The Rise & Fall of the Scandamerican Domestic: Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

toward her, kisses me, her tongue firing into my mouth. “C’mon,” she pants. “Get into it.” Those walls that had kept me up at night are done in thirteen minutes. In thirteen minutes I’m on my back panting beside my wife looking. We’re both breathing out of our mouths, leaning against the sofa. It’s a whole mess we have here. However, in the public sense, it is done.
    Or, as my wife puts it, “It’s started.”

    Later, the nooks of the fireplace wall have filled like lake locks. My wife and I are strewn across the floor like castaways, drunkards. She lies flat, draping her arm over her eyes. Her cheeks are red. She swears again. She asks me if I smoke. We laugh. We are utterly wasted. We are glowing. She says, “Could you do more?”
    â€œRight.”
    She looks up at me. “Seriously.”
    I am thirty-four years old. I am a little bit nauseous.

    Later, it’s Tuesday evening, and we are stripped down again and going at it like reckless teenagers, like we are doing something lewd that needs to be done very lewdly, very quickly. The windows are done in ten minutes. The cat has Country Rill paws. We laugh.
    The laugh is not, as it had been on Monday, robust.
    I say, “Do you like it? Is this something you’re liking?” I shake my head. “I mean, are you glad we’re doing it?”
    â€œIt’s fine.”
    â€œIs it the color?”
    â€œNo. It is what it is.” She scratches her cheek. “It is what it is. But it’s good.” She is not telling me the truth. She cannot tell me that if she were able she would just do it all herself. I cannot be obviated, because the project is too enormous for one person. Science hasn’t yet really come this far. Not to the Midwest anyway, not to the suburbs and the middle class. It is the contract we’d agreed to, for better orworse, that I be included here. All this is sticky-noted across her face, and then, because she knows that I am reading this, she rolls on the floor and laughs affably.

    The first thing we see at the Engelvedts’ is their trim. It’s running up and down every room in the house. Every damn inch of their house blinds us— finished and lovely color, matted color, glossy color, the shadows of work completed and past, distant hardships. In tremendous insult, they have even sanded away some of their color for a look of fashionable oldness. The kitchen stings with what I’d seen called Icicle spreading above their tall cabinets, just a subtle flourish, but it’s there plainly enough to gall. The bathroom has crown molding the color of mud. I have my eyes shielded through half the visit. At dinner, I compliment their attention to detail. “Really,” I say.
    Bob says, “Really?”
    I push the matter. I want to know how long it took them. How long did they have to work, wait. “Give me a ballpark.”
    Years, for them.

    I suggest we take a day off on Wednesday, a day away from the painting. It’s clearly become a mechanical thing, a means to an end, and is in no way enjoyable. This should be enjoyable, right? Everyone says it should be fun, right?

    And we finish off the master on Wednesday night. And we shower together, and my wife says, “We have to do a second coat, you know,” and she waits for my expression and says, “We aren’t done, little buddy,” taking my penis in her hand. “We have the rest of the week to do more. We still have Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and maybe even Monday morning. We need to get as much paint in there as possible—as much as we’ve got, as much as you’ll get, we need to get it up there.” And she calls me little buddy and tells my penis not to pretend he didn’t know all of this when we started painting. Because nobody likes a forgetful little buddy.

    Thursday, we paint, I think.

    Friday, the brush is frayed and starchy, limpid and