woman inside out
     by Kathryn Magendie

Beth hates the smell of sex in the morning. Her panties hug her thighs as she lets loose the water she’s held since the sun first broke over the mountaintops. She feels chilled, but her stream is hot and that heat makes her feel alive, in a way the sperm squiggling inside to her useless womb does not. She imagines the little spermlets’ struggles to find the eggs that no longer drop like beautiful ripe fruit. Not that those ripe fruit ever bore anything more than an ache.

She is bemused that today is her fiftieth birthday; the five and the zero loom three-dimensional, not exactly an ugly number, a bit of a nice rounded one, curvy even.

She stands and pulls up her panties, the semen cold against her, and flushes. In the next bathroom, Stan energetically blows his nose, velociraptor honks. Then the whistling starts. It is like biting on foil, like fingernails raking against a chalkboard, those two sounds, honk, whistle.

Beth knows without looking, knows about the lines spreading out from the corners of her eyes, the way her lids will soon overlap to her eyelashes. After washing her face, she puts in her contacts, swallows half a Vicodin, then, on second thought, swallows the other half. She’s slept wrong, and her leg throbbed all night, causing her to have nightmares full of pain and terror.

Stan calls out, “Beth! Coffee’s ready.”

She pulls on her housecoat, shoves her feet into her slippers, shuffles into the kitchen, and takes the offered cup of coffee, appreciating how the thick pottery mug warms her hands. “Thanks,” she says.

“You’re welcome.” He adds cream and sugar to his, stirring only twice. She never could figure out how three teaspoons of sugar dissolved evenly with only two stirs. He lifts the cup, blows on it (and one blow, she thinks, like one blow will cool a hot cup of coffee!), takes a sip, swallows, says, “Happy birthday to you!”

Beth smiles, sips, swallows, says, “Thanks.” Through the open windows, the creek is laughing at her, the birds chirping, “what-cheer, what-cheer, you’re old, you’re old, you’re old,” but the little red squirrels chatter as if they don’t care one way or another. She likes that in a squirrel.

Smoke billows from the top of the ridge. Someone is building yet another rental log house, the fourth one in just a few months, and soon they’ll make their way to the old log trails where she likes to walk with her old dog, where the silence of the woods, save for the critters’ calls and Girl’s panting, gives her peace. Visitors love the Western North Carolina mountains, and the irony of their carving it away is lost to them, but not to the locals. She feels as if they are tearing out her guts, but one pinch at a time.

When Stan heads out to the porch, Beth spots the card he left propped against the pepper grinder. She waits until he is outside before she takes the card out of the envelope. On the front is the outline of a woman with no discernible features except for big red lips opened wide. Inside, the words read, “These lips were made for talking, and that’s just what they’ll do, one of these days these lips are gonna talk right over you!” Stan has signed it, Happy Big Fat Five O, I love you, S.

She used to keep his cards, she thinks with a hint of sadness as she drops it into the garbage.  It doesn’t matter if he believes she isn’t angry any more. It doesn’t matter that she pretended her orgasm this morning, arching her back and calling out, “Oh, yes, Stan, yes!” She hates the secret irritation she’d felt when he sighed with pride at his ability to cause such pleasure for her. She knows it isn’t about her at all, but all about him, no matter how often he tries to tell her he just wants to make her happy.

It doesn’t matter that he says he is sorry when he hurts her feelings, and it doesn’t matter that she believes he is. It only matters that she pretends everything is okay, because what else is there to do? Or maybe, what else is there to do that she isn’t afraid to do?

Her friends, her family, her acquaintances, her strangers, her enemies, her stylist, her butcher, baker, and candlestick maker all say she is lucky to have Stan, and she always smiles, but sometimes her lips pull taut over her teeth. Her smile acknowledges that she is lucky compared to, say, her good friend Grace, who is married to a horrid little man; and yet the wryness, the bitter part of her smile, comes from a place down in the pit of her gut that says she has settled for less-than. And less than what, she cannot say, much to her frustration.

