Short Story

LOSING MARRIED WOMEN

by

Heather Fowler
 

I am an unrepentant harvester of other people's marriages. I have been told I have a disorder, which is to say, I do not feel, traveling through life on a blank page, skirting the voids and chasms, and sometimes I hear a voice, low and demeaning, which says, "You want to recant all your promises, but that is impossible. You have opened a vast box called Infidelity. It was not locked or heavy. It was a feather that stuck to your shoe. Because you open it again and again, your life is your fault."

I hush it quickly when another voice argues, "The infidelity is not yours--but hers, luminous her, the her you thought you might escape but never could. And then there was the him, the him that slept beside the her until the you: Sex was never the issue. Love was the issue--an absence becoming an issue, just as rapidly as a conversation gets intimate."

Katie was a bleeding gash her husband occasionally cauterized. They made their lives with monotony keeping house. She ached for something new. I stole in, invisible, as I always do. It is easy to steal a heart unguarded, as easy as opening an unlocked door. I watched her and touched her--expecting nothing. She was in her forties--her body, tight like twenty years earlier. She had ash blonde hair. She had purchased a facelift years ago.

I might have been anyone. A mailman, for example. A UPS delivery boy. Instead, I was a woman, living close enough to drink daytime daiquiris. She is what this is about. Katie--to say her name is to remember her.

She lived in a vast, open house beside Virginia Beach. All day, she shopped or called friends or, on special occasions, drank until she passed out on her Ethan Allen couch with her blahdeblah designer end table, near a blahdeblah telescope, in front of an open window. His name was Ed. Katie and Ed. A boring, hetero, upper-mid couple.

At one time, he plied her with romance, settled his hands deep in her heart and stirred it to motion. This soon stopped. I had readily considered their marriage abandoned by both before I even entered. When I met her, we simply shook hands. I said, "Hi, I'm your new neighbor."

She said, "Hello, I'm Katie Ford," with that way some people have of announcing their full names. Her palm was warm and dry. For many days, we talked from our balconies, and one day she said, "Come over and hang out. You busy?"

Of course not. "I'm looking for distractions," I said. "You?"

She said, "Let's go to the beach and swim."

That had already been the plan. I wore a one piece, swimmer's suit. She put on a white wrap and a two-piece, changing in her bedroom while I watched. I told her, "I'm gay, you know."

"I'm not homophobic," she said.

"Okay, just letting you know." My last lover had left me for what she called "an absence of true gayness." I refused to shave my hair and would not attend the women's meetings. I refused to let my armpits grow shaggy and learn the code gay people spoke. Is there such a thing as not gay enough? Sure I had enjoyed men. I had enjoyed women. I had decided to enjoy women more.

They did not beat me. They did not lie to me. Only on occasion, did they cheat, and usually then, over some trifle of affection I had forgotten to give. In fact, I did not care for people…or whether they entered or exited. I was a room in a dance-club, night after night, dazzling, stained with the smoke of cigars--hot bodies crushed against my wall, floor getting crowded. I kept no emotion close. All that remained was the bouquet of truculent voices and my mimicry. My smile looked sincere.

I felt, at times, like an old woman whose eyes watched a myriad of scenes with the same young woman, who was myself, as the star. Star, my own name. In deed and fact. My blood, at times, ran as cold as the Atlantic in December.

Katie and I played in the waves. She didn't fear the freeze. When the top of her bikini came loose, I swam and got it. When I brought it back, she said, "My fingers are cold. Will you put it on me?"

I stared at her rosebud nipples. I stared at her emaciated chest. Her ribs were visible through the surf. But I was bored with straight women who played games with their bodies: Touch me. Do you like me? I'm not gay though. Whatever.

I put the top on her like a bandage. She smiled. "Thanks," she said.

"Sure," I said, smiling back, my sincere smile.

Everyday afterwards she invited me over. One day, she had returned from a shopping trip, wearing a navy silk evening gown. The tag hung from the armpit. The neckline plunged. "I'm playing dress up," she said. "Wanna come in?"

She lifted her blonde mussed hair for me to undo the button in back. My fingers paused at the soft hair just beneath her scalp. I loosed the button. "Come in," she said, husky, with a sad undertone. "Sit on my bed. Stay awhile."

I am naturally silent. That's why my mother named me Star. A star twinkles, is quiet, draws the eye without sound. As I sat in her room, she told me about Ed and slid from the blue dress. She tried another on.

"He's just, well, he's obsessed with the business. He comes home, slumps into his chair and turns on the news. I usually have some kind of dinner ready, but he eats it from the couch. I don't doubt that he loves me, but sometimes, except a quick kiss before he goes off to sleep, I doubt he recognizes that someone else lives here. So I shop. I spend his overtime. It's mutually beneficial. After all, look at this dress! $400! Isn't it beautiful?" She spun around. The second dress had a series of crinolines that swished, pink organdy, the color of cotton candy and little girls.

