Portrait of My Mother-in-Law with Subsequent Touch-Ups

I

My mother-in-law is washing up and in a bad mood because she's washing up. She passes by the open door to my room and sighs deeply, somewhat theatrically, until she can't take it anymore and lets out a "Look at that sink!" She's always like this, she never says, "Someone really needs to do this or that," or "You really need to do this or that." She prefers an indirect way of communicating her desires, the mode of suggestion. She finds it more poetic; she's a lover of the lyrical, my mother-in-law.

I make like I'm deaf, an idiot, clueless; I keep writing the story, because it's her son's turn to do the dishes. I cooked and have no interest at all in getting my hands wet.

So then she decides to use modern torture; she puts on Radio Reloj, which is just the nicest station, round the clock they tell you things in an even, level voice and over it the toom-toom-toom of the metronome, like drops of water on your skull until you go crazy. I don't know whose idea it was, must've been someone with a hideous mind, like that of my mother-in-law, who puts it on all the way up, so I'll go crazy faster, but luckily there are batteries in my Walkman. I hook it up, having already loaded it with Loreena McKennitt's latest cassette, and keep on writing. I keep going with the protagonist, who's a woman writing a story about a woman writing a story about, you know what I mean, nothing out of this world or anything.

II

I write, I smoke, I write and smoke, I write and write, I smoke and smoke, I toss the ashes out the window, I toss the unusable pages out the window, I toss cigarette butts out the window. "My mother-in-law is washing up and in a bad mood," I write, but no one's imagining her, just me, as I watch her pace to and fro with foam up to her elbows, flooding the tiles with foam (then she'll tell me I'm filthy, just look how I've got the floor). I can sharpen her image: she has blue eyes. Striking, no? She wears cheap T-shirts bought on markdown, she has a million cheap T-shirts bought on markdown. She spends long stretches painting her nails in front of the TV, night after night; for that she uses cheap polish bought on markdown that chips away day after day, but she's persistent, a persistent old lady, like the metronome's drops of water toom-toom-toom, until you go crazy, even though I make like I'm persistent too and I write, I write-write-write, you know what I mean, nothing out of this world, the woman, the story, the woman in the story, the other one, and so on endlessly.

III

She passes by the door to my room and sighs deeply, somewhat theatrically, finally she can't take it anymore and lets out an "Ay, I'm so tired!" Loud, louder than Radio Reloj, louder than Loreena, so I'll hear her, but I make like I'm deaf / an idiot / clueless and I write. When Adriana would've gotten up a long time ago to do the dishes, when Marina Tsvetaeva would've gotten up a long-long time ago to do the dishes, I don't, for two key reasons:

1. a). I cooked, therefore let my fellow man do the dishes.

2. b). I can't stand getting my hands wet. When my hands get wet, they look like strings of sausage, once they dry it's even worse and I have to douse them in creams, moisturizing creams bought on markdown, nourishing creams that smell rancid, that smell like misery and chaos. I prefer to let them stay dry and bathe with a scrubbing brush, limiting myself to the...