Two Stories

Seated Woman

Oh, I had my worm’s eye view of him when I was down on the carpet to pick up my ink pen that had slipped off of my lap when I stood. I saw the canopy of his jaw, his jawbones.

God … will I never know if I make things better for Victor?

I would need to go along with him and there was no denying he was piqued, and I was putting up resistance. He wanted to show me something.

But beyond Victor, I looked toward curtain folds – or elsewhere to where this room flows into another and then back out the window toward a swath of bleached blue sky where I saw an airplane that seemed to be going far too slowly – walking speed! It surprised me that it didn’t fall out of the sky!

I followed behind Victor as I carried my mug of tea – mindful not to pour or to spatter, and then he halted and pointed. And to begin with, I looked at his mouth too full of teeth and open.

But when I took in what he saw – it was terribly embarrassing.

Well, the atmosphere here is thick with dismissal and with so much I have done and do wrong.

I drew tight the knot in the belt of my robe. It was the best I could think to do. But I guess the noose now was around my waist.

A paper wasp was making headway on the sill. It was accelerating with rightwardness, and I should have said bravo to it – because the thing had been nearly unopposed – up until this moment.

To What Beautiful End?

To what end does my husband customarily push his knee between my legs before he falls asleep, with his chest against my back?

But I think he was like a scrappy fox who barked while he ran away from me. He did that.

He was gone for about a month, but then he returned – and to what purpose? – and what do I want?

Doesn’t everybody want to learn, to explore – and to interpret the actions of people, and then I like to add in what romance I can, and then play with what little I have learned for all that it is worth.

When Clement recently took me to Orio’s, he told the waiter – ‘My daughter and I will have the chicken pie.’

And I do love the pie, but why call me his daughter? Why?

We have tried out courtesy with one another for our safety’s sake, but I have no choice but to report danger. To whom? To him.

‘Who has the yellow hair?’ I asked about the metallic loop that I found in the tub.

‘It must have come down through the pipe from three C,’ is what he replied.

*

I took a hot bath last evening, lathered, scrubbed myself and when I got into bed, Clement entered me matter-of-factly after I had turned my back on him.

What happened next is that in the morning my hands were rightly in action, but not entirely guided, which is why the glass florist’s vase next to the mixer fell and smashed into a whole batch of sad, but very sparkly charms that had jumped widely.

In some such similar cases, as when I drop a plate, there will only be a chink in the middle of it – or once I had a dish, with finely drawn flowers and leaves, crack neatly into four pretty, piece-of-pie slices that I trashed, but that at first I had to marvel at.

And I figure that I am at my most promisingly expressive when I snap. Sometimes I snap.

But this time I got there only halfway, not the whole.