Once there was a woman, a gorgeous, stunning, richer than the culmination of all the sins in the world woman.  She was married to a handsome man who loved her undying.  He bought her flowers periodically, and took her out to dinner every Friday, and came home everyday from his starched oxford 932nd floor job with a grin excited to see his beautiful wife and their darling 5 bedroom, one large white picket fenced house in tact and on schedule.  

She loved him back.  She’d cook him dinner from French recipe books she’d get for Christmas and birthday’s and sometimes just because someone was thinking of her.  She’d bake him dessert, and brew him coffee, high test in the morning and decaf after dinner.  Sometimes she’d kiss him wilding in public, just to see if he still loved her like he did when they were vagrant children stirring trouble on Midwestern campuses, if he loved her more than he loved his stiff necked man reputation and his gaudy friends, in their gaudy neighborhood. And he did, he always did love her more than all of those things that they had accumulated. 

One day this woman sat down to dinner and she said to her perfect husband, at their perfect dinner, at a perfectly set table, in front of a perfect view of the roaring prairies that are the middle of America.

“I think I would like to be young again.”

Her caring husband, supportive and tactful replied with only a smidge of concern.

“If you were young again, I would still be old, and I could not keep you and love you without the justice of laws or public opinion intervening.”

He had said the wrong thing.  He was sure that this was the case as his wife immediately turned her head to the duck leg half eaten on her designer, jet black dishware matching and simple, then slid her eyes to the magnificent stare of reflection coming from her crystal stemware wine glass almost complete in emptiness. 

She stared there for a while just as many do in the awe of the optical ting that resonated through a full spectrum of light reflecting off the perfect curve on the side of the glass. Noticing her silence as dissonance with her usual chipper self the perfect husband turned again trying to change the subject or at least remind her that her life was all but perfect.

“Where would you like to go Lover? I will take you anywhere.”

She continued devouring the glare of ting coming from the stemware. Like nothing could take her anywhere at all from her devout position on the subject.

“I think I would like to be young again, and I would like to make mistakes, more this time than the first time through.”

The perfect husband could not rebuttal, could not keep his composure and contrary to his usual perfect self even became a slight hilarious maniacal, shrouding in bursts of arrogant laughter to her horribly self-deprecatory presumption.  He laughed, and then he laughed some more, because he had no other response to 

 She finally concluded after a moment had evolved into something longer than a moment, and then maybe something even longer than that with the laughter carrying on behind it all as an undertone for her glorious thoughts of imperfections.

“Why are you laughing?”

Her handsome, wealthy and considerate perfect husband stopped; slowing his laughter to a chuckle, to a high pitched giggle, and then complete silence before he turned and looked at her and said

“Why would anyone feel remorse about making only good decisions, or regret being happy? You are happy aren’t you?”

She was quiet again, as was he, there was no laughter and now in its place stood an intense tautness.

She picked up her fork and continued eat her duck leg, finishing with the crispy, savory duck skin, which she always saved for last.  She reached for the bottle of wine in the middle of the table and covered the shiny spectrum of light coming out of the turn of crystal from the inside.  She finished her dinner and cleared the table, rinsed the dishes and filled the dishwasher, then poured the rinsing detergent and crisp white cleansing agent into their places before locking the door and pushing the start button. She left dessert on the counter uncut, with a lost appetite and a  desire for something not so consistent.  She listened to the electric motor for a minute staring at the open door below the sink where she had returned the weapons of sterilization thinking about a nice hot shower, her usual routine. Instead she decided to quietly take herself to the living room where she turned on the news and sat patiently waiting for prime tv, something with a little humor yet dull enough to lure herself to sleep.

Her husband also finished his meal and sipped his wine as he watched his wife through the process and eventually followed her into the living room and sat at the far end of the couch, musing her channel surfing as he tapped his finger and considered her proposition.

Hours passed around the glow of poorly written sitcoms and dead silence in the midst of the blaring bose surround sound coming from every corner of the dim lit room.  She yawned and the programming returned to the local news.

“Bridge collapses, dozens injured.”

Her husbands phone rang and he took the call into the kitchen. She watched the local sport scores then turned the TV off and then the lights in the living room as she retired to the kitchen to get the house ready for a full night of sleep.

Her husband clicked his cell phone shut and lied it on the counter.

“Who was that?” she asked.

“Work.” He sighed and paused for a minute.

“The city planner. That bridge that collapsed has major structural damage and they want the firm there first thing in the morning”

She nodded slowly and stared at the finished dishwashing cycle, then toddled her sloping shoulders across the sparkling clean kitchen and into her husbands warm, welcoming and tiredly confident stature. He took her in as he poured the last bit of wine at the bottom of his glass into his belly. They stood there in the kitchen stagnant.

She hesitated for a moment and looked up at his much taller frame and spoke assured without a glimpse of troubled.

“If that bridge didn’t collapse, what would you fix….?” 

She dropped her chin into the zipper of his fleece and faced the black and white tiled kitchen floor.

“and if we didn’t eat on those forty dollar plates and cleverly hand-molded wooden salad bowls, with those silver forks and tack sharp knives and if we didn’t stain them with dressing and sauces and duck fat, what would be left to put away, and what would I have to clean, and what would we spend all of our lives on?”

Knowing and understanding of her disposition, a thousand thoughts of comfort rushed to his head like insects to the porch lights on a muggy June evening. Remembering the few hours before when his response had failed her, he held his tongue as tightly as he held her, like vices on a wavering patient yearning to be healed but scared shitless of the process towards that conclusion. Standing there in the middle of their cooling prefabricated house she likewise said nothing, just accepting the comfort of a faithful and loving body to sedate her desperate thoughts on the weary tide of monotony.  They turned the kitchen lights out and made their way up the stairs to the bathroom where they washed their faces and brushed their teeth, and then pulled back the blanket and sheet of the made bed and fell to sleep.  She never asked for youth again, and buried the thought of destruction in the deepest part of her being, she grew old and loved her husband, and continued their perfect life, in their perfect house, with a perfect dish washer that help rid their lives of the perfect residues left from a perfect meal at the end of a long perfectly hard day of work.