LITMIR.BIZ

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is beautiful. Evelyn noted the waved silver hair, the small ears with their tiny pearl earrings, and felt the impropriety of her own red hair, and her ears, whose piercings were off-center because she had done them herself at sixteen using a sewing needle and a piece of potato.

      She tried to smile. “Would you like some salad?”

      “Thank you dear,” said Mrs. Dunlap, and put a very small amount of salad on her plate. And then, “Good heavens, you’ve cut yourself.”

      Evelyn glanced at the bandage around her thumb. “I was cutting a tomato,” she said.

      “Oh, dear,” said Mrs. Dunlap. “Hadn’t you better change the dressing?”

      Evelyn looked at the decanter of vinaigrette beside the salad bowl and back at Mrs. Dunlap’s concerned face.

      “Ray made the dressing,” she said. Thinking, I didn’t bleed in it, bitch.

      “Pardon?”

      Oh Jesus—Mrs. Dunlap meant the Band-Aid. Evelyn turned her hand and saw that blood had seeped through; a thin line of blood had collected on the edge of the bandage and was threatening to spill down her knuckle.

      Idiot, idiot, idiot. “Excuse me,” she managed, and grabbing her thumb in her other fist, she turned from the buffet table and made her way through the people who suddenly seemed intent on blocking her path to the bathroom.

      She re-bandaged her finger, then sat on the lid of the toilet and leaned against the wall. Ray made the dressing—Had she actually said that to Gillian Dunlap? She wanted to run out of the house in shame. There were, she knew, a dozen other fauxs pas she had already made that evening without even knowing it. Faux pas, she had learned, meant false step. In the family she had grown up in, a false step could kill you: the high wire was set thirty feet in the air, the act performed without nets.

      If only she could just stay here in the bathroom until the party was over. During the last awful year of living with her first husband, Evelyn had spent quite a bit of time in bathrooms, in the tiny bathroom of their Airstream trailer, to be exact, while Joe raged on the other side of the door. This bathroom, with its huge old bathtub and pedestal sink, was a thousand times nicer. It wouldn’t be bad to pass a couple of hours in here. She could even take a bath.

      There was a knock on the door, a polite tap-tapping, and then a woman’s voice like one of the announcers on Public Radio: “Is anybody in there?”

      It was Marseille Yeager, a psychiatrist married to Alex, the aging Ken doll.

      “Evelyn, is that you?”

      “Just a minute,” Evelyn called in what she hoped was a neutral tone, wondering how Marseille knew it was her. She flushed the toilet to buy herself time and looked in the mirror. Her mascara had smeared only a little; you couldn’t really tell she’d cried. She licked her finger and wiped beneath her eyelids, then ran a hand beneath the sleeves of her blouse to check that the rubber bands concealed under the turned-up cuffs were solidly in place. Sooner or later someone was bound to find out about the tattoos, but so far she’d been lucky and Ray hadn’t told anyone. She took a deep breath and opened the bathroom door.

      “Hello, darling, it’s been ages!” Marseille held out her arms and Evelyn allowed herself to be embraced. Something metal and spiky dug into her chest. When the hug ended Evelyn saw that what had gouged her was a silver brooch with sea urchin points sticking out of it, the sort of abstract design Marseille favored. Marseille with the M.D. after her name, the Ann Taylor suit over a black leotard, the dangerous jewelry—Marseille terrified her.

      “I’ve been thinking about you, Evelyn,” Marseille said. Marseille always spoke in a tone of voice that made what she said mean several things at once. “How are you?”

      Evelyn, knowing that what Marseille meant was Tell me what’s wrong, replied, “Fine, thanks.”

      Marseille laid her hand on Evelyn’s arm and smiled the smile Evelyn imagined she offered to her psychiatric patients. “Evelyn, I want you to know that if you ever want to talk about anything, I’m here. As a friend.”

      “Marseille, have you seen Ray around?” Evelyn knew she was being rude; she didn’t care.

      “He’s in the living room—” Marseille let a pause settle—“with the rest of the guests. Let’s go join them, shall we?”

      Feeling like a child caught playing hooky, Evelyn allowed herself to be led along her own hallway. Marseille kept her hand on Evelyn’s arm, as if Evelyn were standing on the ledge of a building, threatening to jump. Evelyn’s tattoos, hidden by the thinnest of cotton blouses, threatened to burst into flame beneath Marseille’s cool palm.

      11:00, 11:30, and at last the crowd in the living room thinned. Wine glasses were abandoned, and Ray went into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee for the few remaining guests. Evelyn followed, thinking this was something the hostess ought to do, not the host.

      Ray looked up from the fridge. “Where’s the cream?”

      It was gone, and there was no milk, either: Evelyn had used them both up in the second batch of vichyssoise.

      “We’re out,” she said, “I’m sorry.” Her face was flushing, her throat tightened. It was not the verge of tears, it was something worse than that, something ballooning inside her, threatening to break open.

      “Doesn’t matter,” said Ray, oblivious, “just get me a lemon, will you, and we’ll do an Italian espresso thing with lemon peel instead.”

      It was too much: he was good at everything; she was good at nothing.

      “I’m such an idiot,” she said, aloud this time.

      “Just pass me a lemon, would you?”

      If she moved from the kitchen stool, she would scream.

      “What’s wrong with you?” Ray asked, clearly annoyed now and getting the lemon himself.

      She shook her head and watched him shave off yellow curls of peel, arrange them on the coffee tray with the cups and take it all out through the swinging door, leaving her sitting in the kitchen.

      And then, finally, the last good–bye. She and Ray side by side at the entryway, waving, her hand going side-to-side like some kind of mechanical doll. Finally, it was over.

      “An utter success,” Ray said. He plucked a last clump of lettuce from the salad bowl and popped it into his mouth. He smiled at his wife. “See? You had nothing to worry about.”

      And just like that, as if he’d stuck a pin in her, she felt a balloon pop inside her, and what it contained, what was exploding all over her guts, was the full force of the shame and fury that had been building all night. Nothing to worry about? How dare he—he had no idea what she’d had to worry about tonight. Her face was burning, her chest was burning. It was the same feeling she used to get when Joe, stinking of beer, plunked himself down beside her on the Airstream’s tiny sofette and gave her a certain mean grin: if she didn’t get outside, get away from him that instant, something terrible would happen.

      She took a step backward. “I’m going out to get more milk,” she said.

      As soon as she said it, this seemed like the only thing that would save her: get out of the house, get in the car. Drive to a place where everything was lined up neatly on the shelves with prices on it. Where you could see exactly what you were getting and how much it would cost you.

      “You don’t mean now,” Ray said. “It’s almost midnight.”

      “I’ll go to the Star; they’re open all night.” There was no way she could explain. Ray, who tried so hard to be understanding, would not understand this at all.

      “That’s so far away. Sweetheart, that’s crazy. Get the milk in the morning.”

      “I’m not tired, and I want a glass of milk now,” she said. If she could undo just one of her

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