Sputterpub's Blog

Laura is certain she was molested when she was very young. She doesn’t remember it but she can imagine it. She thinks her deepest fantasies are proof of it.

It’s like her dog and mail carriers. She adopted Logan when he was a year old; his fears were already formed. She acquired him from her friend Karen’s youngest and least responsible brother, and William has told her the dog has no reason to hate postmen. But Laura knows he must have been maced. He’s a people-loving animal who goes berserk whenever he sees the postal uniform or cart.

Other dogs didn’t teach hers to hate mailmen. His antipathy has to be founded on experience. In the same way, those images of Laura’s violation at the hands of a large woman: they have to come from somewhere. Laura’s straight. Totally. Her mother isn’t big. But she envisions a tall woman, a 250-pound woman, undressing a struggling little girl. The image is stimulating. Laura admits that. But she doesn’t want the experience.

She’s straight. She wants a man. She really does; it’s been awhile now. Laura doesn’t think she wants a marital-type relationship – she won’t sign up for one of those introduction services – but she sits in her study and she thinks about sex. Good old heterosexual sex. She sits in her study and wonders.

She has a walk scheduled today with her friend Karen, who happens to be a 250-pound gay woman. All of Karen’s lovers have been straight except when they were with her. She has been alone for several years now. Sometimes Karen looks at Laura that way, but she’s never spoken or acted on it. That’s a good thing, because Laura would not be receptive. Which makes Laura’s fantasy all the more weird.

Driving east this morning, Karen looks at the rising sun through an arc of streaks on her windshield; she hates this. She paid extra for so-called detailing, and apparently the car people couldn’t even get the glass clean. Typical. Another situation trying to needle her.

That’s what she liked about Disneyland: no streaky glass. Everything was orderly and in its place. The way all life should be.

Her friend Laura disagrees. First Laura was shocked to learn Karen had never been to the place. Then she went on about how great it is, except she complained about what she called subtle forms of crowd control. Laura told Karen about going there with her mother and her kids, and how her mom couldn’t find a place to buy chewing gum. That was owing to Disney’s ban of all sales of the stuff on his property, because it’s so hard to pick off the pavement. Laura thought that was too controlling. But Karen wishes they’d ban gum sales universally. Karen wishes everywhere were as clean and orderly.

She retches a grunt as she spots the squashed bug in the corner of her windshield. The incompetent car-washers couldn’t even scrape off all the dead bugs! This one is big. It looks like it was one of those dust-colored beetle things. She doesn’t want to deal with it.

Laura will take care of it, if Karen asks her to. That’s the thing about Earth signs, Karen notes; they don’t mind dealing with the dirt and gore. It’s funny how Laura usually seems so feminine to her, but when it comes to taking care of bugs or street people, Laura makes Karen feel femme.

Laura. No, Karen decides. She’s not going to go there. She doesn’t want to mess up their friendship, the way she did with Vickie when she came on to her. Karen can’t seem to get her timing right any more.

Or maybe it’s that she was never the initiator before Vickie. Maybe she just has to be the – what? recipient? Odd thought…

For now, Karen figures she’ll just stay with her apartment, her car, her sole proprietorship business. She doesn’t need the hassles of home ownership, let alone the labors of a relationship. She’s in a place where if something goes wrong, she wants to be able to call someone to fix it. She doesn’t want to have to deal with it herself. She’s got the money.

For now, Karen will let vague fantasies wash over her. Laura arranged on her couch… not. As likely to be a guy arranging Karen. What the hell, she thinks as she exits the freeway. She’s never tried a man.

Laura is making coffee when Karen arrives. She already has three shots of espresso in her cup and she’s about to foam skim milk to create cappuccino. Karen declines a cup but begs Laura to clear the bug off her windshield. The two of them visit Karen’s parked car, and Laura uses a square of paper towel as the shroud for what must have been an impressive beetle. The phrase “timidly fastidious” rolls around in her head while she wipes the vestiges of bug blood off the windshield glass. Sometimes Karen surprises her with her delicacy and squeamishness. The woman always wears trousers, sits like a trucker and walks like a fully-equipped cop, but she’s scared of bugs and fingernail dirt and avoids most bodily fluids. She’s like a bulldyke channeling a limp-wristed faggot channeling a girly-girl; somehow three layers of prototypical and unattractive characteristics combine to describe an individual Laura likes, loves, and doesn’t want as a mate. She met Karen years ago, back when Karen’s brother William worked at the day care center Laura used for her son. They get together every other month or so for a meal.

