At parties, Johnny calls their new neighborhood twiggy and unestablished. He is speaking mainly of the trees. If the conversation permits it he or his new wife, July, will mention the neighbors from Ghana\u2014they cook pigs feet in their garage!\u2014or the large Greek family that lives across the street.
\n To new acquaintances they say: Yes, it\u2019s Johnny and July, not April, May or June. But our early romance was as torrid as Johnny and June\u2019s, they joke. Cash and Carter, they sometimes have to specify. Those are not the fun parties.
\n After these post-graduate parties, Johnny and July almost always make love. Once, crossing the threshold into their white, high-ceilinged foyer and still in their shoes. It is cacophonous and hurried as if someone will catch them.
\n July, recently unemployed, spends her days in their new place trying to feel comfortable. A task she tackles with projects designed to make a house into a home. She paints the room at the top of the stairs, after consulting numerous sources on the psychology of color, a yellow concoction called limoncello. The room is empty except for an old metal filing-cabinet given to July by her mother. She paints that yellow too. When Johnny sees it, he says filing cabinets aren\u2019t meant to be painted.
\n \u201cIf you don\u2019t like it, you don\u2019t have to go in there,\u201d she says.
\n He does go in the yellow room, though, while July is at her parents\u2019 house collecting dresses she wore on momentous occasions in recent history. Johnny wants to see what the room is used for. All the rooms in the house are named, vaguely, for their use: the computer room, the exercise room, the sun room. There is a television in every other room because July hates a quiet house. So, she always says, T.V. room isn\u2019t an adequate modifier.
\n He wants to open the filing cabinet. The metal still reeks of paint, never really soaking it all in like the walls. He jiggles the handle on the top drawer and slides the little square piece toward the handgrip with his thumb. Nothing. He tries the remaining two drawers. All locked.
\n When July returns home, Johnny asks what\u2019s in the yellow cabinet.
\n \u201cI\u2019ll show you,\u201d she says. July keeps the key on a skinny silver chain around her neck for no other reason than she likes the way it looks. When she opens the first drawer she laughs in a soft, jingly way.
\n \u201cThere\u2019s nothing,\u201d she says, \u201cexcept for a poem I wrote in college about blue candlesticks and a wandering pervert in a puffy red vest. It didn\u2019t win any awards.\u201d
\n \u201cI don\u2019t see why not,\u201d says Johnny, grabbing the folded paper from her hands.
\n He reads it in his best slam poetry voice and tells her it is\u2014with all the red, white and, blue imagery\u2014very patriotic. July bows graciously.
\n \u201cWhy do you keep the poem locked up?\u201d asks Johnny.
\n \u201cWhat place is there for it? Besides the shredder,\u201d she says.
\n In college, July\u2014an English major\u2014dated a guy who liked to dabble in artistic endeavors. He was tall and boyish; he liked to dance and cared about his looks and the environment. July wore black and liked to smoke cigarettes while riding her bicycle. She wrote poems in a leather-bound journal that nobody knew about. In the Spring semester of her third year, she submitted a poem in a competition along with her environmentalist beau. On the day of the award\u2019s ceremony, she smoked an entire pack of cigarettes outside of the ornate-gothic English Department. Then she took a seat inside one of the department\u2019s stinking and cavernous auditoriums, next to her boyfriend. She waited for victory. But his poem, an ode to one persisting dandelion after a nuclear fall-out, took first place.
\n \u201cYour poem belongs in a frame,\u201d says Johnny.
\n \u201cThis old thing?\u201d says July, borrowing from her mother\u2019s native Tennessee-Carolina vernacular. She tries out the accent too. Her tongue lobs lazily, nostalgically against the roof of her mouth. When July and her mother cleaned out the junk room of her childhood home, it took hours. Cross-legged they excavated the paper records of their past. July\u2019s mother handed her a terse rejection letter she received from a White House staffer. The letter, dated 1991, arrived after she applied to be part of a think-tank assembled to tackle fetal alcohol syndrome. July thinks of the things her mother might have said if she suggested they frame it.
\nDon\u2019t know why I kept this old thing, is what her mother actually said. It probably ended up in the toss pile along with decades-old credit card statements.
\n But July cannot keep or toss the untitled poem. She does not object, though, when Johnny leaves the poem under their second-hand copy of Merriam Webster\u2019s for a week to iron out the creases.
\n July\u2019s maiden name, the one she still absentmindedly signs checks with\u2014an error that caused the electric cooperative to turn off the power during the first unseasonably snowy spring they were married\u2014floats in the upper left-hand corner of the wrinkled computer paper. When she sees that familiar heap of letters her body aches. It aches for a time when she didn\u2019t have to put much thought into what to wear because almost anything would exude sex. For a time when she didn\u2019t impulsively buy products proclaiming youth on their labels. She longs for a space\u2014her old body, another body\u2014she used to inhabit.
\n Eventually, Johnny hangs the poem in a cheap black frame above their shared desk in a room with fresh carpeting, mismatched bookcases and a leather chair that swivels. The couples\u2019 diplomas, matted in expensive frames, hang side by side. According to July\u2019s mother, the room screams success.
