Problems by Jade Sharma Page B

to stuff yourself and then have an empty stomach. One time last week, I scarfed down five Hostess cupcakes before I came home but was caught when Peter asked innocently, “Is that chocolate on your teeth?” It was exactly like when he found a bag of dope in my pockets.
    The bathroom: keeping America’s secrets for decades. Snorting. Puking. Crying. Leaving weepy messages on Ogden’s voicemail.
    Whenever I talked to Ogden, it was anticlimactic. To have all these feelings of wanting and longing, a hole in my heart and none of it translating into the dull words passing through my lips, “I miss you,” or “I think about you,” or “I wish you were here.” They came out of my mouth and disappeared but the hole was still there.
    â€œHi, I’d like an egg sandwich with bacon, and hash browns and a dozen donuts,” I said. I turned just as Peter came in.
    â€œWhat is taking so long?” he asked, annoyed. I ignored him and told the woman what donuts I wanted. Eyeing the overly large bag and the box of donuts the woman handed to me, he said, “How many things did you order?”
    I looked behind me. The place was completely empty except for two people. “It was packed. It had nothing to do with how much stuff I ordered,” I huffed at him.
    â€œAre you getting a dozen donuts?”
    â€œYeah, for everyone.”
    â€œI’m sorry, honey.” He put his arm around me. “I just didn’t know what was taking so long.”
    â€œI’m sorry I’m fat,” I said.
    â€œStop it, you know how annoying that is. I like you just the way you are,” he said, patting my butt.
    We walked back to the bowling alley.
    I sucked at bowling. Sue beat me, Jake beat Peter, and Grace couldn’t play because of her burnt hand. I wondered if Jake fell asleep in front of the TV all the time like Peter. If he lay around in sweat shorts and old T -shirts on the couch, playing with his ballsand generally being a disgusting man. Sometimes Peter itched his balls and smelled his hand afterwards. Was this something he had always done, and just now something he felt comfortable doing around me? Did he think I didn’t notice, or did he not care? Why did balls itch so goddamn much?
    After bowling we found another thrift store. Sue and I looked through the women’s section together.
    Peter found a leather jacket, like MacGyver’s. It was terrible, the color of mud or diarrhea, with some rips, and the waist was too short and puffy. The type of thing someone’s dad would wear.
    â€œIsn’t it great?” Peter asked, smiling, so excited.
    â€œI hate it.”
    â€œWhat?” He looked like I had stabbed him. “What do you hate about it?”
    â€œI’m sure there’s one that’s better. Let me look.”
    â€œNo,” he said sternly, “I looked through them all, and this is the one I like the best.”
    â€œIt’s just so bad. The color, the fit.”
    â€œIt’s only twenty dollars.”
    â€œIt’s worth less.”
    â€œWhy are you being a bitch?” he said, walking away.
    Mallard ducks. Peter had a tapestry of mallard ducks on the wall of his room in Queens. The ducks weren’t cartoony. They weren’t whimsical ducks going in every direction. They were serious ducks in serious colors, blank-eyed in straight rows like little communists. His dead grandmother had made it. Before I said something like, “Can’t you love her without displaying this awful thing on my wall?” I realized it meant a lot to him. He was like someone on Hoarders who thought the thing had to do with the person. There was also a frightful portrait of Winston Churchill his grandmother painted. When we moved in together, I didn’tsay anything as Peter, without a second thought, put the mallard ducks up in the bedroom and the Winston Churchill in the center of the living room wall. I would forever be