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It’s a Family Affair: Sellers v. Sellers

Michael Garriga

In Dr. Matthew’s Office for Marriage and Family Counseling,
Dubuque, Iowa, September 20, 2006

Louise Sellers, 8,
Third-Grade Daughter

    This place smells like Lysol and there are no toys or books and on the one TV they’re showing This Old House and the sorrow sob starts to bobble my chin and I’ve cried all week and no one has cared— not Mommy, not Daddy— because show and tell was Monday and last Sunday night I was sitting in the tub singing “Ducky Duddle” when all of a sudden, Oh gripes, it’s tomorrow, so I hopped from the tub all lickety-split, pruned and wet and sudsy, but Mommy’s door was shut, like always, and Daddy was looking over numbers, not listening to me— I tried to tell him how important the assignment was and all he came up with was our science experiment, which I thought was a dumb idea but what else could I do? He took down from the window sill the glass jar where we kept the carrot chunk and the roots were all white and going everywhere like if an octopus’s legs were made of lightning and it did look pretty cool— You can show them how their food grows; that’s interesting, isn’t it, dear?— I was happy to show it off at school but when the bell rang and I got to class and I pulled the thing out, Marcy Dungee said, Eww, what’s that? and Monica Dowell laughed and Melissa Dunhill said, That looks like your hair, and Misty Duncan snorted and shook her long red curls and pulled a Cloe Bratz doll from her Hannah Montana backpack and Melissa her Game Boy and Monica her new ruby bracelet that sparkled all bedazzled and Marcy her whatever and then Tommy Ewland said, What, are you, like, poor or something? And Marcy said, Ewwwwww, again, but this time with that nose whine she does so good, and my chin started bobbing and I buried my head in my arms down on my cold desktop so no one would see my lips shake— it wasn’t like last year when Tommy’s little brother was run over by the school bus and I made sure every one saw me crying the most so they’d know I was Tommy’s best friend, and the tears ran down my face and I made a big show of wiping the snot on my velour sleeves and leaving the tears on my face so everyone could see how truly sad I was but this past Monday I felt as if some weird bird had pecked out my guts and I blame it all on my stupid dad and my stupid mom too.

    I hear her start to yell and cry and I hop down under the big wooden table and grab my knees and curl them to my chest and rock back and forth like I do at home whenever I am scared— like during big storms or when in the middle of the night you wake up and it’s just too quiet and the only sound you can hear is your own heartbeat and you think, When will this ever end?

Dannyelle Louise Sellers, 32,
Former Beauty Queen, Current Housewife, & Mother of One

When Billy was president of the Chamber of Commerce and I was on stage in my Aldo heels and Naired legs and a swimsuit so white that my torso glowed at the center of my dark limbs, I was the object of his desire but now he doesn’t even look at me— I know it’s not his fault that he’s never been able to truly see me because, though I was in that pageant, I was not really even there— how could I have been?— I stood on that stage a prancing six-year-old in front of my mother’s armoire, running my hands over the hanging cashmere and rayon and jersey denim dresses and over her sweaters and skirts, the grays and beiges and taupes, and in her bureau drawers among her bras and her panties, frilled and laced, and the black silky slip that I’d put over my towhead locks and let flow down my back like long black hair, and in which I’d swish and sway and say, Oh Captain Smith, save poor pitiful me from this life of a savage— her hard crenellated vibrator came to life in my tiny electric hands with pink-painted nails just as Mother walked into her bedroom— she put both her hands to her mouth as if to stop a smile but she did not smile— >I>Just what do you think you are doing, young lady, she asked— I’m being you, Mom— and she slapped my face to burning— The hell you are— her face was hard and severe and I stammered, I guess, I guess, I’m being Pocahontas?— she slapped me again but harder— You think I’m some kind of goddamn Indian whore? You are nothing but a—

    Back in this counselor’s office, he calls me beautiful and I call him a liar and shift in this microfiber chair, the backs of my legs sweating even in the artificial cold of this office, because who is beneath this layer of powder and rouge, this four-layering eye shadow, this gloss and lipstick and lip liner, this bobbed blond hair and these earrings, I don’t know— peel back this mask and who is there— in that Motel 6 in Grand Rapids you promised me the Ms. Corn crown but all I really wanted was someone to see who I truly am and to tell me, though the only way I know how to ask it is by smiling broad, Vaseline smeared across my teeth.

William Sellers, 42,
Jeweler, Father, & Unfaithful Husband

    Six Saturdays in a row, D’s dragged me here to listen to this so-called doctor talk about trust issues and acceptance and respect but I am not the one who closed the door on this marriage, clamped it tight as a chastity belt, and for all the money this doctor charges you’d think she’d offer me a scotch or at least an orange juice freshly squeezed between the knees of a sixteen-year-old Filipino girl and the doctor asks why am I smiling and I say, whimsical-like, She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known, which is true, or at least was true, especially when we’d walk along the summertime banks of the Mississippi, her long legs drawing every man’s eye, and I was not middle-aged then and there was not the pressure of employee health insurance and a child and retirement and savings, just our hand-holding strolls— that was back before D let herself go, and suddenly she says, You’re such a liar, and my face flushes and before me I see Peggy through the small window of my office—she is standing at the counter showing earrings to a customer, Peggy’s narrow hips and long waist, and she looks back over her shoulder and I am caught, but she winks, blows a pink bubble with her gum, and smiles with the dark shade ringed around her ruby lips and I’m a fool sitting at my bench re-sizing some heifer’s wedding ring and now there is hail raining against Peggy’s metal window awnings, the sound ringing in our after glow, the window unit in her double-wide hums, and her panties ring her ankle, one shoe still clings to that pale foot, the salt smell cologned about us— my own wedding ring in the glove box of my new Boxster— the ring around the tub where we made love all last winter and Henry the dachshund runs rings around the playpen and Tiny Toons is on the TV even though her kid passed away two years ago and she told me yesterday that I said I’d leave D but I don’t remember ever saying so, or even believing that, though I can see my marriage is dead as dead can lie, ring around the rosies dead, but I am not willing to lose little Louise or half my things, like my fine jewelry or my red convertible that wooed Peggy to me in the first place— pudging and balding, skin loose about my jaw—

    and D says, Damnit, I want out of this life, and I repeat her, You want me out of your life, and she says, No, I want out of this life, and I say, That’s what I said, and we start to argue again and yell and we both see the light of freedom yet neither of us is willing to let go of this darkness.

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