Verge: Stories

A WOMAN SIGNIFYING

You don’t see cast-iron radiators much anymore, the old-fashioned kind. People have learned to be careful around them. But her building was old. She stared at the radiator’s vertical lines and thought about old obsolete things. She took a deep breath, then touched her cheek to the radiator for three long seconds. It was a perfectly calm gesture, seemingly disaffected but deliberate all the same. “One, two, three,” she said, breathing out with each word. One, two three: The heat singed silent through the layers of her skin, through the fleshy part of her cheek.

When she had finally thought of it, how proud she’d been. It had happened in the time it takes to scald a wrist cooking bacon. They’d been standing in the kitchen, she’d been making them breakfast, he’d said, “I’ll be working late again tonight, don’t wait up for me,” and she could feel her own ass sag, her love handles bulge, her chin develop a double; she could feel their sexlessness making mounds of her body like biscuits.

What patience she had! What brave, glorious, undaunted patience. And even then she had realized it would take patience—patience to sit in front of the hot metal, patience to draw her face near, and nearer even as the heat became evident, whispering toward her cheek. Patience at the moment itself, to do it right, to pull away slowly, for after all she did not want to rip half her face off and leave it staring back at her from the radiator. She wanted a controlled effort, a specific result. Only a wound, a perfect wound. She was absolutely confident at the idea, because what was this patience compared to her life? Three small seconds.

She winced or smiled as she peeled her cheek away. Burned, sweet flesh tickled her nostrils. Her eyes welled, swam in their little sockets. When she could see properly again, she rose and staggered, flesh screaming, from the living room to the kitchen.

The first thing she did was pour herself a glass of vodka. The kind of glass one might fill with milk. She drank it down until the heat in her throat and chest challenged the fire in her right cheek, the fire filling the right side of her face now, making her nostril flare a bit, her lip quiver, her eye close. The vodka streamed down the center of her body, a streak of high voltage.

She thought of things her women friends had said to her over their scripted lunches: consolation, advice, admonishment. Come on, be serious, get a grip. You don’t really hate him, do you? Grow up! Be sensible, have some self-control. Maybe go on a diet—herbs and tofu. You’ll feel better. Change your hair. Your perfume. Your heels. Make something of your life. Sex isn’t everything, don’t be ridiculous. You are obsessing. You are playing the victim. You’re just being lazy. I wish I had your problem!

Or: Honey, what you need is a good fuck.

How do you tell women who wear fake nails and baby powder between their legs and order chicken salads with vinaigrette at linen-covered tables and try desperately to chew without smudging their lipstick that women must keep moving or die?

She walked around her living room holding her drink, feeling animated. Alive. Gesturing with her drink to the TV, the couch, the different objects in the room, yelling at everything and nothing.

“He’s not the only one who can play this game!” she shouted, confronting a lamp. “Fucker! Motherfucker!” She trudged back and forth across the carpet. “I hate you! I hate you! I’ve given you half of my life, you fucking bastard!” She brought the glass of vodka up to her mouth so hard it clanged against her teeth.

What advice was there for a woman’s epic anger when it was equaled in intensity only by need? The room swelled with shame and silence.

The now-cold pain in her cheek pierced straight through her skull. She thought maybe her right eye had swollen shut, or at any rate she could no longer open it. She went to the bathroom to have a look. On her way she realized this was all a little disgusting, the kind of story that would make the listener lean a little away from her. Not in public. Not so close. “Should we keep quiet?” she whispered to the bathroom door. “See where keeping quiet has gotten us.” Then she opened it and looked herself in the face.

That really is a beauty, she thought. The outer edge was deep red and crimped; a purplish welt rose on either side like mangled lips. In the center of that, a long, yellowish bubble of blistered skin like sea foam. An amazing wound. A well-thought-out, carefully executed wound. Kind of perfect.

By the time he gets home, she’ll be out already. By the time he gets home, she’ll have outlined her own eyes in black, added lashes in blue. By the time he gets home, she’ll be blushed and lipsticked, red as a Coca-Cola can. Push-up bra and Spanx. By the time he gets home, after she’s stared at the tools of the face for a long while, she’ll have decided on a gold-dust shadow, she’ll have traced a gleaming glow around the thing, ringed it in precious metal. By the time he gets home, she’ll be sitting in a bar with the most perfect wound imaginable. A symbol of it all, her face the word for it.