Jinin Kiem

Beans

February 2, 2006 on 5:00 pm | In Short Stories | Comments Off

I neglected to buy a spare-to-share can of beans at the supermarket—it’s been a long week, I’m weary—and now seated at the dinner table I’m paying the predictable price. Margaret’s macular-degenerated eyes, shielded behind smudged bifocals, widen and focus and fix on my bowl of beans. Her little mouth pops open, threatening to solicit. Her knobby-knuckled hand rises from her own liberally stocked, albeit beanless, plate and trembles towards my bowl.

My ninety-four-year-old mother-in-law wants. I will not give.

I raise my hand, halting the forward motion of hers, and then glance to my left at my husband, Margaret’s only child, born to her when she was forty-two—my age—her change of midlife, which I, childless by choice, can only project to have been jolting. “Why don’t you!” I call out, as if Mike is as hard of hearing as his mother. “Give your mom! Some of your yummy cheese!” and I point my rigid finger at his plate, directing Margaret’s acquisitive eyes to follow. They follow. I lower my hand.

I feel no compunction sacrificing Mike’s food to protect my own. I have my reasons. First of all, he is not possessive—he’s peculiar that way—while I am highly so. Second, in my opinion cheese—one of his favorite foods—stinks and is therefore a negligible sacrifice. Third, Margaret is his, not my, mother. (I have one of my own to contend with.) Finally, I’m feeling a bit put-upon after having scooped and scrubbed Margaret’s shit up and off our bathroom rug just this morning. Not that Mike wouldn’t have cleaned it up himself, had he been the one to unwittingly step in it. It’s just that he, being gainfully employed, has little time to tend to the details of his mother’s visit, while I, ungainfully floundering, have nothing but time. It’s called teamwork—at least that’s what we call it after eighteen years together.

“Give me some of that cheese, will you?” Margaret says to her son in her undemanding monotone, which nevertheless has come to sound downright assaultive to my ears. My upper lip twitches. All week, my lips and eyes, my fingers and toes, they’ve been twitching.

Without a twitch in the world, Mike slices a thick wedge of Swiss and hands it to his mother. She bites into it and chews contentedly, my beans forgotten.

I shovel a spoonful of beans into my mouth and chew discontentedly, my victory hollow, humiliating. I am forty-two years old and have reduced the meaning of my life to beans. A can of plain old pinto beans. Opened and rinsed and drained. Dumped—unheated, ungarnished—into a bowl. Possessively guarded. Nothing else adds up—my schooling and work experience, my passion and ambition and effort. My life. How did you get this way? I wonder, often wonder. There are many answers to that coming-of-middle-age question. Predictable, oft-discussed answers. Surprising, unspeakable answers.

“What’s that?” Margaret drones, her ever vigilant eyes revisiting my bowl.

I whisper tragically, “My life,” making myself all twitchy-eyed.

“Beans,” Mike pipes in helpfully, and I shoot him the twitching evil eye, but he is, as always, oblivious to evil. Sometimes I find this quality heartening, but most of the time—right now—it’s exasperating.

“Beans!” Margaret says. “I used to have beans all the time. Lots and lots of beans.”

“I remember,” Mike says. “You’d soak them in a big pot all night and then make ham and bean soup.”

“It was super-delicious!” she proclaims. “Ham and navy bean soup!”

“And lima beans,” he says. “You’d use those.”

“Kidney beans!”

“How about garbanzo beans?”

Beans, beans, beans! Mother and son are relentless. They cannot stop talking about beans. I grab the nearly empty bottle of ketchup and position it next to my bowl. The clear plastic makes for a flimsy barricade.

“Oh, I used to have a thing for beans!” Margaret announces, and she smacks her lips—really!—and rolls her eyes in what I can only guess is, for a 94-year-old, pure lust. It’s not a sexy picture. “I wish I could still make beans, lots and lots of beans, but I can’t lift that heavy pot of water anymore. My hands—” and she tries and fails to make fists.

