The Doctor's Wife by Luis Jaramillo

more times. For the children, it is more hilarious each time.

Surf City
    In the downstairs bathroom, Ann and Chrissy apply zinc oxide to their noses. It’s the afternoon and they’ve both finished their jobs for the day. They are listening to KJR, hoping that either Jan and Dean or the Beach Boys will come on. The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife expect their children to be gainfully employed, so Ann has spent the morning in the Doctor’s lab, scrubbing test tubes crusted with blood and other bodily fluids, while Chrissy babysat.
    They’ve both already changed into the two-pieces that show their belly buttons. The Doctor’s Wife is thankfully the sort of mother who understands that fashions change. Ann’s is polka dotted. Chrissy’s is red and white, bought at Frederick and Nelson and chosen because the colors match the boat. They snap off the radio, grab towels from the utility porch and pour themselves glasses of iced tea. Ann takes extra cut lemon out of the refrigerator. They go down to the basement where they collect the skis and life belts and then exit out the basement door to the side yard. They need more hands. Chrissy’s towel slips out from under her arm and onto the lawn, and Ann drops the lemons in the sand, but they finally make it with all of their gear to the boat.
    â€œSqueeze the lemon here,” Chrissy says, indicating the top of her head. Both Ann and Chrissy are very blonde, but lemon intensifies the effect. Now they are ready to go. Ann turns the key. Chrissy uncoils the bow line from the cleat and then leaps into the boat as Ann steers the boat away from the dock, driving slowly until they’re in the open water, where she pushes the throttle forward. It’s the middle of the afternoon during the week, so there aren’t many people on the lake. The sun catches the chop of the waves. A million flashes of light wink under the blue sky.
    The first thing they do is pick Bob up from the marina. He fills the tank, they throw his bike in the boat, and then they drive to the middle of the lake where they turn off the motor and float.
    Bob is going away to Stanford in the fall. He’s not going to play football, and Ann is glad. She never liked the idea of her brother getting smacked around. He’s really big, but that doesn’t matter. Sometimes the littler guys go after the big one just to see if they can take him down. Ann stretches out on a towel on the floor of the boat so that the sun can go all the way into her bones. Chrissy dives over the side of the boat. She can be heard splashing in the water.
    â€œLet’s do something,” Chrissy says when she climbs back in. She’s dripping over Ann, which totally ruins the good the sun has done.
    â€œWhat’s wrong with lying here and tanning?”
    â€œIt’s boring.”
    â€œYou’re boring.”
    â€œLet’s torpedo,” Bob says.
    Torpedoing means that one person drives the boat as fast as it’ll go and then the others dive off the side of the boat. The Doctor’s Wife doesn’t know about this game.
    Bob volunteers to drive first. “Faster,” Chrissy yells.
    Ann perches on the side of the boat and then dives. The surface slaps her face and it’s a stunning sort of concussion, then water up the nose and darkness. The depths of the lake call her down. There’s a story that there’s a train at the bottom of the lake, an accident from the days of logging.
    But back up on the surface, the water sparkles, sunny, and Chrissy is bobbing next to Ann. They climb up the ladder at the back of the boat.
    â€œMy turn to drive,” Chrissy says, grinning. There’s no point in doing something fun just once.

In Contrast
    â€œI was only depressed for, like, 40 years,” Petrea says to me.
    â€œBecause of John?”
    â€œBecause of John.”

The Body
    The Doctor went to medical school with Tom Critchfield, a gynecologist who lives on