The Marriage Box by Corie Adjmi

Author:Corie Adjmi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: She Writes Press

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Around midnight, I get hungry and creep downstairs. Music blasts. It’s dark in our living room, misty from a fog machine. Through the haze, I see one of my mother’s friends dancing on our bar, her spiked heels grinding into the wood. Sober, my mother would never allow that. A female bartender wears a holster rimmed with shot glasses. She pours tequila, one after another, in rapid succession, handing them out. Husbands and wives dance, but not with each other. I make a left into the kitchen.

There are tins of fried kibbeh on the dinette table, but I’m not in the mood for Syrian food. I take out a package of hot dogs from the freezer, break one free, and wrap it in a paper towel. While it cooks in the microwave, I grab a bag of Ruffles potato chips and, learning from Bee, swipe a bottle of champagne.

Back in my room, I eat. Hungrily, I chew and swallow, gobbling the hot dog and then the bag of chips, trying to satisfy an emptiness that feels brutal. I fill the tub in my connecting bathroom. Music from downstairs ricochets off the walls. Alone in the bath, I pop open the bottle of champagne and take big gulps, one after another, waiting for it to work and make me feel better. I place the bottle down on the bathmat and dunk, wetting my hair. Water rushes over my face, temporarily drowning out the music. This is it. There is no place darker or lonelier in the world.

Clobbered by the thought, I step from the tub and spread the towel, green as a sod of grass, in front of the full-length mirror glued to my door. I get on my knees, naked. Wet curls sprawl over my shoulders, and I stare as Kool and the Gang’s “Celebration” invades, flooding my room, pouring in from all sides.

I place my hands over the S on my stomach, and my mind wanders to Tracey and New Orleans, and how whenever Grandma Rose and Grandpa David were in town visiting from New York, they’d let me invite Tracey to spend the night with them at the Fontainebleau Hotel. We’d play Monopoly and Tracey was always the banker and SPY, a game we invented to show our bravery and camaraderie, daring each other to do things that, at eight, felt highly mischievous. In reality, we never did anything more serious than stand near the water fountain in the lobby with drops of water on our cheeks, drawing strangers into our web of lies, pretending to cry because our pennies had fallen in; we’d pocket chocolate mint candies wrapped in green foil from a dish in the hotel restaurant and then secretly eat them in a stairwell made of iron and cement, incarcerated.

I get up and slide the boot box from under my bed. Unraveling the paper towel, I see Fish in between my purple boots, and he is whitish, his eyes cloudy. I take a deep breath and a swig of champagne.

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