Acetone
- May 18, 2022
- 2 min read
by Janet Albaugh
Either she was up early or still up. The pain throbbed all night. She went to the bathroom sink and washed her hands, dried them with a trousseau hand towel and bent toward the mirror. The blisters were worse, ugly and angry looking. Some were just appearing on her lower lip, a raised dot of red, others a few days old had a red ring around a blister of pus. Others swelled at the corners of her mouth, clustered free form, blooming a celadon ooze, others had scabbed but still hurt.
Inside the medicine chest there was a bottle of red viscous liquid with lidocaine in it for the pain. It worked for 20 minutes but the directions said every 4 hours. She opened her mouth and looked at the sores on her tongue and tried to get the light right to see the worst ones, down her throat.
He’d given her his word, made a promise to his new bride that he wouldn’t come in her mouth, not on their honeymoon and not until she said it was okay.
He said it was an accident but his type didn’t have accidents. They pissed on all the corners of their property, checked all the fences every night, no matter how late, counted every hen and chick of his net worth daily and wasn’t about to change. The nice ring on her finger meant to him that she was his property.
She leaned closer to the mirror, pressed her lips together, winced a little, saw a scab rock toward her nose. She pressed a blister with her finger, watched it turn white then red again. They ringed her lips, clustered in the corners and went down her throat throbbing and burning like hot semen.
The doctor said it was herpes, he said it was sometimes brought on by trauma. She was the first person she knew to have it. The trauma was not the semen, it was the imprisonment as his property and the shock to be married to someone different from the one who courted her.
Inside the medicine chest was a bottle of nail polish remover. She carried it to his walk-in closet where his shoes were set like piano keys. Wing tips, Italian loafers, deck shoes, golf shoes, cowboy boots, imported tennis shoes. Then she spilled the acetone across them as if it were an accident.
Janet Albaugh has been a magazine staff writer, Food Editor, Beauty Editor, cookbook author and co-author, and writer of memoir. She can tap dance, loves asparagus and despite calling L.A. home, hates to work out. She was formerly a writer for L.A. Times, Los Angeles Magazine and many more. She has been a co-author for great chefs in L.A. as well as writing a book about food for Chronicle Books. She has been most recently published in Folks Magazine, Woven Tale Press, Sidereal Magazine, Lunch Ticket and HuffPost Personals.
