by
Dana Spiotta
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IT WASN’T THAT she no longer loved Augie. She felt increasing affection for him. It wasn’t that she found him repellent in any way. Objectively she would watch him from across the room when he went to get another beer from the bar. He was pleasing in a gentle-bear way. Nice muscles covered by an easygoing layer of soft fat. No edges, no offenses. But somehow the initial excitement of sleeping with him left with no warning. It didn’t wane or dwindle. It just disappeared for her altogether.
She liked him, his hair, his large eyes, his bumped-up hands, his open face. She thought he smelled just fine—not at all bad. Sometimes she noticed his breath, but not too often. That was not it. There was nothing specific in his person that offended her or put her off. Everything was fine, even pleasing. So why then did she suddenly have no desire for him? He still desired her. He wanted lots of sex, and she complied as much as she could. But sometimes he took so long, and her generosity would fray. She would catch herself thinking, Come on. And he would nearly come but not quite. He’d want to switch positions. And the thing of it was Louise knew she could never betray her impatience. She couldn’t say “hurry up” because that didn’t help at all. No, the best thing was to feign enthusiasm, to act as turned on and enthusiastic as possible to peak his desire and make him come. But it was a fine line: if she feigned too much enthusiasm, he might try to hold back longer, to prolong her enjoyment. Often she flicked her tongue at his ear suddenly, or whispered a hushed cliché to him at a crucial moment. She knew to stroke his back but not in too distracting a way. It wasn’t that she minded his being inside her, but the artifice and the effort required, that was tough. He relaxed after and looked at her in adoration. He didn’t know, did he? She was ashamed and terrified to think that he might know. But maybe he didn’t. She had become so good at arousing him, at the micro-modulations that worked his desire. She had paid attention, it was true, but just not for the reasons he believed.
oof
Would it be better to be honest? He used to try, quite often, to get her to come. He was not bad at it. He would slip down beneath the sheets and stay there until it was done. He seemed to enjoy himself—perhaps feigning for the same reasons she did, perhaps not. She didn’t fake orgasms. No reason to. When he used his mouth she could have them quite easily. Sometimes so intense and shaky that she couldn’t believe they came from within her. But it still didn’t matter. She also did this for him. She didn’t really care if she had the orgasm. She would just as soon have gone to sleep. Because in a way an orgasm is mostly a physical thing, which doesn’t necessarily have to do with desire. Desire was more complex: a desperation and a need you felt before, an imagining and then a realizing during. It required mind and body. Her body was just fine. Her imagination—well, it failed her most of the time.
She knew she should change her life. She felt herself to be in such a diminished, subtracted state. It even occurred to her that it might be the name itself—Louise Barrot. She believed taking the name of a dead infant had colored all her possibilities, tinted everything with morbidity. She knew also that the dead infant took on more significance for other reasons. Her underground status had convoluted all context—the fact that she could change her identity so completely changed the very possibility of engagement, or precluded the possibility of real engagement. She regarded everything and everyone from a distance, both ephemeral and abstract.
“You make us pity him.”
Bobby turned off the projector and flipped the lights back on. He shrugged.
“He looks haunted, pathetic, old,” Mary said.
“He is haunted, pathetic, old.”
“But he bears responsibility for atrocities, and he won’t admit it. He doesn’t even desire our sympathy. You hold the camera on him. You dwell on his shakiness. You let his humanity play on us,” Mary said.
“Yeah, you seem like a tiresome asshole, a bully, and he seems like a victim,” Will said.
“That’s the truth. I showed the truth. The truth is complicated. More complicated than we would like,” Bobby said.
“But are you creating a polemic, a tool, or are you on some ego-artist trip?” Will said.
“Your film makes things complicated, and that doesn’t inspire action, that inspires despair,” Mary said. “Besides, who says that’s the truth? That’s sentimentality. If he is blameless, then who do we assign blame to? Aren’t all individuals human? Can’t you portray Nixon and Kissinger as lonely, misguided men leading lives underwritten by existential desperation? Is that what the world needs right now? Empathy for all the powerful, careless old men?” Mary became angry as she spoke.
Later, by themselves, he brought it up. “I feel outrage. I feel anger. But I am undone by sadness. When I am behind the camera, I feel a desire to understand and empathize. To undercut my own points. The truth is, that’s when it becomes interesting.”
Mary nodded, but she didn’t really listen. She was waiting for her chance to speak.
“You have to decide,” she said. “You are describing the pursuit of art. Maybe it is a way to make you feel more comfortable in the world. Maybe it is beauty, or even integrity. But meanwhile that is a privilege. A privilege we enjoy at what cost? People are dying and can’t afford that kind of empathy for all sides. Do you think the warmongers and fascists and corporate munitions suppliers waste time feeling empathy? Do they second-guess themselves?”
