'Who, What, When, Where, Why?' by Fiona McKay

I whisper-ask you why you are late, again, and it all goes wrong from there. You hear
my why as what – what delayed you, what kept you from making the five-thirty train
this evening, of all evenings, when I’d asked could you please, please be home on
time. And you turn it into an argument about why I invited the new neighbours over
for dinner tonight when we don’t know them at all. And I say that’s exactly why;
because we don’t and because we should. And, I follow up, because I can hear the
contemptuous snort in your brain, the reason why I want this is that our kids are the
same age, and their boy might be a friend for our Tom, and you know how difficult he
finds it to make friends, don’t you, and she looks like someone I could have coffee
with, and might he not be someone you could go for a pint with, because – and I
don’t say this aloud – like Tom, you too find it hard to make friends. But it’s this last
bit – spoken and unspoken – you pounce on: why do I always have to interfere? Why
do I think you need more friends than you already have – which I don’t point out is a
number close to zero. And why do the kids – ours and theirs – choose this moment
to fall silent over their pizza and lego and shrieking video games, and why does the
marital chat dry up at the dining table only metres from where we are seething in the
kitchen, so our hissed questions and answers fall loudly into the sudden quiet. And
like so often, I wonder why I try so hard, and why everything is going wrong, again.