The Comparison
1993 Words
Ethel's eyes flew open to the acrid smell of smoke burning her nostrils.
"What..." She bolted upright and was clearly disoriented. The kitchen was hazy and gray with smoke billowing from the stove where her forgotten pot of soup had boiled dry and started to burn.
"Oh God, oh God!" She reached for the stove, turning off the burner with shaking hands. The pot was ruined, blackened beyond repair, with smoke pouring from the scorched remains of her dinner.
The smoke alarm shrieked to life and she grabbed a towel and waved frantically at the detector, coughing as smoke filled her lungs. She threw open the windows, tears streaming down her face from the smoke or exhaustion or despair, she couldn't tell anymore.
She'd fallen asleep because she'd been so tired from the day with Victoria, from scrubbing grout for hours, from existing in this constant state of exhaustion, that she'd literally passed out at the kitchen table.
And now the pot which was Helen's expensive copper pot was destroyed.
"No, no, no..." Ethel stared at the ruined cookware, her heart hammering. That pot was part of a set Helen had brought from France. She'd told Ethel a dozen times how expensive they were, how irreplaceable, how she was only allowing Ethel to use them because "someone has to cook."
The front door slammed open.
"What the hell is going on?!" Morris's voice boomed through the house and she jerked because she wasn't expecting him to be home this early. But here he was and the house was full of smoke and his mother's pot was ruined and...
Morris appeared in the kitchen doorway, his face twisted in fury. Behind him, Helen and Victoria pushed in, their expressions horrified.
"Ethel! What did you do?!" Helen shrieked, pushing past her son. She grabbed the ruined pot, staring at it in disbelief. "This is... this is an expensive pot! Do you have any idea how much this cost?!"
"I'm sorry, I just...I fell asleep for a second..."
"You fell asleep?!" Morris looked at her like she was insane. "You nearly burned the house down because you fell asleep?!"
"I was so tired, I didn't mean..."
"Tired?" Victoria coughed out a cruel sound. "Tired from what? You don't do anything all day!"
"I was cleaning! Then I had to attend to your mother's list, and don't forget I was up early helping you..." The words tumbled out desperately.
"Oh, so this is my fault?" Victoria's eyes went wide with false innocence. "I asked you to help me for a few minutes this morning, and now you're burning down houses?"
"A few minutes? It was seven hours..."
"Don't you dare exaggerate to make yourself look better," Helen snapped. She held up the pot like evidence in a trial. "This set cost five thousand dollars. FIVE. THOUSAND. DOLLARS. And you destroyed it because you're too lazy to stay awake?"
Ethel felt like she was drowning. "I'll replace it. I'll find a way to replace..."
Morris laughed bitterly. "With what money? You don't work. You contribute nothing. You can't even manage to cook a simple meal without nearly killing us all."
Ethel felt like she was drowning.
"Morris, please..."
"Jennifer never would have done something like this." Helen's voice was sharp and cutting. She looked at Ethel with such disdain. "Jennifer was responsible and competent. She could host a dinner party for twenty people and make it look effortless."
There it was. Jennifer. Always Jennifer.
"Mother, please..." Morris started, but Helen was on a roll now.
"No, Morris. I've held my tongue for three years, but enough is enough." She turned to Ethel fully, her perfectly made-up face twisted in disgust. "Do you know what Jennifer is doing now? She's a curator at the Museum of Modern Art. She speaks three languages. She comes from a good family, went to Yale, has actual value to offer."
Each word was a knife to her heart.
"And you? You were a waitress. A nobody from nowhere with no family, no education, no class. You trapped my son..."
"Mother!" Morris's shouted.
"Don't you dare defend her! Just look at this!" Helen gestured around the smoke-filled kitchen. "This is what we've been living with. This is what you married. A careless, incompetent girl who can't even be trusted to boil water!"
Ethel's vision blurred with tears she refused to let fall. "I didn't trap anyone. Morris asked me to marry him. I thought he loved me."
"You thought what?" Victoria cut in, leaning against the counter with her arms crossed. "That you'd just ride the gravy train forever? You thought you could just play house and pretend you belong in our world?"
"I never pretended..." I choked on the remaining words.
"You're right about that," Helen said coldly. "You never could pretend well enough. It's obvious in everything you do. The way you dress like a homeless person. The way you can barely string together a sentence at dinner parties. The way you have no idea how to act in polite society."
"That's enough." Morris's fist connected to the counter and for one wild moment, Ethel thought he was defending her. Her heart leaped with desperate hope.
Then he turned to look at her, and his eyes were so cold.
"Go to your room, Ethel."
She blinked. "What?"
"You heard me. Go upstairs. I need to speak with my mother and sister privately."
"Morris, this is our house..."
"MY house," he corrected sharply. "My name is on the deed. My money pays for everything. My family lives here. You..." He paused, and he gave her a disgusting look. "You're here because I allow it. So go upstairs now."
Ethel looked between the three of them and something inside her shattered.
