Free Splintered Heart by Emily Frankel Page A

— the black cloth was nylon that stretched easily over shoulders, arms, breasts...
    Marian's fingers gripped the cloth, dug into the palm of her hand. Her heart beat wildly; the veins in her forehead swelled, her teeth clenched down to stifle a sob. She closed her eyes. Ribbons of light streaked the blindness. She felt as if she had stopped breathing.
    ...I am dead...
    The thought was air. Marian breathed a greedy breath. There had to be an explanation.
    ...It belongs to Felipe's wife...
    But she knew the wife of Felipe had no reason to come there. She knew Felipe took the laundry home to his wife, they had five children — the wife was fat — couldn't possibly fit into the slip.
    ...Then it's a slip belong to one of our friends, a client's wife — Felipe found it when the men were cleaning up! Where else would you put a slip but in the hamper, how else could a slip get into our laundry hamper, who else could have put it there...
    Asking questions, answering the questions, explaining, denying — no matter what Marian tried to say to herself, the answer was the woman of the black bobby pins, black hair. Marian wanted to be choking her, twisting, twining, knotting the black nylon slip tighter and tighter around her neck, so that the black haired head above ballooned, bulged, split open like plastic.
    ...Oh God, don't let me think these thoughts, don't let this be happening to me, stop me from thinking these thoughts! Dear Father in heaven, help me — I cannot take this — help me...
    She wanted to vomit, to scream, to destroy it, rip it apart —to shove her fingers into her ears so that all thoughts would be shut off. She wanted to be blind, not to see it laying there. She wanted to take the slip, stuff it into her mouth, be gagged, permanently silenced.
    She kept repeating it, "Help me, help me."
    The extremes of her emotion were unfamiliar, the pain, the passion and violence of her feelings became embarrassing.
    ...Fool, silly woman, stupid vile idiot! There is no other woman! There is a simple reasonable explanation. You are acting like a typical housewife, worse than Aunt Paula would act if something like this happened in her family. You've been reading nonsense in novels, watching it on T.V., you have no basis, no reason at all to think Ferris would ever seriously look at another woman, much less be unfaithful...
    Even in thought, the word "unfaithful" was painful to form.
    "Oh Ferris, forgive me for having these thoughts," she cried out to the room. "Please God, I want Ferris just to love me. Make him, make him make love to me! Oh God, please make him sleep with me," Marian prayed, standing over socks and shirts and underwear, tears streaming.
    Then she stopped — stopped crying, stopped praying because what she was praying for was unfitting, inappropriate for a graceful, poised and in control, grown-up woman. Also, Marian knew that what she prayed for, she would not get.
    Marian blew her nose, threw cold water on her face, washed away all the traces of tears.
    She folded the black lace half-slip, put it away carefully underneath her own slips in the bottom of her dresser drawer. The rest of the laundry was then put in the laundry bag to be given to Felipe next week.
    Despite the icy wind from the street, Marian opened the living room window wide, left it open to air out the stale smell which was still lingering. She straightened up the records in her record collection that had gotten out of alphabetical order. She puffed up the couch cushions.
    In the kitchen she loaded the dishwasher with the dishes that had been left in the sink from the night before; she took all the leftovers from the honeymoon dinner, and even though the casserole could have been reheated, she disposed of everything.
    Marian filled the kettle. Before getting to work on the next job on her schedule which was "thank you notes", she wanted some strong hot tea. She got a cup and a tea bag, sat down at the breakfast nook table to wait for the