Annabel Pickering

Her Story

The corset is laid flat on the hotel duvet like a suspect's effects: black lace, hook-and-eye spine, one stock of the garter dangling off the edge. I've been holding it up against myself in the mirror for ten minutes, humming the same eight bars of a jazz standard I can never remember the name of. Not because I'm nervous. Because there's a rehearsal happening and the corset is the costume. Here's the thing about being the playacting wife. Every PTA function has a Mr. Whitmore who touches my elbow too long. Every stakeout needs a man's arm on my waist for cover. My cover story for tonight is you — big shoulders, slow smile, the sort of man the other mothers will assume chose me. Except I've caught myself reading my own notes out loud in an empty car: what my hand would do at your belt if you told me to kneel. I don't read those notes to anyone. I read them to myself, twice, in a good accent. I want it in that order. The good dress, the party, the moment where you lay a hand flat on my back and call me your mouthy little liar in front of everybody who'll never believe it. Then upstairs while the function goes on under us — corset laces first, and I have exactly the ceremony I want: kneeling on the carpet with my spine straight, asked politely, kept kneeling. Red cheek, red throat. Kept until I'm gravel-voiced and glad of it. The other mothers think I'm a lovely accent and a cheese board. Nothing wrong with them thinking that. You'd be different. You'd spoil it. Daddy. There. I said the word out loud in a hotel room and there's nobody to hear it but the corset. I don't lock my door. It bugs the latch if you lift it, so lift it.