The Shine Journal

 

 

A Woman Could Sense These Things

 

by

 

Amy Corbin

 

 

 

A woman could sense these things.  It wasn't one thing in particular.  It was just a feeling.  I first started to suspect something about three months before when John started to wear a belt and actually trimmed his toe nails without any prompts.  He also stopped complaining about my cooking.   At first I didn't catch on.  Meal times just seemed more pleasant; and then when I was in the laundry room emptying his pants pockets, I found the matches.  We've never even been to The Fox and Firkin.  John had always said pubs make him sleepy.  "Heavy beer and dim lighting make me tired."

It wasn’t like everything was so great with us that I couldn't imagine better.  I could and did -- regularly.  It was just difficult for me to imagine another woman liking John.  Maybe I couldn’t be objective because I knew him too well.  Yet there was a time when John made my heart flutter, and I was genuinely nervous thinking about whether or not he’d call.  That was before the days of waking up to his farts and sitting  across from him at the dinner table watching him shovel the food in,  huffing and puffing and chewing with his mouth open.  He even used to be an all right lover; at least he seemed to try.  And then it was on and off as quick as a ride at the fair, yet a whole lot less thrilling.

When was he seeing her?  It didn't seem like there was anything new added to his docket.  He went to work, had poker night with his buddies, and then he had his Amway meetings.  That was it!  It was the Amway meetings.  He’d stopped going for a while, said it was too cult-like.  And then all of a sudden he started back up again.  "They're not so bad," he’d   said when I questioned him on it.  How could I have been so naïve?

 The funny thing about the "affair" was that it made John more appealing.  I started laughing more at his jokes.  I put on mascara and I even traded in my track suits for some new Gap jeans.  His disgusting eating habits were now sweet, and I told myself how awful it would be to cook for a man who just picked at everything and ate like a bird.  I couldn't believe some other woman was with my John.  What did they talk about?  What did she look like?  Each time I imagined her she’d be different.  Dark hair and wild green eyes, blonde and petite, olive skinned and wavy long hair, or maybe she was a freckled red head.  What was her name?  Was it something exotic like Bianca or maybe it was cute like Jenny or maybe it was a cheap name like Roxie?  I had decided to follow John to his next Amway meeting on Tuesday.

By Tuesday, minimal sleep combined with very little food and a mind that was permanently fixated on Jenny or Roxie or whatever that good-for-nothing woman's name was, had left me wacky.  John ate his supper in his quick pleasant manner and was out the door to his Amway meeting.  And right behind him was "Helen, Private Eye”.  I followed him just like they do in the movies -- not too close, but careful not to let my eyes off his car.

When he pulled into the parking lot of The Fox and the Firkin my  heart felt like it was trapped in my throat.  I passed the pub and parked in the Esso station just after it.  Maybe I'd just look in the window; I wasn’t one for scenes.  When I got up to the window I peeked in, I couldn't see anything but dark green curtains.  I thought I  could open the door quickly and steal a look.  They'd probably be so engrossed with one another they wouldn't even notice.

As I walked towards the door I couldn't help but feel uneasy.   Seeing them together could change my whole world.  Sometimes not knowing was better.  When I opened the door I was in shock to see John sitting with a transvestite.   No really, it’s true.  He was, she was, sitting across from him in a very fancy dress and high heels laughing like John was the funniest man on earth.   She had bleached blonde hair done in a Farrah Fawcett do, layered and all poofy-like.  And so much makeup!  John hated makeup.  Yet there he was smiling and carrying on with the polar opposite of me.

I really didn’t know what to do, so I shut the door and walked back to my car.  Was this some sort of fetish of John’s that I was unaware of? 

When I got home I poured a glass of red wine and just sat at the kitchen table thinking.  Did he even know he was meeting up with a man dressed up as a woman?  He could be quite daft, my John.  Perhaps he didn’t know.  Or maybe he enjoyed the theatrical nature of it all. I decided to dress up too and went upstairs to find an outfit. 

John opened the door at 9:15 pm and I was sitting back at the kitchen table sipping my wine. 

“Hi, honey,” said John, not even looking at me.

“How was the meeting?” I asked.

 “Oh, you know:  ‘Sell more.  Rah, rah, rah’.”   

“You know that woman you were sitting with is a man, right?”

“And then he looked at me.  His face was shocked.  And there I was with my hair all teased up like Dolly Parton and enough make-up on to be dubbed the Queen of Maybelline;  spilling out of my 80’s dress that barely fit twenty years prior.

“What are you wearing?” he asked.  “Bill didn’t want me to tell you.” 

“Bill?” 

“He’s a transsexual woman, now.” 

“What about that new belt you got?”

“That belt?  Bill gave it to me.  Said it didn’t suit his new lifestyle.”

 

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My Bio: Amy has been previously published in the filling Station, The Cynic, Ascent Aspirations, Shine, Haruah: A Breath of Heaven, and Everyday Fiction. She likes to eat cold leftovers for breakfast.

 My Motivation : Things are not always as they appear.