Laura is 60 but she has a large-featured face and she exercises an hour or more a day, so she looks about 53. She’s five and a half feet tall and her curly hair is well-colored a medium chestnut. She has good posture. She’s spent a lot of time in her room in the years since her divorce. She says it has been a time of tremendous emotional growth. It hasn’t been a time for meeting many people.

Karen is the same height as Laura but she weighs much more, so she appears nearly as wide as she is high. She’s 56. She maintains her hair at almost the same reddish tone it was before she turned gray, and she keeps it short and blows it dry. Since she is very private and hasn’t been in a relationship for a long time, almost no one other than her hairstylist knows how wavy it really is. The only exercise Karen gets is the occasional walk with Laura or one of the few other people with whom she will spend any time. Most of her hours go to building her Internet business. She approaches the project like it’s a holy mission. She studies astrology like it’s a religion. She spends her time in her apartment, fingertips on her keyboard and eyes on her new flat screen, or astrology book in hand.

The women settle in the atrium before their walk. Laura sips cooling cappuccino and Karen starts talking about her brother William.

“I can’t figure him out,” she begins. “I mean, he and Jess have been an item for over a year now, but I still don’t believe it. And I’m starting to wonder if she does.”

“What does that mean?”

“Oh, I had dinner with them the other night. They looked like a couple – him tall and dark and I think handsome and her blonde and not-fat – but I swear they never touched or even looked at one another. He as usual made free with her plate (Jess is a strange eater. She rarely finishes her plate. She seems to eat very slowly when the food is brought to her, and then pick up speed about when we finish ours. She covers her mouth with her hand – unmanicured nails pointing up and facing outward – even before she starts to talk. It’s weird.) They both drank easily. I think she’d had four by the time we left.

“Anyway, William walked ahead of us with his cigarette. Jess smokes more than he does, but she wasn’t right then. I commented that they’d been together for awhile now.

“She grinned at that. She said, ‘I think William knows me better than my sister does. I swear he’s my best friend. I really like being with him. And you know what I like most about him?’ (Before I could guess she continued). ‘How much he loves and respects his mother. Your mother. His consideration about her is the best indication of what a fine person he is.’

“‘And all this from a guy who isn’t gay!’ I commented then. Jess said ‘Oh I don’t know about that. He’s a little light in the (word I didn’t catch) department.’”

Karen is interrupted by Logan. She hadn’t been aware of the dog’s presence, but suddenly he’s running toward the front door, back hair up and tail down, barking and snarling like a fiend. Logan is a sweet retriever/shepard mix; Karen had never seen him attack the door like this.

“The mail must be here,” Laura commented. “It’s early.”

“Does Logan always…”

“Oh yeah. He’s been like this since I acquired him. He isn’t the best friend of the garbage man, but he goes ballistic about mailcarriers. Time to walk?”

Karen agrees. Laura takes her coffee cup to the sink while Karen uses the bathroom. They loop the leash around Logan’s neck and head south, away from the mail delivery route.

“So you think William and Jess aren’t doing it?”

“I think William’s gay.”

“But you think everyone’s gay.”

“Not everyone,” Karen asserts, poking Laura with her elbow. “But look at my brother. He’s had girlfriends now and then, but only when they chose him. It sounds like he’s usually so inebriated at the end of an evening that he just passes out in bed. He’s almost too close to his long-time best friend, and Cliff is still single too. Hell, Cliff still lives with his mother! These guys are now 44.”

“I thought Cliff had his own place.”

“It’s a separate floor and it has a private entrance, but it’s his mother’s house. He doesn’t pay rent or have a kitchen.”

“Maybe William’s an asexual. I read about them a few months ago. A new subset of human sexuality whose members are not interested in physical intimacy. They can fall in love, feel romance, definitely have an orientation toward same, different, or both genders, but they just don’t want to do it.”

Karen looks skeptical.

“No. Really. Consider my friend James. He’s not into watching sports as much as cooking, he smiles so readily he almost simpers, and he doesn’t project any machismo at all.”

“Kind of like William…”

“Yeah, and some people who know him conjecture that he’s gay.”

“But he was married.”

Karen looked archly at her friend’s words. “Like that’s a way to tell? He and Sharon were more like business partners than romantic mates. And they didn’t produce offspring, did they? I’ve gotten to know him pretty well since her death, what with the dinners and opera outings. Not only has he never come on to me or flirted, but he has zero sexual presence. I think he’s an asexual person.”

“Hmmm.”

