Эйми Бендер - The Color Master

In the horror story, the woman tells the man that she loves him, and she will marry him, but he must never remove the red velvet ribbon around her neck. It is the one thing he can never ask of her. At first it’s the easiest trade; he complies for years and they are blissfully happy, but after a while it begins, in a slow broil, to burn him up inside. Why all the mystery? He unties the ribbon late at night, while she sleeps, and screams when her head rolls onto the floor.

Before, at summer camp, the story had always made Janet puff with righteousness. What a pushy spoiler of a husband. Wasn’t their happiness enough? Couldn’t he respect her one rule? One? But in the dressing room, her nose full of the clean smell of new turtleneck, she felt the story tugging at her. Something she couldn’t quite put a finger on. As she paid cash for the turtlenecks—three: cream, fuchsia, black—she told a quick version of the story to the blonde manager, a woman who clearly knew her way in the world. Strong shoulders, proud large hands, open smile. “What do you think it means?” Janet asked. Far off in the distance, she could see the saleslady of her choice rehanging blouses on a rack.

The manager flattened out the receipt to sign.

“I remember that story,” the manager said, sighing. “I had the cutest camp boyfriend.”

“I mean, why not just be happy with the way things are, right?” said Janet.

The manager took the signed receipt and put it in the register’s pile. She folded the turtlenecks, separating them with sheets of tissue paper, and then slipped all three into a bag. “But can you blame him?” she said, handing the bag to Janet. “I mean, I’m all for clothes, but at a certain point, they’re supposed to go away, you know? How long were they married?”

“I don’t know,” said Janet, taking the bag. “Story doesn’t say.”

“Take it all off!” said the manager. She winked at Janet. “Turtlenecks are good that way too.”

Across the room, the woman with the red ribbon had finished lining up the blouses and moved on to the slacks. It was true, what the manager said. That ribbon was practically made to be removed. Even Janet herself wanted to slide over and undo the knot and unspool the choker from the woman’s throat.

So—the man didn’t know what was coming, Janet thought as she walked to the escalator. They’d been married for years, and he wanted her to give up the last thread of cover so she would stand before him nude and he could make love to her entire skin.

Well, of course that made her head fall off. Of course.

At home that night, wearing her new fuchsia turtleneck, Janet made a simple dinner of spaghetti and red sauce from a jar. She and Daniel ate together in silence. When they were both done, he cleared the dishes and put them in the sink.

“Thank you,” he said, at the counter. “That was very good.”

She watched him run water over the forks. His hair needed a cut—it was getting too long on the sides.

“It’s November 9,” he said.

“I know,” she said. “Thank you again.”

He dried the forks with a cloth. He seemed unusually quiet.

“You know, you were right,” she said, brushing crumbs off the table into her palm. “What you said a few weeks ago. About your wife.”

He didn’t turn from the sink. “When I brought you flowers?”

“Yes.”

“And what did I say again?”

“That she does not love you very well.”

He ran his finger under the tap, back and forth, and poured a glob of dish soap on the pile of plates. “Actually, I think I said something different.”

She picked up the drying cloth. “Oh?”

“I think I said that she doesn’t love me at all.”

He cleared a dish clean with the sponge.

She leaned over, to touch his arm. “Oh, Daniel,” she said. “You know that’s not true.”

She could feel the turtleneck, climbing up to cover her neck, her shoulders, her torso. Pants, covering up her legs. Socks, over her feet. Underwear, over her pubic hair. A bra, over her breasts.

“I want to do better,” she said, quietly.

He placed a dish carefully in the dish rack, lining the circle up with the bent wire.

“Do you ever think about leaving?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

He turned to her. His eyes were bright. “Sometimes I do,” he said.

“Do what?”

“Think about leaving,” he said.

She shook her head at him, confused. “But you can’t leave,” she said. “You’re the devoted one.”

His eyes were kind, and sad, at the sink.

“Are you leaving?” she said, and her voice rose, sharp.

“No.” But there was a softness to his tone that implied a question, or the very first hint of a question mark, and she could see, suddenly, that they were on their way to leaving already, that this conversation was only a walking through a door already open, and once those eyes left they were not going to return and the clothing would be no barrier at all, nothing, shreds, tissue, for all the pain then rushing in.

My sister got the job. She’s the overachiever, and she went to med school for two years before she decided she wanted to be a gifted seamstress. (What? they said, on the day she left. A surgeon! they told her. You could be a tremendous surgeon! But she said she didn’t like the late hours, she got too tired around midnight.) She has small motor skills better than a machine; she’ll fix your handkerchief so well you can’t even see the stitches, like she became one with the handkerchief. I once split my lip, jumping from the tree, and she sewed it up with ice and a needle she’d run through the fire. I barely even had a scar, just the thinnest white line.

So of course, when the two women came through the sewing school, they spotted her first. She was working on her final exam, a lime-colored ball gown with tiny diamonds sewn into the collar, and she was fully absorbed in it, constructing infinitesimal loops, while they hovered with their severe hair and heady tree-smell—like bamboo, my sister said—watching her work. My sister’s so steady she didn’t even flinch, but everyone else in class seized upon the distraction, staring at the two Amazonian women, both six feet tall and strikingly beautiful. When I met them later, I felt like I’d landed straight inside a magazine ad. At the time, I was working at Burger King, as block manager (there were two on the block), and I took any distraction offered me and used it to the hilt. Once, a guy came in and ordered a Big Mac, and for two days I told that story to every customer, and it’s not a good story. There’s so rarely any intrigue in this shabberdash world of burger warming; you take what you can get.

But my sister was born with supernatural focus, and the two women watched her and her alone. Who can compete? My sister’s won all the contests she’s ever been in, not because she’s such an outrageous competitor, but because she’s so focused in this gentle way. Why not win? Sometimes it’s all you need to run the fastest, or to play the clearest piano, or to ace the standardized test, pausing at each question until it has slid through your mind to exit as a penciled-in circle.

In low, sweet voices, the women asked my sister if she’d like to see Asia. She finally looked up from her work. Is there a sewing job there? They nodded. She said she’d love to see Asia, she’d never left America. They said, Well, it’s a highly unusual job. May I bring my sister? she asked. She’s never traveled either.

The two women glanced at each other. What does your sister do?

She’s manager of the Burger Kings down on Fourth.

Their disapproval was faint but palpable, especially in the upper lip.