Dana Spiotta - Lightning Field

On the way, she had to squeeze in Max, briefly. The walk home separated things.

She again stood outside, staring at the house she lived in, aMildred Pierce-y sort of bungalow, its stucco walls surrounded by palm trees. Palm trees, palm trees. Dr. Seuss, branchless, Betty Boop, shadeless, wind-bent, transplanted palm “trees.” No matter how long she had lived here, no matter how many summers she had spent here as a child, she never failed to become momentarily unnerved by palm trees. They seemed to say, This isn’t a real place where things count, this is exotic, this is tropical, this is a vacation! And she got a kind of thrill from it, living here was a sort of faux living, it’s what gave her so much license with time. Southern California ambivalence that was too bright to be ennui. Too palm-treed. Natives were not supposed to get a thrill from a palm tree. It was just a tree. It could be a fir or an evergreen or an oak. She strove to find the tiny details that illuminated the vast differences between the rest of Los Angeleans and herself, and, especially lately, between herself and David. What was she trying to convince herself of, with this little game? Anyone scrutinized in this way would seem hopelessly strange. When she finally reached the vantage point outside David’s office, she became entranced with watching him look intently at his computer screen. She watched him take a sip of tea (she drank coffee and didn’t even understand tea), his eyes not wavering from the blue-green light of the screen, her eyes not wavering from him.

She entered the kitchen and saw that David had washed all the dishes. He was very tidy. She has had her moments, but they’ve been unpredictable and, generally, David has kept things in order. He stepped into the kitchen when she opened the refrigerator.

“How was work?” he asked. She shrugged and opened a cardboard to-go container. She ate in front of the open refrigerator. “Hey,” he said, “you want to order a movie?” She nodded,chewing, and he approached her. He put his hand on her shoulder. “I’m not getting anywhere on these rewrites. I’m sick of it.” David was finishing a tenth rewrite of a script about white, rural, Luddite, fundamentalist terrorists who plan to blow up the White House.

“It’s timely” was all he would really say about it. Whenever she described the plot as being about white, rural, Luddite, fundamentalist terrorists, he corrected her. “It’s not about the terrorists. It’s about the hero who thwarts them.” But he often didn’t say more than that. He was weary of it, as he was weary of all the scripts he wrote and rewrote. When she first met him he was an art history student. He was someone who used to trace his fingertips, with a dreamy shyness, along the hollow at the back of her knee.

“I’m sorry,” she said, mouth full of moo shu pork. It was actually all vegetarian. Almost moo shu pork. It was made of seitan.

“Isn’t that what they use to make wicker chairs?” David joked. It was soba and tempeh and seitan. Fibrous mystery food from the East. Almost tasted like real food, faux moo shu pork. She spooned it in. She had the postcoital munchies. She had the postmeandering famishes. Wretched, she thought, and ravenous.

“You know, we could actually eat dinner,” he said.

“I plan to,” she said, still chewing. Mina could eat a tremendous amount of food. She really enjoyed eating. Also, it felt vaguely defiant. So anti-Lorene. A woman of appetites. She laughed at the young waitresses/actresses working at the restaurants, watching them control their eating, fasting and constantly rebuilding their castles of deprivation. They had neophyte eating disorders. Hers was so elaborated, so long contemplated,that it full-circled to the appearance of a normative eating pattern. Yes, a retro affectation — a woman who eats. That kind of self-obsession was an art, a silent, pure art performed and appreciated only by one’s self. She wasn’t defiant enough to be fat, though. There was a little fullness around the hips, a smoothing of edges that had occurred over the last two or three years. Over-twenty-five metabolic slowing. The inevitable decline begun. But of late, of Max, she liked this softness around the hips. It felt sexy somehow. A concession to the immoderate and sensual. Female and decadent, even. She planned, at some liberated later point, to be able to romanticize her fat, fetishize it. But then there was cellulite. Then there was the drooping of large breasts. Sagging. Technically called ptosis. It was a syndrome, a medical problem to be fixed, don’t you know. A pathology, surely. The pencil test. If you placed a pencil under your breast and it stayed there, if the leaning, sagging breast actually held the pencil there, you failed the pencil test. Fallen buttocks, too. Stretch marks. Lapsed uterus, for God’s sake.

