by Paula Bomer
I don’t know.
You could never bore me. I just swore my life to you. I fucking worship you.
The next morning they took a long bath together and ordered breakfast delivered to the room. They watched a movie, hungover and tired, and checked out of the hotel an hour late. Maddy had found an apartment and Mark said okay and they were planning on moving in that day.
10
Their apartment was perfectly fine and in a decent neighborhood. It was the top floor of an old house. They had a separate entrance and could park the car in the driveway. There was a tree in the front yard and some grass. Maddy hadn’t looked for long—maybe she could have found something a little bigger further away from the central part of the town. But they couldn’t wait. They were eighteen and impatient. Maddy got really excited about it, cooking and cleaning and buying lace curtains for the bedroom. They smoked pot in the living room, had sex in the kitchen.
The air didn’t move around well in the apartment. This bothered Mark. He took it as a bad omen, but he didn’t say anything to her. There was no cross circulation.
He had never spent so much time with someone in such a small place. He had had his own room at home. Every night she lay next to him. Every morning he woke up next to her.
The place didn’t contain Maddy that well. Before, Maddy and Mark spent a lot of time in his car, or at his parents’ house if no one was home. Or they went out to eat, sitting in some booth. Everything and every place had been momentary, transitory. But once they had their own place, time stopped and he learned new things about her.
She walked around in the apartment, back and forth, back and forth. Into the kitchen, out to the living room, into the bedroom back to the kitchen picking up this, putting away that and always cooking. Her face was in the fridge or in a drawer or in a cabinet. Her hands wrapped around a bowl of cookie dough or a vacuum cleaner or a basket of laundry.
When they sat around together, smoking and drinking on the dark green couch (a gift from her parents), watching a movie, he could feel her next to him. She’d get up during commercials and go into the kitchen—do whatever—go into the bedroom, fluff a pillow. If they were watching a video and there were no commercials—she’d get up anyway. He’d say, Maddy, you want me to press pause? She didn’t give a shit. She’d say, no that’s alright, and go into the bathroom and put green stuff on her face. I’m just putting on a facial, she’d say. I’ll be right out. And he’d hear her tinkering around in there. He’d hear the cabinet shut and open and shut and open and the water run. He wouldn’t be able to pay attention to the movie. He’d miss what happened.
Then she got pregnant. She went off the pill without telling him.
When she told him, she was excited and red in the face and ashamed. Sweetie, she said, I’m pregnant. No way. Not until we have money. I’m nineteen, he said. We’re too young. He took a day off of work to drive her to the clinic. She sat silently next to him. Her face was puffy from crying.
I don’t want to get an abortion.
I know, honey.
I’m scared.
Maddy bit the palm of her hand and looked at Mark hunched over the wheel.
I’ll be with you, he said.
They won’t let you past the waiting room.
I’ll be there when you get out.
I know. But I’m still scared, she said, the pitch of her voice altered. Her palms were salty and slick And she sucked on one of them.
Don’t be scared, Maddy. It’s a quick operation. It’s much less dangerous than childbirth. You don’t even have to go under.
I know. It’s not that shit that bothers me.
Mark shifted in aggitation, saying, well, what’s bothering you?
I’m just not excited about this okay.
We can’t have a baby.
I know. You’re right. I was wrong. I don’t want to have a baby. I just don’t want to have an abortion, she said and she started to cry. Mark pulled over.
Oh, honey don’t cry. In a few hours this will all be over, he said. He tried to lean toward her—to kiss her.
Get away from me.
Don’t be mad at me, Maddy.
I am.
This is not my fault.
So it’s mine?
Go back on the pill.
I’m going to, she said. Mark started driving again. They pulled into a parking lot.
We’re here.
Oh shit. Oh shit. I’m scared.
It’s okay. Come on. Let’s go.
Maddy sat in the interior waiting room, separated from her husband who had to wait in the outside waiting room. She bounced her leg around nervously. Her stomach felt sour. She looked at a magazine. A thick, cruel looking girl sat across from her.
Is this your first one? the girl asked, cracking her gum loudly.
Excuse me?
You can always tell the ones that haven’t had one. You look scared. Don’t worry. It ain’t nothing. I’ve had eight.
Nurse. Nurse, excuse me? Can I move back to the outside waiting room, Maddy said, standing up, chasing down a nurse coming toward her. The nurse was not much older than Maddy, wore no make-up and had dark hair pulled back tightly in a ponytail. She looked at Maddy with a professionally toned friendliness and pity.
No, I’m sorry. You’re next.
I need to talk to my husband.
You can go into room five now. The doctor will be right with you.
I’m scared, Maddy said and started to cry.
It’s okay. It will be over before you know it, the doctor replied. Maddy had requested a female doctor. The woman was from Eastern Europe and spoke with a harsh accent and had a perpetual scowl across her lined face.
Oh shit.
Don’t cry, the doctor ordered.
It hurts.
It’s almost over.
Oh, it hurts. Oh jesus!
Sshh. Quiet! Tell her to be quiet, the doctor said, glaring at the nurse.
You heard the doctor. Quiet down. Sshhh. That’s it. Ssshh. There you go. You’re all done.
