Photo by Emma-Jane Hobden on Unsplash
It was a midsummer Sunday afternoon when my wife and I were picnicking at the beach. Margaret had made beetroot sandwiches, a meal she often makes, her go-to lunch or dinner. We were twelve years into our marriage, so I figured it was far too late to tell her now that I hate beetroot sandwiches. That I hate beetroot, in all of its forms, be it roasted, raw, jellied, or juiced. If it’s beetroot, it’s not for me.
‘Here you are, honey.’
I take the offered beetroot sandwich. ‘Thank you, dear.’
Actually, it goes beyond dislike for its taste, its texture, or the fact that it stains my hands if I touch it, turns my lips into Ronald McDonald’s or Marilyn Monroe’s when I eat it. It has nothing to do with those irksome aspects of beetroot that elevate my distaste for what I secretly refer to as the devil’s vegetable. It’s worse than that. You see, I am actually allergic to beetroot.
True, my allergy is mild. It’s no big thing. But it makes my mouth feel fuzzy, a little numb. It seizes up the back of my throat. Just a little, mind. It’s not like it stops me from breathing. If it were that severe I’d just have to fess up, twelve years of marriage or no, and try to communicate to Margaret without words as I choke, wild gestures or maybe scrawling the words on my plate using the ruddy ink from the root vegetable that was killing me, tell her, somehow, that I’m sorry baby, but I just don’t like beetroot very much. Maybe I could tell her on the way to the hospital, or, more likely, after that business with the EpiPen, when the adrenaline comes back down to a simmer and I am able to catch my breath.
But that’s all fantasy. All that dramatic stuff. My allergy is mild. It would never come to that. Even now, as I am finishing my beetroot sandwich, I can bear it. Really, I hardly even notice it. Just be stoic, man. Grin and bear it.
But it makes me want to swallow all the time, strive to coat my throat and expel whatever enzyme clings to my esophagus like a toddler to a leg when they are making a stand, say they will not take another step until they get that toy truck they’ve had their eye on and can’t bear to wait until their birthday, certainly not Christmas.
I hate beetroot, but honestly, it’s not that bad.
‘How was your sandwich, honey?’
‘It was lovely, dear.’ The lie comes easy. Twelve years practice, you see.
My good friend often counsels me to tell Margaret the truth, to let her know that I am not fond of beetroot. He says I can soften the blow by explaining that it’s not her cooking, her sandwich construction, or any other reason associated with her own blame, but that I just don’t like beetroot, plain and simple. My friend says that it could actually paint me the hero, the gentleman, the adorable sweetheart, that for a dozen years I put up with beetroot sandwiches that I detest because my love for Margaret is greater than my hate for the devil’s vegetable.
My friend may have a point. He tells me above all else that communication is essential for a good, healthy, happy, long-lasting marriage. He’s no doubt correct. But I have always been the type to cut corners, and really, the scratchy throat thing and the horrible taste, it’s not the end of the world. Communication is a good option. But I’ve always gotten by on an arsenal of white lies and deception. I’ve swallowed my pride for twelve years, I can swallow some beetroot while I’m at it.
‘I am going to take a dip in the water, honey.’
‘Have a good swim, dear.’
‘Boy, it’s hot,’ she says and casts her beach towel to the side, prancing to the blue waters, the white surf.
It is exactly that. Hot. I note with pride while watching my wife scurry across the sand that she, too, is hot. That, if nothing else, is something that never requires a white lie. In all honestly, I can look her in the eye when she asks me how she looks and tell her -- boy scout’s honor -- that she looks absolutely beautiful. Even after a beetroot sandwich, when her lips look like a Hollywood icon’s or those of a fast food franchise clown.
I lay back on my own beach towel. I notice a dark smear of magenta where a fragment of my sandwich escaped my lips and fell upon the fabric. I know the only way to get the stain out is to attack it with water when it has yet to dry. I consider running to the ocean, crossing the hot sand to the active, pulsing surf, but conclude it’s easier to just let it be. If there is one thing I do like about beetroot, it is its vibrant color, its lively hue.
As I lay upon my towel, digesting a disgusting meal that I am well accustomed to, I put my hat over my eyes to block out the light and allow the sun to assault me with its radiance. The warmth turns to hot and it feels good on my exposed flesh.
I know what I must look like to a passerby, a beachcomber or an athlete on their daily jog. I will look like a blinding beacon of ghostly florescent glare. I will look like the hood of a well-waxed car in a parking lot at noon on a sunny day, angle just so, reflecting laser beams of light to render all who gaze upon it hopelessly, utterly blind.
By descent, I am half Irish, one quarter Welsh, one quarter Norwegian. I have the type of hair and skin that blends into one. My blonde beard and eyelashes merge without beginning or end, without border. Buy yourself a ream of computer paper sometime. Open it up, take out a sheet. Any sheet. Observe its color, its lack of pigment, and you will know my complexion to a tee. With this beetroot staining my lips like a vampire who has just completed his feed, fresh from victimizing some young, hapless bombshell, no doubt I will look like Ronald, not Marilyn, even if I am blonde.
