#89 Two Boys- Lorrie Moore
Mary is enjoying her young single life. For the first time,
she has two boyfriends. Number One is good-looking, funny, and married with two
kids. Number Two is brooding, warm, and a little intense.
“Alone Numbers One and Two were missing parts.” She
fantasizes about having a Number Three, perfect and there when the first two
aren’t enough. This goes fine for a while, but she has predictable problems balancing
her desires and her emotions.
“Her heart was big and bursting. Though her brain was drying
and subdividing like a cauliflower.”
She reacts in odd ways like painting her entire apartment
white, and throwing out all the furniture, "she needed plans.” So, she takes a
random trip to Canada and writes to both suitors when she will be back. Number
Two is at the station waiting. She is grateful and disappointed as she always
seems to be about Two. Number One is glib about not being available and seems
to be leaning back towards going back to his wife and family.
She has not found happiness, has stressful dreams and
imagines herself as a young girl waiting for her boyfriends, who are either
dead, or hanging there as slabs of meat.
Notable Passage: “You choose love like a belief, a faith, a
place, a box for one’s heart to knock against like a spook in the house.”
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