My clothes never fit right in November. It seems they understand nothing of layering and shrink unpleasantly in the dryer at every opportunity, making it impossible to wear two pairs of pants when one is planning on doing some hiking. Jon�s hair gets springy and full of static, developing its own method of defense from my random head-musses, which increase sharply come November. We are not an odd couple, I know, but it feels like it every time this happens. November is disagreeable as a rule for me.
I put on thick clothes today, army-surplus canvas trousers and a gigantic black cable-knit sweater that Jon�s mother knitted for me about three years ago. It swallows me up but is made of the warmest wool I have ever worn. I pad around the house like a cheetah and wait for Jon to come back from his job interview at the bookstore. Things present themselves as temporary obstructions: the book that I want to read that I feel compelled to skim for a few minutes, the coffee that I have to bother making before I can drink it, the toothbrush I must use to ensure proper dental hygiene�they are all tasks that I must perform properly before I can expect Jon back from the interview. It�s like a test that way: you cannot expect this reward unless these select things have been completed.
As I wait the tasks grow odder, less practical. I have to get the mail, and then I have to touch the mailbox only to lift the lid, my hands must not graze the sides. When they do, I punish myself for being so clumsy by going inside and tapping all the mugs in the cabinet twice on each side. Afterwards I go back out and try for the mail again. This time I succeed; this time I am able to yank out the mail without so much as rapping a knuckle against the cold aluminum mailbox. But the mail is so disappointing (an electric bill, a handful of circulars and Jon�s boring Atlantic Monthly which makes my brain sting with its electric politic babble) and I can�t do anything but slam it on the kitchen table and put my head in my hands. I did all of it for nothing, for stupid Atlantic Monthly and the electric bill. A tear slips out of my right eye, and I try to make things even and let one come out of my left, but I�ve already passed the emotional bit of the afternoon and my eyes dry out quickly.
Sort of perversely, I think of horribly sad things for a while, desperate to weep out of my left eye. I think about babies dying, about emotionally traumatized eleven year olds in Appalachia, and then I do the worst. I do the most base thing I can think of: I think about Andrew�s flayed face, and the way his eyes were blankly and obscenely open. Sure enough, a tear goes down my face but I can�t remember which eye it came from, but it doesn�t matter because another one follows it, and another, and the only way I stop myself from crying any more is by being angry that I can�t keep track of my tears. It�s both silly and heartbreaking. I should send all this in to Lifetime fast, before I just get old and generically mad in the nursing home, waving my peachy pink terry cloth bathrobe about, a promiscuous old bat of thirty nine.
And eventually Jon comes home and we have coffee and I ask, slowly so he won�t think I�m too eager to hear (or too lonely to think about very many things at once) how his interview went. His eyes sparkle.
�I think I got the job!� he exults. I smile and say that�s great, man, you will make a great bookseller. I always knew you would find the perfect nerd job eventually, eh? But what comes out of my mouth is older-sister crap, and I feel my whole day of preparation for this moment slip apart and become worthless. Shit.
He also gets excited by the Atlantic Monthly, and by the almond I added to the coffee grounds, and the way the air he puffed on the way to the interview (he walked, the crazy bastard) was white Santa beards of perfection. I can barely take this enthusiasm: it hits me like an overdose from this nothing day, from those bleak nothing hours from one to three forty five. His smile jagged charm bracelets, his arms thick power cables translating his joy to electricity, twining their way around me. He puts on an embarrassing display of wooing me, and I spoil it all.
It�s not like I know why I did. Usually I feel so calm after what my shrink calls �flare-ups�, but this time: nuh-uh. I am far from calm. This is a change and it is beginning to bother me. I don�t particularly care for change outside myself, but when it is a change in me I simply cannot stand it. Too much stuff cluttering up what should be a simple machine, what should do what it is told and then cool it, do the emotions, do the menial work, do the boyfriend (ha!). Humans often make better robots than robots. Why else do you think slavery worked for one thousand years?