The Missouri Review

Chase, Katie.
Man and Wife
The Missouri Review - Volume 30, Number 2, Summer 2007, pp. 10-31

University of Missouri

Katie Chase - Man and Wife - The Missouri Review 30:2 The Missouri Review 30.2 (2007) 10-31 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Man and Wife Katie Chase Click for larger view Figure 1 Photograh by Marta Rostek They say every girl remembers that special day when everything starts to change. I was lying under the tree in my parents' backyard, an oak old enough to give shade but too young to be climbed, when Dad's car pulled into the garage. All afternoon I'd been riding bikes with Stacie, but we had a fight when she proposed we play in my basement -- it was getting too hot out, but I was convinced she was only using me for my Barbies. This was eight years ago. I was nine and a half years old. Dad came out and stood in the driveway, briefcase in hand, watching me pull up grass. "Mary Ellen!" I yanked one final clump, root and dirt dangling from my hands, and sat up. "Come inside. I have wonderful news." In the kitchen Dad was embracing my mother, his arms around her small, apron-knotted waist. "I can't believe it went through," she was saying. She turned to me with shiny eyes, cleared her throat, and said in her sharp voice, "Mary, go get down the good glasses." I pushed a chair to the cupboards and climbed onto the countertop. Two glass flutes for my parents, and for myself a plastic version I'd salvaged from last New Year's, the first time I'd been allowed, and encouraged, to stay up past midnight and seen how close the early hours of the next...