"Yes," I said, but suddenly, out of the blue, wondered how I would react to poverty. Would my needs become emotions? These questions stirred me. And what if all of history suddenly evaporated? Not just mine, everyone's. What if there were no past? I voiced that thought aloud. "What if there were no past?"

She laughed, delighted. She stared at my voluptuous chest. "I get lonely," she said. "Do you have a lover?"

"No."

"How can you not?" she asked. "You are so pretty, Star. That long red hair. That delicate face. I can't imagine." She came closer and ran her fingers through my hair. I steeled myself. She was beautiful, but that did not appeal to me. I thought of the infinite coldness of the universe, of space, of the motion of a formless projectile, like a radio song, hurtling through it. "I don't want a lover," I said.

Her face fell. "I just feel lonely," she said, then began to cry.

"Shhh, Katie," I said, wrapping my arms around her (because that was what I was supposed to do). "You need to get through to Ed. That's all."

She did not go out to her patio for the next few days. She did not call. I began to take interest. Was she rejected? I showed up the next day with dahlias and a gift. She opened the door, faint hope in her eyes. "I'm sorry for being such a sap the other day," she said. "Come look at my new kitchen. It's not done yet, but tomorrow..." A workman stooped on her floor, laying down tile the color of blush. "I've been busy," she continued. "Come see the new closet."

I followed her into her bedroom. She had bought a new armoire, dark walnut, up against the wall. When we entered her bedroom, she closed the door. "Do you think I'm pretty?" she asked. "I mean, I know you're gay, so if you do--it's okay to tell me."

"You're pretty," I said. "But not my type." I handed her the box. Inside the box, was a piece of blown glass that looked like a full-bodied Italian woman, seemed warm due to its cinnamon color.

"Oh, it's so lovely," she said. "I'll put it in the kitchen. Let's see where it might go."

"Alright," I said, thinking: Sex can be destructive. Would I make love to her? I often looked at women's sexual organs, their rosy, lower lips and upjutting clits. Through this, I had visions of my own anatomy. Once determining a place for the glass, we strode back to the bedroom so she could change her clothes once again. "I think you're beautiful," she said then and, unexpectedly, came up and ground her mouth into mine. Her small arms had unexpected strength. I began to kiss her back. She did not pull away.

Her eyes dared me to stop, and she shook. This was obviously her first time with a woman.

"I don't like to get involved in these married things," I told her, lying shamelessly. These married things were always better. An affair with a married woman had no repercussions. She never gave herself, only the needy part. She gave sex without love, misguided sex, sex meant to punish someone else and please the new practitioner. I understood that. Her lips tasted like sage.

The first kiss was always delicious. A kiss is more than a kiss, a beautiful girl in a window, waving hello. A chance to be sensual. A kiss seals things or tears them apart. I love you. I love you not.

I did not look for these liaisons. They came unbidden, laid themselves at my feet like pigeons before hilltops of bread. I told her, "I should leave."

"No," she said. "Let's go shopping."

"Don't buy me anything," I said.

"Star," she said. "Don't be uptight."

On the way, in the car, I could tell she was pleased. She hummed a jaunty tune, her eyes glittered, and she lowered the top of the convertible so the wind would blow through her hair. She put on a pair of cat-eye glasses, and applied burnt orange lipstick. We walked through the mall, staring at everything. I could smell perfume a mile away. "Oooh," she said. "Let's try some on."

I watched her take the samples from the salespeople. She chatted casually. One salesgirl asked if I had smelled Lauder's newest scent.

"No," I said. "I have a scent I always wear." Perfidy, I joked in my head. Not Knowing, not L'Amour, not Tresor.

"Come on, Star!" Katie said. "Live a little."

I let her take my wrist and hold it. A small spritz was applied and was nauseating. Katie leaned in, smelled my open arm. "It's perfect!" she announced. "I'll take one of those too."

"For you?" I asked. "Don't buy anything for me."

"Of course, for me," Katie said, winking grandly at the others. On the way to the car, she said, "I don't think you're really gay."

I stopped and stared at her face. This accusation, heard so many times before, rankled in my head. "There's a time, Katie," I replied, "when there is no gay, or not gay. There is only happy or unhappy. Women have made me happier than men. I have my own money. I want for nothing. It's almost impossible to have money and know that someone loves you for who you are."

"Sounds lonely to me," Katie said.

"Better lonely, than used."

"I won't use you," she whispered. "I won't. I promise."

"I don't get lonely," I said, but we went to her house and made love. I did everything for her. She seemed at a loss for what to do, but by the fifth time this happened, she knew my body like the layout at Nieman's.

~

At home, afterwards, I began a series of randomly destructive acts. Glasses clattered into walls. Stacks of papers flew into the air. Pictures were ripped from their frames. I had done it again. If there were a projectile, hurtling through space, it might, from one angle, appear to stand still. If I were that projectile, I would maintain that illusion as long as possible.

