Love and Affection

by Wendy BooydeGraaff

He likes that I fall apart, that when he’s holding my hand under the cherry blossoms, I’ll stop and sniff, and he’ll keep walking, my arm disengaged from my shoulder. The tension in his grip will change, he’ll look over at me, and see I’m not there, only my hand in his hand, the arm lagging down. 

I’m like a well-loved Barbie; my joints come apart.

They reattach easily, just a snap here, pressure there. He fits the shoulder into the windsock of my three-quarter sleeve. “I prefer you to wear sleeveless,” he says to me, and then he clicks my shoulder back in place. 

I give him my grateful look. It’s well-rehearsed, it’s the same look Barbie has in her pink box, wearing the turquoise workout spandex. Her eyes are wide, gaze soft, nose pert, lips parted and slightly upturned creating that near dimple in her cheek. Really, any 80s Barbie Box will do if you want to be quick about your research.

When I’m on my back and he’s inside me, my hip will fall off, and it allows him to go in deeper. “It’s so worth it,” he says, when he wakes up and sees my leg there on the bed. I keep crutches under the bedskirt so I can get around, make coffee, pour a finger or two of spiced rum if it’s still dark and I want to watch a movie.

There’s a new medicine, one that bonds your joints like superglue. I’m thinking about starting it, but he reminds me of the side-effects. “Dryness,” he says. “Not only the nasal cavity, but the mouth, the vagina.” 

“Stiffness,” he says. “You’ll lose your flexibility.”

I cry.

He gently turns my head. It, too, comes off. He places it on the table, facing the corner. He leads my body, gently, to the floor where he undresses me, enters me, tells me, “Isn’t this better, isn’t this the way you want to live?”

I can’t see what he’s doing. My head can’t turn away from the wall, not when it’s not attached to my body. But I can feel. I can feel everything.

Wendy BooydeGraaff's short fiction has been included in X-R-A-Y, Alaska Quarterly Review, Ninth Letter online, the South Dakota Review, and elsewhere. Born and raised in Ontario, Canada, she now lives in Michigan, United States.