I want to see it.
Stop that. Don’t move. Stay still.
How big is it?
Sit back. Sshhh. Come on.
Stop her crying.
I want to see it.
Sssshhhh.
Maddy was stoned on pain relievers and asked for more juice in the post-op waiting room. The same dark-haired nurse brought her a tiny paper cup filled with cranberry juice.
Here you go.
Thanks.
The nurse smoothed her ponytail and asked, do you still want to know how big it was?
Yeah.
It was this big, she said, holding her thumb and forefinger apart in front of Maddy’s face, about an inch and a half. You were seven weeks pregnant.
Okay. Thanks.
Mark drove her home and she kept her head in his lap the whole way.
What movie did you rent?
The Getaway. How’re you feeling?
Okay.
Do you want me to order a pizza?
Okay.
Are you cold?
No. Hey Mark?
What sweetie?
It was this big.
What?
It was this big. One and a half inches.
Don’t think about it.
The day after the abortion she broke all the plates in the kitchen and emptied the food in the fridge on the floor. Then she took three Codeine pills and went to bed. He heard her wake in the night and vomit.
Mark decided to keep her birth control pills after in a drawer in her desk. He was the one to go to the drug store and buy them. Every morning he made her take one. He woke her and watched her swallow it. He made her stick her tongue out at him, he’d look down the back of her throat. Sometimes he ran his finger around the inside of her mouth. We’re not going through that again, ever, he’d say. She didn’t protest.
After a month of that, she said, stop checking on me, Mark. I don’t want to get pregnant. Really, d
on’t worry about me, she said. He told her when we’re older and more settled that they’d have a family. He’d say Maddy, if you had a kid you wouldn’t be able to party anymore. Your whole life would be taking care of the kid. You’re too young. And she’d cry and say I know Mark, I know, you’re right, it just breaks my heart.
11
At first, she thought their apartment was great. Sure, it wasn’t very big but it was theirs and they had a couch and a TV and their own bed and her mom bought them plates and flatware and glasses. She got a job waitressing and he worked in a computer store at the mall and had all his computers.
She bought The Joy of Cooking and Cooking for Two and Cooking on a Budget. She went grocery shopping at Krogers and filled her spice rack with cheerful bottles of dried herbs. Oregano, basil, thyme, sage, cinnamon, nutmeg. She bought breakfast cereals and English muffins and Oscar Meyer luncheon meats and packed his lunch in brown bags. At night, if she wasn’t working she made dinner and she ate with him. They had a VCR. She thought they had everything.
She painted the bedroom walls an apricot and the bathroom baby blue. The living room walls were white and the kitchen she wallpapered with a flowered print that reminded her of the kitchen at home. They had a La-Z-Boy chair that he sat in when he came home and put his feet up and smoked pot and watched TV. On Saturdays she vacuumed and Ajaxed the bathroom and did the laundry. She had a white plastic laundry basket and she’d fold everything up, even his underwear. Neat, little stacks, all lined up and clean. She washed the whites separate from the colors and used enough bleach to get it white white, but not too much so nothing ever yellowed and the material wouldn’t get stiff. She ironed. She did everything she could do.
He liked meatloaf and pork chops and mashed potatoes with nutmeg in them. He liked salted butter. He liked turkey sandwiches and roast beef on rye. She wiped the top of the fridge off so dust never collected there. She wiped the dust off the TV screen and his computer screens and keyboards.
He bought her presents at first. He bought her red roses and lingerie and high heeled shoes. He took her out to dinner and afterward he drove her to Howard Park and they made out in the car, like they did way back when.
She loved him. She loved everything about him. She loved his plain brown hair that hung straight and that he kept short even though she asked him to grow it long. She loved his pale face and thin mouth and his liquid, colorless eyes. She loved his thin arms that curved inward between his elbows and knobby shoulders. She loved the tan hairs that grew on his body and his brown, shapeless nipples and his dark, deep bellybutton. His almost wide hips and round ass. His armpits, barely hairy that smelled of him.
She loved his smell like it was the most important, safe thing that she ever smelled. Like the smell of him could keep her from what was bad in her and what was bad in the world. She smelled him next to her at night with her mouth open and she breathed him in through the skin on her body, through every pore in her face and she put her face against his back at night and listened to his lungs open and close.
She loved the way he put the key in the door when he came home. The way he put his bag down and kicked off his shoes right there in the kitchen. The way he moved his stuff around on the desk, all that stuff around his computer, all the things he kept so neat, how he seemed to need to touch it all, make sure it was all there. She loved the way he ate and the way he sat and the sound of his breath while he slept.
Her love for him grew each damn day. Her love for him grew so strong there wasn’t any room for anything else. Her love grew strong and she tired, tired of how it took everything from her—her soft hands, her clear brow, the curve of her hips, the smile on her face.
The more she thought of him the more it hurt her. The more she loved him the more she had to steal from him. Steal looks at him. Steal her hands over his back while he slept. Steal time away from him, steal time with him.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Out of sight out of mind. If he thought she didn’t need him then maybe he’d want to kiss her as badly as he wanted to kiss her that first time in the car. He was the only man she ever kissed. If he didn’t know how miserable she was without him maybe he’d think she was strong and sure like she once had been. If she acted tough there was a chance she was tough. If she didn’t show her pain then maybe it wasn’t there.
