The Sentiment of a Woman
helium lost

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“All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of women.” —Voltaire

To Jennifer, who always complains that I never write anything happy.

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He stared at her, flabbergasted.

“What?”

She stared back, resolutely, with her arms crossed. Her eyes narrowed, and she shifted her weight to one foot, taking an offensive stance.

“I’ve had enough of this,” she said, sighing. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think that this can go on any longer, John. I’ll cut the BS and get straight to the point—it’s not me. It’s you.”

“B-but,” he wailed, “what did I do? We’ve been together for three years. We’ve shared our happy times and our sad times, but I don’t think I’ve ever made you angry before . . . . Just answer me this: What did I do wrong? I picked up my dirty socks; I paid my bills; I made sure to leave you some ice cream in the freezer, always, even though I wanted to finish it off; I bought you flowers and balloons on your birthday; I called you every night and comforted you when you were sad . . . . ”

She rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe it, John. Do you think that you can base a relationship on those kinds of things? That’s ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous.”

He stared at her, jaw hanging slack. He was at a loss for words, and could only stand and listen to her rant.

“Yesterday, you forgot to put your slippers on the shoe rack. You know that slippers always go on the shoe rack. Do you know where you put them? Do you?” She glared at him with a beady eye as he shrugged. “You put them next to the door! Can you believe that? I mean, you could have spent an extra two seconds to put them on the shoe rack, but no, you had to put them next to the door! And what’s more, the slippers were not parallel to each other. One was at a forty-five degree angle to the door, and the other was at a seventy-two degree angle to the door. I cannot forgive that.”

“What about the time when I risked my life driving through that blizzard to go to the supermarket and buy you a box of maxi-pads?” he whimpered. “Didn’t . . . didn’t that mean anything to you?”

“You forgot!” she screamed, eyes widening. “You already forgot!”

He jumped, bewildered. “What did I forget?”

“I told you to buy the overnight pads, the ones that come in the red boxes! But you bought me the normal ones in the green boxes!” She stomped over to the bathroom and flung back the doors of the cabinet beneath the sink, spilling carefully-stacked bottles and containers of lotions and makeup. She rummaged around the back of the cabinet for a moment, pushing past bars of soap and boxes of toothpaste, then produced a tattered green box. “See? See?”

He threw his hands up in exasperation. “But I’m red-green colorblind, Cecilia!”

“It doesn’t matter! What matters is that you didn’t take your time to stop and read the labels!” Tears formed in her eyes as she shook the box in front of his face, almost hitting him with it. “You didn’t love me enough to pause, pick up a box, and carefully inspect the label before buying it!”

“You woke me up at three AM to get those pads for you! I didn’t have enough time to put my contacts in!”

“You have glasses! And you can hold the box an inch away from your face to read it; you’re not that blind! It’s not that difficult! I mean, it’s bright yellow text; how can you not be able to read it?”

“Exactly! It’s yellow text on a green box, and it all looks the same to me!” he cried, exasperated. “But, in any case, surely that can’t be the reason why you’re . . . ” He gulped, then whispered, “breaking up with me?”

“No,” she said, voice filled with contempt and malice. “In fact, I have a whole list of reasons. Wait here while I get it, and don’t you dare move.”

He frowned. “Okay . . . ” Cecilia dashed away to the computer room. John heard the beep of the computer starting up, then heard the printer whizzing out dozens of sheets of paper. He sighed, and, figuring that it would take a few more minutes before Cecilia exhausted the printer and her paper supply, bent over and began picking up the bottles of cosmetics and returning them to their rightful places in the cabinet. One bottle had rolled into the space between the toilet and the cabinet; he lay down on his stomach and reached over to the crevice, grunting as his fingers groped around in vain. He felt the disgusting stickiness of old spiderwebs covered with dust, and he felt something crumble beneath his fingers, like a week-old spider corpse exploding into dust. He made a face. Where in the world was that dang-blasted bottle . . .

“John!”

Her scream startled him, and he tried to jump up, but his head hit the toilet bowl with a dull thud; he fell down again and rolled around on the tiled floor in pain, banging his elbows against the corners of the cabinet. He then managed to catch his foot on the shower curtain, dragging it down with him; the rings holding up the shower curtain strained against the rod, then pulled open and richocheted off the walls covered with pink, floral wallpaper. Cecilia narrowly dodged one; it banged against the mirror and left an inch-long scratch. John tried to drag himself up from his position on the ground, but stepped on a bottle he missed and slipped, tumbling down onto the toilet lid and pulling it off its hinges; it fell to the floor with a deafening clatter.

Minutes later, he managed to rise shakily from the devastation, with only one word on the tip of his tongue.

“Shit.”

Cecilia’s mouth hung open. All was quiet for a few minutes. Then, Cecilia pulled a pen out of her pocket and feverishly scribbled something onto the last page from the stack of papers.

“I didn’t mean to do it, really, I didn’t!” John said, exasperated. “It’s just that you came in and—and then . . . . ”

“Whatever. I don’t want to hear it, and in any case, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you did do it. Do you think that those prisoners in jail are allowed to get out by using the ‘I swear I didn’t do it’ excuse? No. Absolutely not.”

