Calling Invisible Women by Jeanne Ray Read Free Book Online

lay there like this for a while, just holding each other like nothing had ever been wrong. “Hard day?” I asked.
    “It was pretty much like the others, maybe a little bit longer. What about you?”
    “It was better than the others,” I said, and then I told him my story, a slightly modified version in which I was a little less brave and not at all invisible but still, the basic facts were true.
    Arthur came up on his elbow and put his hand over my heart. “I can’t believe you! You could have been hurt! You could have been killed! For all you knew that man had a gun.”
    “If he had a gun, then all the more reason to stop him. I did the right thing. You would have done it, too.”
    “I don’t know,” he said. “I’d like to think so but I don’t know. What did the woman say to you once he left?”
    “She didn’t say a thing. She got in her car just as soon as I pushed him away and pulled out as fast as she could.” I told him that the edge of my fender was slightly crushed and that I saw she had a child in the car.
    “Clover, Clover, Clover,” he said, and wrapped me up in his arms. “I’m trying to diagnose a lousy case of meningitis and you’re out there saving the world.”
    “It had to be saved,” I said. Then Arthur kissed me, and I kissed him.
    To tell the truth, I made love with my eyes closed most of the time. Arthur did, too. I knew because from time to time I’d opened my eyes and looked at the sweet intensity on his face. We’ve been doing this a long time, the two of us, ever since college, waiting for one of our roommates to go out for pizza so that we could bolt the door and fall against each other with all of our twenty-year-old passion. Year after month and week after day we have come back to each other. We would know each other’s bodies blind. As for being invisible, I forgot about it that night, and Arthur never knew.
    The next morning when he leaned in and kissed my shoulder, my neck, I started to think about it all another way. Maybe Arthur didn’t see me because he knew me so well and his vision automatically filled in all the things I was, based on the slightest hint of shape or scent. Maybe when you’ve been with someone so long you don’t so much see them as you project them onto things. Arthur could have been making love to my twenty-year-old self, my forty-year-old self. He could have made love to all the women I had ever been. Maybe he saw all of us together. Anyway, this morning I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. I made him breakfast, I wished him a good day. I sat down at the kitchen table and ate the piece of toast he hadn’t had time for, then I picked up the local paper. My piece on composting was in: “This Year’s Eggshells Are Next Year’s Tomatoes.” I started to read it through but it was too boring. I looked at the front page, which discussed the potential merits of a new ice-skating rink, the recipes (“Living Large with Quinoa”), my horoscope (“Today you will take a chance on a new group of friends who think that you’ll fit right in with their club”). I looked at the puppies to good homes column. I asked Red if he was interested in having a friend. He wagged his tail and I realized he was interested in the rest of my toast so I gave it to him. My eyes scanned the want ads, apartments for rent, pianos for sale, men wanting women, men wanting men, calling invisible women.
    I stopped. I went back. There, between a notice for a divorced Christian singles group and a notice for Tupperware representatives, was the following:
Calling Invisible Women.
Downtown Sheraton, Wednesday at 10:00 a.m.
Bring a Kleenex.
    Was it possible that the answer was in our pitiful newspaper that I very nominally still worked for? I went to the computer and googled “Invisible Women,” but all that came up were pictures of the blond girl in the superhero suit followed by a series of articles about women who loved too much and did too much and gave too