Beth pours another cup of coffee and goes to the screen door. Stan is rocking a slow rhythm of contentment. In the distance, the Great Smoky Mountains rise up ancient, and the mists cloud the valley view below. Though she doesn’t want to, she thinks about the office party two weeks ago. The one celebrating another award Stan’s firm has won. There is always that feeling of unease when she is among Stan’s partners and employees. She swims against the current in a sea of intelligence, an ocean of degrees and precise training. She never finished college, and this pricks at her, drawing runny, failure-colored blood.

###

The night of the office party, Beth caught her sardonic smile in her hand, held it cupped in her fist. Standing nearby were two of Stan’s employees: Darla and Jenny. Jenny is the architect Stan hired away from another firm, tall, blond, and—of course—exquisite. Darla is an anomaly in Stan’s firm; the only short, dark woman. How she’d slipped through the pearly-blond gates undetected is a mystery to Beth. Stan’s attraction to pale is obvious in his choice of hiring. She used to ask him, “Why did you pick me?” And even when she’d said “pick” she felt shamed, as if she could be plucked from a vine full of women, she of the darker berries, his other choices pale, cool, white grapes. As if she had no choice in the matter but to be harvested, plucked, placed in his mouth, chewed, and swallowed until she became a part of him.

Stan always answered, “You’re all I want.”

While she stood with a drink in one hand, the other hand wanted to point and point and point and say there and there and there is the evidence of your admiration, there they all are, cool puddles of pale shimmers. To control that urge, she’d clenched her fist more tightly. But Darla took her hand, opened the fist, and read her palm, traced a finger over the lines, traced it in a way that made Beth shiver in a way she shouldn’t have, in a way she didn’t understand. Darla has big dark eyes that always seem liquidly ready to release tears, but she is tough and smart.

Darla released Beth’s hand, and said, “It’s etched in your palm, the unsaid things.”

Beth rubbed her hand against her red dress, as if to wipe away the secrets. “What unsaid things?”

“You know.”

“Why shouldn’t I be happy? I have a wonderful life. I have Stan.”

“Who said anything about being happy or unhappy?” Darla asked.

“What are you two going on about?” Jenny had finished her martini, and not a speck of lipstick stained the glass. “Like she said, Darla, why shouldn’t she be happy? She’s got it all.” Jenny plucked the olive from her empty glass and sucked on it, her eyes searching the room, perhaps hoping someone (Stan? Beth wondered) would notice the way her lips wrapped around the round saltiness of the fruit. She took it into her mouth, rolled it around, chewed, swallowed, and then turned back to Beth. “I hope you don’t dare complain! We’d all snatch Stan up in a flash, so you best be appreciative of what you got.”

“Oh, shut up, Jenny,” Darla said. She put her hand on Beth’s shoulder and squeezed, then walked away. Beth tried not to notice how lush Darla’s figure was, how she wished she were a man right then, so she could see what it was like to—to what? What was it men felt? When they entered a woman, when a woman encircled them, what did that feel like? To have that power over a woman, for isn’t that what it really was? No matter how strong and formidable a woman could be, it still came down to the man plunging, entering, filling up the woman with a part of him, and what could the woman give back? They could only take in, receive.

Jenny was talking.

Beth smiled, hoped the smile was friendly and open. “Sorry. What were you saying?”

In a bit of clichéd affectation, Jenny tossed back her platinum hair. “Well, I was just saying.” She rolled her eyes, then stared across the room again, searching. “Darla needs a man.”

“Maybe she has one.” Beth gulped a load of drink and a piece of ice slipped in between her lips, made its way across her tongue and down her throat along with the liquid. She liked how the combination burned cold.

Jenny laughed, then said, “I think she may go the other way.”

“What way?”

“Oh, come off it. You know what I’m saying.”

“I’m not complaining about anything, you know.” Beth turned away from Jenny, went into the ladies’ room and popped a Vicodin, washed it down with her vodka tonic. She glanced at herself in the mirror, then away. If she didn’t compare herself to Jenny, she didn’t look so bad, not bad at all. If she didn’t compare herself to Jenny’s pale coolness. If she didn’t compare herself to degrees and certificates and meetings on Monday and teleconferences and blueprints and erecting structures.