All this heat has made me drowsy. My eyelids start to close. The close-up view of the inside of my baseball cap which is covering my eyes turns from blue to black. I hear the ocean surf, a seagull, and the wind. I smile, drunk with sun and Sunday fun. I swallow myself to sleep as the beetroot mildly constricts my throat, gently discomforts me. I feel my hat fall off my face to the sand. My vision, projecting an image from behind closed eyelids, shows me dark magenta. Like a stain on a towel. Like the innards of a dreaded sandwich. The color, at least, is a pleasant hue.
All at once, I decide I’d rather perk up than allow this daytime slumber to take hold of me. I am hot now, besides. Overheated and steaming. I decide to get up, take a dip in the water, let the foam and brine of ocean surf be the suds of a fresh-smelling soap to scour me with its rough, repeated beating.
I decide to join Margaret, to tell her a white lie. I will say to her that lunch was lovely, that it tasted great. I decide to join my wife, to tell her a stark, naked truth. I will say to her that she looks beautiful, especially with her eyelashes wet and heavy, bound together with sea water. I will tell her that I love her. But I will not tell her she is worth it, even with frequent beetroot sandwiches as part of the bargain. I will keep that part to myself. I will find these words and voice them through a semi-constricted larynx. I will push them out through the narrow confines of my mild allergy. I will swim with dear Margaret, but first I must find her.
When I get close to the water I realize the surf is rather intense, I see that it is rather rough. When I enter the water I am tossed like a buoy, a rag doll on a rushing river. When I clasp my hands together and spear the water with a downward dive I hear the muffled rage of Poseidon at play. I surface to scan the horizon. I see nothing but layers of waves, a few fleeting glimpses of gulls that skirt the surface. I see white water and blue sky. I see a colorless sail of slick flesh, a skyward triangle, a Doritos-shaped portent of horror. I watch as the shark fin descends the raging surf. I hear no scream, but I sense Margaret is near, and know that she is when the water nearby goes red like a cloud of beetroot juice.
In that moment I don’t rationalize that my wife has been savaged by a fish, the same kind we would watch together when we sat at the couch night after night viewing Shark Week on the Discovery Channel, beetroot sandwiches in our laps, beers in our hands. I don’t think of how I will be spared of routine, terrible lunches, revolting dinners, or even of Margaret herself, how I will spend sleepless nights clutching the pillow, crying into it, hoping that ever faint trace of her shampoo’s aroma never completely disappears. I don’t consider how I will never swim again. How I will no longer tolerate living on the coast, near any body of water beyond filled bathtubs or parking lot puddles. I don’t consider any of this. I merely swim for my life to the shore.
The surf has gone feral, completely wild. It is savage and it is strong and I am weak against its wrath. Each wave is a rabid lion, a battering ram manned by giants. Neptune’s will to thwart me is greater than my will to survive. Besides, what’s the point? A life without Margaret? I’d rather eat 10,000 beetroot sandwiches. I’d rather wash it all down with -- or even drown in -- beetroot juice than to be without my dearest. Quite frankly, I’d rather die. And I think in this moment that is exactly what is happening.
The waves take me. They lift me and throw me as if I am a blow-up doll in a hurricane gale. They thrash me, smash me, against the seafloor, against a rock. They pound and they grind me into beetroot pulp against the coral. My back, flayed and raw, split open, searing like wildfire. I am like a heretic at the stake, afire with the flames of blind justice, divine wrath. My scream is ignored by the sea, which drowns out all sound even as it drowns me. My scream, unheard, is weak. Even in an empty, quiet room it would not be domineering, stinted, you see, by a mild allergy, a modest constriction of the throat.
I feel the cold hand of death seize me. With my last shred of consciousness, of wakeful thought, I note that the cold hand is hot. It burns. I am suffocated by the water. I am taken by the sea. The last thing I feel in life is a ragging flame consuming my chest, like a heated saucepan laid down upon my bared body.
‘Oh, honey! Look what you’ve gone and done!’
I wake upon my beach towel and squint up into the sunny sky. Margaret kneels by my side, wet and dripping, beautiful as ever.
‘I must have fallen asleep.’
She assaults me with sunscreen, squeezes the bottle so it makes squelching, fart noises and sprays me with cooling ointment.
‘You were exposed this whole time,’ she tells me. ‘Were you even wearing any sunscreen?’
‘No,’ I admit. No white lie will get me out of this one.
She tsk tsk tsked. She lathered me in SPF50. ‘You are badly burned, honey!’ She scolded.
‘I’m sorry, dear,’ my words came out weak, my throat fractionally seized by an underwhelming irritation.
‘You look like a cherry!’ She shrieked.
I glanced at my body. Margaret wasn’t wrong.
‘You look just like a fucking beetroot!’
James Callan grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He lives on the Kāpiti Coast, New Zealand on a small farm with his wife, Rachel, and his little boy, Finn. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Bridge Eight, White Wall Review, Beyond Queer Words, Millennial Pulp Magazine and elsewhere. His novel, A Transcendental Habit, is due for publication in 2023 with Queer Space, an imprint of Rebel Satori Press.