confused; it had been a fantasy of hers to watch her husband fuck another woman, one she’d never quite expressed out loud, but something she often went to in her head, in too-plain moments. Suddenly now it felt terrifically wrong. In the near future, she would fantasize again about Richard fucking the girl and it would turn her on, but for now she felt she was leaking out from the inside. Her husband, for God’s sake, was consoling her with an erect penis that had just been inside another woman who during the day worked in their restaurant.
One thing led to another and somehow, they resurrected it. Sloane decided she could keep going. After all, it had already happened. Her husband had been inside someone else in front of her. She had watched his spine, thrusting. There was no going back. Even in the most complex of conjured realms, Sloane could not imagine a time machine convincing enough to take them back from this.
Maggie
During her sophomore year of high school Maggie becomes an aunt to a baby girl named Emily. She’s proud of how beautiful and happy the baby is. Sometimes it scares her, how much the child likes her. If she walks away for a few seconds, the child screams.
She’s demoted from varsity to JV soccer. There are two new coaches, a man and a woman, replacing the old head coach, who stepped down that year. The two new coaches pull her aside after tryouts. In a dingy staff room at the high school they stand shoulder to shoulder and say, Listen, you’re moving down. You have a great vision of the field, but you don’t get the ball to where it needs to go.
She doesn’t understand how both those things can be true. Meanwhile other sophomores plus incoming freshmen are sent up to varsity. She is alternately indignant and humiliated.
Maggie quits. This is how Maggie handles adversity. If someone criticizes her in the wrong way, not taking the time to tell her that she is still worth something, she doesn’t try to do better. She just says, Fuck it, fuck yourself. She forsakes what she loves. She doesn’t have advisers telling her to relax, to hang back and think it over. To work hard on JV and prove the coaches wrong. Her old man is strong, but drunk. He has been trying to get a new job since being laid off from the one he’s held his whole life, but he doesn’t take the right steps.
She knows the two new coaches think she’s uppity. They think she doesn’t know her place. Fargo doesn’t like one of its own to get out of line. America wants you to pay your dues. Maggie sees only the unfairness, everywhere. Then there are teachers like Mr. Knodel, who know how to talk to her. There are people out there who are like the trains in the distance, glorious and forward-moving and unswerving, and she wants to be one of these. But sometimes she falls on the sword of her own desire. And lies there, and repents too late, and too incorrectly, for anyone to want to save her.
Did you continue to confide in Mr. Knodel as you went through high school after having had him as a freshman English teacher and then being in speech and debate and service learning and those sorts of things?
You think Hoy’s bushy mustache is decrepit. Skinny old people freak you out. They remind you of your dad’s mom. When you were a kid you always felt her turning a corner to find you in the middle of something sinful. Similarly, Hoy catches you off guard often. He looks at you like you are an underperformer. You gained weight since high school. Maybe he knows his client is guilty. Probably he does. In any case he looks at you like he is surprised that Aaron went for you. Sometimes you want to pull out pictures of yourself from back then. Show people your smile, your little body. You want to tell Hoy he is an old creep. His wife has probably had more sex-time headaches than any other woman in the history of evanesced desire.
I’m sorry, did I—
Did you continue to confide in him about your experiences with an adult male in Hawaii over your junior—
The prosecutor, Jon Byers, says, I’m going to object to that on relevance and rape shield.
It is a terrible thing when you feel grateful that someone who is supposed to defend you