“Sally! Do you really expect me to wear olive green socks with my navy blue suit?” Sally rushed back to the bedroom to find a pair of matching socks for her husband, Bob. She hurried back to the kitchen, but she was too late. The smoke detector alerted everyone that the bacon had burnt.
“Salllllly! Turn that damn thing off!” bellowed Bob.
Sally hustled to the hallway, climbed on a teetering barstool and reset the smoke detector. The seat swiveled as she climbed off the stool and her toe caught the unraveled hem of her floor length terry cloth robe . She regained her balance before she fell but her head slammed against the wall. Her Goody curlers pierced her scalp. She ran back to the kitchen to salvage some breakfast from the charred carnage.
“What’s that smell? Did you burn breakfast? Again? Forget it! I’m going to work. Where are my keys?” Bob never missed a chance to cast Sally’s mistakes in the worst light possible.
Sally scrambled about searching for her husband’s keys while he inventoried his blood pressure pills. ”Sally! Did you call in my blood pressure medicine refill yet?” Her meek “No,” filled the house.
“I guess I’ll have to do it myself. Who left my keys out here on the counter? Sally! You’re not taking care of me!” Bob left without saying good-bye. Sally theorized years ago that Bob had taken a secret oath to never use the words “good” and “Sally” in the same sentence.
Sally faithfully followed Bob to the front door. She was just about to walk him to his restored ’68 Corvette when her daughter stopped her.
“Mom!” Reagan wailed. “You’re not going outside like that, are you? Last time you did, the neighbors though we’d found an extra-terrestrial. Puh-leeze! I’ll just die if you go outside like that.”
Sally stood between the storm door and the entry door, watching Bob leave but listening to Reagan and Damien.
“Get up, Damien! Mom’s doing it again—scaring the neighborhood pets.”
“Oh, God. You know, Reagan, I bet she could turn dolphins into man-hating beasts.”
“Maybe we should go to the orphanage after school and tell the kids how lucky they are.”
Sally immediately turned her complete attention back to her husband. She waved good-bye as Bob picked the morning paper off the driveway and tossed it toward the house. Sally misjudged the errant throw and the paper slipped through her hands and smacked her in the face. She couldn’t tell for sure through the smoky glass of the car window, but she thought she saw Bob’s first smile of the day.
She returned to the kitchen just as her kids were entering. She offered to make them a new breakfast. They rebuffed her, contending that a package of Ding Dongs and a Red Bull would be more nutritious.
After the kids left, Sally tore through the paper. She hoped her letter to “Ask Joyce” would be printed in that morning’s Claremont Herald. It had been six weeks and she had already received the Mannheim Steamroller CD she ordered the day she sent the letter.
Sally found the Life section and sifted through article on refinishing antiques, caring for toenails and cooking the perfect cabbage rolls until she found the advice column.
The first letter was from a small town teenage girl who had had a baby and was raising it in her bedroom without her parent’s knowledge. She was starting to feel guilty—should she tell her parents? Sally knew Joyce’s answer without reading it. In the next letter a truck driver was complaining about all the small cars on the road that wouldn’t pull over when an eighteen wheeler barreled up behind them. Didn’t everyone realize that truck drivers were hopped up on bennies and had impaired reaction time? He had started an organization to publicize the dangers: Drugged Drivers Against Slow Mothers. The third letter was strangely familiar. With a sudden sting at the base of her neck, Sally saw herself in print.
Dear Joyce:
Help! My husband doesn’t respect me. He doesn’t even know I exist. He treats me like his personal slave in the morning and like his whipping boy at night. He complains about my housework and my cooking. He never hears a word I say. Once when he didn’t like the way I waxed the hall closet floor, he said, “What have you been doing all day?” I told him I was filming a pornographic movie starring me and twenty runaway boys. He said he prayed they didn’t mind yellow wax build up. I’m not sure that he was talking about the floors. Please, Joyce, you’ve got to help me---Trapped
Dear Trapped:
Respect his need for quiet time when he gets home—stop nagging. Perhaps with all your time alone you can read some books about your husband’s interests and hobbies. Once you develop and interest in something he values, your usual boring conversation should perk up.
Sally sat at the kitchen table in a daze. She had imagined Joyce being sympathetic to her problems. She had even planned a menu (warm couscous salad with chicken and a lime-cilantro vinaigrette, citrus fruit salad and key lime pie) for the luncheon Joyce would insist was necessary in order to get to the root of Sally’s problems. Afterward, Joyce would tell her readers that the luncheon had cured her slight but annoying case of scurvy and she and Sally would become fast friends.
