Chapter 1: Ugly Hands

She lay awake for the third night in a row, watching his even breaths as they blew little puffs of air across his pillow and against her cheek.  The smooth, even, snores that escaped his lips were comforting to her, a proof that he was alive, and he was at peace.  So unlike her, who tried to breathe as quietly as possible, and lay as still as she could to not rouse him.  The idea that she could wake him was foolish, really. She could have leaned over and raked her nails across his chest and he wouldn’t have awoken.  For him, sleep was as it should be, a respite and oasis from the every day stress of the waking world.  She wasn’t quite so lucky.

It was hot that night, but it had been hot every night for the past week that they lay beside one another on the mattress on the floor of the apartment they would soon be sharing in earnest- construction keeping them confined to one room and on one double bed.  All at once she thought about how different it was to be sleeping, or trying to sleep, beside a man who was not her lover, to share her bed with someone whose love came without strings and without expectations attached.  She regarded the swirling pattern of his hair with a bemused expression, and reached over to touch the small circle where his hair was most thinning.  She considered how silly it felt that she could so love something that made him so self-conscious, but that small, soft place where the hairs were growing thin touched her heart and made her feel safe.  Stroking it once more before the perceived risk of waking him became too great, she regarded her fingers in the shallow light of the early morning.  She had ugly hands.  They were short, and square, and chubby. Her nails grew in an odd, square-ish shape, never looking quite right, even after a trip to the salon, which she went through phases of requiring and detesting depending both on her mood and her pocketbook.  She wore a size nine ring, a sapphire in white gold, and it seemed squished against the pillows of flesh on each side- even before, when she was younger and thinner, her hands were ugly and lumpy.  The additional fifty pounds she carried now did not help add grace to her hands or her features.

Fifty extra pounds seems like an enormous amount. Any normal person would cringe at the thought of adding that much weight to their body. When someone is labeled as “fifty pounds overweight” images spring to mind of rolls of fat streaming out over the tops of blue jeans, pudgy double and triple chins, greasy with fried chicken, and flabby arms squeezed, sausage-like into sleeveless shirts- but really fifty pounds overweight did not cause massive deformity of the body.  Yes, a bigger stomach, meatier arms and legs, a thin layer of fat gently clinging to every body ridge, softening rib cages, cushioning knees- but not so much weight that you couldn’t fit in an airline seat or an amusement park ride.  That is the sort of overweight she was.  Just enough extra to protect her from the roving eye of the average male, just enough to fit into the largest of the regular sizes at a department store without having to stray into the “plus” section.

She wore simple and stylish garments, nothing too expensive, nothing with too low of a cut or too high a heel.  Gentle, easy, middle of the road clothes which solicited as little attention as possible were her favorites- she liked cotton blouses and linen skirts, in solid colors.  She wore her soft, curly, hair short and well manicured in a deep auburn color.  Though she was often complimented on its natural beauty and softness, its unruliness was still a trait she was deeply embarrassed by. To her mind, her one true possession of beauty were her emerald green eyes, dotted with flecks of blue and yellow, and her long auburn lashes which naturally curled at the tips.  She liked to stand in the bathroom mirror and stare deeply into them, until all she could see were layers of color, a pretty swirling mass of green and blue, which would quickly mix with tears, blurring her vision and making her breathing short and choppy.  She couldn’t remember the last time that she didn’t cry when she looked into her own eyes. It was better to look at her hands.  Ugly hands she could handle.  Ugly hands she understood.

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