Little Beauties by Kim Addonizio

Author:Kim Addonizio
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2005-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

24.

HOMEWORK: Confront the situations that cause you distress.

SHARING makes me puke,” Jamie says at the restaurant. “I am so glad to hear that,” I say.

We’re at Balzac’s, on Marlene’s recommendation. Pink and orange sunset colors, wicker chairs, water sheeting down one wall, lit by candles. It’s pretty soothing, if you don’t think about what might be going on in the kitchen. E. coli, fecal streptococcus, salmonella. Mice and roaches. Food sitting out of the refrigerator, workers without hairnets, with cuts on their hands.

“Like, Siamese twins?” Jamie says. “That is so totally gross. If I were a Siamese twin I’d want to kill myself. Or maybe kill my twin. But then—” She stops, and I can see her imagining how she’d do it. “I guess then I’d be dragging around this dead twinlike thing. Attached to my head or wherever.” She laughs and reaches for her red wine. This is her second glass and she’s getting kind of tipsy already, I can tell.

The women at the next table are grazing off each other’s plates. They’re a lesbian couple: a thin, stylish older woman with white-blond hair, and a younger, darker woman who needs to turn down the volume on her ass a few decibels. They don’t look like they belong together, but who knows. The older one looks my way after she feeds a forkful of her entrée to her girlfriend, and smiles. Maybe she thinks Jamie and I are also lesbians, or maybe she and her partner recognize me from Teddy’s World. Maybe they have a thawed sperm baby at home right now, sleeping in a crib I have sold them.

“My mother had one rule,” Jamie says. “Share everything. She used to live in some kind of religious commune. A bunch of them got together, made up their own church, and rented a house in San Diego.”

“I think rules are important,” I say.

“Your rules?” Jamie says. “They’re a little intense.”

“I know. I’ve been working on that.” I made a list of the homework Sharon has given me over the past few months, and put it up on the refrigerator, next to the rules. I am doing my homework right now. Dining out is definitely up there in terms of stressful situations to confront. I look down, confronting the little dish of olives and bay leaves on the table.

Tim didn’t like eating in restaurants, either. He used to work in one.

I once read about a little girl who died after eating watermelon from the salad bar at a Sizzler; the watermelon had gotten splattered with juice from contaminated sirloin.

Everyone knows this kind of thing happens, but most people ignore it, and eat out anyway. Just like most people, if they order veal, don’t think about the poor calf living in its own shit, in a stall too small to turn around in. When they eat bacon for breakfast, or have a ham sandwich, they don’t think about pigs being electrically stunned and then getting their throats slit, sometimes when the poor animals aren’t quite out cold.

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