“These beans come ready to eat in a can,” Mike, ever-so helpful again, informs her, pointing to my bowl as a visual aid. “So you don’t have to bother soaking them.”

Margaret’s eyes once again fix on my bowl. I’m silenced, paralyzed—even my eye stops twitching. I know what will come next, and I am powerless to stop it. Sure enough, she says, “Give me some beans, will you?”

“They’re mine,” I hear myself respond, and I cannot—yet I can—believe that I’ve sunk so low. And over what? Beans. My beans!

“Here!” Mike says with—finally—alarm, his eyes scanning the table. He grabs a plastic take-out container and holds it up to Margaret’s eye level. “Have some cole slaw.”

But this time she’s not for falling it. “I know they’re yours,” she says to me. “But you’ve got a lot there. You can’t eat all that by yourself.”

Well, actually, I can. But she’s right that I’ve got a lot. My bowl contains fifteen ounces of beans, almost four servings, according to the nutrition label on the can, and while half a cup hardly qualifies as a serving in my book, there is certainly enough for two. But that’s not the point.

“They’re all I have,” I say.

Margaret grimaces. “How come I don’t get to have beans anymore?”

“You can have beans anytime,” Mike reassures her, to which I want to add, Except right now!

“I can’t lift the pot anymore,” she states, and as if anticipating that her helpful son is about to remind her of the availability of canned beans, she adds, “and I can’t grip the can opener anymore.” She looks at me and shrugs, as if to say, So what’s the alternative? She says, “Give me some beans, will you?”

“I don’t think you’d like this canned stuff,” I say, in all ridiculous desperation. “It’s tasteless, worthless.”

“But it looks so good,” Margaret pleads. “Everything you have always looks so good.”

“Really?” I ask, taken aback. Her words flatter me, sadden me. I say cheerily, “But just think of all the good stuff you’ve had in ninety-four wonderful years!” and I hear Mike spit out a laugh. My attempts at cheeriness always entertain him.

“You’ve always got new things. Interesting things I’ve never seen before,” she says. “What kind of beans are those?”

“Pinto!” Mike informs her.

“I’ve never had pinto beans before. I get so tired of the same old things. But.” She looks me in the eye. “Don’t ever grow old.”

I nod, as if I have the power to comply. Remain young is what she means, and in her eyes, I am still young. But die soon is the real alternative. Die soon or grow old. I have the power to choose the former, but not the latter. All I can do is hope to be fortunate enough to live a long life, to grow old. And I do hope to grow old. Even though I see with my own near-sighted eyes, shielded behind smudged glasses, that there is little dignity, charm, peace of mind, fun in growing old. Still, I hope to grow old. But Margaret has no hope. She has already grown old, and she will die soon.

“Here,” I say, sliding my bowl towards her, “take what you want.”

“You give me what you can,” she says.

I scoop up a heaping spoonful, but she shakes her head from side to side—in that instant, despite the gray locks, she looks like a child—and insists, “I can’t eat that much anymore!” But it’s too late, I’ve already spilled the beans onto her plate.

“Give me a break!” Mike says. “You’re snorting us out of house and home,” and he snort-snorts, and he and I laugh.

“I’ll pay you back,” Margaret says in all seriousness. “How much do I owe you two?”

“You don’t owe us anything,” I say. “He’s only kidding.”

She turns to me and her mouth widens into a gap-toothed grin. “So am I,” she says.

Mike and I raise our eyebrows at each other. In moments like this—I only wish there were more—we are only too glad to be put in our place.

“You always give me more than I need,” Margaret says, glancing down at her plate. She digs in. She devours every last bean. She looks up at me.

“Want more?” I ask, and point to my half-empty bowl.

She nods, Yes, but says, “But I can’t, I’m full, I’ve had more than enough,” and then she shakes her head, No, no, no. “I’m tired, I’m done.”