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an orgasm and I learned I was a bad wife.
    I didn’t have the constant decapitating images at work. At work my mind became gray and busy and it was okay. But the next morning I would see a butcher knife plunged into my chest, pinning me to the bed. Or a machete that would go through my pelvis and all the way through the mattress and the box spring to the floor below.
    Eating scrambled eggs or toast in the kitchen I was afraid for her. I cried and moved slowly all day long. I thought it must be bad for her to have that as her mother. So far away. She was like her dad. The same peachy complexion and disposition, the same red hair, the same feet.
    I didn’t talk to her. I was a silent mother. Touching was talking. I smelled her a lot, especially her breath, which smelled like butter.

    I don’t remember much about working there. I remember the to-go girl was incredibly good at her job and that was the first time I had ever seen anyone work smart and hard like that. The phone on her shoulder, the competent look on her face, how she shaved a fraction of a second off her process by not letting the cash drawer open all the way. The tough way she stapled the order chit to the bag. I wanted to be like her and not like Barrett. It wasn’t that I liked waiting tables so much then—it was that I had somewhere to be. Some function in life. I didn’t understand how to be a wife or mother. But there were rules to being a waitress. The main one was don’t fuck up. Another was whatever you skip in your prep will be the one thing you need when you’re buried. If you look at the stack of kids’ cups while you’re tyingon your apron in the afternoon and decide there will probably be enough for the night because you really don’t want to go out to the shed and dig around for the new sleeve, eight soccer teams will come in at nine, and you’ll have to go out to the shed anyway, and by the time you get back you’ll have killed your tips on all your other tables. That incessant fulfillment of Murphy’s Law taught me to be superstitious. I never said It looks like it’s going to be a slow night and we’ll get out early because that would suddenly make the smoking section fill up. The smokers took forever. You could never turn those tables because they just weren’t in a hurry. They smoked before they ordered. They always had appetizers and drinks. They smoked after the appetizers. They always had dessert. Their tabs were inevitably more, but they undid it by staying there for so long you could have had three $25 tables instead of one $40, even though the smokers tipped better. And I never said I think we’re going to be busy tonight because then it would be dead and they wouldn’t cut anyone and you’d stand around for six $2.13 hours. If I knocked over a saltshaker while I was refilling it or wiping down a table I always threw a pinch over my left shoulder.

    I got chlamydia from John Smith. That was actually his name. John Fucking Smith, said my husband. You cheated on me with John Fucking Smith?
    Yes, I said. Do you have to call it cheating?
    What the fuck does it matter what I call it, Marie. Is there anyone else? he said.
    Yes, I said.
    What? he said. His eyes went hard then and he crossed his arms. We were standing in the ugly galley kitchen of our apartment. It was right next to a highway. It never got dark at night and I pretended the constant sound of the traffic was the ocean. It was an all bills paid one-bedroom and the rent was $397. We stood in the kitchen under the fluorescent lights. His face was so white and his eyes were so black. He was still and I heard a semi downshift and I could hear the lightbulbs buzzing and a moth flicking around inside the fixture. Then he lunged away from the counter and I covered my head even though he was the most gentle person I’d ever known. He started kicking the oven. Kicking kicking kicking. Stop! I yelled. Stop! The baby cried from our bed.
    He stopped kicking the oven. Did you