Read The Stuff That Never Happened for Free Online Page A

over and writes on the back. “What do you say we just pretend that this is Tuesday instead of Wednesday, shall we?”
    “Wait.” He keeps writing for a few seconds more, and then he stops and stares at me as though he can’t quite remember what I just said. He clears his throat. “What? Tuesday? You want it to be Tuesday?”
    “Yes. This is ridiculous. Let’s shake hands and meet here again tomorrow morning. Or—what the hell—even next Wednesday. Or better yet, in the spring.”
    “All right, all right. It’s now officially Tuesday,” he says, missing the point entirely, and you can’t tell me it’s not on purpose. And then the book, victorious, decides that was quite enough human conversation, thank you, and reaches up a long, slippery, octopus arm and pulls him back into the smoky unfairness of Factory World. When I get out of bed a few minutes later and head to the shower, he’s writing furiously.
    Which is fine. Perfectly understandable. We’ve been married practically forever, as I may have mentioned. You can have an off year, especially a year when you’re writing a book—but you have to talk about it. That’s all I’m saying. And it’s fine to skip making love, even after you’ve made a big deal about setting up a schedule—but don’t you have to acknowledge that it meant something to you, that it was a loss, no matter how tiny?
    I pull on my terry-cloth bathrobe—I, at least, don’t run around naked when it’s so cold in our bedroom that you can see your breath—and head to the bathroom. I pee and brush my teeth and then, just before I get in the shower, I find myself staring in the mirror. My forty-nine-year-old face looks back at me, and even with all its morning creases and puffiness, it’s a face I’ve at last come to accept. I used to think my skin wasn’t smooth enough, but now I don’t care. It looks as if somebody has drawn pencil lines around my hazel eyes, which were always my best feature, and my wild mass of curly dark blond hair that I spent years trying to tame into sleekness is now cut to shoulder length with highlights to cover the gray strands, thanks to L’Oréal. But it’s okay, good enough. So much that used to seem so important—abolishing crow’s-feet and occasional gray hairs—really doesn’t matter at all.
    I lean forward into the mirror. Jeremiah, I am going to be a grandmother! Can you believe it? Me—the one you said was the youngest person you ever slept with? I am almost fifty years old now, Jeremiah, so I don’t even want to think of how old you are. But I’m okay. I mean, I could stand to lose ten pounds, but I refuse to be one of those women who thinks about that all the time. I have things on my body now that a man can hang on to: real hips and boobs. Possibly even some back fat, I’m not sure. I won’t let myself look .
    This is very bad, talking to Jeremiah in the mirror. It’s bad enough when my mind goes off on its own and constructs a whole scenario about him while I’m sleeping, but his presence absolutely must be chased out of my waking thoughts. I poke out my stomach and pat it. Oh, this ten pounds could so easily turn to fifteen. The truth is, despite my brave talk about not caring about my appearance so much, I know that soon I’ll either need to think about losing some weight or start buying underwear that’s made of industrial materials. I won’t be able to stand myself.
    When I get out of the shower and walk back across the hall to get dressed, Grant is still sitting up in bed, scrawling on my mother’s stationery. He puts down the paper and takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes hard. “This book is killing me,” he says.
    “You and me both,” I tell him. I put on my bra, snapping it in the front and then sliding it around and up over my breasts, once known around here as the Girls. I have to lean forward to tuck them in, which makes me feel a little self-conscious. But when I turn, I see that Grant is not even