Soraya spent the afternoon painting flowers on her cupboards with fingernail polish. Fuchsia, blood red, blue and white. Woodhead came home after work and asked her to get him a beer. She tried to indicate she was busy painting but Woodhead would have none of it. 

“I work all day and so on,” he said, “while you paint flowers on the cupboards.” 

She got him the beer. 

“It’s not cold,” he said. 

She had told him weeks ago they needed a new refrigerator. She wasn’t going to repeat herself. 

Woodhead drank the beer and asked for another. “Giddy up,” he said. “Daddy’s thirsty.” 

Soraya would have preferred selecting one of the dull steak knives in the cutlery drawer and slowly sliding it into Woodhead’s eye, but for the sake of the children, she fetched him another lukewarm beer from the refrigerator. 

“What’s for dinner?” he asked. 

“Pizza when the kids come home,” she said. It was Wednesday and thus pizza night. No debating that. Penny, Grace and Mario demanded pizza on Wednesday night. 

“What if I want something else?” Woodhead asked. 

“Then fend for yourself,” Soraya said. 

“That doesn’t sound fair,” he said. 

“Life’s not fair,” she said. Look at me, she thought. 

“Have you been smoking weed all day?” he asked. 

“You know it’s for my anxiety,” she said. 

Woodhead, a boozer, had never bought that argument. “Pot smoking’s a terrible vice,” he said. 

“Alcohol is not?” she said. 

“I can stop drinking whenever I want to,” he said, “but you can’t go a day without getting baked. How about baking a cake or a pie or something instead of getting baked yourself all day day every day?” 

Woodhead grabbed the third beer by himself. He smelled of sweat and ass. He drove a truck for a national grocery distributor. Made decent money. Worked his forty hours a week. Did his time, as he liked to say. 

“I’m going to head out and grab myself some fish and chips,” he said. 

“You do that,” she said. 

While he was gone, she went out back and smoked another joint. It was true. She couldn’t get through the day without being buzzed. Smoking weed took the edge off. More than took the edge off. The kids would be back from karate classes soon. They were all enrolled. One day she’d call on them to use their skills and she couldn’t wait for that day. Meanwhile, everything looked lovely again and Soraya hastened back to the cupboards to paint more flowers.