VOX. Christina Dalcher

wait, Jeanie,” she said as we smoked cheap clove cigarettes out the single window of our apartment. She pointed to five neat lines of undergraduates marching in lockstep. “See those ROTC kids?”

      “Yeah,” I said, exhaling smoke out the window, Lysol can at the ready in case our landlady showed up. “So?”

      “Fifteen percent is some flavor of Baptist. Twenty percent, Catholic—the Roman variety. Almost another fifth says it’s nondenominational Christian—whatever that means.” She tried a few smoke rings, watching them dance out the window.

      “So? That leaves what? Almost half doing the agnostic dance.”

      Jackie laughed. “Have you run out of brain room, Jeanie? I haven’t even mentioned the LDS people or the Methodists or the Lutherans or the Tioga River Christian Conference.”

      “The Tioga what? How many of them are there?”

      “One. I think he’s in the air force.”

      My turn to laugh now. I choked on a long draw of clove smoke, stubbed it, and sprayed myself with Lysol. “So not a big deal.”

      “He isn’t. But the other ones, yeah. It’s a religion-heavy organization.” Jackie leaned out the window to get a better look. “And it’s mostly men. Conservative men who love their God and their country.” She sighed. “Women, not so much.”

      “That’s ridiculous,” I said, leaving her to burn the other lung with a second cigarette. “They don’t hate women.”

      “You, kiddo, need to get out more. Which states do you think have the highest enlistment rates? Hint: they ain’t in fucking New England. They’re good old boys.”

      “So what?” I was exasperating her, and I knew it, but I couldn’t see the connection Jackie was trying to make.

      “So they’re conservative, that’s what. Mostly white. Mostly straight.” Jackie stubbed out the half-smoked clove, wrapped it in a plastic baggie, and faced me, arms crossed. “Who do you think is angriest right now? In our country, I mean.”

      I shrugged. “African Americans?”

      She made a buzzing noise, a sort of you’re-out-but-we’ve-got-some-lovely-consolation-prizes-backstage kind of a sound. “Guess again.”

      “Gays?”

      “No, you dope. The straight white dude. He’s angry as shit. He feels emasculated.”

      “Honestly, Jacko.”

      “Of course he does.” Jackie pointed a purple fingernail at me. “You just wait. It’s gonna be a different world in a few years if we don’t do something to change it. Expanding Bible Belt, shit-ass representation in Congress, and a pack of power-hungry little boys who are tired of being told they gotta be more sensitive.” She laughed then, a wicked laugh that shook her whole body. “And don’t think they’ll all be men. The Becky Homeckies will be on their side.”

      “The who?”

      Jackie nodded at my sweats and bed-matted hair, at the pile of yesterday’s dishes in the sink, and finally at her own outfit. It was one of the more interesting fashion creations I’d seen on her in a while—paisley leggings, an oversized crocheted sweater that used to be beige but had now taken on the color of various other articles of clothing, and purple stiletto boots. “The Susie Homemakers. Those girls in matching skirts and sweaters and sensible shoes going for their Mrs. degrees. You think they like our sort? Think again.”

      “Come on, Jackie,” I said.

      “Just wait, Jeanie.”

      So I did. Everything turned out pretty much as Jackie thought it would. And worse. They came at us from so many vectors, and so quietly, we never had the chance to assemble ranks.

      One thing I learned from Jackie: you can’t protest what you don’t see coming.

      I learned other things a year ago. I learned how difficult it is to write a letter to my congressman without a pen, or to mail a letter without a stamp. I learned how easy it is for the man at the office supply store to say, “I’m sorry, ma’am. I can’t sell you that,” or for the postal worker to shake his head when anyone without a Y chromosome asks for stamps. I learned how quickly a cell phone account can be canceled, and how efficient young enlisted men can be at installing cameras.

      I learned that once a plan is in place, everything can happen overnight.

SIX

      Patrick is feeling frisky tonight, even if I’m not. Either that, or he’s looking for stress relief before another day in another week at the job that’s keeping gas in the car and paying the kids’ dentist bills. Even a topped-out government job never seems like enough, not now that I’m no longer working.

      The lights on the porch go out, the boys tumble into their beds, and Patrick tumbles into ours.

      “Love you, babe,” he says. His roaming hands tell me he’s not ready for sleep. Not yet. And it has been a while. A few months is my best guess. It might be longer than that.

      So we get to business.

      I was never one to talk much while making love. Words seemed clumsy; sharp interruptions of a natural rhythm, a basic coupling. And forget about silly porn-style mantras: Give it to me. Here I come. Fuck me harder. Oh baby, oh baby, oh baby. They had a place in kitchen flirting or raunchy jokes with the girlfriends, but not in bed. Not with Patrick.

      Still, there had been talk between us. Before and afterward. During. An I love you, six sounds, diphthongs and glides and liquids with only a single turbulent v, a soft consonant in so many ways, appropriate to the setting. Our names, whispered. Patrick. Jean.

      Tonight, with the children in their beds and Patrick in me, his steady breathing close and heavy in my ear, my eyes shut to the glint of moon refracting off the dresser mirror, I consider what I’d prefer. Would I be happier if he shared my silence? Would it be easier? Or do I need my husband’s words to fill the gaps in the room and inside me?

      He stops. “What’s wrong, babe?” There’s concern in his voice, but I think I hear a trace of otherness, a tone I never want to hear again. It sounds like pity.

      I reach up, place both palms flat against the sides of his face, and pull his mouth to mine. In the kiss, I talk to him, make assurances, spell out how every little thing is going to be all right. It’s a lie, but a fitting lie for the moment, and he doesn’t speak again.

      Tonight, let it be all quiet. Full silence. A void.

      I am now in two places at once. I am here, under Patrick, the weight of him suspended above my skin, part of him and also separate. I am in my other self, fumbling with my prom dress buttons in the back seat of Jimmy Reed’s Grand National, a sex car if there ever was one. I’m panting and laughing and high on spiked punch while Jimmy gropes and grabs. Then I’m singing in the glee club, cheering on our no-star football team, giving the valedictory address at college graduation, shouting obscenities at Patrick when he tells me to push and pant just one more time, babe, before the baby’s head crowns. I’m in a rented cottage, two months ago, lying beneath the body of a man I want desperately to see again, a man whose hands I still feel roaming over my flesh.

      Lorenzo, I whisper inside my head, and kick the three delicious syllables away before they hurt too much.

      My self is becoming more and more separate.

      At times like this, I think about the other women. Dr. Claudia, for instance. Once, in her office, I asked whether gynecologists enjoyed sex more than the rest of us, or whether they got lost in the clinical nature of the act. Did they lie back and think, Oh, now my vagina is expanding and lengthening, now my clitoris is retracting into its hood, now the first third (but only the first third) of my vaginal walls are contracting at the rate of one pulse every eight-tenths