Comfort Food
by Earl Coleman

When his wife came home from work she found him with his skillet, at the stove, sautéing garlic, onions, and a soupçon of oregano. It calmed her just sufficiently to savor what she started with each night, a single glass of glowing, belly-warming, fine merlot, which almost blanded (but not quite) the corporate stupidities she’d toted home; the wine, his kiss, the smell (the garlic, in particular) could soften her experience to just a slightly bitter aftertaste, that might be neutralized with one bicarb. Nothing that she’d tried could totally erase or cleanse the heaviness of heart, the palpability of contact with the wounded, bruised, uneasy minds of colleagues, the contagion of their fogginess of purpose, moral ambiguities, loss of social moorings, sequential understandings such as five plus five. One glass of red felt good, two were better, while he cooked and let her slow, until he served her in the candlelight, and only then, before she’d eaten anything, permitted his own tongue the liberty to ask “How did it go today?” as though the question was a magical emetic that would bring the whole mess up.