From the safety of the bathroom, she heard Stan laugh, and then the answering giggles from Jenny. She knew without being there that when Jenny licked her lips, Stan licked his. It wasn’t that Stan had affairs, it wasn’t that he stayed out nights, or went drinking with the boys every weekend, or sat around while she did all the work, for Stan did none of those things. But Stan needed something from these women, the reassurances, the admiration, the adoration. He needed to know he was still A Man, and more, A Man Who Had It. Beth was no longer enough to reassure him, if she ever had been. No, she’d never been quite enough.

And at fifty? She sighed, and left the bathroom. She needed another drink.

Jenny stood in front of her, alone. She stretched her mouth into a shiny smile. She pushed back a wispy strand of hair, even though it had been left to fall in against her cheek on purpose; it was there to push away, fall back again, and push away, artfully, purposefully.

Beth stared into her empty glass. She didn’t want the woman to see the question there: “Are you interested in my husband? And if so, what are you willing to do to have him?” And, worse: “Go ahead. I’m exhausted by it all anyway.” She felt silly again. She felt she was the star in her own personal soap opera, and it disgusted her. She made herself look up and say, “Well, what’s been going on with you?” She could never make small talk, never had been able to.

“Things are going so well.” Lick lips, push back hair. “This award is a boost for everyone. I can’t believe I got to be such a big part of it. Your husband is so good at what he does.”

Beth nodded, smiled, wondered what she looked like right then. Again she felt as if she were rising up above everything and watching herself.

“Did Stan show you the present I got him?” Jenny giggled. Beth, whose own wide open-mouthed laughs were too loud and (lately) too infrequent, had always wondered about grown women who giggled. Jenny leaned forward, said, “I couldn’t believe it when I found it, it was so perfect.”

 “What?” Beth really wanted that drink. “I’m not sure . . .”

“And, to celebrate, I bought him lunch at that new restaurant in downtown Asheville. The salmon is fabulous.” Lick, push. “I wanted to thank him for believing in me.”

Hurt slowed, then heated, her blood. “I’m sure he didn’t expect anything.”

She laughed. “He loves getting gifts! Even if he pretends not to.”

“Oh, of course,” Beth said. Of course he did. Sure he did. She’d stared across the room, looking for him, spotted him in a circle of shine, and sent little lethal arrows his way that penetrated his body, thwap thwap thwap.

What did it matter that he’d gone to lunch with Jenny to celebrate the award? Did it matter that when Beth had called that same day to ask him to a celebratory lunch, he’d said he couldn’t get away, he was too busy? He’d lied. Even if he called it something benign, even if he said, “It was impromptu. I forgot to tell you. We just dashed out.” Even so, it was still a lie, so similar to others it could be laughable. She decided to laugh. Hahaha. And the gift, what was it that he felt he couldn’t share it with her? Hahaha!

Beth sat at the bar and drank another vodka tonic or two, listened to the party voices rise and fall behind her, up and down, up and down, up and down. She’d let the alcohol and Vicodin work their way through her body, until she didn’t care.

###

Later, Beth turns away from the door, tired of thinking about Jenny and lunches and gifts, and goes to the kitchen to rinse her cup. There, beside the fruit bowl, is the vase full of flowers. The arrangement is bright and bold. The flowers jet up happily from their stalks, except for one heavy-headed sunflower that lilts sadly against the rest of the perky bouquet, unable to join the fun. Beth reaches over and tries to right the sunflower, but its yellow petals rain down, some curled brown at the edge. She imagines the person who made the bouquet attempting to get rid of the old sunflower that has been lying around, shoving it in with the fresh dewy ones. Once the sunflower had been fresh, and who had noticed? Why hadn’t it been placed in a clear crystal vase while the soil was still moist on its stalk and the dew still lingered on its petals?

She joins Stan on the porch, and he doesn’t say anything, his comfort with himself evident. He can sit across from her for hours and not feel the need to speak. She used to fill in the silences with chatter, but now, she sits and wonders what he talks about with Jenny, if the words spill from their tongues liquidy-smooth. She imagines the words that Stan ejaculates—words, sentences, paragraphs that Jenny sucks in greedily.

He asks, “Are you going to paint today?”

She shrugs. “I thought I would go shopping.” Shopping. How unremarkable. How boringly blaséingly cliché.

“Oh, that’s nice.”

