There is no blue in the sky. It is white like the walls in the house when they'd just moved in--drywall covered once over, plain white. White like this might mean a storm, if it turns grey and angry. Or, if it stays, thinks Colleen, it might just mean no sun. An empty day, blank as a wall.
There is a load in the wash and breakfast to clean up and the bed to be made. Colleen goes to their room where the sheets lie on the floor in a twisted ball. Sometimes John has sex with her before work--to rev up, he says, laughing. He tests cars for GM, just like on the commercials. Wet conditions, dry conditions, stopping on a dime, zooming around neon cones as if they were mountain curves--like a chase sequence in a movie, only the mountain curves are imaginary. Really they are just spaces between neon cones.
John had wanted to be a race car driver. He tests cars and watches the races on TV and sometimes takes Colleen to a race. They place bets on his favorite car. Actually, thinks Colleen, it must be his favorite driver they place bets on. It must be the driver that makes the difference. If it was just a matter of the car, John could be a race car driver.
Colleen lies on her stomach on the bed. The elastic edge of the sheet has popped off the corner on one side. She presses it between her fingers. The tiny folds of cloth remind her of little girls' shirred dresses. When Colleen was a little girl, she was the most beautiful girl in the world. When she was sixteen and John started coming in to Denny's and sitting in her station, he told her she was the most beautiful girl in the world. Girl made sense then because she was only sixteen and he was thirty-one; and because she was the most beautiful girl in the world.
Now she is old--twenty-four. Way too old to start her modelling career that she never got to start. She practically has
wrinkles. John still calls her a girl, but she knows she is not the most beautiful girl in the world anymore because John doesn't tell her she is.
Colleen puts the laundry in. Above the washing machine is a cabinet where she keeps the All and the Snuggle and where John keeps a box of Playboys. One for every month they've been married. That makes twenty-seven. John's friends gave him a subscription at his bachelor party with a card that said, "Now you'll need to fantasize about getting around. Three-year subscription--renewable if you last that long." Colleen takes the box out and sits cross-legged on the cement floor of the basement. She spills the Playboys out and stacks them up in chronological order. There's Miss September. It's still August, but the September issue has already come and John has already read it, studied it, done whatever he does with it, and put it in the cabinet.
Colleen flips to the centerfold and studies Miss September's breasts. They are much bigger than Colleen's, and with huge nipples. Colleen's nipples are flat and smooth like skin except for when she is cold or, before, when she used to get excited. Miss September's stomach is fuller than Colleen's, too, but a flat stomach is desirable, thinks Colleen. Hard and flat like a girl's.
Really, I am still very pretty, thinks Colleen. Even if I am not the most beautiful girl in the world anymore, and getting old. Miss September looks even a little older than Colleen, and her hair is that fly-away dry that dyed blonds get. Colleen's hair is thick and brown, long to the small of her back. Miss September may look glamorous with all her blue eyeshadow and sparkly jewelry, but she was certainly not the most beautiful girl in the world when she was younger. And Colleen was.
Colleen leaves the box on the floor and goes to the kitchen. She takes out her "Mr. and Mrs. John Almot" stationery that she got for her wedding.
Dear Playboy,
I am writing to tell you to do a feature
on housewives. Men forget that women do
not lose everything just because there is
a band on their finger. I think I still
have it and I would like to show it to you.
Please write me back at the return address
on the envelope.
Yours truly,
Colleen Almot
She reads it over and then takes out one of the blank sheets on the bottom of the box and rewrites the letter. She adds, "I am enclosing a nude photo to give you the idea," and changes the last line to "Please contact me immediately if you are interested." She takes the envelope downstairs and copies the address from the first page of the September issue.
