The View from the Top by Hillary Frank Page A

leaned her head on his shoulder, her hair brushing the underside of his chin.
    He was already imagining the poetry he could write about this moment, the paintings he could make. The sculptures. It was going to be a busy year.

{ CHIN Deep }
    mary-tyler singletary

    F or the twenty-fifth day in a row, Mary-Tyler woke up imagining she was in a coffin.
    Tucked tightly in her sheets, she lay on her back, listening—and heard absolutely nothing. Her eyes fluttered open and she saw the same pitch black as when they’d been shut. It could’ve been five A.M. or two in the afternoon; she didn’t know and she didn’t care. That was the freedom of being in a lightless room.
    She could never keep it up for too long, though, because eventually she’d convince herself that she really was trapped in a box deep in the earth and there were all sorts of things up there in the living world that she’d miss: swinging on a rope over a stream; flipping on a trampoline; going on that salt ‘n’ pepper shaker ride at the little amusement park with the funny name. She had to get on that thing before her life was over.
    Mary-Tyler took out her earplugs. And there was her dad’s voice, somewhere outside the blackness: Get a whiff of that honeysuckle! Is that to die for or what? Then, the crisp snipping sounds of garden shears. She stood up and felt her way along her bed, and then the wall, until she reached her closet. She opened the closet door and groped around the inside, running her fingertips over a panel of buttons, and pushed the top one. The automated blinds whirred, first letting in pinpricks of light, then long stripes. Mary-Tyler squinted as the sun flooded her room and watched the blinds rise to the top of her two expansive windows—one on either side of the corner.
    Down by the path to the beach was her father, all pudgy and balding and sucking on his water bottle with the little nipply top. As usual, he was standing beneath the gardeners’ ladders, pretending he wanted to make small talk but really making sure they didn’t miss any spots—that they got the giraffes’ necks just right.
    Mary-Tyler groaned. She’d asked her father several times to let the gardeners do their work in peace. Last week she’d even made him a Bloody Mary—his favorite drink—and set it on a table by the pool, along with the Wall Street Journal, which she’d opened to the stock pages. But he’d just picked up the drink and the paper and carried them with him as he trailed the gardeners, eyeing their work while they shaped the elephants’ tusks and the monkeys’ tails; it was the thin, delicate parts he worried about most.
    Once her eyes had adjusted to the light, Mary-Tyler threw on her fluffy white bathrobe to protect her legs from the arctic-cold air-conditioning and walked down to the second-floor bathroom, her flip-flops clapping against her soles. She undressed, trying not to catch a glimpse of herself in the mirror-lined walls and ceiling. It was impossible, though, to avoid seeing her body in reflection upon reflection upon reflection. She grabbed a handful of her stomach, wishing she could squeeze the blubber right out of it and— prestos! —she’d be thin. Standing in the whirlpool tub, she turned the showerhead to its highest pressure setting and let it pelt water at her scalp like a barrage of BBs.
    As she lathered up, she eyed her razor. She hadn’t shaved her entire time here. It’s not like there was a point; she didn’t see anyone besides her parents. But maybe, she thought, just maybe if she did it today, it would give her motivation to venture away from this place, to be seen in public. She squirted a glob of pink shaving gel in her palm, then rubbed it into a foam over her armpits and legs and slowly scraped it off. After she’d rinsed and shut off the water, she felt a sharp stinging in both of her Achilles tendons. She knelt