Two days later, just as she began to relent, Bobby came to her with a plan. And the home and second-home addresses of all the board members from all the relevant corps: Dow Chemical, Monsanto, General Dynamics, Westinghouse, Raytheon, DuPont, Honeywell, IBM and Valence Chemical. He carefully worked out the timing, the execution, the communiqués to the press.
But now Mary developed doubts. She started to wonder if he had been right in the first place, that denying the complexity of the world made you as bad as they are. Even if you do act, you may be guilty of the wrong motive—vanity, or self-righteousness. Or maybe you will pick the wrong tactic. Perhaps your analysis was incorrect. You could be making things worse, more polarized. And finally, maybe they shouldn’t relinquish their purchase on the humanity of everyone. Maybe that was the very moral line that saved them from becoming the people they despised and judged. She could argue it either way, with equal conviction. But there was no point in discussing it again. She knew he wasn’t looking back. He was now a force in motion. She watched as everything came together. And then she helped everything come together. This was the power of a couple—their doubts occurred at different times and canceled each other out, making them much more fearless as a pair than they would ever be on their own. And that’s how a life changes—it could go either way, and then it just goes one way.
holy shit
Her thin body stayed thin, but her belly grew and stretched beyond her wildest imaginings. She felt passive beneath it—that taut belly led, and she followed. This was the most specific her body had ever felt. She didn’t feel peaceful or beatific. Nothing as typical as that. She felt her life further reduced to maneuvers and negotiation. Very concrete, physical challenges. Getting out of bed sideways. Bending at the knees to put something in the garbage compactor. This precise body ordered her thoughts. I have to pee. I have to move my leg because it hurts. I have to eat.
And it prescribed what she couldn’t do: She couldn’t get drunk and find some random person to sleep with. She couldn’t run away and change her name and therefore her life—she would still be a nine-months-pregnant woman wherever she went and whatever her name was. And she couldn’t stop it—the barreling of her life toward this new life. So each day she made herself toast and eggs. Each day she watched the TV. She cleaned the house and looked at catalogs. She paid the bills and cooked dinner. When Augie came home, she traded foot rubs with him. She fed him the dinner she had cooked. And she washed dishes, occasionally stopping to prop a hand against her middle back. Augie would ask if he could help her, and she would stoically reply no.
In the final weeks before the birth, she enjoyed cooking and freezing as much food as possible. This was maybe a typical pregnant woman thing to do: prepare for the days ahead with reheatable casseroles and lasagnas. Louise applied a slightly inappropriate energy to these cooking endeavors. Augie bought a freestanding Sub-Zero freezer for her, and she overwhelmed it with individually wrapped and marked meals. Either a baby or a nuclear winter was coming—in either case, they would not starve. The frenzied cooking of those last few weeks was the most satisfying time of her life so far. It had a twisted optimism. It included a future, which was something she hadn’t seen before. Louise abandoned all thoughts of turning herself in. She had to be who she was for quite a while. She at last had no choice. The baby anchored her, finally, in her world. When she gave birth to Jason, she finally found something she believed time would not ever betray or dwindle. The feeling she had for her son was sentimental, it was frightening, it was unimpeachable. It was self-negating and beyond love. It was an ungentle feeling, this baby love.
Jason was a demanding child. Before him, the most profound feeling she had had was an all-points loneliness. This loneliness was so profound as to be almost abstract: she felt distance from her distance. There was nothing abstract in Jason’s need for her. It was desperate and constant and loud.
“Did you go out at all today?” she said.
“I have a lot of work to do.”
“Like what?”
Josh sighed and turned to her. “We’re launching the website for Ergonomica, and I had to make sure everything works.”
“Really? Making sure it can’t be hacked?”
Josh turned back to his computer. “Something like that.”
Sometimes her own boyfriend gave her the creeps.
i like the last line
This is the best moment I will ever have, he thought, but it was already over, they were on their way up the stairs. She undressed quickly. It was cold, and she got under the covers, leaving just her panties on. Then she reached under the sheets and took those off and tossed them on her pants and blouse on the floor.
[...]
Nash felt the same thing again as he sat by the window early the next morning and watched the sun come up. He looked at Miranda asleep in his bed. Her hair was in her face, and he could just see her lips and nose. He watched her stir, push the hair out of her closed eyes and then sink back into sleep. He sipped some water. The worn oak floor reflected light, the sky brightened from deep blue to light blue and Miranda finally pulled herself up on the bed, smiling.