Undisclosed Visitor

From her window, Linda watched the neighbor yell at her son.  While that woman was indifferent to her daughter, she remained unyielding to her boy.  Given those parenting exegeses, it did not surprise Linda that the young man and his friends often lingered on the stoop, all glazed eyes and grassy smelling, while the young woman often returned home touting new cloths.

Linda’s in-laws complimented the girl on her looks, but questioned her brother’s scent.  There had many opportunities to engage those teens since they had exchanged a down payment, for Linda and Ross, for a front door key. Most afternoons those two watched Linda’s television.  They still didn’t know.

Unlike Ross, who cared that Linda remain size eight, Linda’s high school boyfriend had loved her braces and her discomfort wearing hot pants.  That lad saw Linda’s occasional acne as kissable, having primitively understood her self-doubt as a shield for his self-esteem.

Linda partnered that youth until the day he admitted that the same hands, which held hers while watching early Woody Allen, had traveled down the pants of his best buddy’s girl.  That best buddy and girl had double dated with Linda and beau for three years.

Linda donned headphones to drown out her in-laws and returned to her typewriter.  She trembled remembering Ross meant to return for lunch.  She still hadn’t told him.

Most afternoons, Ross stayed at the lab, stuffing equations into test tubes, or throwing Styrofoam packing at graduate students.  He was readily soothed with cheap beer.

The phone chirped.  Linda listened to a second chime and watched the display on her answering machine.  After three rings, the instrument stopped sounding.

Though no message was left, the pale light showed Ross’s number.  She should, at least, have spelled out the situation in a letter.

Ross favored short heels on Linda, arguing that she was otherwise too tall for him.

Linda changed her entire wardrobe.  Though she liked to experiment with color, with fabric, with shape and with reaction, she kowtowed to her mate.  Ross had been especially chagrined when Linda had worn her low, scoop leotard to a party although it had only been unzipped to bra level; Ross liked to look, but did not like to display.

Thereafter, Ross stopped buying Linda flowers.  He ridiculed the ones she put in her hair, sneezing and laughing alternately.  He upped his demand for backrubs and butterfly kisses, too.

These days, the lab “tired” him.  He resisted picnics, foreplay, and experimentation.  He angered at romance and found intimacy inconvenient.  With the help of a marriage counselor, he convinced Linda that her sex drive was ridiculous and that she needed to go on a diet.  He was so clueless.

Linda answered by flirting with life guards and weight room attendants.  Guilt limited her to smiles and eye contact.  She threw out her high-necked sweaters and ate chocolates.  Now, she wished for the comfort of those knits and for anything that would stay digested.

Linda typed a bit more.  Neither the university committee nor her funding agency had complained about her newest research, though it was leagues away from her earlier treaties on abnormal psychology.  While the teen next door smoked pot and her mother-in law made spaghetti in her kitchen, Linda could not focus on cultural and historical relativism.

Instead, she produced papers on pregnancy loss and on the importance of giving name to personal difficulties.  Such work was being well received by her peers, was being featured in regional journals and was being welcomed at national meetings.

Unfortunately, such writings also released feelings.  Linda’s secret was on the verge of being exposed because she was succeeding.

Outside, no school-age child filled the cement commonway.  Winter birds flew to colder climes.  Chipmunks returned above ground to dance.  There would be babies soon.

Ross’s mother knocked on Linda’s door.  She wanted paper towels to drain some fried peppers.

A car pulled into the driveway.  Shortly after they were married, Linda had permed her hair.  Ross had refused to sleep with her, claiming that the smell made him wildly allergic.  Intermittently, Linda considered coloring it to spite him, but in truth she, too, hated the smell of chemicals.  She had meant to apologize for her actions, but never found the voice to do so.  Her most important announcements were always given over as silence.

Sighing, Linda emitted Ross’ mother.  That woman pulled Linda into the kitchen, where she had smoothed one of Linda’s best tablecloths over a serving cart.  She pointed out the early daffodils, pulled up by their bulbs, now settled in Linda’s best crystal glass.

Ross played French horn because his mother had insisted.  He had been an exchange student in Barcelona because his mother had meant to travel there.

Ross’ mother smiled, expectantly.  She wanted Linda’s company-only muffins for her son’s lunch.  She didn’t know about the nausea.

Linda glanced at the counter where fried vegetables drained on one of her new tablets of paper.  Bits of onion and garlic also adorned those pages.  Linda opened a window.

Below, her father-in law’s voice rose from the yard in excited greeting.  Ross was home.  The neighbor’s girl, too, had returned, having thumbed a ride with Linda’s husband.  That lass shone resplendid in tight jeans and in a bubble top which exposed her arms, back and most of her front to the early spring weather. She had no trouble talking about sexual things.

Bio: KJ Hannah Greenberg and her hibernaculum of imaginary hedgehogs roam the verbal hinterlands.  Their writing has appeared in numerous venues, worldwide, including in:Ozone Park, Parenting Express, Poesia, Poetica Magazine, Poetry Super Highway, Prima Stories, Raphael’s Village, Scribblers on the Roof, Shakespeare’s Monkey Review, Short Story Library, Soft Whispers Magazine, Static Movement, and Strange.