Calling Invisible Women by Jeanne Ray Read Free Book Online Page A

much. I tried “Invisible Women Ohio” and “Calling Invisible Women” but I got more or less the same series of hits, including one for inflatable invisible women.
    I looked at the date on the paper. It was Tuesday. Since becoming invisible I had found that dates and times were less and less important. But I would make it a point to remember Wednesday at ten.

four
    I was worrying about what I should wear. How dressy was a meeting of invisible women? Were there wigs involved? I had considered getting a wig, but the more time that went by the less imperative it felt. I put on black tights and boots, a plain dark dress with a collar that could be turned up. In truth, I thought I looked good. I had lost some weight since becoming invisible. Food was less interesting when no one could see you eat it. I took off my clothes and put on a skirt and a sweater but it lacked sophistication. It said, I’m a preppy housewife who thinks being invisible is fun! Not the message I wanted to send. I tried a nice pair of jeans and a blazer but then what if they thought I didn’t care? I went back to the dress and added on the scarf that Arthur had bought me for our anniversary last year. I kept telling myself that I was getting all worked up for nothing. This was not going to be a group of women who were invisible, this was going to be a couple of plastic surgeons peddling the joys of facial fillers. This was going to be the first meeting of a new Weight Watchers club. This was going to be another encounter with the metaphor of invisibility because as far as the real thing was concerned, I seemed to be the only one suffering from that. Still, how could I not go? It wasn’t every day a call for invisible women was going to run in the paper.
    When I went downstairs, Nick was in the kitchen eating breakfast. He glanced up, giving me a split second of his morning’s attention. “Where are you going?”
    “What makes you think I’m going anywhere?”
    “You’re not wearing sweatpants.”
    I poured myself a cup of coffee and refilled his. “I have to go in to the paper. Every now and then we have to check in with the mother ship.”
    “Crappy paper,” Nick said, sliding it in my direction. It was still perfectly folded. He was reading the Times .
    “True,” I sighed, and nodded my head. “But it used to pay the bills.”
    “That must have been nice,” Nick said. “Think up something you’re actually interested in doing, something you might be good at, and then go to that place and get a job and then they train you and over time you learn to take on more responsibility and you get better at it. I want to live in a world where I could at least think, ‘There’s a newspaper! Maybe I can write for a newspaper!’ ”
    “The job search isn’t going so well?”
    I watched Nick’s shoulders slump forward, a nearly imperceptible bend. “I appreciate how rarely you ask about it. It shows real discipline on your part. Dad, on the other hand, thinks that maybe I’m performing neurosurgery somewhere and just forgot to mention it. I keep telling him, once I get a job the two of you will be the first to know. I’m actually doing the crossword puzzle just to spite him. I figured out he was hiding them in the knife drawer.”
    “I can pick up another paper,” I said.
    “I just wish I knew what I was supposed to be doing. I’m overqualified for every job that’s stupid and underqualified for every job that’s smart.”
    “I know how you feel.”
    It was the moment when a different son might have looked his mother in the eye, but my son pressed down his chin and studied the paper harder. “How do you know how I feel?”
    Because, my love, you feel invisible. You think you have no definition. “Well, I used to have a demanding full-time job,” I said, because this was also true. “I used to have a career. I’m a little underemployed myself at the moment.”
    “But you’re a mom,” he said, letting himself sound younger