Janice
by Mary Grimm
Janice’s ex-husband: he left her in the suburbs, she liked to say. At one time they both worked for Key Corps. They met at one of those team building get-togethers – they were in a group who sat around at the lodge at night and made fun of the exercises and drank a lot. He looked like her dead brother but she didn’t realize this until a friend pointed it out. Janice didn’t want to accept it, and so maybe went at him all the harder.
He wanted children but he was afraid of it, too. He suggested they get a dog to practice. Or some fish.
She was unfaithful to him. Even so, he said he wanted to stay together, but a year later when he got a transfer, he told her he didn’t want her to come with him, and this made her angry, although she knew it was illogical, as if he cheated her somehow, maybe out of a dramatic exit.
She missed having breakfast with him. They used to eat in the almost dark kitchen, early mornings, not speaking. He would pour milk into her coffee, she would refold the newspaper for him.
When she was unfaithful it was with someone she met at an antique store, although she hated antiques. She was there with a friend who was picking up a rolltop desk, and Janice flirted with one of the other customers while she waited for the desk to be loaded into her friend’s truck. He was looking, he said, for a present for his grandmother, who liked Nazi memorabilia, which she thought surely must be a lie (but was true). If the desk hadn’t gotten scratched in the loading, requiring some argument and then a price reduction, all of which left them plenty of time to get past their second thoughts, she wouldn’t have found herself later at his house, looking out at his cactus garden while she smoked, naked except for his discarded tie looped around her waist.
Janice’s ex-husband: he left her in the suburbs, she liked to say. At one time they both worked for Key Corps. They met at one of those team building get-togethers – they were in a group who sat around at the lodge at night and made fun of the exercises and drank a lot. He looked like her dead brother but she didn’t realize this until a friend pointed it out. Janice didn’t want to accept it, and so maybe went at him all the harder.
He wanted children but he was afraid of it, too. He suggested they get a dog to practice. Or some fish.
She was unfaithful to him. Even so, he said he wanted to stay together, but a year later when he got a transfer, he told her he didn’t want her to come with him, and this made her angry, although she knew it was illogical, as if he cheated her somehow, maybe out of a dramatic exit.
She missed having breakfast with him. They used to eat in the almost dark kitchen, early mornings, not speaking. He would pour milk into her coffee, she would refold the newspaper for him.
When she was unfaithful it was with someone she met at an antique store, although she hated antiques. She was there with a friend who was picking up a rolltop desk, and Janice flirted with one of the other customers while she waited for the desk to be loaded into her friend’s truck. He was looking, he said, for a present for his grandmother, who liked Nazi memorabilia, which she thought surely must be a lie (but was true). If the desk hadn’t gotten scratched in the loading, requiring some argument and then a price reduction, all of which left them plenty of time to get past their second thoughts, she wouldn’t have found herself later at his house, looking out at his cactus garden while she smoked, naked except for his discarded tie looped around her waist.