worthy of intense and unflinching self-analysis. I was just too tired to pursue it. Iâd muddle on, as I did through most of life, guided by a vague senseâmy personal codeâthat if I could stay a little farther from the things I dreaded and closer to the things I didnât hate, life might possibly, you never know, almost (these things happen) be okay.
Happiness. Possible side effects may include disappointment, recurring feelings of despair leading to possible long-term hopelessness. Some people report diarrhea and âcopper pennyâ breath while using this product. Call your physician if condition persists.
I saw the stack of greeting cards fanning out of her backpack before I sat down. It seemed odd. But I wouldnât have reached in and snatched them had she so much as nodded at me.
Acknowledgment, however meager, sometimes matters. Weâre only human. But she offered none. The girl with the shepherd ink kept herself wedged against the window, face pressed into dark glassâit was a night rideâignoring me completely.
Book Two
Women have a feeling that since they didnât make the rules, the rules have nothing to do with them.
DIANE JOHNSON
EIGHT
Youâre So Pretty When You Breathe Through Your Mouth
I did not know romance was in the air when I stepped aboard. But the more I looked at her, mouth-breathing, under a dark blue babushka pulled tight over thick black hair that plainly didnât want to stay in there, the more . . . I donât know how to put it, the more her face became beautiful underneath the wrapping. (Even though, feet to the fire, I couldnât say that Iâd really seen it.) Became everything I wanted before I even knew I wanted it. Choose your cliché.
I couldnât even tell you why, maybe it was FMDâFilm Noir Diseaseâ but I pegged her for a woman on the lam. I didnât even know if people still said âon the lam.â But she had that about her, whatever you call it. Running away. On a trip that wasnât planned. Maybe not entirely unexpectedâbut not planned.
There was something remarkable about her, but I couldnât place it at first. Then I realizedâshe was sucking her thumb. It was almost shocking. I thought of Carroll Baker in Baby Doll . Sleeping in a crib. Wrongly alluring in infantile sex-wear. Sweaty Eli Wallach having his way with her. Or did I dream the sex-wear and crib stuff? As if she saw me staring, she tugged her thumb out from between her teeth. This was when I realized she hadnât been sleeping, sheâd been reading. Face pressed into the bus window, over a paperback I couldnât make out. The cover was dark. Then I saw that it wasnât a book-book. It was a bound notebook. Not one of those moleskins, which everybody bought because they thought it turned them into Hemingway. But a generic brand. Its cover some kind of shiny fake. But big enough for her hand to disappear inside. So she could write without her seatmate knowing either what she was writing or that she was writing at all. My future friend did not acknowledge me, so I (quietly) rifled her bag. I wondered if she was âjournaling.â But she didnât look like somebody whoâd use that word. Unless she was mocking it.
The first card had a picture of a respectable suburban lady nailed to a crucifix on the front. Inside was GET OFF THE CROSS, WE NEED THE WOOD. Happy Motherâs Day! It was unsigned.
There were more like that. Theme cards. All unsigned. A bulldog on the end of a chain, snarling up at a mailman, said BOUNDARIES. Try some, just as an experiment . . . Another showed a meadow of wildflowers, in bloom, tinted blue. A barbed-wire fence cuts through the middle of the flowers. You call it a restraining order. I call it tough love . The last, another showstopper, had nothing on the cover but Marge Simpson, arms outspread. You canât get rid of the button-pushers, but you can get
Happiness. Possible side effects may include disappointment, recurring feelings of despair leading to possible long-term hopelessness. Some people report diarrhea and âcopper pennyâ breath while using this product. Call your physician if condition persists.
I saw the stack of greeting cards fanning out of her backpack before I sat down. It seemed odd. But I wouldnât have reached in and snatched them had she so much as nodded at me.
Acknowledgment, however meager, sometimes matters. Weâre only human. But she offered none. The girl with the shepherd ink kept herself wedged against the window, face pressed into dark glassâit was a night rideâignoring me completely.
Book Two
Women have a feeling that since they didnât make the rules, the rules have nothing to do with them.
DIANE JOHNSON
EIGHT
Youâre So Pretty When You Breathe Through Your Mouth
I did not know romance was in the air when I stepped aboard. But the more I looked at her, mouth-breathing, under a dark blue babushka pulled tight over thick black hair that plainly didnât want to stay in there, the more . . . I donât know how to put it, the more her face became beautiful underneath the wrapping. (Even though, feet to the fire, I couldnât say that Iâd really seen it.) Became everything I wanted before I even knew I wanted it. Choose your cliché.
I couldnât even tell you why, maybe it was FMDâFilm Noir Diseaseâ but I pegged her for a woman on the lam. I didnât even know if people still said âon the lam.â But she had that about her, whatever you call it. Running away. On a trip that wasnât planned. Maybe not entirely unexpectedâbut not planned.
There was something remarkable about her, but I couldnât place it at first. Then I realizedâshe was sucking her thumb. It was almost shocking. I thought of Carroll Baker in Baby Doll . Sleeping in a crib. Wrongly alluring in infantile sex-wear. Sweaty Eli Wallach having his way with her. Or did I dream the sex-wear and crib stuff? As if she saw me staring, she tugged her thumb out from between her teeth. This was when I realized she hadnât been sleeping, sheâd been reading. Face pressed into the bus window, over a paperback I couldnât make out. The cover was dark. Then I saw that it wasnât a book-book. It was a bound notebook. Not one of those moleskins, which everybody bought because they thought it turned them into Hemingway. But a generic brand. Its cover some kind of shiny fake. But big enough for her hand to disappear inside. So she could write without her seatmate knowing either what she was writing or that she was writing at all. My future friend did not acknowledge me, so I (quietly) rifled her bag. I wondered if she was âjournaling.â But she didnât look like somebody whoâd use that word. Unless she was mocking it.
The first card had a picture of a respectable suburban lady nailed to a crucifix on the front. Inside was GET OFF THE CROSS, WE NEED THE WOOD. Happy Motherâs Day! It was unsigned.
There were more like that. Theme cards. All unsigned. A bulldog on the end of a chain, snarling up at a mailman, said BOUNDARIES. Try some, just as an experiment . . . Another showed a meadow of wildflowers, in bloom, tinted blue. A barbed-wire fence cuts through the middle of the flowers. You call it a restraining order. I call it tough love . The last, another showstopper, had nothing on the cover but Marge Simpson, arms outspread. You canât get rid of the button-pushers, but you can get
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