The Mother Garden by Robin Romm Page A

creeps up her inner calf and thigh, and disappears beneath her pleated skirt.
    Blithe hasn’t figured out that this is a dead-end job. She’s twenty-five and uses her government paychecks to buy manicures, lip gloss, and a wide variety of silk shirts. She keeps her plastic federal investigator badge on her desk, propped up like a holiday greeting, and bought the fanciest gold-embossed business cards—the ones with the federal seal that cost extra. All the guys in the office want to do her, but no one says it. They can’t say it. They work at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. That would be in direct conflict with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. You cannot discriminate on the basis of sex. If you want to fuck Blithe, you better want to fuck everyone, regardless of gender. You better want to fuck your stubborn wife in those baggy pants she refuses to take off and that terrible shapeless pink sweater.
    â€œYou want a mint?” Blithe asks, holding out a small tin. Then she sees it. “What is that?” she asks. “An egg?”
    â€œDon’t ask.”
    Blithe sucks on her mint and casts a dubious glance at the egg.
    Uri hates fluorescent lighting, preferring to work under a lamp in the shape of a goose, a present from his wife. Sometimes when Blithe comes in she leans over to touch it as if it might be alive.
    Now she asks, “Did the goose lay it?” Uri closes the document on his computer. “Nice smiley face, anyway,” she says. “Is it for lunch?”
    â€œI didn’t bring lunch,” Uri says, rolling his chair back. This segues into a conversation about good lunch spots in the area, then into a plan. They eat at the pasta shop a block away. Blithe orders a salad and eats demurely. When he casts his eyes toward his pasta, he can glimpse a tiny bit of black lace through a gap in her shirt buttons. He allows himself to imagine her breasts, freed from their lacy harness. Her nipples would probably be light in color, girlish. She’d be sweating, but only slightly, only enough to make her gleam. Then a tomato slides off Blithe’s fork and lands on her skirt.
    â€œOh damn,” she says, picking it up with her fingernails. “I’m such a slob.”
    Blithe’s originally from Atlanta. She’s got a faint southern lilt that’s immediately endearing. She tells him about her new apartment—a studio, small but just redone. She mentions the man she went out with a few times who turned out to be gay. “He was just double checking . That’s what he said, I swear.” Recently she’d broken things off with another man she met at a party who seemed perfect, an attorney at a big firm downtown. He had a cabin up at Tahoe and a purebred weimaraner that brought him his newspaper in the morning. “His wife left him for a transsexual—that’s the right term for someone who’s in the process of changing, right? Before I moved here I didn’t know anything about this stuff. Anyway. He had anger issues. One time his dog peed in the hall and he lost it—hit it over and over and over again with the newspaper until the dog was just quivering.” She presses a glass of water against her cheek and it leaves a small wet spot. “This city’s a joke for regular girls.” Blithe sets her fork down and clasps her hands in her lap. She pushes her feet against the floor so the chair tips back. “You must get tired of all the ladies chasing you around,” she says. She lets the chair slam back to the ground and leans forward so that her face is close to his. Her eyes flash.

    India is meditating when he comes home. The dark living room feels overly warm. She’s on a folded blanket, her dark hair frizzing in a triangular shape around her head. Slowly she turns, stretches. They have a pact that he won’t talk to her for ten minutes after “her quiet.” Usually he doesn’t