Wifey Read Online Free PDF Page A

it to last. And guess what, Gordy? I never itch after I come that way. I itch only after Norman. So, you see, it must have something to do with him. Maybe I
am
allergic to his semen . . . maybe I’m allergic to his cock . . . maybe I’m allergic to him! Wouldn’t that be something?
    Oh, you’d rather hear about my sex life
with
Norman? Yes. Of course. I understand, Gordy. Bearing on the case. Certainly. Well. Every Saturday night, rain or shine, unless I have my period. Variety? You mean like in the books? Well, no . . . Norm isn’t one for variety. Changes make him uncomfortable. And I’m not one for making suggestions, Gordy. You think I should? I don’t know . . . I’d have to think about that . . . maybe . . .
    Oral
sex? Oh, Gordy . . . now you’re getting so personal. Must we? I mean, really. Well, of course I see that it’s part of my sex life. Yes, certainly we’ve tried . . . but the one time Norm put his face between my legs . . . well, poor Norm . . . he gagged and coughed and spent half an hour in the bathroom gargling with Listerine afterward and I felt terribly guilty. He was like a cat with a hair ball. All that suffering just to please me. And then there’s the problem of smell . . . odor, you know . . . Norman hates the smell of fuck. He always complains the morning after, opens all the windows in the bedroom and sprays Lysol. That’s why I douche with vinegar . . . cunt vinaigrette . . . to make it more appetizing . . . you know, like browned chicken.
    “ S O HOW IS IT, Sandy?”
    “What?”
    “Your sex life.”
    “What does that have to do with my problem?”
    “It could have a lot to do with it.”
    “I don’t think I can discuss it with you, Gordon.”
    “Would you like me to send you to someone else?”
    “No, I don’t think I could discuss the subject at all.”

4
    S HE USED TO LOOK like Jackie Kennedy. Everybody said so. In 1960 she won the Jackie Kennedy look-alike contest sponsored by the Plainfield
Courier-News.
Norman’s mother had sent in her photo. She hadn’t even known she was a contestant until they’d called her to say she’d won and they were running her picture on the front page, two columns wide. A celebrity. A star.
    Of course she’d voted for Jack. It was her first presidential election and there was no way she was going to support Norman’s candidate, even though Norm was treasurer of the Plainfield Young Republicans’ Club at the time. But Norman didn’t know, didn’t guess what she was up to. He thought his politics were her politics; his candidate, her candidate. Oh, the thrill of pulling the lever for Kennedy, defying Norman, even secretly!
    “You should be out there ringing doorbells with me,” he’d told her, during the campaign.
    “If you tell them I’m pregnant, they’ll understand.”
    “All right, as long as you do your share like a wife should.” So Norman brought home lists of registered voters and every night during election week Sandy sat at the phone making calls. The Young Republicans’ Blitz.
    She’d done her share to support her husband. She’d earned the right to celebrate secretly over Jack’s election. For the first time Sandy had been touched by politics, by a current event. There had been no depression or world war to affect her life and Mona and Ivan were determined to spare their children the insecurities, the anxieties they had known. She had once asked her mother, after spending two weeks in the country with Aunt Lottie, “How is the war in Korea?” And Mona had answered, “The same, and don’t worry your pretty little head about it. It has nothing to do with you.”
    Until now. Sandy and Jackie. They’d been pregnant together. John-John was born first, in November, and Bucky followed, in December. Sandy didn’t watch the delivery in the overhead mirror although Dr. Snyder wanted her to. It was bad enough that he’d placed the baby on her belly fresh out of the oven,