John's mother gave them a Polaroid camera for their first anniversary. "For instant pictures of my grandchildren," she said. Colleen goes out to her car to get it. John keeps it there for when they go to races because Colleen and John don't have any kids yet. That's what John says--"yet"--but Colleen isn't so sure they'll ever have them. They've been trying for two years now. John doesn't know that Colleen can have kids for sure; she was pregnant back in the days when he called her, "the most beautiful girl in the world," and she gave it up, along with the boy who made it, when John started asking her out. She thought if she went with someone so old and sophisticated, she wouldn't have to do that whole housewife thing. She could be a model, they could travel the world and leave Deep Falls forever--even leave Ohio.
But after they'd been married a while, John said it was time to start having little Johns and Colleens, future race car drivers and most beautiful girls in the world. Colleen had just started beauty academy--three times a week up in Cleveland--and she told him she thought she should give it a try first.
"Okay," John said, and he went to his dresser where they kept the bills and took out the envelope from Fulfillment Beauty Academy, and handed it to her.
"Okay, honey," he said. "Then you give it a try on your own check book."
"Why are you angry?" she asked him.
"I'm not angry," he said, and kissed her shoulder. "I just want you to learn responsibility. If you want to sacrifice your job as a wife, then you need to do it on your own. I don't go to work every day so you can put on makeup and stop being a wife."
"I didn't think of it that way," she said.
John laughed. "Of course you didn't, puddin'." He took the envelope out of her hands and put it in his pants. He said, "Now come and get this silly old bill," and he took her hands to make her do it.
It was that time that something strange happened, like she got numb inside. She couldn't feel him, couldn't feel anything he did. She was suddenly embarrassed that he would even look at her, her ugly, ugly face, her tiny weak body, that he would smell her living smell and taste her breath, but her stiffness and her crying turned him on. "Mmm, I hurt you baby?" he said after, rubbing her stomach until he fell asleep.
She will never get pregnant, even though she never went back to F.B.A. so she could. She used to scream and moan to fool her body into thinking it was the real thing. Now she does it to fool John because she knows that the problem is her. You have to be full inside to make a baby, so she never will.
But there is no way to stop feeling empty, empty like the sky, white over her head as she opens the trunk of the white Mustang John gave her for her twenty-first birthday. Endless flat emptiness bearing down over her head. She can feel the wind starting and she pictures the empty sky filling up, giant swirls of black and grey above her, her flowered blue housedress sucking her skinny body with the wind. She leans over her white car and pictures it like a photo, brown tones like an old-time picture, skinny little girl with thick long hair blowing up into the wind, long tendrils lifted up on hot wind, the outline of her body (leaning in a soft S-shape) so erotic with the dress blown against her and the storm on the horizon beyond. She imagines the photographer there under his black sheet, his hand held high with the flash that will bring the image of her to that Viewer. She lifts her eyes to the black circle whose shutter eye will open on her for just one second and she says through her eyes that she sees you, you especially, you, Viewer, and she feels the heavy ache in the Viewer's chest when he turns the page and sees her, at the moment that he turns the page to the picture of her there with the dress blown against her and the storm on the horizon beyond, her eyes saying I see you, I wish you, and he cannot breathe for a moment and he stares forever into the picture thinking "God, God, God," at the sight of her, wishing, wishing, wishing she were real.
The Polaroid has a delayed timer so you can take your own picture, but Colleen doesn't know how to use it. She hadn't thought of that--who would take the picture? She is down in the laundry room where she has hung sheets from nails in the ceiling. It will be a picture of her sitting naked on the washing machine with the colored sheets all around and she will write "Housewife's Harem Room" on the little white edge of the photo. She is standing there naked in the basement, her hair soft against her back all the way down to the little hollow above her ass. She has given her hair one hundred strokes from a natural boar bristle brush. Shadow (brown, copper, silver) and liner and mascara (black) that define, not defy, like they said at F.B.A. before she had to leave. She has left her cheeks pale and her lipstick is dark red--her body will take second place to her lips and her eyes; those are what will get them.
Colleen can only think of one person to take the picture who won't tell. She leaves her makeup on and puts on the blue housedress to go next door, leaving the letter on the front hall table, ready to go. It's after three so Owen will be home from school.
