Jul '02 [Home] Short Prose A Good Life Jenna Kalinsky I have a good life. I have a good life, because I have a husband who does the dishes. His name was first Angel and then he became my husband. No one calls him mister the way they call me missus. Angel and I have not figured out why, because women have been integrated into equality-like thinking for many years, even where I live. Yeah, they say this, but it is invisible to me because the women still wear underwear-short skirts in the diner and blue stuff on their eyes in town. They want to attract men and become missus too. My life is good because Angel does the dishes and likes to hang the clothes fresh from the washer. He says he likes to do it because I do it wrong and I laugh and say that I do that on purpose so I can sit on the couch with a magazine while he hangs the clothes. At first I am kidding while I am kidding, putting the egg on him, but then I am serious while I am kidding. He hangs every sock in exactly the same direction, in pairs, all turned perfectly right side out. I believe it is a disorder and he has acquired it from his mother, but I may not make a joke about this because it involves his mother and she is sacred because she is dead. Angel would never hit me if I made a joke about his mother but he would get very red in the face and that one big vein in his neck would stand out and just beat there, all sticking out, and he would look like he wanted to hit me with a very strong face, but he wouldn't because his mother taught him it was a sin, so he won't hit our kids either and then I always have to be the one to do it. [The author lives in Wiesbaden, Germany. Eds.]