I Want to Show You More (9780802193742) Read Free Page A

it from the drain. You remember what the man on your mattress said about yanking your hair; how he knew, without your telling him, that you’d like to be handled that way.
    Look in the mirror. Note the acceleration of time on your face. Smile lines have deepened; there are wrinkles beneath your eyes shaped like sideways letter “F”s.
    Go into the bedroom; peek beneath the sheet. The lower jaw has fallen open. When you push the chin up to close it, a viscous black fluid oozes from the corner of the mouth. From across the room, if you squint your eyes, it looks like barbecue sauce.
    You take your husband by the hand, lead him into the bedroom, show him the black fluid. You want him to feel pity for the dead man; you want him to know the man was real. Your husband punches the mirrored closet door, then holds up his fist, bloody at the knuckles. Here’s what’s real, he says.
    When your husband goes back to work and the children are in school again, you rent a small office space. You furnish it with a futon couch and round table you find at Goodwill. In the office you reread the books you read and discussed with the other man. You watch movies on your laptop, the ones you’d talked about watching together. You make playlists. On one of them you include the MP3 of his voice reading a chapter in a Duras novel. It’s the only MP3 you’ve kept, buried deep in a file on your laptop labeled “Vacation Pix.” You spend entire mornings lying on the futon, listening to the man read the Duras chapter, a hand beneath the zipper on your jeans.
    Only once do you dial his cell phone—a thrill to watch the numbers light up in this particular sequence—being careful not to press send.
    You get up in the middle of the night to write letters to the dead man. You carry your laptop to the upstairs guest room and lock the door behind you. The letters are long, intimate, sexually detailed. The pressure inside you eases in exponential relation to the number of pages you write.
    Your children knock on the guest room door.
    I heard a noise, the nine-year-old daughter says, chin trembling.
    I just wanted to say hi, the eight-year-old son says, shining his flashlight into your eyes.
    You step out into the hallway, close the door behind you, walk them to their rooms. Lie beside them on their beds. Sing to them, tickle their backs.
    You smell funny, they say.
    IV. Butyric Fermentation: In this stage the body is no longer referred to as a corpse, but a carcass .
    We have to bring it out into the open, you say to your husband. The kids can smell it on me.
    There is no smell, your husband says.
    Please, you say.
    Let me do the talking, he says, removing his glasses, which have lately begun fogging up. It’s been a long time since you’ve seen his eyes.
    Make me the villain, you say.
    You and your husband roll the body up in first a sheet, then a plaid quilt. You tie the ends closed with ribbon left over from Christmas. Together, you carry the quilt into the living room and lay it out on the coffee table.
    The children surround the quilt. The four-year-old son yanks at the ribbon; the eight-year-old son pokes the quilt with his light saber.
    No touching, you say. Only looking with your eyes.
    What’s in there, the nine-year-old daughter says.
    It smells like when the maids come, the six-year-old daughter says.
    That’s Mommy’s special friend, your husband says.
    Why’s she wrapped like candy, the oldest son asks.
    Mommy’s friend was a boy, your husband says.
    He looks at you.
    Fuck this, he says. Tell them whatever the hell you want.
    You tell your children—surprise!—there are toys inside the blanket.
    You tell them you forgot to let them open it on Christmas.
    You tell them they’ll have to wait till next Christmas.
    Just think, you say—it’ll be something to look forward to all year long.
    V. Dry decay: Only skin, cartilage, and bones remain. If bone is