Karen’s murmur ends the subject. They walk on in silence for half a block. Then Logan squats to shit and Laura pulls the plastic bag out of her pocket. Conversation resumes with walking.

“I wonder what Jess gets out of the relationship. Or William, for that matter.”

“C’mon, Karen. At the least, they get parental acceptance. I know your mother, and I love her, but I doubt that she’d welcome the news that William isn’t what she considers ‘normal.’ Anyway I’m pretty sure that’s what William thinks. As for Jess, didn’t you tell me she’s from conservative people?”

“Yeah. Born and raised in Oakland, but racist and fearful. Her dad’s a cop, Italian and Catholic. Her mother’s Irish Catholic.”

“Wow – that’s a offspringal challenge. Is that a word? I’m looking for the adjectival form of ‘child.’ You know: like the opposite of ‘parental.’”

Karen says, “I can’t figure Jess out. She has the lowest self-esteem of any person I’ve ever known. She has fears about incidents that have never happened to her or anyone she knows. She cries at any critical comment. She readily declares hatred for what we consider minor annoyances, like a rude bike commuter. I don’t know what her parents did to her.”

“Hold on. She’s 44! You can’t blame her parents.”

“Tell me about it. But Jess’s self-esteem issues are so profound that they really do invite you to look for a cause. It’s like there’s fossil evidence of abuse that you just can’t ignore.”

“I couldn’t do it,” Laura declares. “I’d have enough trouble living with anyone, but without sex and romance and good hugs… there’s insufficient payoff to make the effort worth it.”

“We’re dangerously close to agreement,” Karen says. Both women laugh and get on to other subjects.

And they’ll be agreeing again, but with more of an edge, in one month. That’s how long it will take for Karen to acquire Jess. It will start in four days, at a family dinner her mother will cook, attended by Karen, Laura, William, and Jess. William will be particularly attentive to his mother that evening, matching her smile for smile and almost simpering himself, and Jess will find his big sister more companionable. That occasion will lead to a lunch filled with significant words and arresting glances.

Jess and William will remain friends, but less so. It will turn out that Jess requires sex in her life. She’ll be happier, but she won’t be more self-confident. She’ll continue fearful. She won’t figure out why.

You’d think I would have it figured out by now. I’m a bright person, very observant, and I’ve been studying two couples for twenty years. I ought to be able to make wise statements about their marriages. But the more I watch them, the more they resist simplification.

It’s true my study hasn’t been continuous. There were long periods in my partner Pat’s marriage that were too boring to discuss, too unstimulating to invite any contemplation. And Jeff and I have had a sporadic love affair, eighteen month seminars every seven to nine years, so my examination of his and Vickie’s union has been selective. I guess I can say I’ve watched John and Pat when they were doing something (I’m like a sociological lizard who only sees what moves), and Jeff and Vickie when he and I were doing something (I had to. He made those calls in front of me. He talked to me about the boredom).

I’m accustomed to observing four interactors. My parents had me and then identical twin brothers; Mom and Dad shared a room and made one pair, and Gary and Greg shared a room and made another. Even now: each of my brothers is married and I’m not, so when we get the family together it’s them and their wives, plus me. But the marriages I notice most often, the ones that keep getting in my face, are the mayonnaise mating of my partner Pat with her lumpy husband John, and the lines of lies strung between my lover Jeff and his wife Vickie. Now those four have met. Now my net narrows.

They’re all of an age. I was born in early 1950; they are five to seven years older and not really part of the post-war boom. They live in the suburbs, and the two I don’t know well, Pat’s husband and Jeff’s wife, are heavily involved respectively in Boy and Girl Scouts, so it’s probably inevitable that they would meet, and maybe not improbable that they’d be friends.

Pat’s my junior partner although I’m five years her junior. We are management consultants with a specialty in small business; we help one- to twenty-person firms secure the structures and/or services that will enable them to operate smoothly. I get all the business and do ninety percent of the consulting, but I need Pat to write up my recommendations and to follow through and make sure they’re implemented.

I remember her twenty years ago. She and John were relative newlyweds; I was early into my first marriage. She was cute, frisky, fiercely agnostic. She’s about five foot three and small-boned; she had a great figure then. Dainty size five feet, slim ankles, shapely legs, generous breasts for her narrow frame. Her face wasn’t beautiful but she had thick dark-blonde hair with bounce to it and freckles across her upturned nose; Pat was cute. She had a number of lovers for someone born in 1945. She married John partly because the sex was so good. She even had a few affairs in those early marital times before kids, but she’s been into the community church and monogamy and scouts since she became a mom nineteen years ago.

