Read Online The Instant When Everything is Perfect by Jessica Barksdale Inclan - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jessica Barksdale Inclan
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“You’re late,” Leslie said, her hands on the keyboard, eyes on the screen. “Where were you?”
“I . . . .” he began, but then he didn’t want to explain anything to her, not any more. And really, now he’s not sure she really wanted him to.
Robert sees that he was no more than a means to comfort and stability, an okay man with a great place to hang out. All of them, even Leslie, might not have noticed if he disappeared.
And it was possible Robert didn’t take other jobs because of the house. Despite tantalizing calls from heads of departments from (Boston, Macon, Phoenix, Chicago) other hospitals, he said no. But he said no to Jack’s practice, too. He said no to just about everything.
Now, he sits up in bed, Sacramento by Train open, his cat Phyllis curled at his feet. Every page or two, he flips the book in his hands to look at Mia’s photo and read her bio, as if either might have changed since the time before. Then he goes back to the first chapter, which turns into the second, and then third. Phyllis uncurls, stands, stretches, and jumps off the bed. The night slides on. Robert keeps reading.
In the morning as Robert stands over Dee Swayze inserting the breast extender under her skin (amply saved by Cindy Jacobs), he thinks about what you can find out about someone from reading what the person wrote. Oh, he knows about literary criticism, and how you can’t assume the writer and the narrator are the same. But a writer leaves clues.
“Done here,” he says, handing the nurse the scalpel.
The nurse, Rachel, rolls her eyes and puts the scalpel down. “I can see.” But then she hands him the suture line, and Robert begins to close the incision.
Here’s what he knows. Because Marla, one of the main characters in Sacramento by Train, is a lesbian and a good person and almost a hero, Robert knows that Mia is liberal. Open. Most likely she votes Democrat or Independent or Green Party.
Mia also approves of public transportation. Marla meets the other main characters, Rafael and Susan, on a commuter train to Sacramento, the three of their lives twisting together after they share a table and a cup of coffee. There are paragraphs about the freeway, the clog of carbon in the air, the sadness of our isolated lives behind the wheel.
He was sure that he caught of whiff of mother-anger, the pain of not being approved of. Susan isn’t beautiful enough for her mother’s taste, often being told to cut, tint, streak, dye her hair or pluck her eyebrows or lose fifteen pounds. Robert can envision Sally Tillier saying all those things, though for a novel, he assumes that a lifetime of criticism has been condensed for the story’s sake. But he’s not sure what will happen next with Susan and her mother—on the last pages he read, Susan finally gets mad, says what she’s been trying to say for years, the mother weeping in her bedroom. He doesn’t know how Mia will tie up these loose ends before the novel ends.
The next is sex. Marla and Rafael and Susan have a lot of it. Susan even has sex with Marla once, sort of by accident, during a drunken, snowy night in a ski lodge. But Susan isn’t upset or concerned about it. When she goes home, she makes love with Rafael, and considers the differences of the two bodies she’d just licked and kissed and slid next to, the way both are equally interesting, the parts that rise and fall, the tastes, the textures. Rafael and Susan love each other, but it’s a kind of love based on friendship and the past. And their sex is married sex, the kind that has not been tended to. Susan, as far as he can tell, wants to leave her husband not because he can’t bring her to orgasm, but because she can’t explain to him how big the world feels, how she wants to touch everyone, everything. How she can almost imagine her life arcing wide and out, away from everything she has known before. Rafael is
“You’re late,” Leslie said, her hands on the keyboard, eyes on the screen. “Where were you?”
“I . . . .” he began, but then he didn’t want to explain anything to her, not any more. And really, now he’s not sure she really wanted him to.
Robert sees that he was no more than a means to comfort and stability, an okay man with a great place to hang out. All of them, even Leslie, might not have noticed if he disappeared.
And it was possible Robert didn’t take other jobs because of the house. Despite tantalizing calls from heads of departments from (Boston, Macon, Phoenix, Chicago) other hospitals, he said no. But he said no to Jack’s practice, too. He said no to just about everything.
Now, he sits up in bed, Sacramento by Train open, his cat Phyllis curled at his feet. Every page or two, he flips the book in his hands to look at Mia’s photo and read her bio, as if either might have changed since the time before. Then he goes back to the first chapter, which turns into the second, and then third. Phyllis uncurls, stands, stretches, and jumps off the bed. The night slides on. Robert keeps reading.
In the morning as Robert stands over Dee Swayze inserting the breast extender under her skin (amply saved by Cindy Jacobs), he thinks about what you can find out about someone from reading what the person wrote. Oh, he knows about literary criticism, and how you can’t assume the writer and the narrator are the same. But a writer leaves clues.
“Done here,” he says, handing the nurse the scalpel.
The nurse, Rachel, rolls her eyes and puts the scalpel down. “I can see.” But then she hands him the suture line, and Robert begins to close the incision.
Here’s what he knows. Because Marla, one of the main characters in Sacramento by Train, is a lesbian and a good person and almost a hero, Robert knows that Mia is liberal. Open. Most likely she votes Democrat or Independent or Green Party.
Mia also approves of public transportation. Marla meets the other main characters, Rafael and Susan, on a commuter train to Sacramento, the three of their lives twisting together after they share a table and a cup of coffee. There are paragraphs about the freeway, the clog of carbon in the air, the sadness of our isolated lives behind the wheel.
He was sure that he caught of whiff of mother-anger, the pain of not being approved of. Susan isn’t beautiful enough for her mother’s taste, often being told to cut, tint, streak, dye her hair or pluck her eyebrows or lose fifteen pounds. Robert can envision Sally Tillier saying all those things, though for a novel, he assumes that a lifetime of criticism has been condensed for the story’s sake. But he’s not sure what will happen next with Susan and her mother—on the last pages he read, Susan finally gets mad, says what she’s been trying to say for years, the mother weeping in her bedroom. He doesn’t know how Mia will tie up these loose ends before the novel ends.
The next is sex. Marla and Rafael and Susan have a lot of it. Susan even has sex with Marla once, sort of by accident, during a drunken, snowy night in a ski lodge. But Susan isn’t upset or concerned about it. When she goes home, she makes love with Rafael, and considers the differences of the two bodies she’d just licked and kissed and slid next to, the way both are equally interesting, the parts that rise and fall, the tastes, the textures. Rafael and Susan love each other, but it’s a kind of love based on friendship and the past. And their sex is married sex, the kind that has not been tended to. Susan, as far as he can tell, wants to leave her husband not because he can’t bring her to orgasm, but because she can’t explain to him how big the world feels, how she wants to touch everyone, everything. How she can almost imagine her life arcing wide and out, away from everything she has known before. Rafael is
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