CRACKED AND POURED
The girls wanted to look like their mothers. The housewives prayed with all their might that they would someday grow into the slim bodies of those who’d borne them, those buttery waves of hair. They learned that this was both possible and impossible. As their bodies stretched and grew and decanted into themselves, they indeed learned many things.
They learned that God was good. They learned to cross their legs, a habit impossible to unlearn even when their hips misalign and silvery strokes of pain shoot up their spines. They learned to squat, knees closed, rather than bend at the hip. They learned how to transform their faces—a formidable power—darkening their eyes and polishing the apples at their cheekbones and plumping their insufficient lips. Their beautiful mothers taught them these things.
Next they learned to kneel, and to listen. They learned to be sluttish and coy in turns. They learned what they were and were not allowed to ask. Please fuck me, for instance, was permitted. Stay with me, however, was not. They learned what they were and were not allowed to forbid. These things they learned from their fathers, or else their brothers, or else the friends who’d grown up with them as children, or else their husbands—but mostly by the time they’d married they had been perfectly schooled already. It is when they marry, they’ve been told, that their dreams will be fulfilled.
The housewives take their roles seriously, defending it from those modernized hypocrites who would label it demeaning, pitiful, lesser than. For it is not the burden of the housewives to simply cook balanced meals and dress crying children and sweep creaking stairs. The housewives must also let their babes suckle their nipples red and raw. They must listen with careful attention to the details of their husbands’ last business trip, keep an ear out for signs of betrayal. They must convince their daughters it gets better; they must treat their sons like something between angels and criminals. Most of all, they must enjoy it.
They are all, amazingly, kept women, faithful wives. All except that trim elementary school dean, the one with the perky tits and blue eyes and ravensmane. The pretty dean does exactly whom she wishes, oftentimes to their ire. She is no housewife. Nor is the woman who has bound her children to herself by law rather than blood, nor are the ones who leave their precious gifts in the untrustworthy hands of sitters. What to do with women such as these?
The housewives do not wish to be jealous or selfish. But they can feel it, the comparison inherent whenever they stand beside a woman who is not one of their own. Their men compare—they know. And so the housewives grow resentful, holding their children close and brandishing them like weapons. See? My child is healthy and strong and intelligent, all because of my sacrifice. What has she sacrificed? Not her body. Not her career.
Each woman is fundamentally unhappy in her own special way.
They help each other when they can, plying their sad friends with cheese and white wine. The one who is not clinically depressed will drag the other to spin class, promising her that endorphins are all she needs. They can handle anything: infidelity, sickness, failure, corruption, violence, deceit. But when the pedophile husband is revealed, like a magic trick, they scurry into the darkness, all of them mice. His housewife is on her own.
In times of suicide, their powers awaken, their untapped potential cracked and poured, like skull on pavement. One of their daughters. The housewives rise up, somber pillars, to protect their families from the waves of guilt and misery assaulting their homes.
I’ll buy a dress for the sweet angel.
Oh, you’re a doll—then I’ll order the flowers. Did she have a favorite flower?
We must visit Dianne. She’s a wreck.
Yes, of course. I just have to be home to feed Jed and the kids at eight.
They distribute their medications to the grieved daughters like candy: Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Lexapro, Ambien, Xanax, Klonopin. Don’t worry, sweetheart, it’s just one, to help you through the funeral. Another to sleep tonight. The young mourners are so thankful. They look up at their mothers, eyes faded but relieved above pockets of flesh too dark and deep for their age. It feels good for the housewives’ pills to have a higher purpose. They swaddle their sobbing children like newborns, sorely tempted to offer a nipple.
