want to leave me?”
“No, no, not at all!” She taps the steering wheel. “It’s more that she hated having to depend on you to feed her, as if she was just another chick in the nest with me and Kevin, all of us craning our necks with our mouths open, waiting for you to fly home and bring us worms.”
“I was proud being the one bringing home the worms.”
“Exactly why she hated it.”
VII.
It’s 10 pm, and Julia’s still at the dining table asking Kevin, “How many moles in 9 kilograms of styrene?” Kevin’s chemistry exam is tomorrow. He has a learning disability, and they give accommodations at school, but it’s not like accommodations will teach him chemistry.
When Julia accepted her job, I offered to take over as chemistry tutor, but Julia said, “I’ve been doing this for the whole semester. There’s way too much catching up you’d have to do.”
When I gently suggest maybe this is the perfect time to pull back a little and let Kevin figure out how to do this on his own, she says, “That’s his lazy father talking! You don’t even care if your son fails chemistry.”
Ordinarily I’d blow up, and start screaming about how she doesn’t appreciate me, I’m not lazy, how many other working fathers try to do as much as me?
“I’m sorry you’re so stressed out,” I say, before retreating to the bedroom.
I’m on call tomorrow and I want to get to bed early. My head on the pillow, I listen to the voices down the hallway talking about molecular weights and mass percents and remember that the black unisex aprons I found on eBay arrived in the mail. I think about how I can throw them on the lawn, douse them with Shaohsing wine, and set them on fire.
Eliot Li lives in California. His work appears in Barren Magazine, AAWW's The Margins, Fractured Lit Anthology II, Smokelong Quarterly, Passages North, and elsewhere. He also has work forthcoming in Best Small Fictions 2023, and was longlisted for the Wigleaf Top 50 2023.