Sally never imagined that Joyce would take Bob’s side. She could feel her life quickly turning against her—just as her body had done years before. She rested her double chin on her thick neck. She surveyed the sagging rolls of fat that called her body “home.” She knew she should been repulsed, but somehow it pleased Sally. Her abundance of flesh and fat was the only thing Bob seemed to notice.
Sally pushed herself away from the table. She put on her favorite apron; the one that said “I came. I saw. I took a Valium” and began clearing the breakfast dishes. She picked up the burnt bacon and eggs and absently ate the charred mess. She began loading the dishwasher. Of all the monotonous jobs around the house, she hated dishwasher loading the most. Sally did not bother scraping off the dried flecks of meatloaf and brown gravy gripping the Corningware, she just randomly stuck the plates, cups glasses and pans anywhere they fit. Bob often complained that she wasted a lot of space and that he could get a lot more in if she just reorganized a little.
Bob often complained about her housework. He was particularly critical of her bathroom cleaning. No matter how hard she tried, she just could not get all the soap cum off the shower tiles. She had considered mixing bleach and ammonia in her cleaning bucket, locking herself in the bathroom and dying in one last tile cleaning frenzy. But Sally figured her family would think she had made a stupid mistake and never give her credit for her suicide.
* * *
Sally switched on the Hotpoint. She turned on the kitchen radio. It was time for her favorite local call-in talk show. The host was being particularly abusive that day; she’d have to call. She set up the ironing board, filled the Mary Proctor with distilled water and dragged the ironing board from the utility room to the kitchen, put herself on automatic pilot and concentrated on the scratchy voices on the radio.
The topic of the day was political current events. Sally was disappointed. She preferred the days when callers discussed personal tragedies like when a mother caught her boss in bed with her daughter. Although she had been somewhat dismayed by the poor choices made by her boss and daughter and her complicity in the latter, she was seeking counsel regarding the fact that seeing them there, her boss with his slacks at his ankle and her daughter wearing nothing but her Bojangles’ headgear, had been a turn on.
Sally continued starching pillowcases, creasing jeans and scorching Bob’s good shirts while opinionated callers railed about the liberal media elite, gay marriage and San Francisco. The host, Allan White, brutally attacked any caller that dared to question his conservative point of view. “Commie faggot!” he’d scream. “They wasted a perfectly good butthole when they put teeth in your mouth!” Every time Allan hung up on a caller, Sally imagined the call-ending click and buzz piercing her own ear drum.
By the time Sally had begun the handkerchiefs, the second segment of Allan’s show had started. He had been joined by a local psychiatrist who had had written a book, Revenge Without Risk—How to Get Even Without Getting Caught. Callers were invited to phone in with personal problems. Sally dialed the radio’s number repeatedly until she got through to the station.
“W-H-A-T radio. What would you like to talk about?”
“That’s personal!” Sally reacted defensively to the bored, anonymous voice on the other end of the line.
“Well, lady, you’re about to tell fifty thousand listeners, so what what’s one more?”
“Uh, I want to talk about my husband. He never pays attention to me.” Sally couldn’t be sure, but she thought she hear the voice drone quietly, “Bah, blah, blah.”
“Okay, you’ll be caller number 5, but make it good, please. We’ve had way too many housewives bitching about their husbands this week.”
Sally listened to the radio with the phone pressed tightly to her ear. They psychiatrist was a woman, extremely sympathetic; just what Sally had been waiting for. Caller Number Four rambled about her neighbor who let crabgrass grow in the cracks of his driveway. The weeds were infesting her Bermuda which was otherwise pristine. The psychiatrist suggested posting a notice on Craig’s List for an estate sale at the offending neighbor’s house. She also suggested both neighbors schedule appointments at her clinic’s nearest suburban outlet. Finally, Caller Four hung up. Sally felt the sweat in her armpits drip down her upper arms.
“Caller number Five, you’re on the air. Could you please turn down your radio?”
“It’s down.”
“Ma’am, I can still hear it. Go turn it off, would you?”
Sally reached over to turn the volume down. It was the first time she noticed that she had left the iron burning a hole in Bob’s favorite monogrammed handkerchief.
“Hello?”
“Okay, so what’s you’re problem?”
