The Soft Beauty of an Ordinary Life
Sue William Silverman
Word Count 670
Before his wife catches you:
One spring evening in Georgia, you slide onto the passenger seat of Bob’s Jeep Cherokee outside a Big Lots. You secretly meet here, Thursdays, in this anonymous location, to head north into the foothills of the Appalachians. At dusk, the lights of this box store appear like an oasis across the vast cement stretch of parking lot, across the endless boredom of the week, since the last time you were together.
After his wife catches you:
You imagine you’re walking tracks of a railroad through a forest. Under your feet, you hear gravel crunching like bones. Wind tangles branches of trees, and the bark creaks on an otherwise silent day. You don’t know if this railroad line leads away from your unforgivable past or toward what will be an unforgivable future. Or both.
Before his wife catches you:
You and he lie on a blanket of moist grass beside the too-sweet fumes of magnolias. Night insects agitate the air with more passion than your own, which wears a deceitful mask of love. Over his shoulder, a sickle moon slices the sky; if only it’d slice you in two, then you wouldn’t remember the number of men preceding this one. You wouldn’t remember the history of your misdemeanors.
Because this isn’t your first affair.
You already know your proclamation of love is false…as is his. Except in every amnesiac fantasy, you temporarily forget.
You’re terrified that sex, this mysterious yet ordinary act, might be all you’ve known. You wear it like a plaster cast holding body parts together. You swallow it as an antidote to loneliness, pain, loss, boredom, despair. Yet how can this desire be so temporary?
After his wife catches you:
Your heart thrums as you walk the railroad tracks, but your chest feels empty…as if air is unbreathable. The destruction you’ve caused is a scar carved through a forest.
Before his wife catches you:
You vaguely notice headlights sweep across your nude bodies.
When his wife catches you:
A slash of blonde hair. Words like shards of stars rip the sky, piercing your eyes. Slut, to you. Bastard, to him. You close your eyes, lids now gritty with shame.
After his wife catches you:
The scent of magnolia is a memento of remembrance. You want the white petals to drug you into forgetfulness.
After you and he are caught:
His wife slams back into her Honda. She guns the engine, spewing leaves and pine straw across your naked bodies. Stinging you with dirt. Muddying your skin.
You and he silently dress, your clothes damp from evening forest dew. You don’t look at each other as you walk toward his car. Pine trees sway as if their tops bow in shame. You quietly close the door as if you’re a whisper lost to the sound of mist. He puts his Jeep in gear and pulls back onto the road.
Watching headlights of oncoming cars, you believe you see a mirage. Can you unlearn what you know? Can you not know what you really see? That you will always hear her words behind the lids of your eyes.
He drives in silence following the blacktop as if aiming toward the end of the earth. Melodramatically, metaphorically, existentially, metaphysically, realistically, you want to plunge off the end of the earth. You want to open the car door and jump.
The double yellow lines on the asphalt are a warning: Do not cross.
At Big Lots, he stops beside your car. Still not a word. Still can’t look at him. This non-looking is the last time you don’t see him.
What remains after you catch yourself:
You sit in your Ford Escort, watching cars pull in and out of Big Lots. No one would find you here among shoppers carrying plastic bags containing placemats, shoes, coffee mugs, laundry detergent, toothpaste, t-shirts, baby food, shampoo. Tangible things that comprise a home, a family, the soft beauty of an ordinary life, one you don’t yet know how to live.
Sue’s most recent book is Acetylene Torch Songs: Writing True Stories to Ignite the Soul. Her previous book, How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences, won the gold star in Foreword Review’s Book of the Year Award and the 2021 Clara Johnson Award for Women’s Literature. Other works include Love Sick: One Woman’s Journey through Sexual Addiction, made into a Lifetime TV movie; Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You, which won the AWP Award; and The Pat Boone Fan Club: My Life as a White Anglo-Saxon Jew. She’s co-chair of the MFA in Writing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts.