Julie Iromuanya: Mr. and Mrs. Doctor

Standing in the hotel bathroom on the night of his honeymoon, Job no longer replayed his memory of the stethoscope. Instead, he remembered his mother’s laughter at the sight of his small frame in his brother’s oversized clothes. She had gone from tears to anger to laughter, just like that. But what had made her laugh? Was it merely the sight of him in his brother’s clothes? It had to have been more than that.

Job picked up Ifi’s perfume, sprayed it into the air, and sniffed. It smelled good. He twirled his fingertip in her rouge, absentmindedly dragging a deep red line across the sink. Then, still staring at the streak, he began to spread the rouge on his cheeks, then his eyelids, and finally his lips. Laughing, he reached for her bra, thinking of his flat-chested sisters standing before the mirror as small girls. He put it on, filling each cup with toilet tissue. Ballooning his chest, he made motions like a woman, then a gorilla, then the Incredible Hulk. The little cups barely jiggled on his chest. He chuckled — how silly this was! But maybe, like his mother did, Ifi would laugh; perhaps like his father did, Ifi would hope.

He didn’t see himself in the mirror. Instead, he saw his reflection in Ifi’s horrified expression as she leaned in the doorway: potbellied, tangled curly hairs escaping the bra, straps crookedly balanced on his broad shoulders, smudged red rouge covering his mouth, as much on his teeth as on his lips. She wasn’t laughing, not even a hint of a smile. Ifi was paralyzed and Job was too, his mind flashing to the kind of humiliation her scorn could bring. He simply could not survive it. He had failed badly. Job struggled to peel off the bra. Pretend this never happened. Send her home with the driver. Return to America. Alone.

Suddenly, she let out a burst of laughter. She raised her hand, stopping him. Her eyes formed a question, then her lips followed: “Americans do this, too?”

“Nothing is too strange for Americans,” he admitted.

Ifi motioned to her dress, heaped on the floor. With a toe, she gently kicked it to him. Go on, her look said, don’t let me interrupt you.

Is she trying to make a fool of me? He couldn’t. He wouldn’t.

And suddenly he realized, understood, that something had been fixed, and would be broken if he did not proceed. Just not while she watched. Twirling his finger, he motioned for her to look the other way. She obliged. Carefully, he stepped into her dress, yellow with daisies along the bottom, fitted around the waist. It was a struggle, but eventually he secured the straps in the back. There he stood, ashy feet and unclipped toenails peeking out from under the hem. “Turn around,” he said.

When she saw him, something like hiccups began to erupt from her chest — a laugh.

He sighed. He could do nothing but blow her a kiss.

As she backed through the open doorway, falling onto the bed, she continued to laugh. He turned his hips this way and that, standing on his toes as if in his sisters’ heels. She laughed harder, nearly choking.

“No, no! Like this.” Standing before him, Ifi began to stir her buttocks in slow, deliberate strokes. She spun as if she were unwinding. Once thin and featureless, her body was now defined only by the movement in her hips.

Jerking his hips, knees, and buttocks, Job imitated her. Uproarious laughter rose through Ifi, exaggerating the movement in her hips until she could dance no more. There was a freshness in her face. It made Job laugh as he hadn’t in years.

It was only natural that gradually the clothes began to fall away. The dress refused to come off peacefully; it caught on the bra strap. He squeezed each buttock muscle individually as he lowered the bra to step out of it. It didn’t occur to him that he could simply turn the bra around and unclasp it. One after another, he fought each article of clothing before tossing it to her.

With nothing but the makeup on, Job came toward his wife. Propped on the bathroom sink, the dancing flames peeked through the open doorway and illuminated Job just enough so that the contours of his heavily painted face were accented. Ifi ran her fingers across her husband’s face, tenderly wiping away the rouge with his sweat. “This is only for your lips,” she said. “And for your eyes, there is something called eye shadow and mascara. Did your mother not teach you anything?”

Then, in a blast, the light returned.

In the blinding light, their gazes split apart.

She could not look at him. He could not look at her.

JOB OGBONNAYA’S FIRST WIFE HAD, LIKE IFI, ARRIVED IN A STACK OF photographs before they were ever married. To be exact, the photographs were postcards. Cheryl’s was the third. On one side, stock photography of sandhill cranes dotting an amber Nebraska landscape with a blazing sunset misting around the birds. On the other side, no photograph; instead, her particulars: American, white, twice divorced. She was thirty-two. She owned two dogs and lived with her only sibling, a deaf-mute, in the home their dead parents had left them. His name was Luther. He was on disability. Cheryl was out of work. These were the things Job must know. The rest could be lies.

It was 1982, and he had only been in America for five years. He was just twenty-four, with less than a year left on his visa since he had flunked out of college. His father had given him money for tuition, but he was using it to pay for the arrangement. Half now and half after the business was done. His father didn’t need to know. There would be too many questions. Job could talk to the proper people; he could take the proper tests; he could go back to school, later.

Job arrived that day wearing a tan corduroy suit, a tie, and cracked leather shoes that he had coaxed to a shine with vegetable oil. He had even barbered his hair. As agreed, they met by a Volkswagen across the street from the county clerk’s office, a tall limestone building with dark windows like gapped teeth. An American flag clapped in the breeze, and the sprinkler chopped the bronze placard on the front of the building with a wet streak.

Emeka had said to marry quick-quick, and then irreconcilable differences. Emeka had said his was nineteen, a model. Emeka had said his was getting a degree in literature, but her parents wanted her to study home economics, so she was doing this to pay for her tuition. Anyway, she had said, it’s a free country.

Instead of the American model studying Shakespeare, Job got a short woman, slender with loose, pale skin, red hair, and a freckled face full of teeth, like a small boy. Her stonewashed jean skirt exposed knobby, raw knees. Surely, she was older than the thirty-two on the postcard.

In an hour they would stop processing applications for the day. There were two men waiting upstairs, the broker told them, the witnesses. Once the money had been exchanged, the broker left them on their own. After, the broker would return and they would exchange the second half. In a few months they would be divorced, and it would be like the marriage had never happened.

As soon as they met, without even looking at him, Cheryl said, “I don’t usually do this.”

They always say they have never done this before, Emeka had said. It is a mistake to believe them.

“Of course,” Job said to her with a curt smile. “Of course. You will change your dress and we will go.”

“What do you mean?” Cheryl asked.

“This is not what you will wear.”

“What’s wrong with what I have on?”

Could she really have intended to appear without properly dressing? Real or not, this was a wedding and should be observed accordingly. Job eyed her closely.

They will ask you to spend more money than you have agreed, Emeka had said. Do not fall into this trapdoor.