ultraviolence // kai anderson

how to live

Present Day

    The mirror before me is different, but it seems I am the same. I am still buying new outfits for specific situations, for a specific man who isn't my husband. I'm wearing a tight but thick shirt in the palest blue available, its sleeves ending two inches past my wrist. I have my french tips again, but nearly three times as long as they were the first time I got them done. My hair had been in rollers all the previous night, and I am just finishing my lip routine. It is August 11th, the rainy night of Gregory's birthday party. It's a few days before his actual birthday, but it's a Sunday: the only day all of his invited guests are guaranteed to be off of work.

    With one more spritz of perfume and hair fluff, I exit our dull bedroom once I hear a knock at the front door. I already know Gregory is likely too immersed in his video game to have heard it. I'm annoyed to be right as I pass him and tap the top of his headset to get his attention before opening our hideous orange front door. He's been telling me since we moved in that he would paint it a different color soon, but every day there's another reason why he hasn't gotten to it yet. I plaster a smile on my face to hide my disappointment as I swing the door open and see only his two favorite coworkers who's names I can't place, and his boss Dave. My smile falters a bit when my eyes land on him, but I hide it before it's noticeable.

    The next guests are his parents, my in-laws. They came separately, but happened to still arrive at the same time. It wasn't long at all after the Anderson tragedy that they split up seemingly out of the blue. Everyone assumed the grief made them into different people and they ended up growing apart or needing something other than each other. Eric looks nearly the same, just with a ratty, foot long beard and a newfound habit of wearing a ball cap. Amanda has more greys than someone her age should on average, but that seems reasonable.

    After them is my little brother, Jace. He was born when I was eight, which means he's now right in the middle of that sixteen-year-old personality swap. He wants so badly to pretend he's too cool for his older sister, even coming to this event under the guise of needing more driving hours.

    "Is that a new piercing?"

    His eyes light up and he licks the metal ball that sits on the middle of his lip, "Yeah."

    "Wow," I smile and let him in. "Bet mom loves it."

    "She hasn't seen it yet," he takes his hoodie off with a mischievous grin.

    "Are you kidding? She's gonna think you got it with me if you go home from here with that."

    He shrugs and jokes, "Worried you'll get sent to your room?"

    I roll my eyes and take his hoodie to hang in the hall closet while he joins the crowd of boisterous men, and the more timid Amanda. I join them too after a melancholic solo moment, letting a deep breath activate my perfectly-content-housewife persona.

//

    An hour and a half passes, and I've said maybe six words the entire time. I go back and forth between watching the clock, checking out the living room for cars pulling up, and pretending anything these people say interests me. Jace excluded, of course. But he's been nearly as quiet as I have: just listening and learning and observing.
    I look at my nails dispiritedly, sure there will be no other guests and that this is yet another year I've been let down. There's no reason I should feel this way about anyone but Gregory-- but if we're being honest, he's never had me like this. I've always belonged to someone that's never belonged to me.
    Suddenly, headlights flash in the window, and the sound of wheels turning on wet pavement catch my attention. I immediately know it's him, and have to school my features to feign nonchalance.