Victory Over Japan by Ellen Gilchrist

sky and covered with mist, poured a diffused light upon the bed. Rhoda sat up in the bed and shivered. Why did I do that with him? she thought. Why in the world did I do that? But I couldn’t help it, she decided. He’s so sophisticated and he’s so good-looking and he’s a wonderful driver and he plays a guitar. She moved her hands along her thighs, trying to remember exactly what it was they had done, trying to remember the details, wondering where she could find him in the morning.
    But Dudley had other plans for Rhoda in the morning. By noon she was on her way home in a chartered plane. Rhoda had never been on an airplane of any kind before, but she didn’t let on.
    â€œI’m thinking of starting a diary,” she was saying to the pilot, arranging her skirt so her knees would show. “A lot of unusual things have been happening to me lately. The boy I love is dying of cancer in Saint Louis. It’s very sad, but I have to put up with it. He wants me to write a lot of books and dedicate them to his memory.”
    The pilot didn’t seem to be paying much attention, so Rhoda gave up on him and went back into her own head.
    In her head Bob Rosen was alive after all. He was walking along a street in Greenwich Village and passed a bookstore with a window full of her books, many copies stacked in a pyramid with her picture on every cover. He recognized the photograph, ran into the bookstore, grabbed a book, opened it and saw the dedication. To Bob Rosen, Te Amo Forever, Rhoda .
    Then Bob Rosen, or maybe it was Johnny Hazard, or maybe this unfriendly pilot, stood there on that city street, looking up at the sky, holding the book against his chest, crying and broken-hearted because Rhoda was lost to him forever, this famous author, who could have been his, lost to him forever.
    Thirty years later Rhoda woke up in a hotel room in New York City. There was a letter lying on the floor where she had thrown it when she went to bed. She picked it up and read it again. Take my name off that book, the letter said. Imagine a girl with your advantages writing a book like that. Your mother is so ashamed of you .
    Goddamn you, Rhoda thought. Goddamn you to hell. She climbed back into the bed and pulled the pillows over her head. She lay there for a while feeling sorry for herself. Then she got up and walked across the room and pulled a legal pad out of a briefcase and started writing.
    Dear Father ,
    You take my name off those checks you send those television preachers and those goddamn right-wing politicians. That name has come to me from a hundred generations of men and women…also, in the future let my mother speak for herself about my work .
    Love ,
    Rhoda
    P.S. The slate was put there by the second law of thermodynamics. Some folks call it gravity. Other folks call it God .
    I guess it was the second law, she thought. It was the second law or the third law or something like that. She leaned back in the chair, looking at the ceiling. Maybe I’d better find out before I mail it.

The Lower Garden District Free Gravity Mule Blight or Rhoda, a Fable
    RHODA woke up dreaming. In the dream she was crushing the skulls of Jody’s sheepdogs. Or else she was crushing the skulls of Jody’s sisters. Or else she was crushing Jody’s skull. Jody was the husband she was leaving. Crunch, crunch, crunch went the skulls between her hands, beneath her heels.
    As the dream ended her father was taking her to the police station so she could turn herself in. The family was all over the place, weeping and wringing their hands. Her mother’s face was small and broken, peering down from the stairwell.
    She woke from the dream feeling wonderful, feeling purged of evil. She pulled on Jody’s old velour bathrobe and sat down at the dining room table to go over her lists. Getting a divorce was easy as pie. There was nothing to it. All you needed was money. All you needed for anything was money. Well, it was