“Uh, well, yesterday was my birthday and I thought maybe my husband was planning a surprise for me---“
“What a nice man!”
“No, wait. So, anyway yesterday, when he came home from work, he sent me out to get some cigarettes and his suit at the cleaners. I just knew that was his way of getting me out of the house while he set up my surprise. I was so excited that I forgot to go to the cleaners. When I got home he and the kids were gone. I thought, ‘Wow, this is even more elaborate than I thought.’ I got all dressed up waited for my big surprise. Well, my big surprise was that they had gone out to eat without me because I’d taken so long to get his cigarettes. No one remembered my birthday at all. And then he griped at me for an hour for forgetting the dry cleaning.”
“So why do you need revenge? It seems to me, and this is not just my opinion but everyone in the studio, that you are lucky to be married to this marvelous man.”
“Uh, what?”
This man you want to hurt, this role model for your kids, you just said that you thought he was going to throw you a surprise party.”
“Right?” Sally laid her head down on the kitchen table; the burden of being perpetually misunderstood weakened her.
“Well, any man whose wife could even imagine throwing hera surprise party is a good, good man, indeed. Thanks, caller and congratulations on finding such a god.”
Sally heard the click and hung up the phone. She turned up the radio just in time to hear the hot and guest suggesting that Bob was the one who should seek revenge on such an ungrateful wife. Sally found the Hershey’s chocolate bar she had hidden in the sponge drawer. She gave up on the ironing; it was almost time for “The Thelma Robertson Show”.
* * *
Sally switched on the TV. She sat on the couch feeling more intimate with her chocolate than she had with Bob in years. She wondered what to fix for dinner. He decided on meatloaf. Once, Damien had almost complimented her on her special ground beef pie. He said, “This meatloaf is great, Mom.” Sally’s involuntary false modesty reflex took control, “Oh, it’s not that great.” Damien brought her back to earth,” You’re right, but it’s better than your usual gruel.” Sally’s face stung red with embarrassment from the harsh memory; she realized, for the first time, the cruelty of her son’s words. She turned her attention back to her chocolate bar and the television.
Thelma’s guest was a nationally famous psychologist/nutritionist/televangelist who was in town promoting his new book, The Trouble with Problems. Two days earlier Sally had waited in line for hours to get an autographed copy of his book. Several people had cut in front of her; when she complained the author had admonished her, “Hey, lady, take a back seat with all that hostility.”
Sally watched as a telephone number flashed on the screen and Thelma urged callers to call in with questions for her guest. Sally the number by heart. Luck was finally with her—she got a ring on the thirteenth try.
“W-A-A-H TV. What would you like to discuss on the air?”
“My life.”
“Well, keep it short. You’ll be the last caller-it must be your lucky day. Turn down the sound on your TV and be ready.”
Sally tightened her grip on the phone. She had never had the coveted last caller spot before.
“This is the last call of the day---Caller, you’re on the air.”
“Uh, hello.”
“Hello, Caller. You’re on the air with our guest, author Dr. Dalton Dryden.”
“Uh, hi, um,” she stammered, “I’m very nervous.”
“Don’t be. You’re among friend here, right, Doctor? Just be yourself but get on with it. We’re down to our last 30 seconds.”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I have no energy, no appetite-but I eat all the time. I feel sleepy all day but when I go to bed, I can’t sleep. I cry at any little thing. I’m extremely irritable. I used to be such a contented person.”
Dr. Dryden sounded agitated, “I run into housewives complaining of these symptoms everywhere I go. I’ll bet you’re a stay-at-home-mom with school age children.”
“Yes, yes, I am.”
“Well, lady, I think you’re a fraud.”
“What?”
“I think you’re faking psychosis to avoid your responsibilities. You’re wasting my time. There are people out there with real problems. Good luck and good bye. Oh yeah, lady—this is me, just playing a hunch—lose weight.”
Sally snapped. She snapped in half what was left of her Hershey’s bar, she snapped off the TV. She stared at the silver square fading to nothing on the green screen.
Suddenly the dishwasher’s final hiss shook her from her catatonic state. She knew what she had to do. As she unloaded the pots and pans, the first smile of the day stretched her lips. She thought of the poetic justice of her final act. She thought of the headline in the next day’s paper:
WOMAN FOUND DEAD IN DISHWASHER
Suicide Note Clinging to Refrigerator on Care Bear Magnet
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