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FOUR

Sometimes, I trace invisible letters on my palm. While Patrick and the boys talk with their tongues outside, I talk with my fingers. I scream and whine and curse about what, in Patrick’s words, “used to be.”

This is how things are now: We have allotments of one hundred words a day. My books, even the old copies of Julia Child and—here’s irony—the tattered red-and-white-checked Better Homes and Gardens a friend decided would be a cute joke for a wedding gift, are locked in cupboards so Sonia can’t get at them. Which means I can’t get at them either. Patrick carries the keys around like a weight, and sometimes I think it’s the heaviness of this burden that makes him look older.

It’s the little stuff I miss most: jars of pens and pencils tucked into the corners of every room, notepads wedged in between cookbooks, the dry-erase shopping list on the wall next to the spice cabinet. Even my old refrigerator poetry magnets, the ones Steven used to concoct ridiculous Italo-English sentences with, laughing himself to pieces. Gone, gone, gone. Like my e-mail account.

Like everything.

Some of life’s little sillinesses remain the same. I still drive, hit the grocery store on Tuesdays and Fridays, shop for new dresses and handbags, get my hair done once a month down at Iannuzzi’s. Not that I’ve changed the cut—I’d need too many precious words to tell Stefano how much to take off here and how much to leave there. My leisure reading limits itself to billboards advertising the latest energy drink, ingredients lists on ketchup bottles, washing instructions on clothing tags: Do not bleach.

Riveting material, all of it.

Sundays, we take the kids to a movie and buy popcorn and soda, those little rectangular boxes of chocolates with the white nonpareils on top, the kind you find only in movie theaters, never in the shops. Sonia always laughs at the cartoons that play while the audience files in. The films are a distraction, the only time I hear female voices unconstrained and unlimited. Actresses are allowed a special dispensation while they’re on the job. Their lines, of course, are written by men.

During the first months, I did sneak a peek at a book now and again, scratch a quick note on the back of a cereal box or an egg carton, write a love note to Patrick in lipstick on our bathroom mirror. I had good reasons, very good ones—Don’t think about them, Jean; don’t think about the women you saw in the grocery store—to keep note writing inside the house. Then Sonia came in one morning, caught the lipsticked message she couldn’t read, and yelped, “Letters! Bad!”

I kept communication inside me from that point, only writing a few words to Patrick in the evenings after the kids were in bed, burning the paper scraps in a tin can. With Steven the way he is now, I don’t even risk that.

Patrick and the boys, out on the back porch close to my window, are swapping stories about school, politics, the news, while crickets buzz in the dark around our bungalow. They make so much noise, those boys and those crickets. Deafening.

All my words ricochet in my head as I listen, emerge from my throat in a heavy, meaningless sigh. And all I can think about are Jackie’s last words to me.

Think about what you need to do to stay free.

Well, doing more than fuck all might have been a good place to start.

FIVE

None of this is Patrick’s fault. That’s what I tell myself tonight. He tried to speak up when the concept first bounced around the concave walls of a blue office in a white building on Pennsylvania Avenue. I know he did. The apology in his eyes is hard to miss, but speaking up has never been Patrick’s strong suit.

And Patrick wasn’t the man who showered votes on Sam Myers before the last election, the same man who promised even more votes the next time Myers ran. The man who, years ago, Jackie liked to call Saint Carl.

All the president had to do was listen, take instruction, and sign shit—a small price to pay for eight years as the most powerful man in the world. By the time he was elected, though, there wasn’t that much left to sign. Every devilish detail had already been seen to.

Somewhere along the line, what was known as the Bible Belt, that swath of Southern states where religion ruled, started expanding. It morphed from belt to corset, covering all but the country’s limbs—the democratic utopias of California, New England, the Pacific Northwest, DC, the southern jurisdictions of Texas and Florida—places so far on the blue end of the spectrum they seemed untouchable. But the corset turned into a full bodysuit, eventually reaching all the way to Hawaii.

And we never saw it coming.

Women like Jackie did. She even led a march of the ten-member Atheists for Anarchy group around campus, yelling out ludicrous prophecies like Alabama now, Vermont next! and Not your body—a PURE body! She didn’t give a shit that people laughed at her.

“You watch, Jeanie,” she told me. “Twenty-one women were in the Senate last year. Now we’ve got fifteen of our own in that fucking holy of holies.” She held up a hand and started ticking off fingers, one by one. “West Virginia. Not reelected. Tick. Iowa. Not reelected. Tick. North Dakota. Not reelected. Tick. Missouri, Minnesota, and Arkansas stepped down ‘for unknown reasons.’ Tick, tick, tick. That’s twenty-one percent down to fifteen percent representation in no time at all. And there’s word Nebraska and Wisconsin are leaning toward candidates with—and I quote—‘the country’s best interests in mind.’”