She still has the good hair and the small feet, but now her breasts ride low and her hips are wide. Her fingernails have ridges and appear chalked. The freckles hide her wrinkles but the glasses hide her eyes.

Pat gave up sexual gratification years ago, along with high heels. She brags that her husband hasn’t slowed down (it’s that Italian blood, she habitually conjectures, referring to his one-sixteenth Sicilian genes and his tendency to initiate intercourse or fellatio about once a week). She’s happy to accommodate him; she considers it basic marital maintenance. She’s always needed his hand or mouth to achieve orgasm herself, but she’s less willing now to give it the time needed. Her orgasms aren’t as deep or rolling any more, not even those she does herself Tuesday or Thursday mornings when John leaves their bed early to work out in the basement, or Wednesday nights when he plays cards with the guys. Most of the time now she’d rather receive John in the morning, quick and hard. He kind of reminds her of himself young then. She can almost get off on that.

As for John, what do I know about John? He too was born in 1945. He’s of medium height, was always a bit chubby and is now fat. Besides the smidgeon of Italian DNA, he’s otherwise a WASP. Pat told me he was a randy boy: fathered two kids on two different girlfriends and even briefly married one of them. She said he settled down when he met her, and maybe he did. But his self employment seems to take him to bars and coffee shops a lot, and I’ll never forget the last time I socialized with them, nearly a year ago, for Pat’s birthday. A dozen and a half of us for five hours in a good restaurant. When we hugged goodbye, John reached down and very firmly very unmistakably squeezed the left cheek of my ass. I backed out of that hug and didn’t look up at him but I could feel his eyes trying to get down into mine.

Pat and John have two kids, an overweight immature nineteen year old daughter and an overweight immature fifteen year old son. They’re raising these kids on the other side of the hills, in the suburbs, where everyone sleeps. The family is into scouting and their church. In these things they parallel Jeff and Vickie.

Jeff and I have been lovers three times before. I don’t mean on three occasions; I mean three separate love affairs. The first time was twenty-one years ago, when I was new to the extramarital game and he wasn’t. He already had an established pattern of cheating on Vickie, although he spoke well of her. He’s become less complimentary with each affair. Now he complains.

Our second time started twelve years ago. We hadn’t seen each other for seven years after he broke us up the first time. Not that we were avoiding each other: our paths just didn’t cross. When we accidentally re-met, we rekindled for awhile. But I had already started a relationship with the man who was going to be my second husband, so I broke it off with Jeff after a year. And he moved out of the area.

He and his family returned five years ago, and we had brief but intense fun before his wife got the calls from a bitter ex-girlfriend. This happened at a time when Jeff was in professional crisis; he couldn’t tolerate the idea of his marriage coming apart too. He straightened up fast, lied as much as he deemed necessary to Vickie, and started to behave. Jeff was good for five years. He said it wasn’t that hard. He’s no longer restless like he used to be. That’s what always got him into trouble, that restless need to leave the house, and when he left the house, he usually ended up at a bar, where he’d get to talking to a woman, and one thing would lead to another. He’d finally reached a time in his life when it was possible for him to just stay home at night. Not get into trouble.

He was good for five years. He was like a survivor of a serious health issue: dealing first with doom and then with remedy-induced euphoria, loving life and vowing to live it better, returning slowly to the habits of careless existence, getting bored, forgetting. He was like a diet-breaker when he called me: just to check in, just to check me out, he told himself… like I’ve sometimes quickly eaten something I didn’t even want, just to blow the day, so I could then accept my lapse and settle into a nighttime binge.

We talked about it before we took my clothes off again. After five years of good behavior, why? I hadn’t met Vickie then, but I knew about her. I knew she’s a very good woman, nice, not stupid. I’d seen a few pictures; I knew she was lovely. She certainly has treated Jeff well. And their kids, the same genders and ages as Pat’s and John’s, are attractive, socially ept, well-raised. By Vickie, of course: Jeff was rarely emotionally present.

He didn’t have an answer to the question. He gave me a perfect look of chagrin and he told me he was attracted to me. But Jeff finds women attractive.

I think it’s partly a nostalgia thing for us. From the first we misbehaved sexually; doing it now makes us feel young. I look around my world and see most people repeating the vices of their youth. Pat said it just the other day, discussing John’s exasperating tendency to gain weight because he spends so much time in bars and coffee shops. She wondered aloud why people don’t get out of their own shadows.

