The three others: I mentioned one so sleazy. Maybe in the end he wasn’t as bad as the other two. I say that because he was uglier, and an ugly man may learn to compensate for his face with some kindness. Perhaps his entire career was compensation for his ugliness—a path to money that could pay women to ignore the way he looked. Pale pink, fat, he reminded me of a hairless mole we’d seen at the zoo. There is no point in asking what the attraction was—that’s the wrong question. Clearly what has gone on in the world of my past can answer only other questions. Like why does a man want to pretend a woman likes him? What does anyone get from pretending? I did the ugly one first. Went to a bar in his neighborhood, drank some whiskey with him.

After the bar, his townhouse. One of those ubiquitous places that is nice and expensive but not special in any way. Three stories. On the first I took off my heels. On the second we reclined on a black leather couch and watched a giant television. He lay behind me and pushed his erection against me. I stared into no-space and regretted my life. On the third floor we got into his bed and he was so happy. He had done it. Gotten me there. Into the house, up the three stories, onto the bed. I couldn’t not let him have it. I lay down next to him and turned my back to him and heard the drawer of the nightstand open. He hurried with the condom as if I might vanish. I let him penetrate me. No, I thought. No no no. I whispered it each time he pushed.

At night I would call your dad, who was working as a trim carpenter for his uncle’s contracting business in East Texas. He spent the day wiping sweat out of his eyes so he wouldn’t miss with the nail gun or the circular saw, finishing closets and chair rail and laying baseboard and trying not to keel over from heatstroke. We talked about how we’d never want to live in that kind of house, the two-car garage most of what you saw from the street. As if a house was mainly a place to keep your cars. We talked about that but not as if we assumed we would live together in a house. Not as a joint assertion of what we wanted for our unified future. Or maybe he did mean it that way but he knew I didn’t.

That was the best body I ever had, and the worst mind. I was seventeen. I was slender and strong and I also had swollen C-cup breasts. I had never even worn a bra before my milk came in for her, and I had always been ashamed of my breasts before then. The way they looked if I leaned over. Sad little triangular flaps of skin just holding my nipples to my chest. If I was lying on my back they disappeared completely and I could have been a boy except that my nipples were big and square. I had no breast tissue. I didn’t feel like a girl when I was a child. I didn’t feel female. I felt neutral. Then I had her and I had breasts and I felt like I had become a girl. Femininity is shocking. Women always seem smaller and softer than I expect, when I hug them. Even if they don’t look small or soft. When I had breasts I was aware of them all the time. They were something new in my field of vision and they made my body intrude into another plane of space. But my mind was an open sore. It was black. I couldn’t tell if I was deep inside it or totally outside it. I would imagine being fatally cleaved all day long. By a gallows axe, the T-shaped kind. By a heavy medieval sword like Excalibur. Or bludgeoned, usually blows to my head, usually by the butt of a rifle.

I don’t know what we did all day. I went for walks with her. I read while she nursed. Magazines and biographies mostly. I would go to the library and take one of the subscription cards from something that looked interesting and check Bill Me and then I would get two or sometimes three issues before they cut it off. I used to read the magazines at the library, because there was a nice overstuffed chair there and I could put my leg up to support her while she nursed, which was the most comfortable position. If she was nursing on the left I would put my left leg up with my knee bent and my foot in the chair and that way I didn’t have to put all her weight on my arm. Then I would switch. Then she would fall asleep. I could read through three or four magazines that way. But one day when it was exceptionally quiet there she was smacking and swallowing and I liked the sound myself but it’s not a subtle sound. There’s no mistaking it. I didn’t mess with any of those awkward cloths they sell to cover you while you nurse, I just lifted my shirt and put her on. But we were good at it, you would never see my nipple or even my skin the way we did it. Still the reference librarian came up to me that one day and she stopped about five feet away from the chair like I was contagious and she leaned toward me and whispered I’m sorry honey but you can’t do that here. About that time the baby choked because the milk was flowing so hard and she came off the nipple and the streams were pulsing out into the air. The milk went all over my shirt and the baby’s face. She started crying and I had to put my hand right on my breast and push on it because that was the only thing that would stop it. I said Okay to the librarian and I stood up with the baby but I knew she wouldn’t stop crying until I put her back on, so I turned away from the librarian and got her nursing again while I was standing there. Then I said Would you mind putting these magazines back for me. We walked out. There was nobody there.

