Merriton

“What do you mean you’re not doing a project this year?!” Randy checked Sierra’s face. Why was she doing this? She was so excited about it last year. “I don’t have to do it,” Sierra replied defiantly. he looked at the little crinkles of her eyes to find the truth, but he couldn’t see anything there. “You liked it last year.” The corners of her mouth twitched. “No, actually, I didn’t.”

Randy’s eyes focused away from his wife as he tried to remember the months before the projects last year. “You had some trouble, but you got past it. Your project was a success.” His voice trailed off. He couldn’t think of what had bothered her. “Wasn’t it?”

Sierra turned around and walked out of the bedroom. Randy followed her as she stomped down the stairs, angrily. This was bad. She was going to throw something at his head, he just knew it. What had he said wrong? Last year, she had made a PROFIT. A tiny company just starting out that makes a profit in the first year is AMAZING! What could possibly be wrong?

Randy watched Sierra’s hands as he followed her down the staircase, making sure she didn’t reach for anything to throw on the way down. He thought of the family pictures that they never hung up along the staircase and breathed a sigh of relief at his own inaction. Picture frames are hard to dodge. There’s nothing like seeing a photo of yourself in happier days speeding toward your face in anger.

“You better not throw anything at me. I didn’t do anything to deserve it.” Sierra swung around, eyes glaring. Her laser vision hit him as hard as a picture frame would have. This was BAD, he thought to himself. What the HELL did I do wrong?

Her right hand was still on the banister. He couldn’t bring himself to say anything under her laser gaze. She turned again and continued to stomp down the stairs. She mumbled to herself. Randy couldn’t hear her. “What did you say?” She swung around again with laser eyes and venom spewing. “I didn’t go through eight years of school to be a GOD DAMN HIPPIE!”

Randy stood on the stairs above Sierra. He had no response for her. He watched her eyes and hands, trying to ward off whatever had caused this attack. He held up his hands as if Sierra had a gun trained on him. “Okaaaay…”

Sierra turned and stomped the rest of the way down the stairs. She headed to the suicide room. Randy carefully followed her. She stored her goats milk supplies and products in there. Randy had been so proud of her remodeling job in that room. He would have never been able to tell its gory past if he hadn’t known about it before. He lingered outside the room. There were lots of little bottles that could be flung at his head in there.

He watched from the threshold of the room as Sierra raged. Every plastic bottle so neatly stacked on a shelf was flung at the walls of the room. Randy was confused at her reaction. He had thought she was happy. She seemed happy with the goats. She doted on them like children. She milked her own and even milked Elvis’ goats for extra milk to make the lotions and resell them to the hotels and spas in the area. She had seemed so proud of it all. Was she just faking it the whole time?

She poked her head out the door, her eyes crazed with anger and shame. “I didn’t work as hard as I did to milk goats! I could have done that when I was nine!” Randy backed away from the door. Her right hand was on the door knob. The other one was full of lotion bottles for hotel rooms. She had been so happy when she found a bottle supplier that made such unique little bottles. Randy eyed their sharp edges. Her mouth curled in anger, “I’m just about sick of this getting back to the land thing of yours!”

Randy felt inexplicably injured. “Getting back to the land?” He watched her left hand for movement. “I’m not getting back to the land. I’m just getting the hell out of San Francisco.” Her left hand tensed and he yelled at her, “Don’t you throw those at me! I don’t know what’s the matter with you right now, but I won’t let you throw those at me!”

Sierra slammed the lotion bottles to the floor. “When are we going HOME?!!” Randy watched the tiny bottles scatter across the floor. One of them had lost its lid and the scent of grass-flavored lotion floated to his nose. The white lotion made a Jackson Pollock painting on the newly refinished hardwood floor. Randy wanted to lie to her, but he just couldn’t. “I thought this was our home.”

“Oh HELL NO!” She stepped toward him, slipping in the lotion a bit. “I refuse to be a fucking hippie in some shack in the mountains!” She raised her hands at the house. At the home that Randy had considered his fortress of solitude. It had felt like this home had brought him face to face with himself. Selling Zerbitz to those ungrateful bastards had taken so much from him that he had felt like half a man. Randy advanced on Sierra so quickly that she had no time to escape him.

He enveloped her in a hug so tight and smothering that her squirming couldn’t break free. He whispered into her ear, “This house isn’t a shack, but you ARE a hippie. The sooner you accept that part of yourself, the less you’ll have to run away from it.” She deflated in his arms and he pulled her even tighter to his chest.