The most recent first time with Jeff was funny and erotic. We always seem to manage the erotic part, but the older we get the more we laugh. It was erotic because, the way it worked out, after we’d tried to get together twice before and been stymied by the unpredictable social schedules of my teenagers, we stole an hour one Thursday evening, when he called from his car on the way home from some business banquet and I just happened to be alone and slightly inebriated. I’d had two glasses of champagne with a light dinner out. My kids were not expected home for an hour, but one can never be sure about kids. I was already in a silk robe. Jeff arrived wearing a suit. The inequality of attire was preserved as we embraced. Nice visuals.

But I murmured as he pulled my unharnessed body into the woolly scratch of his suit, “You don’t have to do anything you’re not comfortable with,” and he lost his serious composure and laughed into my mouth. When he left an hour later, he whispered down to me, “I’ll be sure to drive carefully.” We crack each other up.

Twenty years ago Jeff always spoke of Vickie with respect and admiration. He never talked about their sex life but I got the impression it was active and gratifying. Nowadays he complains about her. Says she’s getting fat, which he doesn’t mind except she blames him for it. Says they never do it. He still speaks with admiration about her mothering and other nurturing but he sounds insincere and suburban when he does so, like he should be wearing shorts and have more chins.

I think Jeff wants me because I’m safe, forbidden, and slim. He spends so much time caressing my ass and kissing my midriff that I know he appreciates the shape. And then there’s the abandon thing. Yes there’s that. Jeff and I know how to lose ourselves in sex together. Literally. Our mouths have to be involved, they’re so close to our brains. We can do it with kissing alone. Sail/slide together, into each other, till we’re not Susan and Jeff anymore; we’re just a living dancing kiss we plumb together. That’s what we go for. That’s what we love.

Love? Love. The L-word that scares so many folks, that people take so seriously. Sure we love each other; what of it? Doesn’t mean we’re supposed to be together. Jeff and I play set roles for each other, but only for a period of time. (He admits he liked the old dormitory lockout hours; it put a cap on the time he had to be perfect for some girl.)

Vickie is beautiful. She looks like Sophia Loren.

I saw all four of them a month ago. I couldn’t get out of the big Scouts fundraiser, so I went to the picnic-with-silent-auction-and-hayride. Actually kind of enjoyed the hayride, which I’d always wanted to try.

There were John and Pat and their kids, with their Nissan Pathfinder. And parked two cars away was Jeff’s Ford Explorer that I knew so well, unloading Jeff and Vickie and their two. Jeff was in shorts; I was a little appalled at his knees in the light of day.

I had to sit with Pat and John of course. I watched them relate to each other like a salt-and-pepper shaker set; they matched and they were sort of cute, but you knew unmatched salt and pepper grinders would add more to the meal. They did have mayonnaise on white bread, or at least that’s what the sandwiches appeared to be – I don’t know because I don’t eat meat.

John is even more boring than he used to be, but he tried to flirt. I don’t think he’s an entirely well-behaved husband. Pat did not notice. After John was called away about Scout announcements he returned with his Girl Scout counterpart, none other than Vickie, with Jeff and kids and their picnic in tow. Oh boy.

Vickie is beautiful. Vickie is fat. Her face doesn’t show as many lines as mine because it is plump even if six years older. But she has too much boob and belly, and her shorts ride up her inner thighs as she walks. I felt relatively gorgeous.

She paid no attention to Jeff. She talked to John, and also to Pat and even me, but she was most focused on her children. She didn’t interfere with them but her eyes sought them. Jeff relaxed back on his elbows and occasionally looked at me. He tried to appear nonchalant but I could tell from his burping how nervous he was.

They say every marriage is a mystery and that no one but the participants understand it. I think not. I’ve been married twice and I’ve watched a lot of other marriages. I’ve seen those looks of quiet exasperation and fleeting hatred. All relationships are mysteries because people are complicated. Of course. But this cultural elevation of marriage? Hah! As much a lie as the one about “quality time.” As incorrect a cultural turn as frontal hugs for kids.

If marriages are so great, how come all the passionate art is about relationships other than marriage?

Ultimately, maybe it comes down to an issue of laundry. Whose are you willing to do, and why? Jeff and Vickie have a firm arrangement; she does the shopping and he cleans the clothes. Mostly he doesn’t mind. But he does complain that women leak. He says he doesn’t care about the occasional skid mark on his son’s underwear but he’s tired of the leakage from his wife and daughter. This from a man who gets after me if I bathe too often.

