Papa's Muse

The doorbell rang. “Oh, shit,” Miranda hissed as she threw the burning cigarette into the toilet and flushed. The doorbell rang again. “Coming,” she yelled. She sucked in a few short breaths through her nose, forced them out through her mouth, and compressed her face with a hand towel. Someone banged on the front door. “Damn it,” she snarled and checked her complexion in the mirror. She threw the plastic pregnancy stick to the back of her makeup drawer, tugged the rim of her blouse down in the front, and stepped out of the bathroom.

The banging intensified until Miranda yanked the front door open. Her sister Beth shoved in and headed for the kitchen.

“Champagne’s warm by now,” Beth bantered. She let the bottle land hard on the table and reached into the cabinet for two champagne glasses.

“It’s too early—”

“Edward home?”

“No, but I wasn’t expecting—”

“Does he still want you to call him that?” Beth snorted and turned to face Miranda, who stared at the flutes with a raised eyebrow. “What? I thought we were celebrating.”

Miranda remembered that she called Beth a few days ago to share the news about the job offer. Miranda was selected from four, more senior, staffers to go to Italy and report on the new pope. Her Executive Editor promised that if the assignment went well, he would give her more opportunities around the world.

On the call, Beth did not say much about Miranda’s news, only—through the sound of baby bottles springing from her hands and clattering onto the floor—that she would try to get away if she could. It was just so hard with the baby, the crying, just whining, all the Goddamn time, and leaving the house is damn near impossible, and—

Beth brimmed a flute with blush champagne and gulped it down. She refilled her glass and leaned in to fill the empty flute.

Miranda rushed her hand in to block the bottle.

“Eh, you’re no fun,” Beth ribbed and slammed the bottle down.

“Beth, I really appreciate this, but you didn’t have to come. It’s just— I’m—”

“It’s so dark in here.” Beth was moving through the family room now, tugging open the long vertical blinds on the bay windows. “Oh, I almost bought that vase. Love… it. Crate and Barrel?”

“What? Oh— I don’t know. Mom gave it to me for my birthday.” Miranda watched from the kitchen as Beth swiveled picture frames into right angles and tugged couch cushions into perfect squares.

“Oh, yeah. Mom asked me again what Edward’s book is called. I told her it was Literal Men of… I don't know, something or other.”

“Patriot Pens: The Literary Men Who Defined War.”

“Right. Anyway, I told her how you helped him write it—”

“Revise— but who knows if he even used any—”

“Di'I tell you Mom asked if me and Joe are pregnant? She said I’m showing.”

“Chanel is two months old,” Miranda scoffed. “Did Mom tell you that she never returned the car-seat she bought for the shower? She said she’s 'keeping it for the grand-baby' that I’m going to give her. ‘Hadley is cute for a boy or girl,’ she said.”

“Mom just wants grand-kids. I mean, c’mon, Miranda. You are almost thirty—”

“She’s lonely and bored, Beth. Dad’s gone. She has no interests of her own—”

Miranda’s voice quivered. She inhaled a sharp breath then let out a silent sigh to calm herself. She filled her flute with champagne and held it. “Beth, whatever happened to that night school program for your Bachelor’s?”

“I don’t know. Why are you bringing that up? It's been ages since I told you that.” Beth slumped onto the couch and cradled a bolster pillow. “You know Joe and I are talkin’ about tryin’ again. So, I mean—” She trailed off and combed the pillow's fringe with her fingers. “I can always go back, ya know, when the kids're in school, or when they're older.” She continued twisting the fringe into ringlets.

Miranda sank into an armchair in the living room and stared out of the window, squinting as if trying to focus on something in the distance. “You said that when you married Joe— that you were just taking time off for the wedding. Do you not want that anymore? You were almost finished.”

“I mean, Miranda, I don’t even know what I’d do with a degree if I had one,” Beth grumbled, looking down at the pillow. Then, she blurted, “Hey, what does Eddie—I mean Edward—think about you goin’ to Italy?”

“I haven’t told him my decision. I haven’t made a decision, really.” Miranda pushed up from the chair, knocking it into the window sill, and strode into the kitchen. She lit a cigarette, imprisoned the smoke in her mouth without inhaling, then released it in a slow, undulating fog. She steadied the cigarette in an oak ashtray, watched the anxious smoke escape upward and collide against a skylight.

