Adam Johnson - Fortune Smiles - Stories

I put my hand on the producer’s arm. She turned, startled, discovering me.

I used my grip to assess her soul — I felt the want of it, I calculated its lack, in the same way Lady Montagu mapped the microscopic world of smallpox pustules and Voltaire learned to weigh vapor.

You tell me who the fucking ghost is.

—

There is a knock at the door. It’s Megumi!

My husband answers, and the two of them regard each other, almost sadly, for a moment.

They are clearly acknowledging the wrongness of whatever it is they’re up to.

They head upstairs together, where I realize there are Costco-size boxes of condoms everywhere — under the sink, in the medicine cabinet, taped under the bedside table, hidden in the battery flap of a full-size talking Tigger doll!

Megumi and my husband enter our bedroom. Right away, the worst possible thing happens — they move right past these birth-control depots. They do not collect any condoms at all.

My kind of ghost mom would make it her job to stop hussies like Megumi from fucking grieving men, and if I were too late, it would be my job to go to Megumi late at night, to approach her as she slept on her shabby single-mom futon and, with my eyedropper, dribble one, two, three purple drops upon her lips, just enough to abort the baby he put inside her. In her belly, the fetus would clutch and clench and double up dead.

Megumi and my husband do not approach the bed. They move instead toward the armoire, beside which is a rolling rack of all the vintage dresses I could no longer wear once I lost my bustline. I moved them onto the rack but couldn’t bear to roll them out of the room.

Megumi runs her fingers along these dresses.

She pauses only to eye a stack of my training bras on the dresser.

Interesting fact: While you can get used to being titless, the naked feeling of not wearing a bra is harder to shake. You just become accustomed to the hug of one. I recommend the A-cup bras from Target’s teen section. Mine are decorated with multicolor peace signs.

Megumi selects a dress from the rack and studies it — it’s an earthy pink Hepburn with a boat collar, white trim and pleated petticoat. At the Florida university where I met my husband, I was in his presence three different times before he finally noticed me. I was wearing that dress when he did. I wonder if he remembers it.

Megumi holds the dress to her body, studying herself in the mirror. Then she turns to my husband, draping the dress against her figure for his approval.

Interesting fact: The kanji for figure is a combination of the elements next and woman .

I study my own figure in the mirror.

Interesting fact: The loss of breasts doesn’t flatten your chest — it leaves you concave and hollowed-looking. And something about the surgery pooches your tummy. My surgeon warned me of this. But who could picture it? Who would voluntarily conjure herself that way?

Megumi waits, my dress held against her. Then my husband reaches out. He has a faraway look in his eyes. With his fingertips, he tugs here and tapers there, adjusting the fall of fabric to the shape of her body. Finally, he nods. She accepts the dress, folding it in her arms.

I do not dagger her. I stand there and do nothing.

—

Interesting fact: My first novel that no one would publish was about Scottsdale trophy wives who form a vigilante group to patrol their gated community. It contains, among other things, a bobcat killing, a night-golfing tragedy, the illegal use of a golf ball — collecting machine and a sex scene involving a man and a woman wearing backpack-mounted soda pistols. It was called The Beige Berets .

Interesting fact: My second novel that no one would publish concerns two young girls who have rare powers of perception. One can read auras, while the other sees ghosts. To work the ghost angle, I had their father live in Charles Manson’s old apartment. To make the girls more vulnerable, I decided to kill off their mother, so I gave her cancer. To ratchet up the tension, I had a sexual predator live next door named Mr. Roses. My husband came up with the name. In fact, my husband became quite enamored with this character. He was really helpful in developing Mr. Roses’ backstory and generating his dialog. Then my husband stole this character and wrote a story from Mr. Roses’ perspective called “Dark Meadow.” I can’t even say the name of this novel without getting angry.

—

My husband does not return to the novel he was working on before my cancer. After the kids are asleep, he instead calls up the website bigboobsalert. He regards this on slide-show mode, so ladies with monstrous chests appear and fade, one into the next. My husband has his hand lotion ready, but he doesn’t masturbate. He stares at a nebulous place just past the computer screen. I contemplate these women. All I see in their saucerous nipples and pendulous breasts is the superpower of motherhood. Instead of offering come-hither looks to lonely men, these women should be feeding hungry babies, calling upon foundling wards and nursing the legion orphaned of the world. We should airdrop these bra-busters into tsunami zones, earthquake epicenters and the remote provinces of North Korea!

I kneel beside my husband, slouched in his ergonomic office chair. I align my vision with his, but I can’t tell what he’s looking at. Our faces are almost touching, and though he is lost and sad, I still feel his sweet energy. “Come to bed,” I whisper, and he sort of wakes up. But he doesn’t rise to face our bedroom. Instead, he opens a blank Word document and stares at it. Eventually, he types, “Toucan cereal.”

“No!” I shout at him. “I’m the one who got cancer, I’m the one who was struck. That’s my story. It belongs to me!”

—

Interesting fact: Cancer teaches you to see the insides of things. Do you see the can in uncanny or the cer in concern ? When people want to make chitchat with you — even though, if they took the time, they could see that under your bandanna you have no hair — it’s easier to just say to them, “Sorry, I have some uncanny concerns right now.” If you’re feeling feisty, try “I feel arcane and acerbic.” Who hasn’t felt that?

But sometimes you’ve got chemo brain and your balance is all woo-woo and your nails are itching like crazy and you don’t want to talk to anybody. Be prepared for that.

Person 1: “Gosh, I haven’t seen you in forever. How’s it going?”

You: “Toucan cereal.”

Person 2: “Hey, what’s new? I’m so behind. I probably owe you like ten messages.”

You: “Vulcan silencer.” Smile blankly. Hold it.

—

Arrows boat-tail through the night. Raccoons rear, yellow-eyed, to watch them fly. In spring the surf sorrel, considered an aphrodisiac by the Miwok peoples, open their gate-folding leaves. I can’t look at my children head-on. From afar I study them. I watch my husband shuttle them to school from a distance great enough that I almost can’t tell my kids from other ones.

Even worse than cancer glommers are widower clingers. They approach my husband with their big sympathetic eyes and force him to say things like “We’re managing” and “Keeping our heads above water.” But he’s no fool. He returns their casserole dishes to be refilled.

Our daughter takes on my voice. I study her as she admonishes her brother and the Horse-child to take their asthma medicine and do their silent reading before bed. When lice outbreaks arrive, she is the one who meticulously combs through their hair after my husband succumbs to frustration and salty talk.

I keep a hairy eyeball wide for Megumi. She doesn’t come around, which makes me all the more suspicious. I wonder if my husband took some of that Pulitzer money and bought a “studio” in the neighborhood. You know, a place to hide your book royalties from the IRS and “get some serious work done.” I flip through his key chain, but there is nothing new, just keys to the house, his Stanford office, the Honda Odyssey, five Kryptonite bike locks.