The news that Joel was cheating came to me during a migraine headache. It was Wednesday night. Joel was supposed to be bowling, the kids at ball practice. Even though I was dizzy, I walked the dog because nobody else was there. Thirty minutes before the blood vessels dilated, full-throttle in my head, I saw an aura, spots before my eyes, just before the incessant throbbing turned to nausea. 

To imagine a migraine aura, think of heightened sensory perceptions, slightly pleasurable, yet surreal in a Salvador Dali melting clock kind of way; at the same time, teetering on the threshold of unconscionable pain--the kind of pain that makes you smash your head into a wall in a heroic effort to stop its escalation.

It paralleled twilight, minutes before the sky fades from deep blue to black, in those moments when everything changes hue, from bright-colored to brilliant, from mediocre to spectacular, from ordinary to unbelievable, developing like color prints, in front of my eyes. I saw everything through clusters of tiny lights, swirling colors mixed by the mind, not the paintbrush, like the spots brought on by those blue Sylvania flash bulbs back in the sixties. As the dog pulled me along the sidewalk, I saw Joel's red tail-lights, disappearing in a cloud of dust on the gravel road to Sherry Grafton's place.

Sherry lived in a run-down double-wide trailer out in the sticks, ten miles from our house, just across the ravine from the old Mooney house, only the blood-stained staircase still standing, where Mr. Mooney was bludgeoned thirty years ago. Sherry was right up Joel's alley--she was cheap goods--flannel shirts, chain-smoking, sitting, legs spread, on a splintered picnic table, drinking Budweiser--a damned good time to her.

As my dog pissed on the neighbor's rosebush, random details boiled to the surface and I saw Sherry, pulling up a pair of hot-pink panties, sucking in her stomach as she admired herself, sideways in the mirror. She probably thought she was hot, even though her over-washed padded Playtex, cups yellowed, looked just like the bras Joel's mother wore. Extra-sensory olfaction overwhelmed me and I could smell the sickening aroma of a flickering hydrangea-scented candle, the same one I sold Sherry for fifty cents at my last garage sale.

Back at the house, I gave the dog two Milkbones, one green, one red, and before I started dry-heaving, I picked up the phone, dialed Sherry's number and told her a matching pink bra would be more slenderizing. I could hear her screaming as I held the receiver away from my ear. Joel got home early, complaining about Bob's gutter balls and the copper penny he found in his shoe.

 

First published: November, 2004
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