Before I could stop her, she ran the numbers for the House of Representatives. “Nineteen percent down to ten percent, and that’s only because of California, New York, and Florida.” Jackie paused to make sure I was still listening. “Texas? Gone. Ohio? Gone. All the Southern states? Gone with the fucking wind, that’s what. And you think it’s some kind of blip? I mean, we’re gonna be back in the early nineties after the next midterms. Cut the representation in half again, and we’re headed into the dark ages of 1970-something.”

“Honestly, Jacko. You’re getting hysterical about it.”

Her words flew at me like poisoned arrows. “Well, someone needs to be hysterical around here.”

The worst part of it all was that Jackie was wrong. We didn’t squeeze down from twenty percent female representation in Congress to five percent. Over the next fifteen years, we squeezed down to almost nothing.

By this last election, we reached even that unthinkable goal, and Jackie’s prediction of being back in the early nineties seemed solid—if one was referring to the early 1890s. Congress had all the diversity of a bowl of vanilla ice cream, and the two women who still held cabinet positions were quickly replaced with men who, in Jackie’s words, “had the country’s best interests in mind.”

The Bible Belt had expanded and spread and grown into an iron maiden.

What it needed, though, was an iron fist, an enforcement arm. Again, Jackie seemed clairvoyant.

“You wait, Jeanie,” she said as we smoked cheap clove cigarettes out the single window of our apartment. She pointed to five neat lines of undergraduates marching in lockstep. “See those ROTC kids?”

“Yeah,” I said, exhaling smoke out the window, Lysol can at the ready in case our landlady showed up. “So?”

“Fifteen percent is some flavor of Baptist. Twenty percent, Catholic—the Roman variety. Almost another fifth says it’s nondenominational Christian—whatever that means.” She tried a few smoke rings, watching them dance out the window.

“So? That leaves what? Almost half doing the agnostic dance.”

Jackie laughed. “Have you run out of brain room, Jeanie? I haven’t even mentioned the LDS people or the Methodists or the Lutherans or the Tioga River Christian Conference.”

“The Tioga what? How many of them are there?”

“One. I think he’s in the air force.”

My turn to laugh now. I choked on a long draw of clove smoke, stubbed it, and sprayed myself with Lysol. “So not a big deal.”

“He isn’t. But the other ones, yeah. It’s a religion-heavy organization.” Jackie leaned out the window to get a better look. “And it’s mostly men. Conservative men who love their God and their country.” She sighed. “Women, not so much.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said, leaving her to burn the other lung with a second cigarette. “They don’t hate women.”

“You, kiddo, need to get out more. Which states do you think have the highest enlistment rates? Hint: they ain’t in fucking New England. They’re good old boys.”

“So what?” I was exasperating her, and I knew it, but I couldn’t see the connection Jackie was trying to make.

“So they’re conservative, that’s what. Mostly white. Mostly straight.” Jackie stubbed out the half-smoked clove, wrapped it in a plastic baggie, and faced me, arms crossed. “Who do you think is angriest right now? In our country, I mean.”

I shrugged. “African Americans?”

She made a buzzing noise, a sort of you’re-out-but-we’ve-got-some-lovely-consolation-prizes-backstage kind of a sound. “Guess again.”

“Gays?”

“No, you dope. The straight white dude. He’s angry as shit. He feels emasculated.”

“Honestly, Jacko.”

“Of course he does.” Jackie pointed a purple fingernail at me. “You just wait. It’s gonna be a different world in a few years if we don’t do something to change it. Expanding Bible Belt, shit-ass representation in Congress, and a pack of power-hungry little boys who are tired of being told they gotta be more sensitive.” She laughed then, a wicked laugh that shook her whole body. “And don’t think they’ll all be men. The Becky Homeckies will be on their side.”

“The who?”

Jackie nodded at my sweats and bed-matted hair, at the pile of yesterday’s dishes in the sink, and finally at her own outfit. It was one of the more interesting fashion creations I’d seen on her in a while—paisley leggings, an oversized crocheted sweater that used to be beige but had now taken on the color of various other articles of clothing, and purple stiletto boots. “The Susie Homemakers. Those girls in matching skirts and sweaters and sensible shoes going for their Mrs. degrees. You think they like our sort? Think again.”

