Aimee Bender: The Girl in the Flammable Skirt

“Not the news please,” I say. He clicks the knob three times over. The game show host looks really old. The shy man puts his elbows on his knees and he starts to call out answers to the trivia questions. I close my eyes and listen to the noise of winning fill the room.

Steven returned from the war without lips.

This is quite a shock, said his wife Mary who had spent the last six months knitting sweaters and avoiding a certain grocery store where a certain young man worked and looked at her in that certain way. I expected lips. Dead or alive, but with lips.

Steven went into the living room where his old favorite chair stood, neatly dusted and unused. I-can-eat-like-normal, he said in a strange halted clacking tone due to the plastic disc that covered and protected what was left of his mouth like the end of a pacifier. The-doctors-are-going-to-put-new-skin-on-in-a-few-weeks-anyway. Skin-from-my-palm. He lifted up his hand and looked at it. That-will-work, I-guess, he said. It-just-won’t-be-quite-the-same.

No, said Mary, it won’t. That bomb, she said, standing on the other side of the chair, you know it took the last real kiss from you forever, and as far as I can remember, that kiss was supposed to be mine.

That night in bed, he grazed the disc over her raised nipples like a UFO and the plastic was cool on her skin. It felt like they were in college and toying with desk items as sexual objects. Her boyfriend of that time, Hank: Let’s try a ruler. Let’s measure you, Mary. Let’s balance a paperweight on my dick. I’m over that, Mary thought. I want lips now. I just want the basics.

She didn’t say anything, but began to shop at the other grocery store again.

The young man there had always had lips but now they seemed twice as large and full and incredible, as if his face was overflowing with lip. While he ran her milk and eggs and toothpaste over the electronic sensor, she couldn’t stop looking at them, guessing what they tasted like. The warm, salty taste of flesh.

Good to see you, he said, moving those lips. It’s been a while.

Mary blushed and fiddled with the gum at the counter.

Just take a pack, he told her. I won’t tell.

Really? She looked at the flavors and picked cinnamon.

Sure, he said, smiling at her, glancing around to see if his manager was in sight. Think of me while you chew.

She blushed again, pocketed the gum and then grabbed her two full bags in both arms.

Need help? he asked. Let me help you.

Okay. She passed the weight to him, and he walked her to the car which was parked near the river. While he placed the bags into the trunk, she was taken by the desire to join them. She wanted to sit in there and invite the man in with her, shut the trunk down and lock it and just make love and eat groceries until they suffocated or her husband needed the car.

Back at home, Steven was in the bathroom, looking at himself in the mirror. Mary stood and watched him touching the disc with his fingertips, a bag under each arm, until he felt her and turned around.

Honey, he said, back-so-soon! He took the bags from her, peered inside them and — oohed- and — aahed- over her food choices.

Oh-Mary, he said, God-I-missed-you-so-much. In-that-ditch, when-I-thought-of-you, I-saw-an-angel. His voice broke. I-saw-Mary, my-angel, in-this-house, with-these-bags. You-brought-me-back-home. He reached out his hand and fingers trickled down her arm.

She kept her back to him and shoved tin cans into the cupboard. Maybe, she was thinking, if you’d concentrated better you’d still have lips. Maybe you’re not supposed to think of your wife at the market while people are throwing bombs at you. Maybe you’re supposed to protect certain body parts so she’ll be happy when you come back.

But instead she just piled the cans one on the other, edge to edge in tall buildings, kidney beans on top of tuna. She turned to Steven.

You’re alive, she said, and hugged him. You’re Steven. He pressed the disc hard to her cheek and kissed her, — -, and she held herself in and tried not to shatter.

Steven ate more than she remembered so she was back at the market in two days. The young man was there, and she offered him a stick of the same cinnamon gum. He grinned at her.

Thanks, he said, taking a piece.

She touched the back of his hand while he was writing her driver’s license number on the check, and said, Do you take care of yourself?

He looked up at her. What do you mean?

I mean, what if they called you to fight in the war? Her hand was stilled on his.

He snapped his gum. He drew a little gun on a corner of her check. No, he said, I don’t think I would do it. I think I’d run away, because, you know, I don’t want to fight in the war. I mean, how would you do it anyway? How would you know what to do? He drew little bullets coming out of the gun and sliding down the side of the check, near where her name and address were printed.

Mary nodded and placed her license back into her wallet.

I know, she said, me too. I would move away somewhere else. I wouldn’t leave people and maybe never come back. You can’t do that to people, you know?

Right, he said, looking up at her: I know what you mean. The most unbearable thing is losing someone like that.

Oh no, she said to him, wrapping the plastic handle of the bag around her wrist several times, I don’t think so. I don’t agree. The most unbearable thing I think by far, she said, is hope.

At night Steven twitched with nightmares. He never used to; he used to sleep straight through the night, and Mary would carve shapes into his back with her stub of a fingernail and watch the goose bumps rise and fall like small mountain populations. Now he was bucking in and out of the sheets and she still carved the shapes and the goose bumps still emerged, but they didn’t calm him. She wondered what he was seeing. Sometimes she woke him up.

Steven, she said, it’s okay. You’re here. You’re back.

He looked up at her with a frame of sweat around his face and breathed out. -Mary-, he clacked, it’s-Mary.

It’s Mary, she said. Yes. That’s me.

He held her so tightly she was uncomfortable. She wiggled loose and finally fell asleep for a couple of hours but woke up again in the middle of the night and left the bedroom. Steven was sleeping quietly, his back to her, arm out, palm open, belly sloping down to the sheets. She tried the TV but everything was either without plot or in the middle so she couldn’t understand what was going on. Clicking it off, she went and sat in the backyard, on the edge of the patio with its red paint chipping. The sky was oddly light, but it was nowhere near morning.

Leaning down into the dirt, she began to dig a hole. The dirt was grainy and soft and lifted out easily, and she wondered why she never took up gardening. It’s supposed to be so soothing, she thought. Perhaps that is the soothing that I need.

She leaned down into the dirt and dug until there was a hole a few feet deep. She placed her feet in it.

I built this hole, she said, now what to put in it? She wandered in through the kitchen to the hall closet, opened it and saw the three sweaters she knit for Steven At War piled on the shelf by the sewing machine. There, she said, my sweaters. He won’t want these. No one wears sweaters here anyway.

She lugged all three sweaters outside and gently folded them, placing them on top of each other in the hole. She remembered knitting them, singing songs into the thread about Steven, pretending she was keeping him alive although she knew he was dead. He had to be dead. She was just more honest with herself than the other wives. With each purl and knit and knot, she felt the coldness of his stiffening legs, the draining of color from his cheeks, knew that never would she feel his forearms warm and veined around her waist, never again would his voice whisper praise into her ear.