Judith Lysaker
What’s True
She’d decided to eat fish again. She’d leave veganism behind her in the wake of his wake and wean herself from animal advocacy to taste flesh and saltiness again. She’d force a change that might fill her.
On Saturday nights, before her vegan days, he would make salmon for her on the grill just outside the backdoor on their concrete patio, where he’d stand barefoot and shirtless flipping pink flesh until it was charred with patches of crispy blackness that camouflaged its soft insides. He would bring it to her on a square turquoise plate (his was the red one, she’d remind him) and ask her to cut it open, look inside to see if the pink was how she liked it. He’d put a small piece in her mouth and ask her to taste it for texture and sweetness.
So, she thought she’d try salmon first. She could have chosen sardines. Cans of his favorites were still stacked neatly in the pantry, taking up space he had claimed for his own salty needs. She had yet to move them, hadn’t considered clearing them out. Instead, she listened, listened to them tell her magical stories of what might be—his mouth still full of desire.
She settled on salmon. It was odd, feeling flesh again in her hands, and placing it in the pan on the stove with olive oil and capers. It was odd squeezing the lemon and watching the spatter of oil and juices mar the clean glass stovetop. But she turned the heat higher, and listened to the flesh crisp, disturbing her with unwanted images of other charred skin and pink flesh. She let the saltiness invade her nostrils and caress the edges of her eyelids.
Sitting now at the small black folding table in the family room, she cuts into the fish on the square turquoise plate. At first it is satisfying—the salty, sweet flesh moving through her. But soon she is left wanting as she sits beside his empty seat and pushes her tongue hard on the top of her palate to stop the truth, a salty wetness cleaving to her cheeks.
Judith Lysaker lives in Indiana with her brilliant, veggie-loving German Shepherd. An erstwhile academic, she now spends long hours writing short forms. Her work has appeared in Gone Lawn and *82. In her earlier career she published books with Teachers College Press and the National Council of Teachers of English.