“Come on, Jackie,” I said.

“Just wait, Jeanie.”

So I did. Everything turned out pretty much as Jackie thought it would. And worse. They came at us from so many vectors, and so quietly, we never had the chance to assemble ranks.

One thing I learned from Jackie: you can’t protest what you don’t see coming.

I learned other things a year ago. I learned how difficult it is to write a letter to my congressman without a pen, or to mail a letter without a stamp. I learned how easy it is for the man at the office supply store to say, “I’m sorry, ma’am. I can’t sell you that,” or for the postal worker to shake his head when anyone without a Y chromosome asks for stamps. I learned how quickly a cell phone account can be canceled, and how efficient young enlisted men can be at installing cameras.

I learned that once a plan is in place, everything can happen overnight.

SIX

Patrick is feeling frisky tonight, even if I’m not. Either that, or he’s looking for stress relief before another day in another week at the job that’s keeping gas in the car and paying the kids’ dentist bills. Even a topped-out government job never seems like enough, not now that I’m no longer working.

The lights on the porch go out, the boys tumble into their beds, and Patrick tumbles into ours.

“Love you, babe,” he says. His roaming hands tell me he’s not ready for sleep. Not yet. And it has been a while. A few months is my best guess. It might be longer than that.

So we get to business.

I was never one to talk much while making love. Words seemed clumsy; sharp interruptions of a natural rhythm, a basic coupling. And forget about silly porn-style mantras: Give it to me. Here I come. Fuck me harder. Oh baby, oh baby, oh baby. They had a place in kitchen flirting or raunchy jokes with the girlfriends, but not in bed. Not with Patrick.

Still, there had been talk between us. Before and afterward. During. An I love you, six sounds, diphthongs and glides and liquids with only a single turbulent v, a soft consonant in so many ways, appropriate to the setting. Our names, whispered. Patrick. Jean.

Tonight, with the children in their beds and Patrick in me, his steady breathing close and heavy in my ear, my eyes shut to the glint of moon refracting off the dresser mirror, I consider what I’d prefer. Would I be happier if he shared my silence? Would it be easier? Or do I need my husband’s words to fill the gaps in the room and inside me?

He stops. “What’s wrong, babe?” There’s concern in his voice, but I think I hear a trace of otherness, a tone I never want to hear again. It sounds like pity.

I reach up, place both palms flat against the sides of his face, and pull his mouth to mine. In the kiss, I talk to him, make assurances, spell out how every little thing is going to be all right. It’s a lie, but a fitting lie for the moment, and he doesn’t speak again.

Tonight, let it be all quiet. Full silence. A void.

I am now in two places at once. I am here, under Patrick, the weight of him suspended above my skin, part of him and also separate. I am in my other self, fumbling with my prom dress buttons in the back seat of Jimmy Reed’s Grand National, a sex car if there ever was one. I’m panting and laughing and high on spiked punch while Jimmy gropes and grabs. Then I’m singing in the glee club, cheering on our no-star football team, giving the valedictory address at college graduation, shouting obscenities at Patrick when he tells me to push and pant just one more time, babe, before the baby’s head crowns. I’m in a rented cottage, two months ago, lying beneath the body of a man I want desperately to see again, a man whose hands I still feel roaming over my flesh.

Lorenzo, I whisper inside my head, and kick the three delicious syllables away before they hurt too much.

My self is becoming more and more separate.

At times like this, I think about the other women. Dr. Claudia, for instance. Once, in her office, I asked whether gynecologists enjoyed sex more than the rest of us, or whether they got lost in the clinical nature of the act. Did they lie back and think, Oh, now my vagina is expanding and lengthening, now my clitoris is retracting into its hood, now the first third (but only the first third) of my vaginal walls are contracting at the rate of one pulse every eight-tenths of a second.

Dr. Claudia withdrew the speculum in one smooth move and said, “Actually, when I first started medical school, that’s exactly what I did. I couldn’t help it. Thank god my partner then was another med student; otherwise, I think he would have zipped up and walked out and left me laughing hysterically under the sheets.” She tapped my knee and removed one foot, then the other, from the pink-fuzz-covered stirrups. “Now I just enjoy it. Like everyone else.”

While I’m thinking about Dr. Claudia and her shiny steel speculum, Patrick orgasms and collapses on me, kissing my ears and throat.

I wonder what the other women do. How they cope. Do they still find something to enjoy? Do they love their husbands in the same way? Do they hate them, just a little bit?

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