filling and surrounding her. She didn’t black out this time, but everything slowed and went slightly out of focus. Neither of them moved and yet Kendall could feel the distance between them widen.
One singular thought swam through the undercurrents of her brain and broke through to the surface: She didn’t have to do anything about this right now. Not one thing.
She looked into Calvin’s eyes and read the urgency there, his burning desire to be done with her so that he could continue to do as he liked.
But Calvin Aims’s wants and needs no longer had anything to do with her. For the first time since she’d met him twenty-five years ago, she didn’t owe him any special consideration. She didn’t owe him anything.
She felt his growing impatience, but it no longer carried any weight. If she wanted to, she could simply go back and lie down on the couch in the family room and watch Oprah and eat her way through the pantry. Just because Cal wanted an answer didn’t mean she had to give him one. In fact, the very fact that he wanted one was all the more reason not to give it.
“I’ll think about it,” she finally said quietly, grateful for the merciful numbness. “Maybe you should take some things with you when you go.”
Cal’s face telegraphed his surprise. Clearly during his rehearsals he hadn’t wasted any time imagining how she might react. But then imagination had never been her husband’s strong suit.
Slowly she got up from her chair then turned and walked away from him. In the family room, she fit her body into its groove in the couch and pulled the old afghan around her then aimed the remote at the television. Oprah’s theme song came on, drowning out the sounds of Calvin going through dresser drawers up in the master closet as well as his clomping down the stairs and the slam of the garage door as he left.
Then she flicked to The Kristen Calder Show , which was also broadcast from Chicago and whose host had been hailed as the next Oprah. Her guests were a woman who’d gone to jail for maiming her abusive husband and another who’d driven the sports car her husband had given to his girlfriend into the deep end of their swimming pool—a crime for which a jury of her peers had refused to convict her.
“Right on, sisters,” Kendall thought, as she lay wrapped in her cocoon on the couch. But in her current numbness she couldn’t imagine ever marshalling the energy to punish Calvin for his crimes. She wasn’t even sure she could make it to the pantry.
At the moment, as far as Kendall could see, she had absolutely no reason to move at all.
6
If my doctor told me I had six minutes to live,
I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.
—ISAAC ASIMOV
Tanya Mason sat at the flaked Formica dinette in the mostly silent trailer. From the back bedroom her mother’s snores sounded in a dead-to-the-world rhythm that originated in a liquor bottle.
From the second bedroom came the occasional snuffle or sigh from her daughters accompanied by the squeak of the metal springs on the old iron bed that took up most of the room. Later, when she finished this chapter, Tanya would squeeze in between them to grab the three to four hours of sleep that would see her through her breakfast shift at the Downhome Diner on Thirty-fourth Street South and the afternoon at the Liberty Laundromat, just around the corner.
Her only light came from the beam of the desk lamp she’d placed on the dinette and a small slice of moonlight that poked between the panels of the once beige curtains, now dingy from years of her mother’s cigarette smoke, that hung at what her mother called the “picture window.” Even though the only picture provided was of the septic tank that served the 1960s-era mobile home park.
Normally, no matter how tired she was after working two jobs, feeding the kids, and helping them with their home-work and then getting them to bed, Tanya was eager to get to her writing, which she saw
One singular thought swam through the undercurrents of her brain and broke through to the surface: She didn’t have to do anything about this right now. Not one thing.
She looked into Calvin’s eyes and read the urgency there, his burning desire to be done with her so that he could continue to do as he liked.
But Calvin Aims’s wants and needs no longer had anything to do with her. For the first time since she’d met him twenty-five years ago, she didn’t owe him any special consideration. She didn’t owe him anything.
She felt his growing impatience, but it no longer carried any weight. If she wanted to, she could simply go back and lie down on the couch in the family room and watch Oprah and eat her way through the pantry. Just because Cal wanted an answer didn’t mean she had to give him one. In fact, the very fact that he wanted one was all the more reason not to give it.
“I’ll think about it,” she finally said quietly, grateful for the merciful numbness. “Maybe you should take some things with you when you go.”
Cal’s face telegraphed his surprise. Clearly during his rehearsals he hadn’t wasted any time imagining how she might react. But then imagination had never been her husband’s strong suit.
Slowly she got up from her chair then turned and walked away from him. In the family room, she fit her body into its groove in the couch and pulled the old afghan around her then aimed the remote at the television. Oprah’s theme song came on, drowning out the sounds of Calvin going through dresser drawers up in the master closet as well as his clomping down the stairs and the slam of the garage door as he left.
Then she flicked to The Kristen Calder Show , which was also broadcast from Chicago and whose host had been hailed as the next Oprah. Her guests were a woman who’d gone to jail for maiming her abusive husband and another who’d driven the sports car her husband had given to his girlfriend into the deep end of their swimming pool—a crime for which a jury of her peers had refused to convict her.
“Right on, sisters,” Kendall thought, as she lay wrapped in her cocoon on the couch. But in her current numbness she couldn’t imagine ever marshalling the energy to punish Calvin for his crimes. She wasn’t even sure she could make it to the pantry.
At the moment, as far as Kendall could see, she had absolutely no reason to move at all.
6
If my doctor told me I had six minutes to live,
I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.
—ISAAC ASIMOV
Tanya Mason sat at the flaked Formica dinette in the mostly silent trailer. From the back bedroom her mother’s snores sounded in a dead-to-the-world rhythm that originated in a liquor bottle.
From the second bedroom came the occasional snuffle or sigh from her daughters accompanied by the squeak of the metal springs on the old iron bed that took up most of the room. Later, when she finished this chapter, Tanya would squeeze in between them to grab the three to four hours of sleep that would see her through her breakfast shift at the Downhome Diner on Thirty-fourth Street South and the afternoon at the Liberty Laundromat, just around the corner.
Her only light came from the beam of the desk lamp she’d placed on the dinette and a small slice of moonlight that poked between the panels of the once beige curtains, now dingy from years of her mother’s cigarette smoke, that hung at what her mother called the “picture window.” Even though the only picture provided was of the septic tank that served the 1960s-era mobile home park.
Normally, no matter how tired she was after working two jobs, feeding the kids, and helping them with their home-work and then getting them to bed, Tanya was eager to get to her writing, which she saw
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