Woodland Chorus

Meta looks across the kitchen table at Peter. It is a Sunday night, and he has spent most of the afternoon preparing the meal that sits on the table. It is from some recipe he searched for in the row of cookbooks that line the shelf above the kitchen sink window. Ledova’s Family Kitchen, she thinks. The meal is wickedly over-spiced, and Meta wonders if Peter, in that incredibly brilliant brain of his, does not know the abbreviated differences between teaspoon and tablespoon.  

The recessed alcove, in which they sit, is wallpapered in a pastel pastoral motif.  The room is overrun with smells of cinnamon and cumin. They escape from the large red-enameled pot that takes center space on the oval oak table. Meta spears a piece of chicken on her white plate and brings it to her mouth without hurry. As she does so, she regards the wallpaper that envelops her. Woodland Chorus, the print name of the grass-cloth paper lining the walls, depicts a pattern of small British birds, goldcrests and chaffinches, landing on delicate branches. Inspired by an eighteenth-century painting, the print relays the early signs of spring with budding leaves and early blossoms. She remembers carefully selecting the paper with happiness, some years back, hoping to usher the natural world into their home.

“It was a great choice,” Peter says noting her observation.

Meta looks up to him, her eyes not quite meeting his, and nods, “It was.” She focuses on that last spoken word. Meta’s mind sinks back to when she spent the whole of a weekend measuring and applying the wallpaper. With her back aching, she had stood upright and stretched to admire her handiwork once the last roll of paper was affixed in the room. The starchy paste, used to adhere the paper to the walls, had covered her hands, and she planted them on Peter’s face when he entered the room, his smile alighting alongside hers.

Now, for reasons she just begins to understand, the wallpaper seems to screech at her. The birds, once discerned as peaceful and untroubled harbingers, suddenly bear eyes laced with judgement and reckoning. The delicate branches have amended into thin arms, reaching for her. 

The serenity the wallpaper once held is gone, replaced by a menacing agitation.

The sound of the cutlery scraping the porcelain plates pivots Meta’s attention back to the table.

“Meta, will you talk?” he says to her. His face is filled with unease and the early marks of resignation.

“What should we talk about?” Meta replies. She is unsure what she could possibly say.

What she does know in her own brain, though, as clouded as it may be, is that she can no longer do this. She can no longer sit across from him, pretending as if nothing has changed, as if the chair between them was not his. In that muddled mess of clouds blanketing her mind, she knows she must find a way out. And, it occurs to her, in looking at the wallpaper once again, that the only way out, is out – away from here.

About the Author

Aileen Solana is a graduate student in the MA English program.  She works in the Academic Success Center of Bucks County Community College and as a freelance writer for industry trade magazines and web content.  Her free time is often spent with her overprotective dog, her husband, and four sons—and her order of preference for them changes on any given day.