Owen's family lives in an old house with a big wrap-around porch and peeling green paint. It was his family that sold land to make the development. Colleen knocks on the front door, which has a huge window so she can see Owen coming down the hall from the kitchen. He must be seventeen by now, lean like his dad, but not stooped. He smiles when he sees her and opens the door.
"Hi, Colleen." His eyes dart back and forth from her eyes to just above her shoulder. He takes a bite from his sandwich.
"Sorry to bother your eating."
He shrugs. "'S'awright."
"Listen, I gotta ask you a favor. Could you take a picture of me?"
He nods and flips his blond hair away from his eyes.
"But you can't tell anyone about it because it's a surprise for John."
His mouth is full of sandwich. "'Kay. Now?"
They walk together across the porch, down the stairs, across the grass to her house. The wind blows her dress against her back, and she feels air rushing up from under the hem to tickle her stomach. Owen takes quick bites from the sandwich so he can finish it by the time they reach her front stoop. She turns to him at the door.
"It's gonna be in the basement--it's all set up kinda weird, but it's sort of a private joke between me and John. I don't want you to think we're nuts or anything. It's just this joke we have."
In the basement, Owen wipes his hands on his jeans before he takes the camera in his hands.
"It's alright," Colleen tells him. "It's been tumbling around in the trunk of my car so I don't think you could break it if you tried."
Owen lifts the camera and looks through it at the ceiling, the whole left side of his face squinting his eye. "I love your car."
"It's nice," says Colleen. "I'm gonna take off my dress, okay?"
Owen looks down fast at her and then faster away, back into the camera at the ceiling. "No problem," he says loudly.
She pulls her dress off over her head and lays it down on the floor. "I wanna sit on the laundry machine, I guess," she says. She stands with her back to the laundry machine. "Do you think that would be good?"
Owen is still looking through the camera at the ceiling. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I think that would be cool."
She lays her hands on the machine to hoist herself up to sitting. "Oooh, that's cold."
"Colleen," says Owen.
"I guess I should sit sorta sideways and like lean back. Can you see the sheets?"
Owen moves the camera from the ceiling to her without taking it away from his face. "Yes."
She twists her legs sideways and arches her back, one hand on her ass, one on her right thigh, twisting her shoulders in opposition to her legs, leaning her head back until she can feel her hair brush her leg. She lifts her eyes to that shutter eye, opens her mouth just slightly.
"Don't snap it yet," she says. Owen doesn't move, steadying the camera against his face.
"I see you," she says. "I wish you." Her nipples harden.
"God," Owen breathes.
Colleen clenches her teeth and opens her lips. Owen clicks the shutter.
Colleen picks at her big toe while Owen stares at his watch.
"D'ja say two minutes?" says Owen without looking up.
"Yeah--but let's wait two and a half to make sure it really looks good."
"Seemed good." Owen is still staring at his watch, and the photo in his other hand is shaking. "'Kay--that's two and a half."
His fingers are pressed together on the edge over the little yellow triangles. "I don't know nothing about photos, Colleen," he says slowly and raises the photo to her without looking up.
"Why are you shaking, Owen? You cold?" She takes the photo. "God, I'm so nervous over some dumb picture." She peels back the covering--the image shines wet and she blows on it as she looks. It seems bluer than real life, the sheets dark and mysterious. Her hair almost blends into the darkness. Her body is blue white like a ghost. Her lips are blood red, her eyes the darkest points in the picture. It hurts her inside her chest to look at it, like it's part of her deep inside that she doesn't know--a her that she doesn't know. The erotic blue ghost of an ancestor, an image from a dream captured. She holds it out to Owen. "Whatcha think?"
Owen takes the picture quickly. After a second he says, "I never thought a picture could look like more than what real life looks like."
"That's neat, Owen. That's a neat thing to say." Colleen jumps off the washer and takes her dress from the floor. "I'm gonna call it, `Housewife's Harem Room.'"
At the door, she puts the photo into the envelope, and Owen thanks her.
She laughs. "Owen, it's me that thanks you."
