Second Chance. Elizabeth Wrenn

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СКАЧАТЬ I was getting headaches at the drop of a hat. Or the raise of a penis. And I was irritated a lot. Really irritated. In a way I’d never been before in my life. A don’t-touch me -or-I’ll-yank-it-off-you kind of irritated. Although I never let those feelings out. Never. Just kept the lid on. Tight. Part of my job.

      Neil exhaled sharply, muttering, ‘I wish you’d take some hormones. This isn’t good for us.’

      He climbed out of bed and noisily dressed, banging drawers and cabinets. Then it sounded like he was putting every clinking, jingly thing from the dresser in and out of his pockets several times. Finally he left the room, his heavy footfalls down the stairs further conveying his feelings. I didn’t blame him. But I did. Neil was one of the good guys. Or was when we’d married. I supposed he still was, but we’d drifted apart the past few years, sailing merrily along in our life sailboats, our courses charted by the gale force winds of responsibilities, rarely by the gentle breezes of love. And as for me personally, as a woman, I felt like I’d recently looked up and realized I was in the doldrums.

      I heard Neil downstairs, kitchen noises for several minutes, complete with slamming fridge door and cabinet, a few minutes’ pause, then going through his medical bag, opening the hall closet for his coat, then, Bang!

      The doors and cabinets in the house were paying a price for our lack of sex.

      Sex. It had once been so great. But now … If one person’s legitimate need is to have sex, and the other person’s legitimate need is to not have sex, whose need trumps? Why were women supposed to take hormones in order to be horny? Why weren’t men pressured to take hormones to make them able to have three thoughts and not have two of them be about sex? That way they might be able to think over the myriad facets of ‘good for us,’ like the fact that working seventy-hour weeks, even for a good cause, was a kind of infidelity.

      The garage door went up, his car started, then backed out. The garage door went down, and, even though it was a remote, I swear it too landed with more of a thud than usual. I exhaled, my eyes still closed.

      But I was solidly awake, and still wanting to paint an orange. And yes, when I pictured myself holding a paintbrush, there was that feeling again. Arousal. What is it about nearing fifty that one’s life becomes steeped in irony?

      I climbed out of bed and raised the blind. It was another spring day in January. Colorado was famous for its quickly changing weather and seasonal confusion. It was forecast to hit the upper fifties today. From our second-story bedroom I looked over my quiet suburban street. A few withered designs of snow held stubbornly to the shadows of trees and houses. But those too would meet their evaporative demise today in the warm chinook winds that were already whistling down the canyon. Across the street and two doors down I saw the Kellermans’ shepherd-mix, Melba, tied up to a tree in their front yard, her fur blowing in the wind. I watched her for a long minute. Since the divorce, Melba spent too much time tied to a tree.

      I briefly thought about going out for a walk. Maybe I could take Melba. I could head up the mesa trails, get some exercise. It’d been years since I’d done that. Not exercise, the trails. Well, the exercise in the past few years had been pretty sketchy, too. I felt the tips of my breasts touching my ever-protruding stomach. It was like a race – breasts down, stomach out. Hard to tell who was winning. They were both doing pathetically well. But I wanted to paint. For the first time in years.

      I pulled on my ancient gray zip sweatshirt and matching pants, both patterned with the set-in stains of motherhood, and headed down to the basement. I paused in the kitchen, a note on the counter catching my eye.

      D – out of tea bags. Call Sondra O’Keefe about dinner Friday. – N.

      Damn. I’d completely forgotten about the O’Keefes’ dinner party. A benefit for seed money for the clinic. The dinner was going to be a fancy, dressed-to-the nines affair, and my total wardrobe added up to maybe five and a half. But it was yet another duty. The O’Keefes were nice people, it’s just that I didn’t even feel like being with my family, much less with a bunch of people all decked out and hobnobbing for a cause, even a good cause. I just didn’t have the energy. I looked down at the note, noticing the absence of an x and o where Neil signed off, a usual given in notes from him. When had he stopped? Maybe this morning. I pushed the note into the pocket of my sweat jacket and went down to the basement.

      First, the laundry. I shoved in a load of whites, scooped out the detergent, then tipped in the perfect amount of bleach, watching as the agitator sucked the socks, underwear, and T-shirts into its spiral abyss. But I was smiling when I finally walked into the storage room. I had seen the large Art Department shopping bag when I’d put away the Christmas things last week. I started moving the precisely labeled boxes. Glass Ornaments & Lainey’s Ornaments I gently set on the floor. Garland for Bannister I set atop another stack. We hadn’t opened some of these boxes in a couple of years. Teenagers neither require nor admire festive stairways.

      It was behind Fireplace Wreath and Red Candles that I found the bag, stuffed into a crevasse between the Christmas boxes and the spring holiday boxes (Valentine’s through Easter). I gathered the paper hoop handles and lifted. The handles broke free of the paper, no doubt rotted over the years. I was holding the two loops when Lainey’s cannonball bellow shot through the house.

      ‘Maa-ahhh-ammm! Where are you?!’

      Loops still in hand, I climbed the stairs. The paints were almost certainly dried out anyway.

      Lainey was just coming around the corner into the kitchen, yelling again when she ran into me.

      ‘MA— oof! There you are. Where were you?’ She said it as though I’d been deliberately hiding from her. Hairy was yowling on the desk chair, wanting some canned food in addition to his overflowing bowl of dry kibble.

      ‘Lainey, it’s Saturday. What do I always do on Saturday? And on Wednesday?’ Her puzzled face stared back at me. ‘Here’s a hint: We all magically have clean clothes every Sunday and Thursday.’

      She rolled her eyes. ‘Fine. Whatever. You need to drive us to the mall at eleven. Sara can’t now.’

      Lainey and the neighbor girls, Nan and Sara Kellerman, had planned to spend the day at the mall, shopping and ogling boys. Matt was going to hitch a ride with them, to meet his friends, maybe catch a movie. I was going to have the house to myself on a Saturday. But apparently not.

      ‘What happened?’ I asked, walking past her to the kitchen table. I began gathering up her breakfast dishes.

      She leaned dejectedly against the doorframe, arms folded over her ever-growing chest. ‘Kurt,’ she said rather dreamily, seeming to think this would explain everything.

      I stared at her while still holding her cereal bowl, juice glass, and toast plate in a stack in my arms. I shrugged and began loading the dishes into the dishwasher. ‘Am I supposed to know who Kurt is?’ My slipper stuck to a tacky spot on the floor. What was that? I’d just mopped yesterday afternoon.

      ‘Oh, Mom! Kurt!’ The juice glass still in my hand, I looked at my daughter. I felt my own mother’s clueless expression on my face, and hated it. Lainey drummed her fingers on her arms, giving me that fifteen-year-old’s look of, ‘Are you naturally this stupid or does it take effort?’ I remembered that, too. I mentally apologized to my mother. Lainey pushed off the door-frame with her shoulder, flipped her long brown hair over her other shoulder, and took a step toward me, her hands now on her hips. ‘Sara’s boyfriend?!’

      ‘Oh,’ I said. I put СКАЧАТЬ