He’s already moved on, Beth thinks. Maybe he hates the weekends, maybe he wishes it were already Monday again so that he could put on his suit and tie, comb his still-thick sandy hair in the way he’s combed it for years, pick up his leather briefcase, kiss her with his cool, thin lips, and say, “See you this evening. Hope you get some painting in.”

It doesn’t matter that she hasn’t painted in months.

After coffee and a breakfast of scones she’d made the night before, Beth showers, combs her dark hair into a low ponytail, and dresses in cotton capri slacks, cotton pullover, and sandals. She brushes on a bit of foundation and blush, smoothes on lipstick, and stands back to see the result. Fifty. Does she look fifty? She takes yoga classes, walks Girl twice a day, eats fruits and vegetables. Her breasts have always been small, so there is no sag (Jenny’s are full and abundant, spilling out of her bra as if no bra could ever contain them. She’s caught Stan staring, his eyes growing wider, his nostrils flaring. He says her breasts are all he needs, so why does she worry about a look, or two or three?).

She sheds the capris and pullover, and rummages in her closet for something sexier. When she exits the bedroom dressed in tight jeans and a form-fitting silk blouse, Stan raises his eyebrows and says, “Look at you! Have a date?”

She wants to say, “Yes, as a matter of fact I do. I thought I’d have lunch with a young studly kind of guy. You know, since I’m feeling old.” So, she says it: “Why, yes, I’m having lunch with a studly young man who’ll make me feel thirty again.”

Stan says what she expects, says it with a relaxed and confident grin. “Well, have fun and just remember to come home to me.”

It makes her mad that he thinks she’d never flirt, that she’d never do something to make her feel alive and young. Her sandals click on the pine flooring as she walks away. He calls out, “What about our kiss?” It was their rule: they never left the house without kissing one another.

Beth pretends she doesn’t hear, gets in her car, and drives away. A shimmer of anxiety curls through her as she takes the curves along the mountains on I-40. What if she gets in a wreck and dies? That would have been their last exchange. She can hear him talking, hear him saying to Jenny, to all of them who would grab him up in a hug, sigh in his ear; he would say, “I asked her for a kiss, and she turned heel and left. Our last moments together and she was angry with me, and I didn’t do a thing!”

They’d coo, “Oh, you poor thing,” and soon one of them, maybe Jenny, or Suzy, or Rebecca, one of them would slip her hand inside his shirt and rub his bare chest, rub in circles, downward rub and say, “If you need anything, anything at all.”

And Stan would have need. He would need.

It doesn’t matter that he thinks her trustworthy. Regular. Fair-to-middling.

At the mall, Beth parks and walks in, feeling her hips loosen. She feels sexed-up in her outfit, the silk shirt rubbing against her breasts.  Her tight jeans pull and tug between her legs, and she wants to arch her back, wants to pull the next man she sees into the bushes and show him what she is capable of. She thinks, When I walk through the door, I am entering someplace different. I am someone different. She lets herself feel surreal. She touches the door, then wraps her hand around the lever to pull it open.

Stepping inside the mall entrance, she is greeted by youth. Young girls giggling with their friends, their clothing made for teenagers and Jennies, the mannequins hard-bodied and doe-eyed. She stops at a make-up counter and picks up a jar of cream.

A pretty young redhead approaches her and asks, “Can I help you?”

“Yes. Will this cream make all my dreams come true?”

The girl is smiling that stretchy kind of smile that says, “Oh, boy, what’s this now.”

“And those shoes, and that purse, and over there, that dress, if I buy all that, will I sell my paintings? Will I be dewy again?”

“Um, I don’t know. I mean—”

“—if I buy this lingerie, will my husband stop ogling blondes?”

The redhead’s smile softens. “I’m afraid that’s never going to happen for us.”

Beth puts down the cream and shrugs.

The girl says, “What you need is revenge.”

“Revenge?”

“That’s what I do. You know, don’t get mad, get even.”

“And that’s worked for you?” Beth asks.

The redhead taps her finger on her lips. “Well.” Tap tap. “I guess not.”

They both laugh.

