Fiction

Marilyn Abildskov

She doesn’t like to name what’s on her face: these sores, these blemishes, these zits. She hates that word, zits. She also hates the words bitch, whiz, and boobs. When Sam was tipsy sometimes—and that’s all he ever really got—he’d say, “Excuse me, I have to take a whiz,” which made Ally crazy-irritated. Those were also the nights he spoke rhapsodically about her gorgeous boobs, and suddenly this man she thought of as so funny, would be saying things like, “Your boobs are just so boobalicious,” and she’d feel sorry for herself, embarrassed she had married someone who, in all seriousness, used such a word.