Troy Tradup

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This story had one of the cushiest births of anything I've ever written. One night, after some minor and almost certainly stupid argument with the guy I was seeing at the time, I cracked open a bottle of wine, climbed into a hot bath with a pen and legal pad, and spewed out this story. Sometimes it just happens like that.

I typed the story the next day, and I'm sure I changed a few words here and there during that process, but ultimately I'd guess that 95% of the final version came directly off my slightly soggy notebook pages.

Good Habits Make Life Easier has been published twice -- by Buffalo Spree in 1991, and by Aldebaran in 1992. Buffalo Spree surprised me by not actually telling me they were going to publish the story; they simply sent a check, along with a copy of the issue the story appeared in. I don't recall if Aldebaran had already accepted the story at that point or not, but either way they went ahead and published it a few months later. My first double-header.

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GOOD HABITS MAKE LIFE EASIER

by Troy Tradup

 

First published in Buffalo Spree (1991)

Subsequently published in Aldebaran (1992)

 

Live by ritual, by habit, and life will never throw you any surprises. My mother used to say that, or something like it. I guess I learned it well.

Saturdays, my ritual begins first thing. While I'm still in bed, just easing awake, I close my eyes tight, and I try to imagine Bill in bed beside me. I imagine him rolling over, still asleep, sighing as he throws one strong, tanned arm across my stomach. I open my eyes and make this dangerous image disappear. I close them again and let Bill return.

Although we have been seeing one another for nearly a year, Bill rarely stays overnight. He's not much of a staying-over type of guy, he says. He likes to keep his little Maggie special, he tells me, a secret treat away from home--a dessert of sorts, I guess.

Of course he's married.

The first part of my Saturday ritual, the imagining part, goes on for an hour or more. It goes on until I can no longer bring myself to accept the two pillows wedged beside me as anything more than two wilted pillows. It goes on until I've had all I can stand of trying to see Bill as my husband instead of hers, until I can no longer stand just imagining all of the things he'd be doing to me this morning and every morning, and I have to scramble for a shower first blistering hot and then numbing cold and then colder still.

After my shower, I walk naked into the kitchen and do all of the typical morning things. I feed the cat (a present from Bill, from a litter of kittens his wife's cat had six months ago), I make coffee, I pour some juice, I toast a bagel. I climb back into the bed I never bother to make on Saturdays, eat my small breakfast, drink my coffee, and contemplate new and interesting ways to kill Bill's wife.

I know what you're thinking. I know what you have every right to be thinking.

I should just get over him. I should just get on with it. I should just get a life.

The truth is, I already have one. I already have a perfectly boring, uneventful, five-day-a-week life in a publishing house downtown. My Saturday ritual is simply my way of making that two-day lull between Friday and Monday seem slightly more manageable, a little less overwhelming. Living by habit, you know exactly how each interminable hour will be spent. You know that each minute will slip away in due course as part of the plan, and that you will survive it. You know you will endure. This is perhaps more comforting than it might sound.

Sometime shortly after noon I get out of bed, dress in faded sweatpants and one of Bill's old baseball shirts, and go through the motions of cleaning the apartment. In truth, the apartment is already clean, but the act of cleaning is soothing, calming, an easy way to fall into the self-hypnosis necessary to manage the free time I have between work and Bill's visits. I clean a lot.

While I putter about the apartment, I usually play a good, weepy cassette. Jane Olivor is good for cloudy days; Taylor Dayne works if I'm feeling somewhat hopeful. I clean and dance, I sing along with the songs I know. I pull down old photo albums, write wistful letters to former friends who'll probably remember me only vaguely, sometimes I call my mother in her cheery pink room in the nursing home across town. The afternoon flies.

Around four o'clock, I start to get antsy. The first tentative barb of a potential headache pokes and prods at the back of my skull. I sometimes notice my thigh muscles flexing and contracting involuntarily.

I go to my bookshelf, find a slim volume of short stories I haven't read for awhile. I take the book into the bathroom and draw a bath so hot I can stand it only by sheer force of will. I fill the tub as close to the rim as I dare, sink into that gleaming white cauldron, and read.