“Oh, well, thanks. I’ll be off now.” Beth clicks away, fingering the beautiful clothes on the winsome mannequins. Stepping out into the mall main hallway, she looks for the ladies’ room, her Vicodin a hard knot in her jeans pocket. She isn’t even sure she feels the pain in her leg is bad enough yet, but it doesn’t matter.

The injury to her right leg happened when she was only twelve. She’d been riding Flame through the pasture, without a saddle or bridle. Her father had lectured against this, but she was young and stubborn, foolish. She kicked against Flame’s flanks, and he took off. She leaned into his neck when they went through the woods, but one low hanging branch caught her shirt, and next thing she knew, she was flying off Flame’s back and onto the ground, her right left leg twisted underneath her.

When had it begun to hurt every day?

Outside the bathroom, she sees him. He is tall, with seemingly careless, messy hair that Beth is sure is very much on purpose. He wears his clothes the same way; casual yet with intent.  She sees him because he sees her. He leans against the wall outside of Old Navy. Inside Old Navy young girls giggle and hold up tiny little tops. Maybe one of them is his girlfriend. She isn’t jealous of the girls, feels no horrid envy; she only wishes they weren’t so revered at her expense, that she was revered as much as youth. Just as she’s thinking this, the man detaches himself from the wall and walks her way. Beth doesn’t know what to do, so she fumbles in her purse. How silly she would feel if he were really looking at someone behind her, or maybe he is going to ask her for the time, or maybe for money, or maybe—

He’s beside her, and she feels the heat from his body cover her. Beth looks up into dark eyes, dark hair, full lips. She has the urge to suck his lips into her mouth. She is even more aware of the tight jeans pushing between her legs, where a heat is spreading. He says, “I’ve been watching you.”

“What?” Beth can’t stop looking at his lips, imagining them here, there, here, and especially there. “What?” she says again, and it almost comes out a whisper. Her face is burning, because she knows she is a fool for acting this way. An unexpected way. Stan’s way? Is this what he feels standing next to fresh pale? The thought intrigues her, hurts her, and makes her angry, foolishly and hypocritically angry.

He steps closer, into her space. That territorial space Stan had once told her about when he taught an architectural class at her college. He’d said everyone has their own territorial space, which is why some people stand too close—their space is smaller and they don’t understand the effect this has on others. When they step into our territorial space, he said, we want to step away. In that low husky voice that made her shiver, he added, “Unless we’ve invited them in.”

He’d stepped closer, closer, and, sure enough, once he was within two feet of Beth, she’d stepped back, even though she’d daydreamed of this during class, many times. Even though at night she’d touch and arch and moan while thinking of him. He’d laughed and said, “Your territorial space is more than most.”

She’d said, “Is it?”

And later he’d stepped closer until they were an inch apart. They’d ended up on Stan’s couch and, while he slammed into her, she wondered if any of the other students had let him into their territorial spaces.

###

The man is saying, “—and you have a sexy walk.”

Before she can stop herself, it pops out: “Do you know how old I am?”

He laughs, and she likes how it sounds. As if the laugh comes from deep inside him. Deep inside. Deep. “Forty?”

She laughs, shakes her head no.

He reaches out and touches her arm. “Forty-four?”

She shakes her head. She knows she should just tell him, but if he keeps guessing, he’ll stay this close to her, in her territorial space, where she’s invited him in. She can feel the heat, she can watch his lips move.

“You can’t be older than forty-five.” He pushes his hair back from his forehead, and she wishes she could have done it for him. The urge to touch him begins to feel uncontrollable, and this scares her. She shoves her hands in her pockets before she does something stupid. Her purse cuts into her shoulder, hanging heavy.

“It’s my birthday today.” She holds her breath, lets it out. Soon he’ll be gone, enough of this silly game. “I’m fifty.” She shifts her weight a little to adjust the purse, just so she can brush against his arm.

He shrugs, then says, “You walk like you want something you aren’t getting.”

Walk away, she thinks. Walk away. This is getting too strange. And shouldn’t she be insulted? Offended? How dare he say that to her? Instead, she wants to push him into the ladies’ room, lock the door, and then, then she’ll shove his lips over her body. She’ll lick him like a lollipop. To defuse, she says, “How old are you anyway?”

