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Slip carefully out, like a shoe horn, from beneath his sleeping body—he grunts groggily—and go to the closet. Open it with a mini-mum of squeaking and stare at her clothes. A few suits. Looks like beige blouses and a lot of brown things. Turn on the closet light. Look at the shoes. They are all lined up in neat, married pairs on the closet floor. Black pumps, blue sneakers, brown moccasins, brown T-straps. They have been to an expensive college, say, in Massachusetts. Gaze into her shoes. Her feet are much larger than yours. They are like small cruise missiles.
lol
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Fallen in love(?) Out of control. Who is this? Who am I? And who is this wife with the skis and the nostrils and the Tylenol and does she have orgasms?
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Reclaim yourself. Pieces have fluttered away.
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Everything you do is a masochistic act. Why?
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Don’t you like yourself ? Don’t you deserve better than all of this?
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Need: something to lift you from your boots out into the sky, something to make you like little things again, to whirl around the curves of your ears and muss up your hair and call you every single day.
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A drug.
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A man.
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A religion.
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A good job. Revise and send out resumes.
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Remember what Mrs. Kloosterman told the class in second grade: Just be glad you have legs.
ack
“Who is he?” says your mom, later, in the kitchen after you’ve washed the dishes.
“He ’s a systems analyst.”
“What do they do?”
“Oh . . . they get married a lot. They’re usually always married.”
“Charlene, are you having an affair with a married man?”
“Ma, do you have to put it that way?”
“You are asking for big trouble,” she says, slowly, and resumes polishing silver with a vehement energy.
Wonder why she always polishes the silver after meals.
Lean against the refrigerator and play with the magnets.
Say, softly, carefully: “I know, Mother, it ’s not something you would do.”
She looks up at you, her mouth trembling, pieces of her brown-gray hair dangling in her salty eyes, pink silverware cream caking onto her hands, onto her wedding ring. She stops, puts a spoon down, looks away and then hopelessly back at you, like a very young girl, and, shaking her head, bursts into tears.
“I’m thinking of telling Patricia about us.” Be skeptical. Ask: “What will you say?”
He proceeds confidently: “I’ll go, ‘Dear, there ’s something I have to tell you.’ ”
“And she ’ll look over at you from her briefcase full of memoranda and say: ‘Hmmmmmm?’ ”
“And I’ll say, ‘Dear, I think I’m falling in love with another woman, and I know I’m having sex with her.’ ”
“And she ’ll say, ‘Oh my god, what did you say?’ ”
“And I’ll say: ‘Sex.’ ”
“And she ’ll start weeping inconsolably and then what will you do?” There is a silence, still as the moon. He shifts his legs, seems confused. “I’ll . . . tell her I was just kidding.” He squeezes your hand.
NO
Shave your legs in the bathroom sink. Philosophize: you are a mistress, part of a great hysterical you mean historical tradition. Wives are like cockroaches. Also part of a great historical tradition. They will survive you after a nuclear attack—they are tough and hardy and travel in packs—but right now they’re not having any fun. And when you look in the bathroom mirror, you spot them scurrying, up out of reach behind you.
god she's amazing
[...] With the glassed candle by your bed lit and burning away, doze off and on, arranged with excruciating care on top of the covers, the window lamp on in the living room, the door unlocked for him in case he arrives in a passionate flurry, forgetting his key. Six blocks from Fourteenth Street: you are risking your life for him, spread out like a ridiculous cake on the bed, waiting with the door unlocked, thinking you hear him on the stairs, but no. You should have a corsage, you think to yourself. You should have a goddamned orchid pinned to the chest of your long flowing hostess coat, then you would be appropriately absurd. Think: What has happened to me? Why am I lying like this on top of my covers with too much Jontue and mascara and jewelry, pretending casually that this is how I always go to bed, while a pervert with six new steak knives is about to sneak through my unlocked door. Remember: at Blakely Falls High, Willis Holmes would have done anything to be with you. You don’t have to put up with this: you were second runner-up at the Junior Prom.
[...] At lunch regard your cream of cauliflower soup with a pinched mouth and ask what on earth he and his wife do together. Sound irritated. He shrugs and says, “Dust, eat, bicker about the shower curtain. Why do you ask?”
Say: “Gee, I don’t know. What an outrageous question, huh?”
He gives you a look of sympathy that could bring a dead cat back to life. “You’re upset because I didn’t call you.” He reaches across the table to touch your fingers. Pull your hand away. Say: “Don’t flatter yourself.” Look slightly off to one side. Put your hand over your eyes like you have a headache. Say: “God, I’m sorry.”
Hilda is worried about you and wants to fix you up with a cousin of hers from Brooklyn.
Ask wearily: “What ’s his name?”
She looks at you, frowning. “Mark. He ’s a banker. And what the hell kind of attitude is that?”
lol
Don’t lose your resolve. Fumble for your list. Sputter things out as convincingly as possible.
Say: “I suffer indignities at your hands. And agonies of duh feet. I don’t know why I joke. I hurt.”
“That is why.”
“What?”
“That is why.”
“But you don’t really care.” Wince. It sounds pitiful.
“But I do.”
For some reason this leaves you dumbfounded.
He continues: “You know my situation . . . or maybe you don’t.” Pause. “What can I do, Charlene? Stand on my goddamned head?”
Whisper: “Please. Stand on your goddamned head.”
Love drains from you, takes with it much of your blood sugar and water weight. You are like a house slowly losing its electricity, the fans slowing, the lights dimming and flickering; the clocks stop and go and stop.
At Karma-Kola the days are peg-legged and aimless, collapsing into one another with the comic tedium of old clowns, nowhere fast.
:(