These stories are beautiful. They are from everyday life, and confusing and wonderful. They make you wonder.
"A Love Story" is amazing, in its verocity and confusion.
Norma eats lunch here every day since she lost her job. She and the waitress often talk. Theya re used to each other the way people are used to their TV sets, a hum that keeps them warm even if they aren't listening to the broadcast.
Ada hadn't even known Henry was married until they'd been together for months, and then it was too late because up north falling in love is like animal husbandry. It's necessary. It's so cold in the winter.
I had great hopes the threat of Lyme disease would revitalize our sex life. "Will you check me for ticks?" You know, and things would go from there. Grooming each other as monkeys do. In that way, at least for a while, I got him to touch me again and that felt good, but then Lyme disease never really took off in California like it did on the East Coast.
Who are you?
The answer is easy in daylight. But the night's untethering almost always turns me into someone I'm not. i sift through the different women I become in the dark, my own private Greek chorus whispers, shrieks. Where do I keep al these women when the sun is up? Where do they hide, the doman who have breached the sanctity of my home, who know things about me so secret even I don't know these things? Maybe they are in the closet. Maybe they are hiding inside me. Maybe they are me trapped somewhere I can't get to, like in the DNA markers of my hormones, those mysterious proteins that make me a woman instead of of something else, those mysterious proteins no one seems to understand.
You may ask, Are these women who bombard me at night real or do I imagine them? You may eventually realize that is a stupid question.
I think about fidelity. To Sam, to myself. The light is still gray. The night is still so quiet. I let the women in, an entire parade of them, the whole catalog, spread out on the bed before me. Sam is gone and these women keep me company. These women are women I need to reckon with, even if some of them terrify me. The light is gray and the night is quiet.
I let the other women in.
