LITMIR.BIZ

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that’s the new guy. You know. The middle-aged one who lives there alone. He’s Italian or something. Anthony. He has that—”

      “The one with the nice cars?” Jada interrupted.

      Michelle nodded. “The one with a limo service. And a very small mortgage.” Jada reflected that being a loan officer gave you insights others might not have. Michelle continued. “I don’t think he’s married.”

      “Well, then he has a very unhappy girlfriend.”

      “Maybe it’s an arranged marriage,” Michelle said. “You know, like they write away to Russia and order some young wife.”

      “That’s not ar-ranged, it’s de-ranged,” Jada said. They walked on in silence for a while.

      “So what are you going to do about Clinton? Will you force him to make a commitment?”

      “Clinton? Commitment? The only thing those two words have in common is they both start with a ‘c.’ I mean, Clinton is the only guy in his ’hood who never got a tattoo. De Beers lies when it says it’s a diamond. A tattoo is forever.”

      “I can’t imagine why he’d do something like this,” Michelle said. “You’re perfect.”

      “Why he wouldn’t get a tattoo?” Jada asked, deflecting the discussion. Sometimes Mich just didn’t get it, Jada thought. Was it her kiss-me-I’m-Irish heritage? “That’s just it, Mich. I’m perfect, and that makes Clinton sick. I’m twice as strong as he is. He knows it and he hates it!”

      “No! Jada, don’t say that! You’re going through a hard time—a really hard time—but that isn’t true. Clinton admires you. He doesn’t hate you.”

      “I didn’t say he hates me. I said he hates my strength.” Jada sighed. “He could make it ten years ago when it was easy, but he can’t make it now when it’s hard. I could. I can. Shit, girl, I have to. And he resents me for it.” They came to the gate, where they turned around. Michelle, as always, patted the corner post. Jada, despite her mood, almost smiled. If Michelle couldn’t touch the post, she wouldn’t feel as if they had accomplished this bone-chilling, breathtaking three-quarters-of-an-hour of torture. She looked at her friend’s long legs, her skinny mane of perfect blond hair pulled back into a ponytail. She looked like a young colt—all legs and eyes and tail. Meanwhile Pookie sniffed and snuffed at the post as if the damn dog had never seen it before.

      “But I thought they wanted us perfect,” Michelle said as they got moving again. “Frank notices if I put on a pound or don’t shave my legs. I mean he loves me anyway, but—”

      “Hey, it isn’t about whether your legs are shaved. And it isn’t even that your legs are twenty inches longer than mine. We’ve got the same thing between them. Men want that without a lot of trouble.”

      “Jada! That’s awful. I work hard to keep myself looking good. It’s not just about looks, but it’s not just about sex, either. I mean, I know it’s impossible, but I used to try to be perfect for Frank.”

      “They don’t want us perfect,” Jada snapped. “They want us dependent. Unless we’re too damn dependent. Then they feel smothered. And they want us to take care of them. Unless we do it too much. Then they feel controlled. And they want us sexy, unless it means we want to make love too much. Then we’re demanding. Because then they feel castrated.”

      Michelle sighed. “That’s harsh. You just have to talk to him. He’s your kids’ father. Talk to him when you get home now. There’s no time like the present.”

      Jada had to admit she was pumped up. Her adrenaline was flowing. “You’re right. Cover for me at the bank. I’ll probably only be an hour late. I’m serving Clinton a little extra something with his scrambled eggs this morning.”

      “Just don’t be bitter, Jada,” Michelle begged. “In spite of this, don’t get bitter.”

      “Too late,” Jada told her friend. “I already am.”

6

       In which Angie compares her father’s taste in decor with her own in clothing, and in which she’s briefly—very briefly—reprieved

      Angela opened her eyes as she did—pointlessly—every morning at a quarter to six. The first thing she saw was the smoked glass mirror of the wall opposite the black leather sofa she was sleeping on. She closed her eyes. She was already so depressed she knew she couldn’t get up, and the day wasn’t ten seconds old. Her eyes still closed, she collapsed from her side to her back. Well, that could count as her exercise for the day. She pulled the shamrock green afghan over her head. Good. More exercise. Now perhaps the day would go away.

      Actually, she wasn’t sure what day this was: her anniversary had been on Tuesday, and it felt like she’d slept for days. Hopefully it was Sunday. If so, her mother would be home from her trip to some seminar or other. She’d once again watched TV till dawn and hadn’t the strength to leave the den to go upstairs. She was camped at her dad’s house, which was decorated in Middle-Aged Suburban Despair. But Angie had no place else to go. Her mother had recently moved into a new apartment and Angela hadn’t ever been there. She couldn’t even sit in her mother’s space and take comfort from her surroundings. So Angela had been holding on, waiting for Natalie Goldfarb, giver of comfort, speaker of wisecracks, to get back so she could pour all of this pain and disappointment into her mother’s ear.

      But what good would that do? Angela asked herself now. Under the blanket—in the bra and panties she’d have to wear for two, or possibly three, days—Angela tried to avoid that thought. But she wasn’t a kid with a boo-boo. What good could her mother actually do? Sure, she’d hold Angela while she cried her lungs out, but that was about it. Somehow, till this minute, Angela had felt that her mother could fix things. Not just that she’d comfort her and sympathize, but that she’d actually give Angie the key, the way to stop the relentless pain she was in. No—more than that. She would make the pain disappear, fix the problem, and make it go away. “Oh. The first anniversary I-cheated-on-you announcement. Sure. Daddy did it, too. You just …”

      But there was no just. Lying there, feeling as dead and lank as her own hair felt now, Angie realized that what she wanted, more than anything, was to be back with Reid. Back with him, lying in their bed in the bright clean bedroom they had furnished together. She wanted his muscled arm around her, not her mom’s. She wanted to open her eyes and see the Massachusetts light of early morning shining, but softened by the white net of the curtains, falling onto the bare bedroom floor. She felt such a tug of homesickness and longing for all she’d left up north that she actually opened her eyes and groaned. Now there was only the empty Shreve, Crump & Lowe box. She reached out for it and nestled it against her chest. Instead of her white bedroom pillows, she had a lumpy leather throw cushion under her head. Instead of her fluffy quilt, she had this old afghan. Instead of a skylight over her bed she had a ceiling repulsively spackled in figure eights, topped off by a light fixture from hell. Angie sat up, sick and dizzy. Who had done her father’s decorating? That chandelier had to have been bought from a bad Italian restaurant’s second-best dining room.

      Angela had never lived her life with a man at the center of it. Since before high school she’d had a good group of girlfriends. In college they’d dispersed, but she’d made new friends and kept them, adding more in law school. She had always made time to see movies, and to Rollerblade, and to consistently volunteer for Meals-On-Wheels. She’d been delivering to some of the same people for years. It wasn’t as if she’d read The Rules and built her life around catching some man. She’d gone to Thailand with her girlfriend Samantha and walked part of the Appalachian Trail with pals from school. So she wasn’t just going to fall apart like some pathetic fool. Reid was not her entire life. At least that’s what she told herself. So how come

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