Mina stopped eating.

Of course, there was always Dr. Mencer, Lorene’s plastic surgeon. The pencil test, what sadistic misogynist came up with that one? But it could be fixed, nothing was irrevocable. All was curable. Good old Dr. Mencer.

She ate another mouthful.

“I suppose we could order in,” David said. She nodded. “Sushi,” he said.

“I’m bored — in a deep, profound, practically hysterical way — with sushi,” Mina said, “and besides, they give you the dregs for to-go orders.”

“They do not. It’s the same sushi.”

“Dregs. Ends. The unlucky pieces. Unwanted, bad luck, cat food pieces.”

“That’s in your head,” David said. Mina made a mental note that David needed to be drunk to go down on her, but he’d eat sushi from three days ago. He’d eat it warm and wilted, he’d eat it from Super Sushi Surprise if he had to.

“It’s yesterday’s. The edges are curled. It’s salmonella and mercury drenched. It’s a petri dish. It’s a penicillin experiment,” she said.

“Oh, stop. You don’t get salmonella from fish.”

“Well, then trichinosis. Or trignomisis. The trich,” she said, “didn’t you hear about the Brentwood housewife who got herpes from a piece of slightly used anago? A piece of previously owned maguro?”

“I heard it was genital warts. From take-out sushi.”

“Right,” she said.

“Pizza, okay.”

“I’ll order it,” Mina said. She pulled open the drawer by the phone. It was full of paper menus.

“Hey, you got some mail today,” David said from the bathroom.

“I did?”

“I almost forgot. A postcard. It’s by the phone,” he shouted. She listened to the shower running. He took showers, she took baths. She noted that, repeating it to herself. Added it to the list compiled for some unknown purpose. He takes showers. Tea. Ignores palm trees. He’s tidy. He drives.

The postcard was a photo of the Andalusian countryside. The card said only one word, “LEFT,” in block capital letters and was unsigned. The postmark was San Francisco.

David appeared, a towel jauntily tied around his hips. Minaadmired his body, damp, tan, and lean, and the hair on his legs and arms and chest in artful wet swirls. The towel tied around the hips. The way the drops of water found all his hollows.

“Who sent the card?” he said.

“Don’t know,” she said.

“It’s got a San Francisco postmark,” David said. David had checked the postmark. He was pondering her mail. She was almost touched, almost excited. She put her finger on his belly. Dragged her finger to his hipbone. The skin was damp and warm. She traced the outline of the hip to where it reached the towel. She could hear him exhale. She thought, I should, I should. She put her hands on his hips and angled them forward, toward her. He did nothing, he was pliant, and she didn’t look at him but bent from the waist to where the hair started to curl and leaned downward. She put her lips there. It felt soft and wet, and when she licked she could feel a trembly sort of movement. His hands were on her shoulders, and he started to pull her shirt up along her back as she bent into him. She grabbed his wrists. He let her. She held his hands out to his sides away from them both. She pushed the towel down with her face. She felt him looking down at her. She pulled her face back a little, closing her eyes, imagining what she looked like, her lips moving on his cock, her hair stranded on her jaw and forehead. She saw them both, her mouth attaining a sort of mesmerized rhythm, and the muscles in his legs and abdomen tightening. She heard his urgent breaths. Then she heard him sigh and some seconds later she felt him shiver. She thought of Max coming, earlier, and then she felt David come. No one should know these things about her. She wouldn’t let herself think about it. David held her for balance and then unwound. She was glad his body felt so heavy, glad being with Max madehim a body again, made him unfamiliar and sexy. He smiled at her, shaking his wet hair. Anyone, anyone , would find him appealing. He leaned to kiss her.