2. Amy Tells All – Almost

Lana put down her 4B pencil and regarded the drawing paper she was working on. Her little demon was taking shape. The sharp report of Scott’s voice in the kitchen made her gut flip.
“Lana! Where’s my ratchet set?”
“I don’t know!” She yelled back, turning her head in the direction of the hall.
“It was in here yesterday!”
He’s heading her way. Out of habit, she closes her book of demons. He doesn’t approve of her drawings. She gets up off the sofa to head him off, tossing the book aside.
“You went on some massive clutter flutter, and now it’s like, where is anything around here.”
“Scott, baby, I don’t want to fight about it just now. Do we have to?”
“No, we don’t. It’s just that it makes me crazy when I can’t find shit.”
“I know. Perhaps if you describe the item, I can recall seeing it.”
“You know, the ratchet set.”
“I don’t know what a ratchet set is. Remember me? The ignoramus?”
He smiled. His wife is so pretty he thinks, and so impressed with him. He doesn’t know the word, but he feels that it is correct when she is submissive. He relies on her passivity to shield him from the world in which he is not a God.
“It’s a rectangular black case with a latch in the front. When you pick it up it’s heavy. If you shake it, it rattles. If you drop it, the little metal cylinders all fall out all over the floor or ground or whatever. The latch is loose. I keep meaning to get some pliers and fix that. Anyway, does that help?”
“Yes. Very helpful.”
She headed for the closet and came forth with the box.
“This it?”
“Thanks, babe.”
Off he goes to do whatever it is he’s going to do with those ratchet-ma-bobs.

She sits back down and opens up her writing journal. She’s been writing all of her young life. At 25, just out of law school, she’d had high hopes of a job with a big firm. Her area of interest was domestic law. Her parents had gone through hell, with her in tow, during their divorce. At school, she’d become aware of stalkers and batterers. There was that English Literature course that poked into Shulamith Firestone’s “Dialectic of Sex.” One thing that emerged in those often heated discussions was the notion that “if you had a possessive partner, you had a problem.” Did she herself have a problem? Was Scottie turning out to be problematic? He did seem to yell a bit too much. He liked to know where she was. Too much? She put it out of her mind. It re-entered by the side door, through her ears; she heard him drop a tool. Sometimes she went to watch him work. He was a very beautiful man, with an elfin face and a beautiful hard body. He worked out constantly. She did this too, but Scott was a fanatic. Though his features were fine, he was a big, solid man.

She was also fine featured, a bit of a waif. She was small. She was the feather on her husbands back when they rode it out in the sack to glory. She would turn her head to the side, and put a hand up, and allow herself to be spent. Invaded by the armies of the South, she picked up the book and a ballpoint pen.

Tomorrow, when she was done with her half day as legal assistant at the law firm, she’d sit here with her laptop and type her journaling into her blog. She wrote of all manner of inner truths and outer observations. She held only two things back: she never used her real name or the names of any of her subjects. She never mentioned Scott. Otherwise, “Amy Tells All.”