\nWhen they finish furnishing the house, Johnny and July host a party for a small circle of college friends\u2014July\u2019s\u2014and co-workers who are willing to commute to the suburbs. July meets Garrett and Colleen in the Kiss-n-Ride lot at dusk. They are the only couple she knows from college whose relationship has weathered graduate school, ramen dinners, and diminishing egos. She drives them just three blocks, pointing out the Greeks\u2019 house. She notices\u2014aloud\u2014a lone, freshly-mulched crape myrtle standing in the amber radius of a scarce streetlight.
\n \u201cThere are no sidewalks here,\u201d says Colleen.
\n \u201cAn affront to pedestrians everywhere,\u201d says Garrett. \u201cThe extra-wide SUVs necessitate the extra-wide avenues,\u201d he adds.
\n \u201cTruth! I hear this area is a veritable melting pot, though,\u201d says Colleen. It occurs to July that this is the neighborhood\u2019s only saving grace, the reason why she and Johnny always regale their hosts with anecdotes about its residents and the reason why\u2014buzzed and confident again in their life-choices\u2014they make love when they get home, as if it were simply a logical extension of the night\u2019s events.<\/p>\n
Johnny ushers July and her friends through their recently painted front door. He has already begun the house tour and his co-worker, Jane, lingers in the home office. For a woman who spends her week in a cubicle making spreadsheets, she has an eclectic wardrobe. July notices Jane\u2019s neon blue tights and then her empty wine glass, which she dangles against her thigh.
\n \u201cRed or white?\u201d says July.
\n \u201cRed, please,\u201d says Jane. She hands July her glass and their manicured fingers intertwine. They stand close enough to make July blush. She can smell the wine on Jane\u2019s breath. It is floral but dirty, like the soil of a pungent potted-plant. \u201cJohnny was just showing me your poem,\u201d says Jane still holding onto the stem of her wine glass. \u201cHe was saying that you\u2019re such a talented writer,\u201d she adds. The compliment causes July\u2019s pastel blush to burn deeper, almost plum.
\n Johnny herds everyone else into the office now. With one hand he pulls July\u2019s black-skirted hip against his own so they are conjoined. This causes July\u2019s fever-blush to recede and for a moment she feels collected. Then, with his free hand, Johnny points to the poem on the wall. \u201cWould you look at that,\u201d he says. He is really saying: Look at my wife\u2019s brain. Look at my achievement.
\n Colleen and Garrett lean over the desk with their hands clasped behind their backs. \u201cIt is so sweet, this gallery wall you\u2019ve got,\u201d says Colleen when she finishes reading.
\nJuly wants to tear the thing off the wall. She wants to smash the frame and show Johnny what\u2019s written on the back of his sweetly curated poem. A note to another man: The Environmentalist. She wrote it, the print small and palsied, because she couldn\u2019t say it, I\u2019m pregnant. And blacked-out underneath of that, I could never leave you. Now July, seeing the fruition of things, thinks it should be the other way around\u2014the redacted line.
\n But she does not show Johnny the message, the little joke really. Instead, July slips out of Johnny\u2019s lasso to refill Jane\u2019s wine glass.<\/p>\n
After the party, they do not make love. She climbs into bed where Johnny is reading nonfiction.
\n \u201cIt\u2019s anachronistic,\u201d she says.
\n \u201cWhat is?\u201d Johnny asks
\n \u201cOnly everything. I mean, you work for a company with a family-friendly insurance plan for chrissake,\u201d says July. Look at my achievement.
\n \u201cI do. And?\u201d
\n \u201cAnd you always know what the next step in going to be,\u201d she says.
\n \u201cThat\u2019s not entirely true,\u201d says Johnny. It was true. It\u2019s one of the reasons why she married Johnny.
\n \u201cWhat\u2019s the next step then? A baby?\u201d says July.
\n \u201cI\u2019m not following you here,\u201d he says.
\n \u201cI know,\u201d she says. Look at my wife\u2019s brain.
\n But July knows that he\u2019s probably seen it, the message scribbled on the back of the poem. She equates his silence about it to thoughtful self-restraint, another reason why she married Johnny.
\n The morning after the party, July locks the poem into the yellow filing cabinet again. She wears only her robe and the chain around her neck. She thinks about swallowing the key. Outside something rattles in the street.
\n Eager for another story, she peers out the curtain-less window, the sky like a dusty drape over the earth. A shirtless old man is making repairs to the gray sedan parked across the street. It occurs to her that there is always someone around to fix things. Another saving grace.
\n Then she sees them walking in the extra-wide avenue. Two immaculately dressed women embrace at the elbows. Only a sliver of space cuts between their mother-bodies. They seem to sway. Another one, the mother of the neighborhood twins, sashays behind a double-wide stroller where the matching toddlers are fastened. The women\u2019s colorful espadrilles tap and then pound the asphalt. The Greeks are dancing in the street. The beat they imagine predicting all of their jubilant steps. And still the curly-headed babies slouch into their morning naps. Those bouncy baby cheeks, hot with sleep, July could just devour them. She could devour it all.<\/p>\n
At parties, Johnny calls their new neighborhood twiggy and unestablished. He is speaking mainly of the trees. If the conversation permits it he or his new wife, July, will mention the neighbors from Ghana\u2014they cook pigs feet in their garage!\u2014or the large Greek family that lives across the street. To new acquaintances they say: Yes, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[20],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-1UI","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7360"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7360"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10363,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7360\/revisions\/10363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}