Part One
In the Vagina
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âWhen I am pinned and wriggling on the wall . . .â
âT. S. Eliot, âThe Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrockâ
One
Wilson
2002
In a crappy condo in Kalamazoo, Wilson and his family slept. Wilsonâs wife, Katie, had chosen the placeâsheâd lived there with her son before they metâand at first, he found it charming. It was nice the way the pitched rooftops rose black against the evening sky, the way the boxy brick buildings glowed orange in the afternoon sun. But lately, with the winter days bleak and gray, what the neat rows of fourplexes resembled most was a military base. It was called the Reserve, and each street was named for a bottle of wine. Wilson and his family lived on Merlot Court. This, though, he only presumed, as the street sign had been missing since he met Katie. They had a horrible time ordering in pizza.
âMaybe we live on Mogen David Street, or Night Train Lane,â he said once, trying to be funny. And wasnât it funny? Only a couple of years earlier, before meeting Katie and promptly making two babies with her, he was a drunk. Now he lived, sober, in a wine cellar. Katie didnât like to talk about the drinking. She preferred to think of it as a momentary lapse rather than what he feared it wasâhis calling in life. Katie liked to talk about the condo. She hated the carpeting, wanted glass doors on the fireplace and new medicine cabinets in both bathrooms. âItâs a rental for Christâs sake,â he said, but she was adamant that they fix it up.
âItâs important,â she said. âWhere you live means something, itâs an echo of who you are on the inside.â
âThen Iâm a freaking eight-year-old girl.â He sighed, closing his eyes to the ballerina-pink walls surrounding him. After the wedding in Las Vegas the previous summer (the three kids in tow), and before she let him move in, Katie made him paint. He sometimes wondered if she wouldâve agreed to any of itâthe marriage, the living togetherâif he hadnât. She was stubborn and self-sufficient. What did she need with a clown like him?
Maybe it was the ring. Would she have become his wife without the antique blue-diamond and platinum ring? Every time he saw it, blazing like a blue bumblebee on her pretty hand, he felt sick.
âYouâre supposed to spend six monthsâ salary,â sheâd reminded him. âDonât forget, itâs forever.â Since his six-month âsalaryâ as a graduate assistant at Midwestern came to a little under five hundred bucks, heâd bought the ring on credit. When his office mate, the imposing Dr. Gloria Gold, laughed meanly and told him that you traditionally spent only two monthsâ salary, Wilson had felt duped. How would he ever pay it off? He couldnât even think of their collective student-loan debt of nearly ninety grand. And it wasnât like they were neurosurgeons. They were English majors, professional students with seven degrees between themâeight if you counted Katieâs cosmetology âdegree,â which he didnâtâwho found it easier to start yet another program than to find a job.
Painting the marital homeâpermission secured from managementâwas a rite of passage, a way for him to make his presence known in the family, and a way for Katie to let go of her fierce single motherhood. When heâd finally finished, after her silent and thorough inspectionââIs that a smear on the ceiling? Is it supposed to be bumpy here?ââsheâd announced that she loved it. âSoft and pink on the inside, spiny brick on the outside, and here we are, safe as baby pearls,â sheâd cried, hugging him hard.
âA baby pearl,â he said, annoyed. âJust what Iâve always wanted to be.â After weeks of backbreaking work, he realized heâd created a vagina, a great pink yawning vagina, in which to crouch humbly for the rest of his life. What had he done? Wasnât it enough to be the happy visiting dad, the âhousehold imp of fun,â as Katie called it, and leave the tough stuff to her? But even as he thought longingly of his former homes, a quiet lake-view apartment, and then a rented basement in Vicksburg with red velvet walls, a six-foot-tall stuffed bunny that often startled him, and a parade of shifty roommates, he knew it wasnât enough. The family heâd createdâfour-year-old Paul, baby Rose, and Katieâs eight-year-old, Jakeâdeserved his full surrender.
Katie, not liking his sarcasm, had ignored him the rest of the night. And that was it: He was in. He was a family man, deputy to Katieâs sheriff, father of three, and co-owner of the beloved and elderly dog, Lovely. Who could forget Lovely? He was never to forget Lovely when doling out treats or love. If he did, Katie wouldnât sleep with him for a week. Withholding sex was one of the few ways in which she was a typical female. In other ways, she was odd.