“I just don’t understand why you’re stayin’ at the magazine after he made that huge book deal,” Beth incited, “and he wants to keep you home, Miranda.” She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Don’t you want to be a stay-at-home mom... like me... like Mom?” She waited for a reaction.

Miranda pinched up the cigarette and sharpened the cherry. She tapped the ashtray and condemned the dead ash to a mound in one corner.

Beth scoffed and stood up, tossing the pillow behind her. “God, I’d love to have your life, Miranda. You don’t even appreciate what you have. Huh— if Joe ever came to me and said I could be a housewife, all I gotta do is give him another baby, I’d lay down and—”

“That's enough,” Miranda railed.

“I just don't get how you can be so selfish—”

“I want you to leave. I need—”

“Oh, come on Miranda—”

“I want you to leave. I want to be alone.” Miranda slammed down the ashtray.

Beth glared as Miranda lifted the cigarette, siphoned the steady smoke in, and tilted her head back as if in ecstasy. She exhaled through pursed lips. The two women watched the scarlet-brown smoke stain the sunlight over the table, cut around the champagne bottle, and uncoil when it reached the floor.

Miranda stared at herself in the mirror, through her unfamiliar gray eyes, and lost track of how long her hands shone red under the hot faucet water. With puckered fingers, she traced the faint crow’s feet and laugh lines transforming her face. She stretched her cheeks up and back to remember her face thinner, younger, how the crescent bones of her cheeks lusted from the inside, out, without rouge.

She remembered the day she met Eddie in English 101, the nights they stayed awake reading passages to each other from A Farewell to Arms, the late early-mornings when they made love, fell asleep in each other's arms, and barely made it to class a few hours later. She thought about how Edward never wanted to read out loud, or hear about her day, how she worked sixty-hour weeks, and helped him as he worked half as long, while she never received—

The front door grated open and hammered shut. Miranda wound the pregnancy stick ten or more times around with toilet paper and kept it squeezed in her hand. Footsteps receded down the hall, and the bedroom door closed. She went out to the kitchen and shoved the wad down into the trash bin, beneath ash and cigarette stubs, and a tattered Pottery Barn Kids catalog.

When Miranda entered the bedroom, Edward let out a guttural, “Hey, babe,” without looking up. He was thumbing through papers in a blue-striped folder on his chest. “The publisher said my revisions were exactly what he hoped for,” he boasted. “They’re publishing me.”

“Good— I mean, great. That’s great news.” Miranda paused a moment, half expecting an acknowledgment. When she did not get one, she tried to keep the conversation alive. “Beth stopped over today.” Edward did not respond, and Miranda knew he heard. She took a tatter-bound copy of Travels with Myself and Another: A Memoir, from her nightstand.

“Do you remember when we read Hemingway to each other,” she nearly whispered.

Edward grunted then slouched far down into the pillow, lying supine with his bulbous chin slackened over his collarbone. As he tossed the closed folder onto his nightstand, he grumbled something about his Editor’s marginalia. He switched off his table lamp and swung his head toward Miranda. “Goodnight.”

He reached his hand over and closed her book to view the cover. “You still have that old scrap about Papa’s muse?” His voice stung her eardrums. He flopped over with his back to her and moved to the very edge of the bed. “Why don’t you turn your lamp off, now.”

Miranda gazed at Martha Gellhorn’s picture on the book's cover. The lines of the prairie grass surrounding Gellhorn seemed to vibrate in an imaginary breeze, and the scene entranced Miranda. Gellhorn’s back held the wind and the world that scrutinized her. She poised her gun toward whatever she hunted—lions—or men. Gellhorn’s eye fixed on Miranda as if through a gun scope, and Miranda swore she heard her whisper, “Aren’t you coming?”

Miranda smiled as she placed the book on the nightstand and switched off her lamp. She maneuvered herself onto her back, closed her eyes, and pressed the heels of her hands into them. She imagined that she was in a Tuscan field. The swooshing ceiling fan, the chirring grasshoppers, the puttering rain outside—all orchestrated the fireworks bursting open on the backs of Miranda’s eyelids. She held captive a long breath, then let go.

Copyright (c) 2011, 2013, 2015, 2020 by Lindsey Vernon

All rights reserved