Love in Mid Air by Kim Wright Page A

room, so flushed,
     so beautiful, and so in despair, I wondered if I was really trying to protect her. Maybe I just knew that if Daniel returned
     and swept her away that I would be left, for the first time, utterly alone.
    This is not a happy story. Why am I remembering it now? I exhale sharply and pull a plum camisole over my head. It looks good
     against my skin. Tara pushes open the door. She has the black hose and an armful of bras as well. She wants me to try them.
     She says they’re the most comfortable bras on the market, and once women try them on they get one in every color. You know
     how it is. Ladies will do anything to find a really comfortable bra, and I realize this is how I look to her, like a woman
     who buys in bulk.
    “Bring me some of those black satin heels,” I say. “The ones in the window.” I sit down on the little chair and pull the stockings
     on carefully. I love the sound the nylon makes when one leg rubs against the other and I imagine the rough tug of Gerry’s
     hands pushing my knees apart, Gerry’s head sliding up between my thighs. Tara knocks at the door, hands the shoes in without
     a word. They’re too small but I jam my feet into them anyway and stand up in front of the mirror. This is all quite nasty
     and lovely, the way the shoes lift your legs up to the eye level of the consumer, and isn’t that what they do with candy at
     the checkout counter, after all? It’s the way of the world. What you see is what you want, and I would like to be candy at
     the checkout counter, at least once in a while. I would like to be the guilty pleasure, that thing you know isn’t good for
     you but you grab it anyway. You grab it hastily, guiltily, looking over your shoulder to make sure that your gluttony is unobserved.
     I stand shakily in the high-heeled shoes, turning my hips one way and then the other in front of the mirror and murmuring,
     “Would you like some of this, sir?”
    “You’re sure you don’t need the bras?” Tara asks, but within five minutes I am out and walking through the mall, with the
     shoes, the plum-colored silk slip, a silvery camisole, and the elastic hose nestled inside a swirl of hot pink tissue paper.
     I am humming as I swing the bag back and forth in my palm, headed toward the bistro where I will meet Nancy for lunch. Headed
     toward Gap Kids where I will buy a parka for Tory, toward Home + Garden where I will stir the tails of each wind chime hanging
     in a row, my eyes closed, swaying in a small and private dance. Headed toward Nordstrom where I will spray a different perfume
     on each wrist, headed toward Barnes & Noble where there are so many stories of so many people who have loved and lost in so
     many ways, headed past the courtyard fountains and through the puddles of light that spill across the pretty slate floor.
     Headed wherever it is that women like me go.

Chapter Nine

    W hat do you want?” Jeff asks me.
    “That’s just it, I’m not entirely sure. I know, I know, you’re thinking that it’s unfair to make Phil try to guess what I
     want when I don’t even know myself.”
    Jeff shakes his head. “You sound human. But you’ve gotta know something—Phil is very sure about what he wants. He wants to
     keep this family together at any cost.”
    “At any cost?”
    “Those were his exact words.”
    “I guess it’s easy to say ‘at any cost’ when you know the bill is going to be delivered to somebody else.”
    Jeff sits back in his chair and folds his hands very carefully in front of him.
    “Didn’t you think it was weird,” I ask him, “that Phil was the one who called to schedule our counseling?”
    It was damn weird and he knows it. “Couples have all sorts of arrangements,” he says. “I thought maybe at your house Phil
     was the one who scheduled the family appointments.”
    “Please. He wouldn’t know the name of Tory’s teacher or her pediatrician if you held a gun to his head. He just wanted to
     make sure we