T H E T U S C A R O R A R E V I E W 2 0 2 2 2 7 Rags LY N N E R E G U L E S She wishes to be twenty women at once. Much work is to be done, about the laundry, about the rags, about the children. She folds each shirt with straight creases and handles them so carefully it seems she’s worried the fibers will decompose in her hands. Chicken dinner sits frozen stiff in the fridge. It is dark, but it is not quiet. Children run around the house like beetles. Looping music from the grocery store buzzes in her head. She worries she’ll dream of stocking shelves again. When she sleeps, she dreams of paper blue landscapes and galloping deer. Men with spotted white horses travel over vast plains to cities that spring from the ground like pillars of salt. A grand ceremony awaits. She is twenty women at once, with twenty bodies in gilt gold dresses and forty hands and tens of silken tapestries to attend to. She can do it all, she can move and she can lay them down in one flat stack which she places on her head to be carried across the hall. Children flutter around her like greyhounds and heed her commands when she asks for quiet. The groin vaulting of the dining hall is lofty and new light pools on black tile. She rolls out a single powder green runner across an infinitely long dining table. Another self catches the runner and adjusts it, while a third sweeps around the table and places down ceramic plates and silver forks. Crystal glasses, heavy blue napkins, lush flower arrangements are all set in place with a flurry of sweeping gold skirts. Bread and fruit and rosemary chicken thighs are brought out on platters the size of the moon. She sits down at one of the peripheral seats around the table, while her other selves welcome hungry travelers. Glasses clink and her dress is made of the heaviest silk in the room. “The food is wonderful. They talk of the most important things, the most pertinent topics, and she knows exactly what to say. “More water, more wine please.”
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