Paula Bomer - Inside Madeleine

Mark decided to keep her birth control pills after in a drawer in her desk. He was the one to go to the drug store and buy them. Every morning he made her take one. He woke her and watched her swallow it. He made her stick her tongue out at him, he’d look down the back of her throat. Sometimes he ran his finger around the inside of her mouth. We’re not going through that again, ever, he’d say. She didn’t protest.

After a month of that, she said, stop checking on me, Mark. I don’t want to get pregnant. Really, don’t worry about me, she said. He told her when we’re older and more settled that they’d have a family. He’d say Maddy, if you had a kid you wouldn’t be able to party anymore. Your whole life would be taking care of the kid. You’re too young. And she’d cry and say I know Mark, I know, you’re right, it just breaks my heart.

11

At first, she thought their apartment was great. Sure, it wasn’t very big but it was theirs and they had a couch and a TV and their own bed and her mom bought them plates and flatware and glasses. She got a job waitressing and he worked in a computer store at the mall and had all his computers.

She bought The Joy of Cooking and Cooking for Two and Cooking on a Budget . She went grocery shopping at Krogers and filled her spice rack with cheerful bottles of dried herbs. Oregano, basil, thyme, sage, cinnamon, nutmeg. She bought breakfast cereals and English muffins and Oscar Meyer luncheon meats and packed his lunch in brown bags. At night, if she wasn’t working she made dinner and she ate with him. They had a VCR. She thought they had everything.

She painted the bedroom walls an apricot and the bathroom baby blue. The living room walls were white and the kitchen she wallpapered with a flowered print that reminded her of the kitchen at home. They had a La-Z-Boy chair that he sat in when he came home and put his feet up and smoked pot and watched TV. On Saturdays she vacuumed and Ajaxed the bathroom and did the laundry. She had a white plastic laundry basket and she’d fold everything up, even his underwear. Neat, little stacks, all lined up and clean. She washed the whites separate from the colors and used enough bleach to get it white white, but not too much so nothing ever yellowed and the material wouldn’t get stiff. She ironed. She did everything she could do.

He liked meatloaf and pork chops and mashed potatoes with nutmeg in them. He liked salted butter. He liked turkey sandwiches and roast beef on rye. She wiped the top of the fridge off so dust never collected there. She wiped the dust off the TV screen and his computer screens and keyboards.

He bought her presents at first. He bought her red roses and lingerie and high heeled shoes. He took her out to dinner and afterward he drove her to Howard Park and they made out in the car, like they did way back when.

She loved him. She loved everything about him. She loved his plain brown hair that hung straight and that he kept short even though she asked him to grow it long. She loved his pale face and thin mouth and his liquid, colorless eyes. She loved his thin arms that curved inward between his elbows and knobby shoulders. She loved the tan hairs that grew on his body and his brown, shapeless nipples and his dark, deep bellybutton. His almost wide hips and round ass. His armpits, barely hairy that smelled of him.

She loved his smell like it was the most important, safe thing that she ever smelled. Like the smell of him could keep her from what was bad in her and what was bad in the world. She smelled him next to her at night with her mouth open and she breathed him in through the skin on her body, through every pore in her face and she put her face against his back at night and listened to his lungs open and close.

She loved the way he put the key in the door when he came home. The way he put his bag down and kicked off his shoes right there in the kitchen. The way he moved his stuff around on the desk, all that stuff around his computer, all the things he kept so neat, how he seemed to need to touch it all, make sure it was all there. She loved the way he ate and the way he sat and the sound of his breath while he slept.

Her love for him grew each damn day. Her love for him grew so strong there wasn’t any room for anything else. Her love grew strong and she tired, tired of how it took everything from her — her soft hands, her clear brow, the curve of her hips, the smile on her face.

The more she thought of him the more it hurt her. The more she loved him the more she had to steal from him. Steal looks at him. Steal her hands over his back while he slept. Steal time away from him, steal time with him.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Out of sight out of mind. If he thought she didn’t need him then maybe he’d want to kiss her as badly as he wanted to kiss her that first time in the car. He was the only man she ever kissed. If he didn’t know how miserable she was without him maybe he’d think she was strong and sure like she once had been. If she acted tough there was a chance she was tough. If she didn’t show her pain then maybe it wasn’t there.

She acted like she didn’t love him anymore. It seemed like it was all gone. But it was there, she just tried to keep it contained, tried to show him she was still the same Maddy.

The air in the apartment became stiff, no matter how high the fan was on. No matter what she cooked the kitchen smelled stale. Dinner on the stove smelled like heaven while her face was in the pan, but once that was over, once she put the food down to eat in front of the TV, the stale smell took over again. She couldn’t eat, no matter what she cooked. Vegetables were like rubber in her mouth, bright and plastic. Chicken tasted like slime, no matter how she prepared it. She’d gag trying to force it down. Mark ate and ate. He gained weight. She lost weight. She began vacuuming every day, thinking maybe it was the carpet that smelled stale. She used carpet fresheners; floral scents, spring scents, pine scents. Sprinkling the sharp, scented white powder on the dreary wall to wall carpet, chasing it around with the vacuum cleaner. She dusted and put her nose to the furniture after wiping it down with lemon Pledge.

The longer she lived with him the less recognizable he became. His face, his body, what would come out of his mouth. What was going on in his head. The expressions on his face. He grew out of focus, strange and foreign.

Their apartment never had been cleaner. There wasn’t a speck of dust anywhere, a mislaid sock anywhere. The fridge smelled like a fresh box of baking soda and the chrome in the bathroom gleamed. She tried every recipe in every cookbook. Sometimes she went through them alphabetically. Pork Chops Almondine, Pork Chops Barbecue, Pork Chops Catherine. The freezer was full of homemade frozen dinners in Tupperware and various other food stuffs wrapped in aluminum foil. She cooked and cooked and cleaned and cleaned until her fingers were pink and raw from water and soap and rubbing up against things. But she stopped being hungry altogether.

It wasn’t like the time when she first started dieting when she was a kid and was forced to do it. Then it was hard and she missed eating so much. This time, it was just the opposite. Hunger left her first.

She didn’t want to eat and not eating gave her pleasure and made her feel stronger. The less she ate the less she wanted to eat. She felt blessed. She felt special.

Air tasted different and smells became stronger and everything became more textured. Sometimes the smell of a hamburger that she was cooking for Mark was so strong and sweet that she almost cried, so overcome by its power. A fresh washed blanket against her face felt like a cloud from heaven and smelled as sweet as talc. She felt thankful to be alive.