She acted like she didn’t love him anymore. It seemed like it was all gone. But it was there, she just tried to keep it contained, tried to show him she was still the same Maddy.
The air in the apartment became stiff, no matter how high the fan was on. No matter what she cooked the kitchen smelled stale. Dinner on the stove smelled like heaven while her face was in the pan, but once that was over, once she put the food down to eat in front of the TV, the stale smell took over again. She couldn’t eat, no matter what she cooked. Vegetables were like rubber in her mouth, bright and plastic. Chicken tasted like slime, no matter how she prepared it. She’d gag trying to force it down. Mark ate and ate. He gained weight. She lost weight. She began vacuuming every day, thinking maybe it was the carpet that smelled stale. She used carpet fresheners; floral scents, spring scents, pine scents. Sprinkling the sharp, scented white powder on the dreary wall to wall carpet, chasing it around with the vacuum cleaner. She dusted and put her nose to the furniture after wiping it down with lemon Pledge.
The longer she lived with him the less recognizable he became. His face, his body, what would come out of his mouth. What was going on in his head. The expressions on his face. He grew out of focus, strange and foreign.
Their apartment never had been cleaner. There wasn’t a speck of dust anywhere, a mislaid sock anywhere. The fridge smelled like a fresh box of baking soda and the chrome in the bathroom gleamed. She tried every recipe in every cookbook. Sometimes she went through them alphabetically. Pork Chops Almondine, Pork Chops Barbecue, Pork Chops Catherine. The freezer was full of homemade frozen dinners in Tupperware and various other food stuffs wrapped in aluminum foil. She cooked and cooked and cleaned and cleaned until her fingers were pink and raw from water and soap and rubbing up against things. But she stopped being hungry altogether.
It wasn’t like the time when she first started dieting when she was a kid and was forced to do it. Then it was hard and she missed eating so much. This time, it was just the opposite. Hunger left her first.
She didn’t want to eat and not eating gave her pleasure and made her feel stronger. The less she ate the less she wanted to eat. She felt blessed. She felt special.
Air tasted different and smells became stronger and everything became more textured. Sometimes the smell of a hamburger that she was cooking for Mark was so strong and sweet that she almost cried, so overcome by its power. A fresh washed blanket against her face felt like a cloud from heaven and smelled as sweet as talc. She felt thankful to be alive.
Her legs grew longer, or so it seemed. Her stomach became flat and the lines on her skin, the wrinkles she’d always had from losing weight when she was younger, became stronger and more defined. Dark, jagged lines running across her body, the flesh hanging loosely around them. She traced them over and over again. They comforted her.
For the most part she stopped sleeping more than a few hours a night. She’d lie next to him, like she always had, but now she tried to recognize him, tried to remember who he was to her.
And as she stared at his back in the dark, bent toward her in their bed, memories did come. But she didn’t trust them. The images were vague and as she tried to bring them into focus in her mind, she would get startled and think—is that his face I’m imagining leaning to kiss me and then she would wonder, but is that his nose? Are those his lips? And indeed they weren’t because she would slip around the bed and stare at his face, breathing deeply and no, his nose was different. His lips, stretched out in sleep, were rubbery and non-distinct. So she had imagined, remembered, the wrong nose and the wrong cheekbones. The face she crouched in front of in their bedroom was longer and thinner, the bon
es high and narrow. In her mind he had a rounder face, a pink hue, a broadness to his cheeks.
So she would press her face against him and smell him like she had, like she remembered doing and often what came back to her was too strong to bear and she would pull back, her nostrils burning.
Her memories lied to her. She became convinced she had conjured visions for her own needs of comfort. She didn’t know a bone in his body and her own were shifting slowly, steadily.
She stared at the sink and she stared at the dishtowels and she watched the television and occasionally they looked at each other and occasionally there would be a sign of comfort, a signal of recognition and caring, but more often they ignored each other.
And that smell. The staleness. It became so strong she could barely stay in the house. If she wasn’t busy cooking or cleaning she sat in front of an open window and stuck her face out to breathe the fresh air. She was terrified and the only thing that subdued her fear while she was in that apartment was her ability to not eat.
She began working extra waitressing shifts to get out of the house. She worked brunches and doubles during the week when she could. Adding checks and taking orders and filling ketchups with a newfound organization and efficiency. Her boss loved her. She always filled all the salt and pepper shakers and wiped down all the menus. The other waitresses loved her. They could always count on her to cover a shift, even if they called at the last minute because they were hungover and didn’t want to work. She’d rush off to work, her uniform spotless and ironed. She washed it lovingly in the sink every night, carefully rubbing out stains and hung it on her bedroom door, ready to be pressed and worn first thing in the morning.
She accumulated tons of cash. She wrapped a rubber band around each stack of five hundred dollars and put them in long, white envelopes that she sealed and hid in her underwear drawer—which she then locked. She saved thousands of dollars in a matter of months.
