who weren’t bad looking were just okay. So I stopped avoiding looking at them. At least that’s how I think it happened. Anyway, I don’t try not to see nice-looking women anymore, and I used to.
“There’re other little things. When we used to watch a movie and an actress was really good looking, I wouldn’t say anything. Now I usually say something. Like, we have to acknowledge this, that’s how it kind of seems at the time.
“Last week, I was eating lunch and I heard two girls walking up behind me. I didn’t look at them. They were behind me. But I could hear them talking about where to sit, and they sounded like they were good looking. It used to be with something like that, I’d want them to sit far away, out of mind, out of sight. But I didn’t want that. I didn’t want them to come up next to me and say, ‘hey hot stuff is this seat taken,’ but I wanted them to sit in my general area. Well, they didn’t sit anywhere near me and I thought, do I look bad? I wanted them to think I was attractive.
“So this weird game, this thing that happens. It doesn’t happen too much, but it happens. It’s like one of those things you do when you’re a kid. I’m sitting or driving somewhere and I see a girl. I can tell she’s at least thin-ish. Just idly, I start thinking, it just pops into my mind - the girl isn’t close enough for me to see her face I can just tell what she’s got on, but I start thinking what if I were married to her? What would that be like? It’s not about sex. I don’t think about that. What happens is I just start thinking about some girl, I don’t see her face or I don’t ever remember, and she’s wearing the same clothes as the girl I see far off, and she and I are just walking somewhere, or sitting. I’m laughing and smiling. And then it’s over, like that, just a flash. But I can tell I was really happy.
“Christy, you make me happy. I feel, it feels like I’m not as happy as I used to be. But it isn’t you. You’re the thing that’s going right. Everything else is wrong. It’s work, it’s our apartment, it’s, you know, life. So I don’t know why I keep thinking these things. It doesn’t make sense.”
“I don’t,” said Christy, “I don’t think this is any big thing. It doesn’t happen very often. It’s just, something. I think the worst thing we could do is dwell on this and draw grand conclusions about our marriage from it. I make you happy. You make me happy.
“I know that sometimes now, you don’t feel as good as you used to feel. You don’t like your job. We thought we’d have the debt paid off by now. It isn’t strange to be unhappy. We’ll just concentrate on the good stuff, okay? It’ll get better. We’re going to the drive-in. Popcorn. Explosions. Okay?”
Mark looked over at Christy. He turned the ring on his finger.
“Thanks,” he said.
“It doesn’t make sense to me either,” said Christy, “but it isn’t – wait. How about this? What are the biggest things in your life?”
Um,” said Mark. “You, my job, credit card debt, stuff like that.”
“Has a job opening ever rolled up beside you in a drop-top Porsche and winked? Have you seen debt forgiveness roller-skating the beachfront in an American Flag bikini?
“You aren’t happy with your life and you want change. Of the big things you can change, only one, me, woman, walks around in plain view. Occasionally, or so I’ve been told, we actually show off the goods on purpose.”
“I’ve done it,” said Mark.
“You probably think about having a different job all the time,” said Christy, “and you leer at strange houses.”
“I have no shame,” said Mark.
“But you don’t think about it,” said Christie, “because nobody thinks it’s wrong cheating on houses or jobs.”
A lady jogger caught in the corner of Mark’s eye and he looked. Mark turned the ring on his finger a second time.
“Panic,” he said, “I’m looking at a jogger. What do I do? What’s the opposite of marrying someone?”
“Divorcing?” said Christy. “Killing? Signing a contract with her saying your finances are separate?”
“I guarantee she’s worse looking than you,” said Mark.
The jogger came down the sidewalk. Mark and Christy drove closer to the jogger. Mark hoped his wife wouldn’t look.
“Ooh,” he said, “I don’t know. She has a pretty sweet spray-on tan. Her hair is dyed much bleach-blonder than yours. Are permanents permanent?”
Mark felt a weight growing on his leg and this time he knew there wasn’t anything there. He didn’t have to look. The weight pressed heavily down. Mark decided to ignore it. The cramp would go away by itself. Mark’s ring finger itched. He reached down with his right hand to scratch it. His fingers found a lump; there was hair on the lump. Mark heard the tires skid. He looked up.
Christie wasn’t watching the road. She was looking down at something in her lap. What was that? It looked kind of like a little plant somebody had pulled up from the soil. It was brown and dead. There were the branches, not much of a trunk, and there were the roots. The roots were caked in a big clump of brown dirt. The plant was sliding around on Christy’s lap. It wasn’t a little plant, it was just a plant. The clump of brown dirt opened its eyes.
The plant wasn’t a plant and it wasn’t small and it wasn’t normal size. It was big and it was getting bigger. It had been growing the whole time. The thing was bulging and contracting and blowing itself up. Its mouth opened and closed and opened and closed. Mark saw that the thing was a head. There was a head in Christy’s lap. It was bigger all the time and now it didn’t roll around because it was wedged between Christy and the steering wheel. The breathing brown lump rolled its eyes up into its head. The head was like a deer’s head. The thing wedged against the steering wheel pinning Christy back into her seat was the poorly drawn animal from the family crest. The head was as big as a horse’s head now and Christy could feel spit from the mouth soaking through her shirt and the mouth champing randomly. Mark jerked his body against the weight holding him to his seat. He could not move to help Christy. Christy pushed down at the head. She grabbed hold of the thing’s antlers and tried to wrench it loose. The head became even more excited. It wriggled up against Christy. The car thudded over a curb and crashed to a stop in a ditch. The impact threw Christy even tighter against the smiling head. Mark’s momentum pushed him into the weight holding him down but it did not move. Mark felt a tug on his finger. Christy’s face was even with one of the head’s enormous eyes. It looked at her. Mark looked down and saw his left hand. The ring was shoving itself up past his knuckle and into the middle of his hand. The giant antlers popped through the top of the car’s metal roof. The sweating fur of the huge shaking face pressed Christy down into the driver’s seat. Mark couldn’t move. He saw it now. The weight holding him down was the bulgy, snake-like neck of the head-thing. Mark saw his left ring-finger. There was a hairy, shuddering bag growing out of the finger at the knuckle. The bag shook as it sat on top of the thing’s heavy neck, which still pinned Mark to his seat. Mark saw that the hairy, blown-up umbilical bag was part of the neck and part of the huge, quivering face that wheezed so hot and loud as it smothered Christy and bowed out the metal frame of the car. That thing had come out of him.
~ ~ ~ ~
Mark woke up and he didn’t know where he was. He looked around the room and saw the cracked paint on the walls and the green curtains. He was in his own bedroom, in his own apartment. Why was he awake? Lying there on the bed next to him was his wife. Every part of her was covered by the twisted white bed sheet, except for a single, tanned hand and the top of her permed, bleach blonde head. Oh yeah, Mark had to go to the bathroom. He rolled out of bed. His wife Maggie half woke up.
“Mark?” she said.
Mark didn’t answer.
###
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Two Good Turns Page 3
