Tough Little Wife
2012; Colorado State University; Volume: 39; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/col.2012.0034
ISSN2325-730X
Autores Tópico(s)Latin American and Latino Studies
Resumo55 EDWARD PORTER TOUGH LITTLE WIFE Winner of the 2012 AWP Intro Journals Project selected by Brock Clarke E very day is the last day at the Alamo. Time has us surrounded , and we hold out against the inevitable, hoping the way we handle ourselves matters somehow. In a storefront apartment in fin de siècle Brooklyn, Tina stared at Wesley. Wesley played the guitar. She guessed he’d had all the marriage he could take. They were deep into their Sunday afternoon laze in the corner they called the kitchen because that’s where they kept the toaster oven. She perched on a scavenged bar stool, licking doughnut crumbs from her fingers, and watched him ignore her. He hunkered on double-stacked milk crates, a study in chiaroscuro outlined against the glowing opaque window. Beyond the smoked glass lay the honking, brake-screeching, Papi-ing, culo-ing land of Bushwick. Ostensibly, he was lost in his art. On their flip-top-schooldesk -cum-dining-table lay a back copy of Guitar Player, creased open to a page of tablature. His whole body struggled to decipher its arcana: shoulders tensed, left hand stretching and clutching at the frets while the thick red pick in his right hand tortured rapid-fire pliks from the unplugged Fender. What he was really trying to do was annoy her out of the room, out of his life. Each note was a butterfly wing brushing against her, wearing her away. Plikity plikity plik. She’d be gone in a couple hundred thousand years if he could just keep it up. Piece of cake. “How long are you going to do that?” “Until I get it.” She wanted to say, “I won’t hold my breath,” but stuffed it. He shook his head, perhaps to clear his eyes. His hair was a mess—a dirty yellow, sprouting like a pavement weed a dog had lifted its leg on. His red checkered shirt was untucked and unbuttoned at the bottom, revealing a snarl of belly hair. It was hot for May, and his limp skin had a humid, pallid cast. Vain as he was, he was deliberately letting himself go, representing him- colorado review 56 self as a lost cause. But it wasn’t working. She still loved what she saw. She sometimes fantasized about cutting his hair, shaping it, letting it fulfill its potential. She went into the bathroom and came out with the yellow beach towel and the blunt-nose scissors. “You have won the Sunday afternoon special, which is a shave, a haircut, and a shoulder rub. After all, don’t you deserve to be pampered?” “Are you clinically insane?” “As of the last time I was checked out, mostly no.” “My hair should be six inches longer, at least.” “Okay then, just the shave.” “Fuck no. By the time you’re done, I’ll be Justin Timberlake’s gayer cousin.” “How about the shoulder rub?” “Why don’t you sashay over here, cut off my balls, and be done with it?” What was it with men and castration? Why did they always equate accepting love with losing part of their body? She’d have loved the shave. She’d always been curious about shaving him— about slowly peeling away his sharp, angry stubble with one of those blue plastic razors, leaving his jaw and his cheeks naked, pale, and soft. She’d have loved that. She was nobody’s doormat. She loved him, but he made her want to drive a truck through the wall. Plikity plikity plik. At thirty-two she was all too aware that the best way to break up with someone was to get them to break up with you. She’d gotten rid of guys the same way Wesley was trying to get rid of her, by wilting and rotting on them, step by step, until they pitched her out in the garbage like the bad little flower she was. Or maybe he was going to try a prison break. They were two years into their marriage, and he twitched whenever she tried to touch him. When she talked, she’d feel the vibration of his leg violently...
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