Free Carry the One by Carol Anshaw

found a way they could move into a bigger house. Their current one was too far west, and too small. They were on Ravenswood, facing the tracks. The urgent rush of the commuter trains heading north to the suburbs and south to the Loop was a large component of their immediate surroundings. They would have both preferred a less locomotive setting.
    So she thought the “something important” was “new house.” All of Matt’s surprises up to that point had been pleasant ones. But this time the surprise was Paula. Now Carmen could see, with heated humiliation, that the peaceful atmosphere in the room of their marriage was, for Matt, only a muted backdrop to a large, loudly ticking clock. While she had been going on, pretending their union was a rough but working organism, he had been quietly waiting for something to get him out of a marriage he had always seen as tainted. Carmen saw the stain, too. She could still, anytime, look back and see herself standing there in her ironic red wedding dress, just wanting her guests to leave, sleepily watching the splayed fins of Olivia’s old Dodge sashay withher good wishes down the dirt road, off the farm, navigating by its fog lamps, on its short, murderous course. At first they talked a lot about their culpability. They even went a few times to a couples’ counselor. After that, Carmen didn’t think the problem had gone away, or would ever go away, but that it was something they shared, as opposed to something that divided them. But now she could see the whole of the marriage played out under a long stretch of shadow it couldn’t outrun.
    Carmen and Gabe dressed up a little for Horace’s party. For Gabe this meant fresh pants, shined shoes, and a dress shirt. An outfit to which he added a cheesy red satin magician’s cape.
    “Peeeuuw!” He climbed into their car, following Walter, who liked to come along, anywhere. He didn’t mind the sour mildew aroma at all, and settled with a wheeze into the pile of old clothes in the back.
    “Just hold your nose,” Carmen told Gabe. “We don’t have very far to go.” Yesterday she spent the afternoon combing the racks at AMVETS and Salvation Army for large-size dresses and pants suits for women at Hearth/Home, the shelter where she worked—women who were going on job interviews, or back to school. Except for the really old women, who could be small and gnarly, clients at the shelter tended to be large gals. They lived on McDonald’s and sweet wine. Plus, they hadn’t been putting in much of an effort to keep themselves up.
    Coming up the stairs to her parents’ apartment, Carmen could hear the overlapping ebb and spike of party conviviality. Walter had rushed ahead and was already standing with his nose touching the apartment door.
    “Pay attention to your grandfather,” Carmen told Gabe, her hand on the doorknob. “It’s his birthday.”
    “Okay. But inside me, I don’t like him. He’s too loud, and he’s always mad at everybody.”
    The apartment, which occupied the floor above her father’s studio, was pure sixties bohemian, beatnik through and through. Danish modern furniture, blond and webbed; sagging brick-and-board bookcases; a set of bongos gathering dust in the corner, primitive African art on the walls along, of course, with Horace’s paintings. The apartments of all her parents’ Old Town crowd bore a similar stamp. These were the lairs of old artists and their younger trophy muses, women who were themselves now creeping through late middle age, variously thinning down or plumping up dramatically. These apartments were historic sites of landmark parties filled with artistic proclamations, the ignition of feuds, the birth of signature cocktails. Also of false teeth lost in toilets, tatami mats puked on, friendships bitterly ended, chops busted, cross-pollination among couples transacted in bathrooms and broom closets, and usually someone naked found passed out between the layers of coats on the bed.
    This