Bliss by Danyel Smith Page A

sighed loudly and got out of the water. He’d been talking to his teenage daughter, who was lolling on a blue raft, staring up at the blue sky, which was the brightest blue possible, the only blue thatmattered, even in battle with the bottle-blue pool water, the teal blue of the sea, and the blue of the daughter’s bathing suit, which was dyed the hostile kind of turquoise blue that only a sixteen-year-old Miamian with a springy body would wear.
    The man walked over to his wife. His chubby body gleamed bronze, and water ran from his red trunks and pasted down the hairs on his legs. He reached in a sodden pocket and then did something to his wife’s face that Eva couldn’t see. His arm moved roughly. The wife’s bird hand twitched.
    The husband stepped from in front of her, and Eva saw him twist a cap back on something. The wife pressed and rubbed her lips together; it was that white zinc stuff, and it was all around the outside of her mouth. The husband leaned over and made the ointment sit perfectly on her lips. Like maybe another time they could have been going out and the zinc could have been lipstick he fixed for her and she would’ve been wearing shoes bare enough to be sexy but comfortable enough to dance in. The wife smiled at her husband in a grateful way, and the blue daughter looked at her father like she hated him, like he was an asshole.
    Then the man moved his wife’s hands the tiniest millimeter. Adjusted whatever discomfort the twitch might have caused. Eva baldly stared. She tightened her bladder, overwhelmed by the tenderness. Eva gulped back a sharp desire to care and be cared for. Then pee leaked from her body. It warmed the tepid water around her hips green. The daughter looked into Eva’s eyes, then rolled off her raft, paddled to the other side, and clutched the pool’s edge, disgusted.
    Stiff and embarrassed, Eva rose from the steps and gathered her things. She felt even more queasy. Her body was out of control and rebelling in response to rotten treatment. Telling her it was tired and not to be counted on for its usual behavior. The family at the pool had come all the way from someplace else, had wheeled Mom out, folded and unfolded the wheelchair, got to and from airports. And then the husband had hauled himself from the pool to fix up his wife. Eva wiped at herself with a towel like she was contaminated.
    He didn’t have to do any of that. He didn’t have to be here
.
    Eva felt dead to the world. Felt like she’d done too much, sold too much, been touched too much.
    She lay back on the plastic slats of the lounge chair, unfastened her bikini top, and left the stretchy triangles covering half her breasts.
    No show. No thrill
. Sunlight was like the force of voices bearing down on her.
    It’s my right to do what I’ve done. Thank God it’s my right because I didn’t want those kids. Wasn’t ready. Ain’t ready now. It’s my body. I get that. I want the decision to be mine. But, shit: I want candy. I want certain people to fall off the Manhattan Bridge. Just because you can do something, just because it’s legal, doesn’t make the shit all right. I’m not trying to overturn the law, but I hate freedom sometimes. Free to abort. Free to put out bitch-ho-kill records. Free to put out corny records. Free to lie. People’s parents free to break out on kids already here. I’m free to weasel fools out of their dough. And you and me are free to be you and me
.
    Eva wanted a tall bottle of water. She wished she still smoked cigarettes.
I am so burned. Cuticles ragged, polish chipped. Haven’t combed or curled my hair. Have on a cheap leather bracelet with a stupid sunrise-sunset design
. Eva thought of an old country song:
    Single girl
…
    She goes to the store and buys
.
    Married girl
…
    She rocks the cradle and cries
.
    Single girl
…
    She’s going where she please
.
    Married girl
…
    A baby on her knees
.
    From the twenties
, Eva thought.
They were crooning that in the goddamn