âIn a fabulous way,â sheâd add. She talked to herself, wore colors that didnât match, and was far too sensitive about her living conditions. Everything had to be warm and cozy and sweet like a fucking Barbie doll dream house. As a kid sheâd wanted to live in a bottle like the genie on I Dream of Jeannie, and as he saw it, her wish had come true. Their home was alive with oversized pillows and throws and rugs, all in wild dizzying colorsâlemon yellow and fuchsia and her favorite battery-acid greenâcolors that made his heart beat fast and spots swim before his eyes.
In the bedroom, batik fabric rippled on the walls and swooped from the ceiling, and there were too many goddamn blankets on the bed. Their mattress on the floor wasnât a ânestâ as Katie claimed. With the kids and the dog and the unbelievably heavy Korean blanketsâremnants of Jakeâs hippie dad, no lessâit was a kind of hell.
There, heâd said it. Hell. They warned you not to date in the first year of sobriety. He now understood that there was a reason for this, and that once again, he was not the exception to the rule. As terrifying as his life seemed, however, he slept peacefully. Flat on his back in his boxers, his hands folded on his stomach, he was sternly handsome, his body a perfect sculpture, inviting touch. Yet he liked to think of himself as untouchable, existing somehow apart from the ignorant culture that surrounded him in Kalamazoo, the Midwest, maybe the entire Western world. He never watched TV except for sports or Cops. He grumbled when Katie bought the kids Happy Meals, and he made fun of her when she read People magazine.
At thirty-three, he had a hard time believing in life. Even as a kid, he was the bad party guest, the jerk that refused to wear the pointed paper hat and sulked in the corner while the other kids, the normal ones, enjoyed a rousing game of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. Heâd thought about counseling, but it went against his belief that all answers to life could be found in literature. Katie was a habitual counselee. Sheâd gone, off and on, for nearly half her life. She liked to chat and communicate and reveal every secret part of herself whereas he was the opposite. Half the time he didnât know who he was or what he was feeling. This made Katie furious.
When they first datedâthose two magical weeks before he got her pregnantâshe used to watch him sleep, sometimes nudging him awake to comment on his full pretty lips, his blond curls, his utter peacefulness. One night after they married, however, things changed. âI have no idea who you are,â she said, poking him hard in the ribs and making him yelp. âDo you ever cry? Do you have nightmares? Do you even dream?â There was an edge to her voice, and he realized that, beneath her vague cheeriness, she felt the same as he did, that theyâd made a terrible mistake and were trapped.
What had brought them to the king-sized mattress on the floor of the overpriced condo in Kalamazoo? He was a good Midwestern boy. She was a single mom from the West Coast, a free spirit, heâd thought, although he quickly discovered how wrong he was. Neither liked condoms, and one or both were incredibly fertile. They had two babies in less than two years, and that was it, their lives were set.
âYou are not going to believe this,â Katie said the day she discovered she was pregnant again, with Rose, their youngest. Her words had chilled him. Heâd thought he was going to pass out, and could only stare as she squatted on the toilet, holding out the test stick with a nervous smile. It wasnât that he didnât love the kids. He did. It just seemed that, like in the John Lennon song, life had happened while he was busy making other plans.
âIâm perfectly human, the same as you,â heâd assured her the night she jabbed him so rudely awake. Heâd wrapped her in his arms and pulled the covers over her shoulders. Beyond being human, he didnât know. Sensitive genius that he was, his moods ranged from nervous to enraged and back again, with occasional uneasy stops at happiness. It was during these respitesâwhen he touched baby Roseâs funny pointed ears, or watched Paul crayon wildly on the awful pink wallsâthat he felt as if something inside, something quiet and good, was awake for the first time since he was a kid.
Katie slept beside him, curled around the baby, her bottom in her big, white maternity underwear pressed into his side. She looked lost, even in sleep. Her long red hair hung in her face, and her body in the unattractive underwear made him sad. It was pretty, curvy and pale and sexy, but she sometimes seemed slumped in the middle, as if she were very tired. Her arms and legs were long and thin and were always entwining thingsâbabies and chair legs, themselves when she did yoga, his back when they used to have sexâbut she hunched over her full breasts, as if no one had ever told her to stand up straight. This, too, ma...