Red Clocks(51)

The stretching and loosening is permanent, no matter what miracles they tell you Kegels can work. Kegels can’t fix the lips. The wife’s college roommate got the surgery after her third child. “Flappy no more!” reported the roommate in a mass email. The wife remembers thinking how odd to announce your labiaplasty to seventy-nine people—the addresses weren’t hidden—but odder still were the replies. “Tell your javiva congrats.” “Bet your man is lurving it!”

She buttons her jeans, flushes the toilet, returns to her children, slumped on the sofa. Didier is hiding upstairs, pretending to write lesson plans.

Bex moans: “I’m so bored.”

“Then play with your Christmas presents.”

“I played with everything.”

“Have you read all the books Grammy gave you?”

“Yes.” She is facedown on the Turkish carpet, snow-angeling.

“I doubt that.” The wife watches John start to remove, one by one, the blocks she just put away.

“Where’s Ro?”

“At her own house. John, leave those in the basket, please—”

“Why are you sleeping in the sewing room and not with Daddy?” Still facedown, but the girl has stopped moving, is waiting hard for the answer.

“Daddy snores.”

“So do you.”

“No, I do not.” The wife grabs two blocks from John, bangs them into the basket with their fellows.

“Also, if you have another baby—”

“I’m not having another baby.”

“But if you do have another baby, will you get a purple nurple again? And will your hair fall out and your breasts die?”

“They didn’t die. They changed shape when John stopped nursing.”

“Went flat,” says Bex.

Just wait until you get here, sweetpea.

“I’m not going to hit you,” she whispers.

She has never hit her sprites, and never will.

Fifteen minutes later she’s alone in the car, going fast. The road is wet and dreamy with fog, but she is a good driver; her foot is steadfast and capable.

Inside the Acme she slows, lingers over her selections. In the chocolate department she has her preferred brands and flavors, the organic rainforest companies, the mints and the sea-salt-almonds; but sometimes she likes to mix it up with a hazelnut-coriander or a black-pepper-fennel-cardamom.

She sets six bars (three cardamoms, three mints) and a family-size of soft-batch chocolate-chip cookies on the conveyor belt, along with an unneeded pack of kitchen sponges.

“Looks like you’re in for a fun night,” says the cashier.

“It’s for my daughter’s class,” says the wife.

“Right,” says the cashier.

On the way home she pulls into the scenic overlook parking lot, whose guardrail is sturdy.

Dials Bryan.

Gets his growly message: “You know what to do and when to do it.”

“Hey there,” she chirps, “hope you had a good Christmas. Checking to see if you wanted to have that coffee sometime. Oh, and this is Susan. Okay, well, call me! Thanks!”

What will Bryan make of her clapping labia?

The cardamoms go in the kitchen drawer, under the maps.

The mints stay in the torn lining of her purse.

The soft batches were eaten in the eight minutes between the scenic overlook and home.

She spots husband and children through the window, tumbling in the brown grass behind the garage. He has given them a snack, at least, even if he didn’t clean it up.

Herd crumbs into palm.

Spray table.

Wipe down table.

Rinse cups and bowls.

Set cups and bowls in dishwasher.

Throw empty family-size soft-batch cookie box into recycling.

If she leaves first, she breaks her family.

Knot up recycling and take out to blue bin.

Pour compost pail rinse water into pot of ficus tree.

Spray mist onto green snake arms of Medusa’s head.

If she sleeps with Bryan, it won’t be a relationship.

Stack books.

Push fairy costumes into trunk.

Only sex.

Ignore black dust on baseboards.

Intercourse with a shire horse.

Ignore soft yellow hair balls in every corner.

Ignore beds of children, but make own.

That little red motel on 22—

While making own bed find sock of husband in covers.

Sniff sock; be surprised that sock does not smell bad.

Run rag through dust on dresser.

She will leave the credit-card statement open on the dining-room table.

In downstairs bathroom, ignore soap heel crusted to sink.

Except that Didier wouldn’t bother reading the charges.

Lift toilet seat.

Count three pubic hairs.

Slam seat back down.

Then she will just tell him, flat-out.

And he will leave first.





When London was colder, “frost fairs” were held upon the Thames. Fire pits and puppet stages, caged lions and gingerbread booths, were dragged onto the ice; there were sled races, pigs turning on spits, fortune-tellers, bull-baiters. One could see flounder and porpoise trapped mid-swim in the glass river. But not since 1814 has the ice been solid enough to withstand this revelry. I came to London too late.