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AN: Bad grammar, comma splices, run-on sentences, all that was intentional. Really.

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Circumstance
Written by Carolyn Ann Snow

She was a wifely wife -- the wifeliest one. Shapely, curvaceous, certainly not going to die of starvation or lack of fat collected for hibernation. A smile of golden odds and ends thrust between pasty white, pink chubby cheeks you'd pinch if she was three years old, beaming blue eyes and long lashes to flutter at her husband when he came home at night. A wonderful cook, a tender and loving mother of two children, aged eight and four, a part-time seamstress in sewing wonderful gowns for little childrens' birthday parties and also sometimes fixing the clown's suit. She always wore an apron, spotted or checked, sometimes with little roosters running across the hems or wheat stalks waving endlessly in a breeze that never changed. Don't feel quite right without the apron, she said. She didn't have much education and she wasn't ashamed of it. All she ever wanted from life was to stare at a sunset spread its fingers over trees and ocean, hug a little girl with brown curls and a crooked smile and a little boy who sometimes got mud on his mother's clothes. She laughed when it happened. What's a little dirt she said. Been staring at that color my whole life. Her smile was big and jolly and genuine and she always had cookies in the little white jar her children could almost reach, "cookies" tantalizingly printed on the label. The girl could read it now and knew what it meant. The wifely wife was so proud the day she found it out. Spell cookies for me honey. Good job!

She hung her childrens' finger paintings of no decipherable design on the fridge and pointed them to company when the children were near. Look at Johnny's art. Look at Katie's. Aren't they sweet, they sit together all the time and they're best friends. Gosh Mrs M you have some fine children, wish mine got along so well. Oh Sally I'm sure all yours need are a little time. Mine fought till Katie went to kindergarten! And then she'd laugh, a delighted-sounding little chuckle regurgitated by all her sickly friends immediately after. She had not one who was not also a wifely wife. They were so empathetic or narrow-minded that they could finish each other's sentences constantly, then laugh at the same instant when they did it. Merry were their cooking fests and childrens' clothing shopping sprees on the weekends their husbands would drive them to the mall. None of the wifely wives drove of course. All were secretly horrified at the idea.

They all said they loved their husbands but they all knew they were lying. They married because they had to and put up with their husbands' sweaty bodies moving in and out of theirs because if they didn't there would be fights, and Lord how they hated fights. And of course there were also children to think about, because every good wife gives her husband children. One in the circle hadn't been able to have her only child until she and her husband had been married for seven years and still the disgrace of it was unlivable. Her face would turn pallid when it was mentioned. The wifeliest wife would say there there Suzanna you know it's not your fault, but no one really believed her, not even the wifeliest wife. She must have committed some horrible sin sometime if the Lord would hold off giving her children for so long.

Since the wifeliest wife had only been married for nine years and had two children and the largest paid husband they fawned over her. Recipes were given whenever she asked and flowers with a snap of the finger. Want a piece of my zinnia have it plant it in your garden make it grow dear Mrs M you are a wonder with flowers. Thank you my dear it's a knack you've either got it or you haven't! The boy would run his trucks over beds and Mrs M would smile indulgently because she would replant them at the dead of night and they would still grow. She never told them about the special fertilizer she used, or her occasional excursion to the flower shop for grown blooms. It was her obsession to keep the garden beautiful, and she did it gorgeously, never losing a pound in the process. Her husband liked a good armful she said with a wave of her thinning dyed brown hair and a smile to show her dimples. He had gotten that out of a book but she never knew which one. She never read his books - no time for such foolishness, life was to be lived after all.

One by one the years dropped off. Eight years turned to fourteen and boys became involved and for the first time in her life Mrs M missed her innocent daughter. Four years became ten and twelve and fifteen and then she lost her baby boy forever to the girls, who were always trying to fondle him she was sure. Sometimes he came home looking too happy and elated. Sometimes now her daughter stumbled when she walked, foolish smile on her face, laughing like a dazed hyena. Mrs. M never said a word to the wifely wives because they were all getting older and wanted to enjoy each other's company not the worries. Her waist was expanding daily it seemed and if she ate any more cookies from that damned jar she might just hang herself. She remembered only faintly the happiness her daughter used to take from that jar, like it was a fountain that could never end. University and boys had ruined her she was convinced. She was glad she'd made her live at home so she could keep an eye on the girl. And her baby was still a baby even if she sometimes found cigarette butts outside his window or beer bottles broken on the road before their house. Sometimes her talks went right over his head but she ignored it. He would learn eventually she was sure.

Enter old age. The husband died first, then one by one the wifely wives dropped off, till in the end she had no one and nothing and had to live with the daughter and the three grandchildren who dropped things in her false front from upper levels and laughed to themselves behind Grammy's back. Her things were always getting misplaced and she could never remember what she'd eaten for breakfast, but she always saw her little eight-year-old kiddy standing there, reading the cookie jar, and drool would ooze down the sagging wrinkled old face in the smile so grotesque now with no teeth. She talked to the girl often and the grown-up daughter would try to tear her from the child but the wifeliest wife would become frantic, sometimes lash out bruise and cut. Soon the wifely wife left and went to a little room with white walls and a bed that poked in all the wrong places, but there were other wifely wives who had ceased to be wifely. She introduced her daughter to them and they smiled wetly and showed off their pottery collections, beautiful shrubs their husbands had given them, china dolls spread neatly on high shelves where the little toddlers couldn't reach. I have twins you know said one. Ah is that right well I was never so lucky to have twins but I have two babies! Here's my daughter now. There was no present or future anymore, nothing to live for, and the escape now was in the past because the rest was too confusing to try to piece together.

In the end there was a tombstone, lichened in three years as the daughter visited once in twelve months never scraping, mossy in five and illegible in ten as all went on with their lives. And the daughter lived her modern wifely life and sometimes wondered how her mother could stand that old life she had left behind. She never understood how superficial circumstance really was.

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