I don’t remember much about working there. I remember the to-go girl was incredibly good at her job and that was the first time I had ever seen anyone work smart and hard like that. The phone on her shoulder, the competent look on her face, how she shaved a fraction of a second off her process by not letting the cash drawer open all the way. The tough way she stapled the order chit to the bag. I wanted to be like her and not like Barrett. It wasn’t that I liked waiting tables so much then—it was that I had somewhere to be. Some function in life. I didn’t understand how to be a wife or mother. But there were rules to being a waitress. The main one was don’t fuck up. Another was whatever you skip in your prep will be the one thing you need when you’re buried. If you look at the stack of kids’ cups while you’re tying on your apron in the afternoon and decide there will probably be enough for the night because you really don’t want to go out to the shed and dig around for the new sleeve, eight soccer teams will come in at nine, and you’ll have to go out to the shed anyway, and by the time you get back you’ll have killed your tips on all your other tables. That incessant fulfillment of Murphy’s Law taught me to be superstitious. I never said It looks like it’s going to be a slow night and we’ll get out early because that would suddenly make the smoking section fill up. The smokers took forever. You could never turn those tables because they just weren’t in a hurry. They smoked before they ordered. They always had appetizers and drinks. They smoked after the appetizers. They always had dessert. Their tabs were inevitably more, but they undid it by staying there for so long you could have had three $25 tables instead of one $40, even though the smokers tipped better. And I never said I think we’re going to be busy tonight because then it would be dead and they wouldn’t cut anyone and you’d stand around for six $2.13 hours. If I knocked over a saltshaker while I was refilling it or wiping down a table I always threw a pinch over my left shoulder.

The second was pot. He taught me how to do that. He was beautiful with it. So deliberate. Grinding the buds for the joint, rolling it. The way he sat forward on the couch with his arms balanced on his knees and his handsome fingers handling the paper with such respect and delicacy. So serious. His glasses would slip down his nose a bit while he focused and he would pause and hold the paper trough so still in one hand while he nudged his glasses up with the other. Nothing happened of course the first few times but one afternoon when we were both off we went to the Olive Garden on a date. I was married. I didn’t hide it from my husband. Damon and I smoked out before we left his place to go to the restaurant. It was in the car that I finally felt it and I tipped forward and put my hands on my knees and felt warm and good. I felt desperate and so content. I felt like I knew everything about life. I knew what it was. I knew it was real and I knew what real meant. My eyes were closed and I said Oh. Damon said Hey Marie are you good? I didn’t say anything. I was thinking about life. He said Hey. I could feel him looking at me. Hey, he said. You got to be able to shake that off. I don’t want to shake it off, I said. Sit up, he said. I leaned back but I didn’t open my eyes. When we got to the restaurant I didn’t want to get out of the car. We sat in the parking lot listening to Dar Williams. The bright rasp of her fingers lifting off the strings connected my ears with my nipples with my cunt. My ears pulsed and my nipples pulsed and my cunt pulsed. I felt the milk and I pushed in on my breasts and thought about my husband and my baby and how much I loved them. Hey, he said. Open your eyes. I looked at him. You ready to go inside? Or what. I’m ready, I said. Okay, he said. You’re cool?

I’m great, I said.

We went inside. We sat across from each other with the breadsticks between us. I don’t know what we talked about. Everything tasted amazing. He said I sure was occupying a lot of space in his head. I don’t think I said much. Olives don’t even grow in a garden, I said.

[...] There was nothing but my mouth around him. Nothing else but feeling what he was feeling and giving him what he wanted. I gave myself over to it and I knew what to do. The sounds he made were so genuine and grateful. I was moving with the music. I was performing. Just like that I understood how to be sexy like I’d finally understood what it was to be high and it was as if I had always known even though I hadn’t until that night. When he came he curled forward over me and cradled my head and I was wrapped up in the middle of him and I was swallowing it all and I could feel the vibration of his sounds on the back of my head. I stayed there with him far back in my throat after he’d finished and I had swallowed all of it. I waited until he sat up and then I let him go gently and sat back on my heels and looked up at him and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. Damn, he said. Damn. Where’d you learn to do that? he asked, looking at me with admiration and disbelief. Here, I said.

So many times I ran that gauntlet. If I were to advise someone going into the service industry, my second suggestion after Don’t would be Walk through the place and look for the tables farthest from the kitchen. You’ll probably be stuck in that station for a couple months. Imagine walking from wherever that is all the way back to the kitchen for extra salad dressing. Now imagine it eighteen more times, and that’s just for one table. You may think you’ll be waiting tables but really your job is to walk fast in a circle for six to eight hours every day. Don’t work somewhere with stairs, steps, ramps, outdoor seating, small water glasses, or kids’ menus.

I sat down in a booth to wait. I felt the clock pressing on me. Now I had less than two hours to rest at home before I had to be at the Italian restaurant where I worked nights. I closed my eyes. Can you help run some stock? barked Marlo. No, I thought. Sure, I said. If it got close to one hour there wasn’t much point in going home, and I kept my other uniform in my car because sometimes that happened. But sometimes even if I could only be home for five minutes I would make the drive. I would sit on the floor in the bathroom and close the door, even though I lived alone. To feel like there was something between me and all that for a few moments.