by Ethel Rohan

A father from our daughter’s kindergarten class sent invitations to his art exhibit downtown. The white card was premium stock and edged in gold. The envelope lined with rainbow-colored silk paper, and smooth under my fingers. My wedding was the only occasion I had ever sent such fancy invites. The kind of invite you had a drink with.

We arrived at the gallery. Its walls were white-washed behind the oil paintings and the lights hung low from the white ceiling, stalactites. Waiters dressed in black-and-white, and with dark slicked-back hair, moved through the crowd. They offered white and red wine in stemless glasses. I reached for the red wine. My husband shot me a look and requested water. We made small talk with the other parents: weather, economy, rumors that our school’s principal was about to take early-retirement.

As soon as I could get away, I visited with each of the twenty-six paintings. I pictured what I would change: put the red dog in the trout’s jaws; the black church spire atop a walled-in prison; a field of massacred trees floating in bright green blood, the men, women and children a forest. My imagination flowed along with the wine. Not that I was an artist. I liked to re-imagine things.

We strolled arm-in-arm from the gallery to a nearby restaurant, the air cold and moon full. The restaurant smelled of garlic and basil. My husband gestured at my wine-colored lips, and I could picture the bloody hues there, trapped in the crevices. I chewed at the stains. My teeth were discolored too, he added. It always happened. I forced a toothless smile and told him about my trip to the zoo, that afternoon with Mia. One lemur had mirrored Mia’s hand gestures and waved, pointed, and clapped.

He sniffed. “Monkey see, monkey do.”

The waiter, soft cinnamon eyes and black hair shiny as plumage, removed my wine glass. I ordered another.

“Your fifth? Sixth?” my husband asked.

I looked out the window. A girl pulled an aggressive three-point turn in her red SUV and snagged the parking space right outside the restaurant. I should drive like that, take.

My husband used his dinner napkin to wipe the back of his neck and his forehead. He rubbed the napkin repeatedly over his hair: ten, twelve strokes. I wanted to snatch the napkin and throw it at him. Animals in the zoo primped themselves in front of everyone. His doing that, it reduced us. Sweat broke again on his forehead. I pictured both of us melting right there at the table. We tried to struggle and scream, to reach out for each other, but we were frozen, voiceless. Then, then we shrank, slow, slow, and dissipated to puddles on our chairs, his clear and mine red.

From the ceiling, clusters of silver balls, the same type used for Christmas decoration, hung low from thin steel cords. I asked my husband if they weren’t like arms reaching down from the moon with miniature orbs at their ends: the moon offering us parts of herself.

His face darkened. “You’re drunk.”

I lifted my wine glass. “I’m imaginative.”

I tried to relax back into how loose and soft I felt, my senses blunted and edges padded. Nothing hurt. But the floating feeling was gone.

He placed his face in his hands and rubbed his eyes with his fingers, weary, sad. “You promised.”

I swallowed and looked into my wine glass. I pictured my parents inside. They sat facing each other with their knees pulled to their chests and heads tipped back, mouths open, filling. I drained my glass and waved to the waiter.

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Raised in Ireland, Ethel Rohan now lives in San Francisco. She received her MFA in fiction from Mills College, CA. Her work has or will appear in Hobart, Storyglossia, Necessary Fiction, PANK 4, Keyhole 9, Potomac Review, and Los Angeles Review, among many others. She blogs at ethelrohan.com.

Tagged as: New Literature Online, Short Story

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