A Letter to Harvey Milk by Lesléa Newman

Author:Lesléa Newman
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-299-20573-7
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Published: 2012-11-27T00:00:00+00:00

The Best Revenge

I.

As her childbearing years came screeching to a halt, Gloria Epstein decided to take stock of her life. She flopped down on the couch naked, for it was so hot she had just worked up a sweat by grating a carrot into the potato salad that was now chilling in the refrigerator. She picked up a pen and her journal and started making a list of all she had achieved since arriving on the planet in 1949.

Under WHAT I HAVE, she wrote Good Health. “And if you have your health you have everything,” she said aloud, imitating her ninety-nine-year-old grandmother who, thank God, except for thick glasses and a pair of sparkling white dentures, was more or less intact. Under Good Health, Gloria wrote Nice Apartment, Decent Teaching Job (with health insurance for once in my life, she reminded herself), Lots of Books, and Matching Towels. Gloria chewed the end of her pen thoughtfully. “That’s it for thirty-seven years?” she asked the newly painted walls. “My health, an apartment, a job, some books, and towels?” She tapped the pen on her notebook and recrossed her legs, which were resting on the old camping trunk she used as a coffee table. “Oh yeah,” she said, nodding her head. “I almost forgot—Ellen.”

Gloria wrote down ELLEN SILVERMAN in big bubble letters, the kind that merge into each other, and filled them in with thin blue stripes. Then she drew stripes in between the stripes until the letters were a solid blue. She hadn’t changed her doodling style since high school.

Strange that Ellen should be the last thing on my list, Gloria mused, scratching a mosquito bite on her thigh. Two years ago, not only would she have been the first thing on the list, she probably would have been the only thing on the list. Who cared about an apartment or a job or health insurance, for chrissakes, when your new lover was so hot you never even left the bedroom anyway, except for an occasional trip to the bathroom, and you called in sick as often as you dared?

It’s not that I don’t love Ellen, Gloria thought, drawing her name again. It’s just that after two years, everything is so predictable. She knew how Ellen looked in the morning, with her straight brown hair smushed against one side of her face and the ends all sticking up like a ruffled bird. She knew what Ellen liked for breakfast: pecan spice granóla with a plop of vanilla honey yogurt. Ellen had eaten that same breakfast every morning Gloria had woken up with her for the past two years. “Hey, I’m into cereal monogamy,” she’d said, when Gloria teased her about it. She even knew the way Ellen liked to be touched, with two fingers inside her vagina and Gloria’s thumb massaging her clitoris in a circular motion (counterclockwise was best).

There was no doubt about it. They were definitely growing stale. Gloria wrote STALE under Ellen’s name and started filling in the letters with little blue dots.

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