I read until the water is only lukewarm, as many stories as I can manage in that time, one after another. The stories flow together and swirl through my head like some haphazard, undisciplined novel. The characters change names and positions in life, the setting changes, yet all of the stories seem ultimately part of a single, messy narrative.

The water lulls me to a point just before sleep. I often find myself turning page after page without actually connecting with any of the words. Once in awhile I'll turn back a few pages to try to recapture the thread of a particular story, but really it doesn't matter. The book--like so many other things--is simply there out of habit. I started reading in the bathtub at some point in my life; therefore, I read in the bathtub now.

When the water has cooled sufficiently, I set aside my book and go about the ritual of bathing. I start with my feet and work my way up. I slather cocoa butter soap over every inch of my skin. The suds glide across my body and I close my eyes and imagine Bill in a soapy caress.

I imagine his hands moving along the backs of my knees, up along my inner thighs. They linger for a moment, ease up over my stomach, come to rest just below my breasts. I imagine his thumbs working my nipples in small circles that grow larger. I think of the way he cups my breasts in his strong hands just before he kisses me. Finally, finally, I let myself feel Bill's fingers gliding to my throat, to my shoulders, to the back of my neck. I open my eyes.

With a soft washcloth, I scrub my face and neck. I run more hot water onto the cloth and lay it over my face for several minutes. I want every pore completely open. I take two large dollops of moisturizer and massage them into my forehead, my cheeks, my chin, my throat. I let the cream soak in while the water drains from the tub. Then I stand and shower under slightly cool water. I wash my hair with coconut shampoo, condition with an orange-scented rinse. I dry off, smooth in more moisturizer, and dress. I wait.

Bill doesn't show.

Saturday night, the night Bill's wife always works the second shift at the hospital, the night I prepare for, long for, work towards--and Bill doesn't show.

Bill rarely shows; this, too, is part of the ritual.

I wait a long time. I make a strong Jim Beam and tonic. I sit in the dark and play some nostalgic tape--the Beatles, the Beach Boys, something Bill's recorded for me off his wife's old albums. I hold the cat--Bill's wife's music, Bill's wife's cat.

Finally I call my brother Ted, who waits for my call, who now stays home Saturday nights just waiting.

"Teddy, can you come over please? I'm feeling kinda down, I'm feeling kinda blue."

Ted arrives twenty minutes later. He's thought ahead and carries several videos and a carton of Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey ice cream.

"Oh Maggie," he says. "Oh Maggley-Waggley."

We pop in one of the movies and trade the ice cream back and forth. We use the same spoon. Teddy saves the biggest chunks of chocolate for me; he's a good big brother.

Teddy always falls asleep during the second movie. I grab a comforter from the hall closet and tuck it around him on the sofa. I have a quiet cry during the third movie and then curl up on top of the comforter next to him. I leave the television on with the sound turned down in case Teddy wakes up in the middle of the night; he used to be afraid of the dark, I remember.

Sunday morning, we're awakened by the sound of the apartment buzzer--an insistent, commanding drone. Teddy bolts awake, eyes wide, momentarily disoriented. I stumble to the door.

Of course it's Bill.

"Hey there, sleepyheads," he says. "How's it goin', Ted? How's it goin' there, Maggie-baby?"

Teddy grumbles something and shuffles into my bedroom to finish his sleep.

"So where the hell were you?" I say. "I waited and waited. I always wait and wait."

"Oh Maggie," Bill says. "Did we have something going for last night?"

He's wearing a wrinkled shirt that his wife would not have allowed out of her house, he smells vaguely beery and also faintly of some soft floral scent neither his wife nor I would ever consider.

"I was out with the boys last night," he says. "You know, we get to drinking, carrying on. I guess I just clean forgot about you, baby. I'm sorry. I just forgot about you for a minute."

He sees that I'm not going to respond on my own, so finally he asks the fateful question: "So what did you do?"

"I just sat here and fell more and more in love with you."

He looks at me for a minute and then he busts out laughing.

He laughs like I've just said the funniest thing he's ever heard.

He laughs like it's the biggest joke in the world.

Because it's part of our ritual, however, I'm ready for him.

Just out of habit, I laugh too.