“Oh, that is such bullshit,” she said. It was an inexpressible relief to hear that other voice-Ruth’s voice-come out of her mouth. She sometimes (well… maybe often would be closer to the truth) hated the Goodwife voice; hated it and feared it. It was often foolish and flighty, she recognized that, but it was also so strong, so hard to say no to.

Goody was always eager to assure her she had bought the wrong dress, or that she had chosen the wrong caterer for the end-of-summer party Gerald threw each year for the other partners in the firm and their wives (except it was really Jessie who threw it; Gerald was just the guy who stood around and said aw shucks and took all the credit). Goody was the one who always insisted she had to lose five pounds. That voice wouldn’t let up even if her ribs were showing. Never mind your ribs!” it screamed in tones of self-righteous horror. Look at your tits, old girl! And if they aren’tenough to make you barf a keg, look at your thighs!

“Such bullshit,” she said, trying to make it even stronger, but now she heard a minute shake in her voice, and that wasn’t so good. Not so good at all. “He knew I was serious… he knew it. So whose fault does that make it?”

But was that really true? In a way it was-she had seen him deciding to reject what he saw in her face and heard in her voice because it would spoil the game. But in another way-a much more fundamental way-she knew it wasn’t true at all, because Gerald hadn’t taken her seriously about much of anything during the last ten or twelve years of their life together. He had made what almost amounted to a second career out of not hearing what she said unless it was about meals or where they were supposed to be at such-and-such a time on such-and-such a night (so don’t forget, Gerald). The only other exceptions to the general Rules of Ear were unfriendly remarks about his weight or his drinking. He heard the things she had to say on these subjects, and didn’t like them, but they were dismissible as part of some mythic natural order: fish gotta swim, bird gotta fly, wife gotta nag.

So what, exactly, had she expected from this man? For him to say, Yes, dear, I will free you at once, and by the way, thanks for raising my consciousness?

Yes; she suspected some naive part of her, some untouched and dewy-eyed little-girl part, had expected just that.

The chainsaw, which had been snarling and ripping away again for quite some time, suddenly fell silent. Dog, loon, and even the wind had also fallen silent, at least temporarily, and the quiet felt as thick and as palpable as ten years of undisturbed dust in an empty house. She could hear no car or truck engine, not even a distant one. And now the voice which spoke belonged to no one but herself. Oh my God, it said. Oh my God, I am all alone out here.I am all alone.

Jessie closed her eyes tightly. Six years ago she had spent an abortive five-month period in counselling, not telling Gerald because she knew he would be sarcastic… and probably worried about what beans she might be spilling. She had stated her problem as stress, and Nora Callighan, her therapist, had taught her a simple relaxation technique.

Most people associate counting to ten with Donald Duck trying to keephis temper, Nora had said, but what a ten-count really does is gives youa chance to re-set all your emotional dials…and anybody who doesn’tneed an emotional re-set at least once a day has probably got problems alot more serious than yours or mine.

This voice was also clear-clear enough to raise a small, wistful smile on her face.

I liked Nora. I liked her a lot.

Had she, Jessie, known that at the time? She was moderately astounded to find she couldn’t exactly remember, any more than she could exactly remember why she had quit going to see Nora on Tuesday afternoons. She supposed that a bunch of stuff Community Chest, the Court Street homeless shelter, maybe the new library fund drive-had just all come up at once. Shit Happens, as another piece of New Age vapidity passing for wisdom pointed out. Quitting bad probably been for the best, anyway. If you didn’t draw the line somewhere, therapy just went on and on, until you and your therapist doddered off to that great group encounter session in the sky together.

Never mind-go ahead and do the count, starting with your toes. Doit just the way she taught you.

Yes-why not?

One is for feet, ten little toes, cute little piggies, all in a row.

Except that eight were comically croggled and her great toes looked like the heads on a pair of ball-peen hammers.

Two is for legs, lovely and long.

Well, not that long-she was only five-seven, after all, and long-waisted-but Gerald had claimed they were still her best feature, at least in the old sex-appeal department. She had always been amused by this claim, which seemed to be perfectly sincere on his part. He had somehow missed her knees, which were as ugly as the knobs on an apple tree, and her chubby upper thighs.

Three is my sex, what’s right can’t he wrong.

Mildly cute-a little too cute, many might say-but not very illuminating. She raised her head a little, as if to look at the object in question, but her eyes remained closed. She didn’t need her eyes to see it, anyway; she had been co-existing with that particular accessory for a long time. What lay between her hips was a triangle of ginger-colored, crinkly hair surrounding an unassuming slit with all the aesthetic beauty of a badly healed scar. This thing this organ that was really little more than a deep fold of flesh cradled by crisscrossing belts of muscle-seemed to her an unlikely wellspring for myth, but it certainly held mythic status in the collective male mind; it was the magic vale, wasn’t it? The corral where even the wildest unicorns were eventually penned?

“Mother Macree, what bullshit,” she said, smiling a little but not opening her eyes.

Except it wasn’t bullshit, not entirely. That slit was the object of every man’s lust-the heterosexual ones, at least-but it was also frequently an object of their inexplicable scorn, distrust, and hate. You didn’t hear that dark anger in all their jokes, but it was present in enough of them, and in some it was right out front, raw as a sore: What’s a woman? A life-support system for acunt.

Stop it, Jessie, Goodwife Burlingame ordered. Her voice was upset and disgusted. Stop it right now.

That, Jessie decided, was a damned good idea, and she turned her mind back to Nora’s ten-count. Four was for her hips (too wide), and five her belly (too thick). Six was her breasts, which she thought were her best feature-Gerald, she suspected, was a bit put off by the vague tracings of blue veins beneath their smoothly sloping curves; the breasts of the gatefold girls in his magazines did not show such hints of the plumbing beneath. The magazine girls didn’t have tiny hairs growing out of their areolae, either.

Seven was her too-wide shoulders, eight was her neck (which used to be good-looking but had grown decidedly chicken-y in the last few years), nine was her receding chin, and ten-

Wait a minute! Wait just one goddamned minute here! the no-bullshit voice broke in furiously. What kind of dumb game is this?

Jessie shut her eyes tighter, appalled by the depth of anger in that voice and frightened by its separateness. In its anger it didn’t seem like a voice coming from the central taproot of her mind at all, but like a real interloper-an alien spirit that wanted to possess her the way the spirit of Panzuzu had possessed the little girl in The Exorcist.