The Rise & Fall of the Scandamerican Domestic: Stories Read Online Free Page B

me.
    â€œAnd,” I say, “to the matter of education and the poor subjects in Lapland: your sister has no idea how many people are actually painting in Lapland, very likely none.”

    I dream of kneeling and working by the fireplace, those shit corners. What size brush should I use? And the tape job. That blue stickless tape. Of the trim along the floor, the carpeting.

    By Monday colleagues ask me my story, say things like, “What’s your deal?” and I tell them.
    â€œOh my god!” one of them says, a woman I dated years ago and who seems determined to maintain an ongoing interest in my personal life. “You are going to do such a good job! I can completely see that for you, for your house! Your wife must just be like, ‘Ah!’”
    The males don’t have a response at all to the painting question, only that I’ve shared anything about my domestic life with this old girlfriend. Do I think she won’t somehow take advantage of this personal information, ask, for example, to come over and see it—help even, somehow? They laugh.
    They haven’t married yet, these guys. They have no idea what lies ahead. I try to level with them: “Can you paint trim every night or does this makethe job uneven? Can paint go bad or change color if it’s left too long?”
    They look at me and shrug. One of them answers, “Keep that shit to yourself. Trust me, you don’t want people telling you what’s best for you and your wife.”
    â€œI’m talking objectively,” I protest. “What’s best for paint, generally speaking?”
    â€œThat’s like asking what’s best for cement, generally. It all depends on what kind of cement you want. Rough, textured, flat, matte, shiny. I can’t tell you what you want. Anyway, even when you know what you want, to a certain degree you’re just going to have to take what you get. You can’t control cement. That’s the bitch of Mother Nature.”

    That evening, the sun is at an odd angle, gleaming off the cans on our front stoop. They have arrived. I yank them each inside the house and read their instructions over and over. It’s exhausting. I feel woozy, the smell of the cans and of the future with the cans. I’m predicting the cans’ smell. I close my eyes . . .
    I open them, and my wife’s ready. She throws her bags on the floor and tears off her shirt andslacks. She’s in her underwear before I’ve sat upright. “Let’s go,” she says. “Get that lid off. Did you shake it? Stir it.”
    I say, “Is this the right color?”
    She says, “It’s fine. Let’s go.”
    â€œI’m not sure it’s at all the right color.”
    â€œIt’s fine,” she says again. “Just shut up and stir.”
    â€œWe need to tape.”
    â€œYou didn’t fucking tape?”
    I look at her.
    My wife swears a noun, an ugly thing. She throws herself onto the sofa. She is ruddy and damp. Her warm body is twisted on the sofa and hangs loose, pretty. She pushes her hair back from her eyes and sighs, and she swears again. She closes her eyes, and just as I think she has forfeited her interest, she shakes her head and says, “To hell with it.” She hops up again and takes my brush, thrashes it through the roller dish.
    â€œThe carpet!”
    She is deaf and she is dumb. She is swiping at the chair rail in long, reckless strokes. She’s made a speckled rill of Green Rill on our old berber. She’s crouching like a catcher, raking along the wall nextto the fireplace walls. Paint is flinging and dripping. She strokes in those long, reckless strokes, lavishing the wall above and below the rail. Her muscles tremble and twitch. Her knees crack. I take a glob in the forehead and come to. The small of her back.
    I have lost my breath.
    I haven’t really ever seen her like this. She turns and takes my hand, yanks me