He smiles with one corner of his mouth raised higher than the other. He says, “Old enough.”

“Hunh.”

He leans and whispers in her ear, and his breath is hot. Of course it is. “Are you afraid of me?”

“No.” But she is nodding her head yes when she says it.

She begins to release her hands from her pockets, letting the tightness of the denim edge slip around her wedding band, and when she pulls her hand free, the ring stays in her pocket. Ah, she thinks. Ah.

He stands with his legs spread, pointing it at her.

Beth watches a woman watch her. She wonders what the woman is thinking. She looks to be in her sixties. Maybe she is wishing she were dewy again? Or maybe she is silently warning Beth against doing stupid things on Big Fat Birthdays. Maybe she is relating a silent, “Go for it. Go go go for it. What do you think a man would do? Huh?” The woman walks away and Beth wants to run after her, to ask her what will happen next, what the years will bring. She wants to ask her if she’s happy, if she’s ever been happy. If it matters.

“Hey,” he says, and hands Beth a slip of paper. “This is my cell. I hope you’ll call me.” He presses the paper into her palm, presses it into the flesh, holds it there. “By the way, my name’s Gary.”

She thinks what a normal name this is. Not like Zeus, or Hamlet, or Thor, or Hercules. She closes her hand a bit, feels his fingers slide away against her skin, and then she squeezes into a fist to capture the phone number. She doesn’t say, “I’m married.” Her wedding band makes an outline in her pocket. She says, “I’m Beth.”

He nods, smiles, looks over his shoulder, then says, “Gotta go.” He turns and walks into Old Navy.

Beth stares after him, shoves the slip of paper in her pocket next to her wedding band, the Vicodin nestled there. And the phone number written on the paper, all its possibilities, all its mysteries, burns a hole, burns into her skin, enters her bloodstream, racing to her heart and causing it to beat beat beat, races all through her veins. She is an inferno burning from the inside out. Her skin flames, her hair is on fire, her fingers and toes shoot comets, her breasts rise up and out, her lips burst open, she implodes.

She leaves the mall without buying anything, and on the drive home, she lets her mind wander. She imagines dialing his cell number. Imagines his honey-warm voice suggesting where they should go. She imagines the hotel, one with soft white sheets, and a big down-filled cover, and there will be wine, and her Vicodin, to take the edge off the betrayal.

Gary is leaning against the doorway, watching her walk into the room. He peels the clothes from his body, and every inch of him is hard. He is confident, knows he looks good, knows that when she touches him, the flesh will not give way. Knows.

Then it is her turn: she is to undress. And it is then she wishes he could see the inside of her. How brave and strong she is from within. How smooth and firm and young her bones are, her bones that can support the weight of men, how hot her blood runs, how if she could just turn inside out and show him who she really is underneath, he would look at this woman, instead of the other one. Inside out, that is all she asks, that he would see her strong bones, her hot blood, her full and beating heart, her organs pink and wet and dewy.

For the first time since she’d accepted Stan into her, received the squiggling tadpole, felt it blossom, for the first time since she felt it all drain away, never taking hold, leaving an empty space, leaving a guilty relief, she wishes she were a virgin again: fresh, unused. Where everything was unexplained and unexplored. Where she could start again from the beginning.

She is a container that they fill up with their pleasure.

She sees his grimace as he calls out to the goddess of love, sees him get up, go into the bathroom, whistling as he wipes her from his body, his semen caught inside a rubber tube where it will be flushed away. And Beth sees herself lying there, empty.

Back at home, Beth goes to the bathroom, pulls everything from her jeans pocket, and then flushes everything down the toilet, watches as everything swirls and swirls and then disappears.

# # # # # # # #

VOTE!  Should this story be included in our annual print anthology?*

Kathryn Magendie left behind her moss-filled grandfather oak trees in South Louisiana and floated off to her tucked-in cove in western North Carolina, where she spins tales, drinks Deep Creek Blend coffee and an occasional vodka tonic with lime, and contemplates the glow of Old Moon. She is a writer, editor, and co-managing editor of The Rose & Thorn Literary Ezine. Her short stories, poetry, essays, and photography have been published in both online and print publication. Her debut novel, Tender Graces, will be released this spring (2009).

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