"Oh. Yeah."
"Now you go do your homework and eat your sandwiches." She stands on the front stoop to watch him walk slowly across the grass, looking down at his feet. It will surely start raining soon. What it would be like to have a son?
Halfway across her lawn, he turns. "You know, Colleen, that's not all I do."
"What, Owen?" she yells.
"Homework and eat sandwiches," he yells back. "That's not all I do."
Colleen leans against the screen door. He faces her from across the yard. The wind blows his hair up in ridiculous spikes that rise and fall with the gusts. She doesn't know what to say, so they just stand there for a moment looking at each other.
"I know," she shouts suddenly. "And I am not the most beautiful girl in the world anymore." She whips around and back into the house, screen door slamming behind her.
Owen doesn't move. He feels the wind lifting his hair, and he hears the growing of the grass scream in his ears. He whispers, "Yes, you are."
Colleen runs from the front door to her bedroom and as she runs she pulls off her housedress and when she gets to her bedroom she rolls the closet door so hard sideways that it slides off the bottom runner, leaning against the top rail like a drunk. She pulls out all her housedresses, all five of them, and throws them on a heap with her blue one. She does not want to get dressed, to stop feeling her body defined by the air on her skin, she hasn't been able to feel her body, but then she remembers an outfit she used to wear before she was married. She never got rid of it, even though she couldn't wear it in front of John. It's up on the top of the closet--black leggings and a black V-neck top with silver dots all along the V. She puts this on and she puts on her black high heels and more lipstick and she grabs the pile of dresses and the letter from the front table and she runs out the door without even looking in the mirror. Owen is still standing there on the grass and she looks at him as she runs down to the car.
"I have to go to the A&P," she screams, throwing the car door open and jumping in. He watches her ripping her purse apart until she finds her keys. The car bellows and coughs and roars off screeching and stops just past his house. She leans out the window to look back at him.
"Owen--I'm sorry I hurt your feelings, Owen."
Owen doesn't move. "Where you goin', Colleen?"
"I don't know," she says, and he takes off, racing for the car. "I'm gonna come, I'm coming," he says, throwing open the door just like she did, sliding in beside her--not too close--checking to see if she fastened her seatbelt (she had) before fastening his.
They have gone down Elm Road to Sunnyvale (where Colleen drops the letter with the photo into the mailbox and the dresses into the dumpster behind the Dairy Mart) and up the hill around the cemetery, down into the little valley that marks the end of their development and the beginning of farms again. Colleen doesn't say anything so Owen just watches her. She is so mature and so sophisticated, such a fancy lady with her sexy black outfit and made-up eyes. She seems to know so well how to be in a car, the way she switches on the radio and finds just what station she wants without ever turning her eyes from the road and the mirror, accelerating fluidly as she bellows out the chorus--"Who could hang a name on you"--and with an absent touch of her index finger, the roof of the car groans and folds back and the two of them are open to the sky where angry black clouds gather.
He is afraid to speak. He won't speak, not for anything. "Goodbye, Juicy Tuesday," Colleen sings into the wind, and Owen sits back (he'd been leaning forward, shoulders tightly hunched, watching Colleen sideways) and lets the cool sweetness of her voice settle over him. There is Colleen's voice and there is the cool wind rushing on them to blow the heat off his skin, his red, red face. He turns to the fields of corn and soybean that rear up into hills up and down across as far as he can see or imagine and thinks of sitting in the bath when he was a boy with a fever so high his mother had to call the doctor. The bath was filled just a few inches with cold water and alcohol; he could feel the line of water trace a horizontal line from his thigh down to his knees and there the water covered his whole calf down to his feet where the line crossed above his arches, below his toes. His body pulsed heat into the water. There was his mother's hand, cool and wet, on his shoulder, and in her other hand, a cool cool cloth that she squeezed over him. Cool rain on his back. Magic rain that pulled the heat out of him in a steady wave, drawing the pulsing beats of heat into a slow wave out into the air.
