Gossip
by Judith W. Steinbergh
She was a mother you could count on. She was like the sun
and the moon, the seasons, the constellations, the orbit
of Saturn, the laws of gravity. She could cope. Everyone
took it for granted. She did this for years and years and
years until it was like breathing, like getting up, like blood
in the veins, and the husband came and went on the train
or the plane carrying a briefcase or a suitcase. He was a
footnote to the thesis of their lives. So when he left for the
West Coast for six weeks, everything seemed as it always
seemed, but back in the suburbs, she mailed the ticket to his
mother in Wales, painted the trim, took his shirts to the
cleaner, cooked a week of meals and froze them, booked
one passage on a freighter with no return, and four days
after her mother-in-law arrived and six days before her
husband was due home, she left it all behind, ruining in one
act a reputation it took her years to create, scandalizing
a community, stirring up worse than dust, leaving hus-
bands and wives sweating in their king-sized beds,
For an interesting set of questions about this poem, click this link.
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