“But—”

“Don’t argue! Now listen to this.” She carefully stacked the pages so that each and every sheet lined up perfectly with the one beneath it. She picked up the stack and read from the top page, titled ‘List of Offenses’. “On our first date, you ordered me a dish with scallops in it.”

John had a puzzled look on his face as he racked his brain for an explanation. “I thought you liked scallops.”

“I do. But, you see, that is not the point. The point is the fact that the dish cost twelve dollars and thirteen cents.”

John stared at her, bewildered. “So?”

“So?!” She stared at him as if she were looking at him for the first time. “You know that I never spend over twelve dollars on any dish at a restaurant! Twelve dollars and thirteen cents?! That’s absolutely diabolical! Absolutely despicable! It should not be allowed!”

“But I was paying!”

“That’s not the point!” said Cecilia, stamping her foot down resolutely. “What if we have kids? You’d be setting a bad example for them! They need to learn how to be thrifty, how to be economic, not how to overindulge!”

“But only thirteen cents over? Cecilia, I think you’re overreacting a bit!”

“Only thirteen cents? Only thirteen cents?” She stared at him, disgusted. “If you spend only thirteen cents more every day for three hundred sixty-five days, that becomes forty-seven dollars and forty-five cents! Think of what you could get with forty-seven dollars and forty-five cents! You could buy a replacement shower curtain with that! In fact, Mal-Wart stocks shower curtains for a mere twenty-two dollars and twenty-two cents! You could buy two sets of shower curtains with the kind of money you waste if you were to spend only thirteen cents more on something every day!”

“Well—”

“On our second date!” Cecilia said loudly over John’s protests as she marked off the first item on the list, “We went to watch Larry Botter and the Sorcerer’s Scone!”

“But you told me that you loved Larry Botter with a flaming passion! You told me that, if you were stuck on a deserted island and you could only bring six things with you, you’d bring the first six Larry Botter books, then hope anxiously that you’d be rescued in time to get the seventh one at midnight!”

“Yes, but that’s not the point! The point was that you told me after the movie that you thought that that Emmie Swatson was ‘pretty cute’!”

“She was, but she was eleven! I just thought that she was fantastic as a child actress! And I didn’t mean anything by it! I told you right afterward that I couldn’t imagine being with anyone other than you!”

“But you still thought of her in that way!”

“No I di—”

“John! What if we have kids?! You would be, through these kinds of actions and words, be teaching them to be adulterous, to be unfaithful! What kind of role model would you be setting? How would you be teaching our children? What would they learn from you?”

“But you said that you’d do Danny Cliffradde if he were a little older! I remember because this old lady sitting next to us gave you a weird look, then got up and walked right out of the theater—right when the movie was getting to the best part!”

“I—well—third date!” she said quickly. “We went to the park, and while we were sitting under the trees, staring at the stars, you gave me a single, yellow rose.”

“What’s wrong with that? I thought it would be very romantic . . . I thought it would bring us closer . . . I . . . . ”

“But you missed a very, very important detail—yellow roses are for friendship! Friendship! What kind of message were you trying to send me? That were were only supposed to be friends? Don’t you know that red roses are meant to show love? It’s elementary education! I thought that you of all people would know!”

“I . . . I . . . ”

Thus passed three more hours. John stood stiffly against the wall, facing every accusation with a pounding headache from his near-concussion earlier; Cecilia ruffled through the pages, picking out the most serious offenses, including offenses such as not squeezing out toothpaste from the bottom of the tube (as John had a habit of squeezing out toothpaste from the area in the tube where it seemed most plentiful), not reusing plastic cling-wrap and aluminum foil (“You can reuse a roll twice or three times, and you won’t have to waste your money buying more rolls! Think of what you could get with the money you save!”), throwing out yogurt that was a day past its expiration date (“It’s perfectly good! You can freeze it and eat it later, you know; that’s what ‘frozen yogurt’ is!”), and more. By the end of all her accusations, John was bored to tears and beyond arguing with her, opting instead for twiddling his thumbs and counting all the little stucco bumps on the ceiling.

“And,” she hissed as she pulled him in close by his collar and jerked him out of his reverie, leaning in closer to his face, so that their noses touched and his eyes blurred when he tried to look into hers, “there’s something even more important I have to say.”

The clock in the hall struck twelve. Her vehement expression softened abruptly as she pressed her lips gently against his, tracing her hand down his neck. John was pleasantly surprised and returned the kiss, then began wondering if he should take Cecilia to a good psychiatrist and have her take a test to see if she was bipolar. Cecilia pulled away a moment later, grinning, and dashed to the bedroom, returning to put a brightly-colored jester’s hat on John’s head.

“April Fool’s!”

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Author’s Notes: Happy belated April Fool’s from me; I had intended on finishing this yesterday, but five o’clock came sooner than I thought, and I had to dash off for my school’s musical. In any case, constructive criticism is greatly appreciated; I personally thought the ending came a bit abruptly, though I’m not sure how I’d fix that, so any suggestions would be fantastic. And if you’re curious as to why she suddenly stopped when the clock struck twelve, it’s because April Fool’s pranks aren’t supposed to extend beyond noon (hey, I didn’t know).

Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to review! ;)