raring to go.”
“I was too worried about my career. Joke’s on me. I didn’t get so far anyway.” She makes a bad laugh.
“Who knows? It might have helped.”
“Might have helped me anyway. With my life.”
They remember I am here and they forget. It is the way they would be in front of a pet. But her marriage, it is only average, for five years. Wood anniversary, in our country, that is practically newlywed. I am past silver. Almost pearl. You have a good life , I want to say. Do not complain. God will hear . If someone listened to our marriage, would it sound like this? Bong Bong still sends me a card every week.
“Paul’s cute enough,” Lil says.
“Oh, much better looking than I deserve. But I hug the pillow, and say Night.”
I empty the dustpan, seal the bag, and walk out to the alley. When I return, the house is dark. I will just check the stove and the locks. But Claire sits in the dark.
“You think your weekend employer is more in love?”
Why is she saying to me? Because I told her the new car? Claire, she is not one for romance. I never wanted to be a romantic heroine , she said once, ’cept for a few years in my twenties. Mistake. Silliness, waste .
“You are not so different,” I say. “They have a younger love.”
“A stronger love, maybe.”
“Younger loves are stronger. That is always the way.”
“I wish we were more in love.”
“For what?” I say. “You are fine.” I start the dishwasher.
“Paul deserves it.”
This I really do not know. “But he is not here. What good would it do?” His career really it should come to more, for all the time he works.
She holds a ripening tomato.
“Very few people get a big love. Maybe one in four hundred. Six hundred even. And even fewer than that like what they have to do every day.” I am giving her a gift she can recognize: what she already owns. I was lucky. Virgin when I married Bong Bong, maybe two in a thousand bodies fit. When they left the Garden of Eden , my grandmother said, God changed men and women, only a small bit . Because it is really that, a trickle of water making its way down dry soil, involuntary, a digging that is right. So many times I was in the kitchen, thinking, No I do not want tonight, I am so tired, and then when we are in our bed together a restlessness began. The sole of my foot moved on his leg.
Now when I think of my husband, I see him carrying boxes. So many times he has packed for our daughters, wrapping every treasure in newspaper, waiting in line to send. Unwinding what I ship from here. So much care for our cherishables. He understands the importance of the things you cannot take with you. What you keep—the smoke of love—that trades in mementos, the way value trades in coin.
I hear keys dropping. Paul. I put a dinner for him in the micro.
“So you will call the Hollywood agent?”
But my employers decided not to become rich. “You don’t drive freeways, Lole, it would take hours to get to Burbank on surface roads. I can’t drive him all over LA for auditions or shoots or whatever they do.”
“We have two careers,” Paul says.
That is true, but maybe the career of Williamo it would be higher.
I use the calculator to add up the money. If I stay until Williamo is eight, it will have cost more than seventy thousand. That is counting a five-dollar raise once a year.
So Lola is romantic after all. I am the one who gave up the big bucks for love. But not the American sex kind of love.
Claire
THESE ARE THE JOKES SO YOU BETTER START LAUGHING
I saw Paul one more weeknight that year.
A Thursday late in October he walked across our lawn while it was still light, Surprise! in his manner. I’d settled into my chair, reading, Gorecki’s sad chants on the boom box. Lola had taken Will and the house had finally fallen quiet. When the door slammed, my eyes raced through the paragraph before I tented the book down. Paul entered with an air of faint disappointment, looking around the
“I was too worried about my career. Joke’s on me. I didn’t get so far anyway.” She makes a bad laugh.
“Who knows? It might have helped.”
“Might have helped me anyway. With my life.”
They remember I am here and they forget. It is the way they would be in front of a pet. But her marriage, it is only average, for five years. Wood anniversary, in our country, that is practically newlywed. I am past silver. Almost pearl. You have a good life , I want to say. Do not complain. God will hear . If someone listened to our marriage, would it sound like this? Bong Bong still sends me a card every week.
“Paul’s cute enough,” Lil says.
“Oh, much better looking than I deserve. But I hug the pillow, and say Night.”
I empty the dustpan, seal the bag, and walk out to the alley. When I return, the house is dark. I will just check the stove and the locks. But Claire sits in the dark.
“You think your weekend employer is more in love?”
Why is she saying to me? Because I told her the new car? Claire, she is not one for romance. I never wanted to be a romantic heroine , she said once, ’cept for a few years in my twenties. Mistake. Silliness, waste .
“You are not so different,” I say. “They have a younger love.”
“A stronger love, maybe.”
“Younger loves are stronger. That is always the way.”
“I wish we were more in love.”
“For what?” I say. “You are fine.” I start the dishwasher.
“Paul deserves it.”
This I really do not know. “But he is not here. What good would it do?” His career really it should come to more, for all the time he works.
She holds a ripening tomato.
“Very few people get a big love. Maybe one in four hundred. Six hundred even. And even fewer than that like what they have to do every day.” I am giving her a gift she can recognize: what she already owns. I was lucky. Virgin when I married Bong Bong, maybe two in a thousand bodies fit. When they left the Garden of Eden , my grandmother said, God changed men and women, only a small bit . Because it is really that, a trickle of water making its way down dry soil, involuntary, a digging that is right. So many times I was in the kitchen, thinking, No I do not want tonight, I am so tired, and then when we are in our bed together a restlessness began. The sole of my foot moved on his leg.
Now when I think of my husband, I see him carrying boxes. So many times he has packed for our daughters, wrapping every treasure in newspaper, waiting in line to send. Unwinding what I ship from here. So much care for our cherishables. He understands the importance of the things you cannot take with you. What you keep—the smoke of love—that trades in mementos, the way value trades in coin.
I hear keys dropping. Paul. I put a dinner for him in the micro.
“So you will call the Hollywood agent?”
But my employers decided not to become rich. “You don’t drive freeways, Lole, it would take hours to get to Burbank on surface roads. I can’t drive him all over LA for auditions or shoots or whatever they do.”
“We have two careers,” Paul says.
That is true, but maybe the career of Williamo it would be higher.
I use the calculator to add up the money. If I stay until Williamo is eight, it will have cost more than seventy thousand. That is counting a five-dollar raise once a year.
So Lola is romantic after all. I am the one who gave up the big bucks for love. But not the American sex kind of love.
Claire
THESE ARE THE JOKES SO YOU BETTER START LAUGHING
I saw Paul one more weeknight that year.
A Thursday late in October he walked across our lawn while it was still light, Surprise! in his manner. I’d settled into my chair, reading, Gorecki’s sad chants on the boom box. Lola had taken Will and the house had finally fallen quiet. When the door slammed, my eyes raced through the paragraph before I tented the book down. Paul entered with an air of faint disappointment, looking around the
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