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Go ahead and eat another cupcake, you cow. He would never actually say it to her, but he felt safe thinking it.

She sat across the table from him, phone clamped between her ear and shoulder, mindlessly peeling the corrugated wrapper off her third cupcake.

Too bad prattling to Whatserface all night won’t burn off those calories for you.

“…no, I thought she was kidding,” Kate was saying. “You would think with a comment like that she would have to be kidding. No. I know.” A long pause with tinny garbling out of the earpiece. Kate giggled. “I know! Well, you heard her and…”

Tom poked at his cold dinner. It was cold before he even made it home from work.

That meeting… His shoulders slumped at the memory. If we’ve gotta sit through a browbeating like that, he should at least try to wrap it up by five-thirty. But at least there were cupcakes. Our consolation prize.

He looked up toward Kate and winced, feeling his own barb at her.

She was still attractive—the kind of attractive about whom strangers whisper, “If only she’d lose some weight, she’d be really pretty…” And when she bemoaned the weight she wasn’t losing, she wasn’t just seeking compliments. She meant it.

When she and Tom were dating, she really turned heads. He had been drawn to her pretty face, her ready smile, her cute little curvy figure, her ivory complexion, and what could be called her ‘ample femininity.’ All guys are drawn to that, really. Not their fault. But Tom never dreamed how soon after offspring began springing off that Kate’s voluptuousness would begin to multiply and migrate in search of uncrowded pastures.

But that’s not when it started. His attraction for her had begun to wane mere months after their wedding, even before her figure began to change. The superfluous curves she had picked up only added fuel to the fire. Or lack thereof.

I should’ve known, Tom thought. Evaluated the genetic potential. He shook his head, remembering the day before. But I never should have said it. Never be honest to a woman. He had, in a moment of diplomatic dementia, told her she was starting to look like her mother.

While she grazed on cupcakes, he gorged on his stupidity. He would eat his words for days, maybe a couple of weeks. Whatserface couldn’t possibly sense through the phone lines the smoke still hanging in the room after yesterday’s grenade volley.

I never should have married a redhead. “Auburn,” she would correct him. Same thing. Same temper veiled behind her smiling sunshiny goodness, her painted splendor the folks at church get to see. They all think she’s flawless: the perfect wife, the perfect mother.

Tom stared through his food.

Sure, the perfect wife, except…

He glanced up at her for the briefest moment, almost a twitch.

Except…

Except for the chasm growing between them.

It had started as newlyweds: Her stratospheric expectations. Her holding him responsible to meet needs he didn’t even know she had, only to snub him when he asked her what’s wrong. Her jealousy. Her hypocrisy.

Then the kids came along.

It was easier to be happy back when we were allowed to have fun, back when it was just two of us, with two full incomes and only two mouths to feed. But now… Tom frowned. And still she takes the cash we were saving to replace that barbed-wire mattress of ours, and instead dumps it into that weird table thing we don’t need. And she was surprised that another battle followed.

Tom sat motionless with a forkful hovering above his plate, his eyes hollow.

Sure, the perfect wife, except…

Except for the coldness growing between them.

He had started needing her less. No—not really; he had started wanting her less. She sensed this, but she assumed her weight had caused it, when really everything—all of her, all of life—had caused it, exacerbated by the vicious cycle of his own unharnessed thoughts. But she became more and more self-conscious, less and less flirtatious, and they drew further and further apart, and it depressed her. And when depressed, she ate like her mother. Her own vicious cycle. His attempts to help, in his analytical, clinical, surgical manner, didn’t help. He only stirred up her fight-or-flight instinct—except she was Irish, so the flight part was missing, and he would find the scalpel turned on him. Rewind, replay. With each replay a deeper rut gouged into the routine, a more searing pain carved into each other.

Suddenly Coby howled out in his high chair, thinking he was done or something. Tom didn’t hear him, his mind already back on the afternoon’s meeting. He remained frozen, staring through his food. Abigail tried to shush Coby, but she was only a big sister, not even that much bigger, very easily ignored. Coby hurled his little plastic bowl overboard; the clatter threw orange spots up the wall that wouldn’t be discovered until thoroughly petrified. He arched his back and shouted again.

Kate covered the phone and glared at Tom. “You just gonna sit there?” she barked in her angriest whisper. She tilted her head toward Coby. “Get him. Can’t you see I’m busy?”

Tom shoved his plate back, rose to work his way down the tiny space between the chairs and wall, knocked a photograph askew, and grumbled, “Hannah, move.”

Hannah tried to scoot her chair forward, but it was big and she was little. He scooted her himself. Low enough so Whatserface wouldn’t hear, Tom growled, “Jacob, quiet.” He snatched up a napkin and commenced the impossibility of scouring coagulating food off Coby’s face, from between his fingers, out of his ear…

“Of course,” Kate said into the phone, giggling again. “No. I don’t even know what I did. Yeah, I guess I’ll have to, but only because…”

Jacob, dangling by the ribs, happily kicked his legs as his father carried him out of the room. Tom’s unfinished plate sat until it also petrified; he would chisel it off an hour or so later.

But the photograph stayed crooked just a little while. As she carried on an unbroken chat with her friend, Kate walked around to straighten the frame, and stood before it reminiscing on the day the photo was taken. Typical family portrait: uncreatively composed, cheaply framed. There they all stood behind the picture glass. No, not all: Jacob was not yet; Hannah was in Dad’s arms. Abby stood by Mom holding her hand. Cabbage sat in front, looking the wrong way, her leash taut, clearly held by someone off camera. Somehow Kate had the ability to laugh over the phone while her eyes grew distant over the picture.

Tom looked happy in it.