|
In Harmony Delia could not help herself. Every time she went to a friend’s
apartment, she would excuse herself within the first half hour to peruse
and catalogue every item in the friend’s bathroom cabinets. Not
that she was nosey; in fact it started quite by accident. One mirrored
door left slid open five years ago in Julia’s Soho studio, and
she found comfort, learning that she was not alone on Prozac. After that, it became a challenge to find a match for all of the things she ingested, inserted, rubbed in, smoothed on, or had any contact with her own body. She would chart friends’ birth control pill cycles, compare how many milligrams of medication her happier friends took to those with obvious issues. She knew who had yeast infections and who preferred intrauterine to oral contraceptives (in spite of the warnings, seventy percent still were on the pill.) Aspirin and aspirin substitutes appeared with equal frequency, although
the bottles of Tylenol and its various imitation brands were almost
always emptier than the aspirin. Twice as many diet pills as vitamins
appeared. Imodium and Kaopectate were always situated next to each other
on an upper shelf. Hair colors and hair removers were kept under sink
cabinets with tampons and overnight pads. She would flush the toilet, wash her hands and hope that nobody would
wonder why she was gone so long. No one ever did, and she would return
to the card game or book group or movie night with a sense of balance
that she guessed believers might find in God. She never looked in the cabinets of male companions. There would be
nothing there to interest her. Besides, she knew that a tube of jock
itch medication or an aerosol can of toe fungus spray — or any
Preparation H product — would ruin her for sex that night. During one of those August heat waves, when the air did not move and
brownouts kept air conditioners from cooling anything, she was sitting
in the cramped apartment of Sabrina, a girl the temp agency had sent
her three weeks earlier and with whom she had developed a fast friendship,
both of them having ended relationships that had traveled nowhere for
too long. They were drinking rum and Cokes, talking like high school
girls about the men they had dumped. She was laughing hard and did not want the moment or mood to end, but
as always, gave into her compulsion. “Need to pee. Be right back.” In the bathroom, she locked the door, as she had done in so many apartments,
lofts, studios, and even a couple summer bungalows. She peered at the
shelves behind the small mirrored door. To her, they seemed illuminated. Three gold boxes of Godiva chocolates. A bottle of wine, the good kind
that she could never afford. There was an original Monet on a four-by-six
canvas. A pair of tickets for the Sondheim musical, impossible to get.
Nothing there was meant to be, yet it all made sense once she closed
the cabinet, flushed, and turned off the light. |