Ed came home everyday at 7 p.m. After seven, I sat in my house, hoping he'd ignore her or go to bed early. Everything seemed normal. One day, instead of playing at the beach, or shopping, Katie and I went to a motel. "Why here?" I asked. "We could go to my house."

"Because we have to check in," she said. "I told Ed I'd be here tonight."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because I told him I was leaving. In case the lawyer calls. I won't have much money--but the alimony should be decent. We could go on vacation. We could have so much fun. He can't know too much about us before the settlement, though, so I came here." She wavered, unsure of herself, hovering between wanting one thing and something else.

"Does he know who I am?" I asked.

"No," she said. "He only knows I left him for a woman."

"Go home, Katie."

"No."

"Do you know who I am? Really? I can't make you happy."

"I think so," she said, with a small smile. "And you can."

I pictured her purchase of that sickly perfume. She had no idea what I wanted. "Go back to Ed," I said and pictured him crying in his soup, wracked up.

"He doesn't want me back," she said. "He told me: 'Go be a fucking faggot if you want to, but not on my money.'"

I cringed. I put my arms around her. She wept. While she wept, I couldn't help myself--I wanted escape. I thought about her life, and my life, and our lives, and the improbability that I would ever be enough. I thought of her, waking one morning to decide that I had not given her enough attention. My pulse raced.

"He said," she moaned, "That I would have to leave you and never see you again. I told him I couldn't."

"Katie, go back to him," I told her. "I'm not who you want." As I said this, I wondered why no one ever says, "You're not who I want." People always inverse it, just like no one ever says, "You can't complete me," but that's what they mean. What they really mean is, "You are just one speck of dust on my sleeve and I'm ready to brush it off." I loved her like a memory but was done with her.

Besides, it was never the "other" person who made a scene unbearable, always the unhappy housewife/neglected husband. A world of need was laid at my feet, her need for me to be everyone and everything that pleased her. I did not want to.

I kicked the burden away like a skipping stone. I stared in Katie's eyes as I watched who she thought I was change--and she inched back, but I was a breeze in a house of boredom, a come-hither draft that wrapped around others until they chilled. She had opened the door. She had gestured--come in. I came in. But now, she glared because she had chosen to change her own life?

I watched her eyes pulse like a kaleidoscope, shifting blue to black. Her eyes decided I was meaningless, that she had made a startling mistake. They decide to return to Ed. They decide to hate me. No, there was another resolution. None of this mattered--it was all a fantasy--some grim joke enacted for a lukewarm laugh. "Star," she said. "Do you want to make love? One last time?"

"No."

The door closed and I was gone. Literally. Figuratively. Perhaps she fought herself inside that room, reeling with embarrassment, deciding to call Ed. Perhaps not. But I kicked the feather from my shoe and raced into another series of illusions. These were my life. The scent of crushed flowers hung in the air outside the door. I followed that scent into the open afternoon. Losing married women was delicious--just beyond the sensation of losing yourself in a storm.

Beyond the parking lot, on the telephone wires, a single sparrow careened into a pair of sparrows. They fell awkwardly, flew up, and united, shaking out their wings. Possibly, they tended to each other--until ambushed by other interruptions, but the kamikaze bomber flew away, oblivious.

The other two returned to their previous position, preening.

~

"Hi, I'm Star," I said to the woman at the checkout.

"Hi, Star. I'm Glory." It was two in the afternoon, Wednesday, midday. She obviously had nothing important to do.

"You live around here?" I asked.

A diamond ring was plain on her finger, two carats at least. "Yes, yes I do."

"I live on Thistledown Court," I said. "The weather's nice, isn't it." I smiled my genuine smile.

She smiled back.

"I like to go swimming in the ocean on days like these…" I said. "Are you busy?"



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Heather Fowler received her M.A. in English and Creative Writing from Hollins University in May of 1997 and has recently relocated to her hometown San Diego, CA.

Her stories have been published or selected for publication in the following journals: artisan, a journal of craft (upcoming), Exquisite Corpse (May, 2001), The Barcelona Review (May, 2001), Quercus Review (May, 2001), Penumbra (May 2001), B & A New Fiction (Jan. 2001), Barbaric Yawp (Dec. 2000), Zoetrope All-Story Extra (June 2001, October and December 1999), and Mindkites (December 1999, and June 2000).

She worked as a Guest Editor for Zoetrope All-Story Extra in March and April of 2000. Her story “Slut” won third prize in the 2000 California Writer’s Conference in Monterey.

Her poetry has been published in various venues including: the Map of Austin Poetry, The Coast Highway Review, the Driftwood Highway 1999 Anthology, Joe's Journal, Best of the Beach 1998, The Publication, and the Cityworks Literary Anthology, Volume 6.

Please free to contact her at:fowlerhm@hotmail.com .

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