"Of course," she whispered. "I'm sorry for the pot and for... everything."
She walked past them with her head down, feeling their eyes on her back like brands. As she reached the stairs, she heard Helen's voice, loud enough to ensure she'd hear.
"Honestly, Morris, I don't know how much more of this we can take. The girl is a disaster."
"Mother's right," Victoria added. "You're still young enough to start over. Jennifer is single, you know. I saw her last week at the country club, and she asked about you..."
Ethel climbed the stairs on shaking legs, each step feeling like it might be her last. She closed the bedroom door behind her and stood there in the darkness, smoke still clinging to her clothes, while her body trembling with exhaustion and humiliation and something else...something that felt dangerously close to rage.
She walked to the bathroom while the events of the day settled in her mind and looked at herself in the mirror.
She barely recognized the woman staring back. She didn't look like the bubbly waitress of three years ago.
When did I become this? She asked.
Her phone buzzed with a text from Morris.
Morris: You'll pay for the pot and I'll deduct it from your household allowance over the next year. Also you're not to use Mother's cookware anymore. Buy your own cheap set.
She couldn't believe her eyes. Five thousand dollars. Deducted over a year. That was... Ethel did the quick math. Over four hundred dollars a month from an allowance that was already barely enough to cover groceries and household supplies.
How was she supposed to survive?
Her phone beeped again.
Morris: And I'm having dinner with clients tomorrow night. Don't wait up. In fact, don't cook for me this week at all. I'll eat out.
So he'd eat expensive restaurant meals while she figured out how to stretch pennies.
Ethel sat on the edge of the bathtub, her phone in her shaking hands, and realized something terrifying. She didn't know how much more of this she could take.
Downstairs, she could hear them talking, their voices drifting up through the vents. She shouldn't listen. She should just go to bed, forget this horrible day, try again tomorrow but she couldn't help it. She moved closer to the vent.
"...absolutely mortified," Helen was saying. "Can you imagine if we'd had guests here? If someone important had seen this?"
"I know, Mother. I know."
"You need to do something, Morris. This can't continue."
A pause. "What do you want me to do?" Morris asked.
"What I've been telling you to do for two years. End it. Divorce her. You've given her a good life for three years, that's more than someone like her deserves. Cut her loose with a small settlement and move on."
Ethel's heart stopped.
"It's not that simple," Morris said, but he didn't sound like he was disagreeing. He sounded like he was considering logistics.
"Why not? You don't love her. You haven't touched her in over a year, don't think I don't notice these things. She brings nothing to this family except embarrassment and extra work."
"Jennifer would take you back in a heartbeat," Victoria added. "She told me so herself. She said she made a mistake letting you go."
"Jennifer is..." Morris paused. "She's different. She's... what I should have chosen in the first place."
The words were quiet, but they might as well have been screamed.
Ethel pressed her hand to her mouth to keep from making a sound.
"So why don't you?" Helen pressed. "Why keep this going?"
Another pause. Longer this time.
"If I divorce her now, people will say I used her. That I married someone vulnerable and then threw her away when she wasn't useful anymore." He finally said.
"So wait a bit longer," Helen suggested. "Maybe six months, so you can make it look like a mutual decision. In the meantime, start being seen with Jennifer again. Let people think you've grown apart naturally."
"Mother, that's..."
"That's what that is. You're not getting any younger, Morris. You should be thinking about children, about your legacy. Do you really want her to be the mother of your children?"
The silence that followed told Ethel everything she needed to know.
"I'll think about it," Morris said finally.
"Don't think too long," Helen warned. "Jennifer won't wait forever and trust me, darling, you don't want to lose her twice."
Their voices moved away, toward the living room, and Ethel sank to the bathroom floor.
They were planning to divorce her.
Not because she'd done something unforgivable or because of any single moment or mistake.
She'd thought so foolishly, and desperately that if she just tried hard enough, was perfect enough, sacrificed enough, that Morris would love her again and that his family would accept her.
But she'd never had a chance, had she?
Ethel pulled her knees to her chest and let herself cry for the first time in months. Great, gasping sobs that shook her whole body. She cried for the girl who'd thought she was rescued. She cried for the three years she'd wasted trying to earn love from people who saw her as nothing. She cried for the woman in the mirror who'd lost herself completely.
But somewhere beneath the tears, beneath the pain and humiliation and exhaustion, something else stirred.
Hours later, when her tears had dried and the house had gone silent, Ethel stood up. She washed her face with cold water and looked at herself in the mirror again.
"What am I doing?" she whispered to her reflection.
Her reflection had no answer.
She walked back to the bedroom where Morris was already asleep or pretending to be and lay down on her side of the bed. The side that felt like a separate continent from his and in the darkness, she made a decision she didn't even know she was making:
Something has to change.
She just didn't know yet that the change would come from a place she never expected.
Or that in exactly two weeks, at Helen's dinner party, everything she thought she knew about her life would shatter completely.
- Writer