John and Pat aren’t as organized. Most of the time Pat does the laundry, and that isn’t even because she’s there. In fact, with John’s self employment he’s home more than she. Most of the time Pat does the laundry and resents it. Sometimes John does it but he never does it right. Often they quietly, bitterly argue about who should do it. Their sporadic attempts to teach their children to do it have failed.

Me? I don’t mind doing the laundry. Neither do my kids. We hate chemicals, so we never buy clothing that has to be dry-cleaned, and that means we launder often. But the machines are right here in a house we love. It’s not inconvenient to do a load or two. No hostility is involved.

They conversed throughout that evening. She wasn’t fascinated but she wasn’t exactly bored. They sat side by side on the couch after dinner, sipping coffee and brandy, talking only to each other because Denise and Chuck were settling a geography dispute then, atlas open across both their laps. Siggy wasn’t the talker Alan had been – Susan was starting to think about getting herself home after fifteen minutes of Siggy on sea kayaking – but then he put his right arm around her waist and pulled her to him with a smile that completely charmed her. His movement was so authoritative, so masculine, so refreshingly unambiguous. She gave him her phone number and agreed to see him that weekend. She refused to let him walk her home; she didn’t want more interaction right then.

When Susan awoke the next morning the creek was running clear. She forgot about the cat until she saw her car in the driveway; then she renewed her vow to sell her sedan and give up driving. She remembered Siggy and considered him along with her memories of Alan as she went through her day.

Siggy called shortly after she got home that evening. He’d thought about it, and suggested that there was no reason to wait for the weekend to see each other. She was flattered but she would soon discover that his eagerness to see her was only evidence of his impulsiveness and impatience, and nothing personal. She was to learn his family had called him Sudden when he was a boy. His divorce hadn’t been his idea, and he was lonely.

She knew even then that bells weren’t ringing for her. But she’d gone a few years without sex or male companionship, and she liked his eyes. She also liked the way he liked food; she thought the sex would be good. She was dreadfully wrong there. He was vigorous like an 18-year old, and about as creative. He was so childishly enthusiastic about it that she decided not to discuss the subject with him. And he never asked.

She didn’t love him, but she liked him at times. She shouldn’t have taken up with him, she told herself at the end and afterward, but in the beginning she hadn’t meant anything by it.

Sometimes Susan asked Siggy about his wife: had she laughed a lot? what did she like to eat? when did they enjoy each other most? He always said he didn’t know. At first Susan thought that was his discreet way of refusing to answer her questions, but she came to understand that Siggy really didn’t know. He’d been married to Brenda for 18 years and he had no idea who she was. Susan realized this and also understood that she was just as much outside Siggy, trying to pound into him some notion of who she, Susan, was… and failing.

She had been seeing him for more than a year when she had that revelation. Time flies when you’re old, she told herself, as she watched her 50th birthday approach. She realized at the same time that she no longer enjoyed dining with Siggy, or walking with him, and their metaphysics were diverging the more he got into the aura-flossing Portals program he had discovered a season before. Suddenly she saw him as too murky to keep.

As long as they had been together Siggy did the driving for them. He owned a station wagon but Susan hadn’t gotten around to selling her car; she just gave him the keys when they wanted to use her more comfortable vehicle. He was an inattentive driver. He thought he was a safe one because he’d never had an accident, but Susan concluded that he was so bad the other drivers saw him coming, and maneuvered to avoid him. She was never comfortable in the car with him, but at least she didn’t have to drive.

The day she broke up with him Siggy pulled out of her steep driveway with even less attention than usual. He was angry and upset and he gunned it. He ran over a big yellow cat as he backed up to the street but he just put his car in gear and drove away.

Susan saw which way the hurt animal raced. She followed the flopping creature to the edge of the creek and had her hands on the cat before she thought about her own safety. She released one hand at a time to pull off her sweatshirt jacket, wrapped the injured animal in it, and got it into her house. The cat was conscious and quiet. Susan looked into its small face. “What the hell,” she murmured as she picked up her keys.

She managed to get herself and the cat to the animal hospital without mishap. The vet had no trouble setting the broken leg. He also examined the yellow cat, pronounced it male and healthy, and sent them away with ointment, antibiotics, and instructions.

Susan refused to reconcile with Siggy. She told him she didn’t even want to talk about it. She settled in with Sanity, as she named her new pet, and she resumed driving her car now and then. She decided the best thing she could be for Siggy was a memory without bitterness, her image clean, level, and two-dimensional, like a cat’s face on a chrome drain.