Free Goodbye To All That by Judith Arnold

into the world as a single woman, she ought to get a manicure.
    Oh, God. A single woman. Would she be dating? Dating men who weren’t Jill’s father? Where would she meet these men? She wasn’t a bar type. She often lectured Abbie about all the sleazeballs lurking on the internet, so Jill couldn’t imagine her trusting an on-line dating service. And who was she going to meet as a clerk at First-Rate? Sprightly geezers who resented their wives for sending them out on stupid errands to stock up on paper towels or mouthwash when they’d rather be home channel-surfing?
    “There’s his beard,” her mother said.
    “What beard?” Melissa asked as she, Doug and Jill shifted their gazes to their clean-shaven father.
    “He shaves every morning and leaves beard hairs in the sink. Why he can’t rinse them down the drain, I don’t know. I’ve asked him a million times but he leaves this mess for me every morning.”
    “Oh, yes, a huge mess,” Jill’s father snapped. “A massive mess. Hours to clean up.” He shook his head. “I’m rushing to get out every morning—unlike some people, I’ve got to get to work by a certain time. I’ve got patients waiting for me, people whose lives I’m trying to save. And I’m supposed to take the time to scrub the sink before I leave. It’s not like you’ve got so much else to do that you can’t wash a few little hairs down the sink.”
    “I’ve been scrubbing the sink since the day we got married,” she shot back. “Forty-two years, Richard, and have you ever once said, ‘Thank you for scrubbing the sink’? I’m tired of cleaning up after you. It would take you two seconds to rinse your beard hairs out of the basin, but you won’t do it. Even though I’ve asked. Even though it would make me happy.”
    “I do plenty to make you happy!” Jill’s father roared.
    “You do things you think would make me happy. You buy me earrings. Earrings are nice, I like earrings fine. But what would really make me happy is if you’d clean the sink after yourself. I’ve told you this and you just ignore me.”
    Jill closed her eyes and reconsidered her decision not to serve liquor. She could use a drink right now. Diet Coke with rum. Rum with a splash of Diet Coke. Rum, hold the Diet Coke.
    Listening to her parents bicker about something so petty yet so intimate made her feel like a voyeur. She eyed her mother’s hands again and wondered if her short nails and the dry white skin of her cuticles reflected all the years she’d spent scrubbing sinks. Jill also tried to remember whether as a child she’d ever thanked her mother for scrubbing the sinks. Or whether anyone in her own family ever thanked her. Gordon left beard hairs in the master bathroom sink all the time, and she always washed them down the drain. She had never thought about that before now. Maybe you had to scrub sinks for forty-two years before it drove you over the edge. Jill had twenty-six years of sink-scrubbing to go before she snapped.
    “It’s more than just beard hairs and the remote,” her mother continued.
    “It’s the bed,” her father muttered.
    Melissa clapped her hands over her ears. “I don’t want to hear this,” she moaned. “La, la, la, la—”
    “The mattress, Melissa,” her mother cut her off. “He wants to rotate the mattress.”
    Doug frowned. “You’re supposed to flip the mattress every year or so.”
    “Flip it, sure. But we got that pillow-top mattress a few years ago—”
    “Almost ten years ago,” her father interrupted. “And it’s never been rotated.”
    “Because you’re not supposed to flip it. The pillow-top has to stay on top. So he says he wants to rotate it to even out the wear and tear. His side is getting wear and tear. My side isn’t. He weighs forty pounds more than me.”
    “I’m a perfect weight for my height,” Jill’s father pointed out.
    “I didn’t say you were fat. I said you weigh forty pounds more than me, which you do. So we’re supposed