Object of Your Love by Dorothy Speak

staring at my exposed knees. A fine perspiration forms on his upper lip. His hands begin to shake.
    â€œJean, you’re going to ruin me,” he says after the patient has left the room.
    â€œI hope so.”
    One night after work, he catches my arm in the hallway, hisses in my ear, “You’re acting like I don’t exist, Jean!”
    â€œYou don’t,” I say ruthlessly, pulling on my coat. Recently I have been careful to leave the office at the same time as everyone else so that he cannot apprehend me, press me, unwilling, onto the waiting-room couch. Out into the night I run with the others, into the damp fall evening with its bitter smell of dying leaves. Clattering down the wooden porch steps, I turn onto the sidewalk, away from the congestion and traffic lights of downtown, and hear my own voice, shrill, sad and gay, calling, too loud, to my co-workers, “See you tomorrow!”
    *   *   *
    On the evening of the last day in November, Dr. Beveridge says to me, “All right, Jean, you’ve won,” and hands me a key. “I’ve rented a small apartment for us. It’s available as of today. We’ll live there on a month-to-month until things settle down and we can find something more comfortable. I’m going home now to tell Alice. You tell your family too. I’ll meet you at the apartment at eight o’clock tonight. Here is the address.”
    Then he sweeps me off my feet, carries me out to reception and makes love to me for the first time in weeks, in the blue quivering reflections cast by the aquarium. I am in rapture. I look up at the shining fish moving in their transparent, deadly regions. Suddenly I enter, I am transported into the aquarium’s landscape of sunken ships and treasure chests and tiny plastic scuba divers. My body floats, is sucked into one of the black, watery caves. I close my eyes and the searing colours of the fish burn my eyelids. I feel the fish moving over me, wave after wave of them, their scaly, wafer-thin bodies brushing the length of my limbs like feathers.
    *   *   *
    It is late when I arrive home.
    â€œJean,” Mother says, relieved to see me. “It’s nearly seven. We wondered.” In the kitchen she and Floyd and Blanche have almost finished dinner, which is never delayed on my account because of Blanche’s galloping appetite. I see that Mother has set aside something for me on a plate, covered with a pot lid.
    â€œToo bad you came home,” Blanche says, disappointed. “I was thinking of eating your dinner.”
    â€œHelp yourself,” I tell her indifferently. “I won’t be sitting down.”
    â€œIs anything wrong, Jean?” asks Mother, worried, detecting something in my face. Floyd, his cutlery poised in the air like daggers, stops to observe me.
    â€œShe looks smug about something,” says Blanche cautiously.
    â€œJean, sit down,” says Mother, perplexed.
    â€œI don’t have time to sit down,” I say. “I’m going upstairs to pack my bags. You may as well know,” I tell them, “that Dr. Peter Beveridge and I have for some time been carrying on an affair. He’s leaving his wife tonight. He’s breaking the news to her even as we speak. We’re meeting later this evening. We have an apartment waiting for us. We’re going to be very happy.”
    There is a moment of exquisite silence while they absorb the news. Blanche’s eyes are big and round, her face flattened with shock as though someone has hit her head-on with a frying pan. Mother cups her hand over her mouth.
    Blanche is the first to find her voice. “I knew it!” she cries, though her soft, puddinglike face is now quivering with surprise. “I knew there was something funny going on.”
    â€œI’m glad you think it’s funny,” I say.
    â€œShe doesn’t mean amusing, ” Floyd explains. “Jean,