THE BOBOLINIS | S.L. WISENBERG I. Mr. Bobolini Two orbs of egg: white around pink-skinned yellow the way he likes it, soft, so he can pierce it with a touch of the heavy tines. The fork is real silver, wedding pattern (Wild Rose). He listens to the country music station. Sometimes at the same time, the Today show, so that cries and exhortations about heartbreak and appliances crisscross like trucks on the Interstate. He knows he should watch his cholesterol, his level teetering at 265, down, he reassures himself, from last year's 280. One egg every other day for Mr. Bobolini's breakfast. No more bacon, no steak. Instead, two slices unbuttered toast, half a Ruby Red grapefruit. His spoon lifts out the triangles his wife has carved. After the toast is gone, he returns to the fruit, gouging this time with the serrated edges, like tiny lizard teeth, scraping extra bittersweet nuggets of pink, seemingly beyond his allotted portion, all the way to the white pulp (the healthiest part of it, he remembers someone saying). This is what he knows: A peanut (or pistachio or raspberry or spoontip of citrus meat) that you’d forgotten about or didn't know was there when you thought your plate was empty always tastes better than food in plain sight. II. Mrs. Bobolini Mrs. Bobolini sits in the loge, holding her program the way her husband holds note after note. Her ticket was free. How lucky to be able to hear him, even in the shower, says everyone who knows she is Mr. Bobolini's wife. In fact Mr. Bobolini's wife wants to share the shower with him, feel the hot spray between her untanned breasts, the same time he feels it on his back, the droplets bouncing off his freckles. Mr. Bobolini's wife wants to giggle: Oh, honey, look at what they've painted on your back. Let me try to wash them off for you. Oh they have melted down here -- But Mr. Bobolini likes to bathe alone, heaps of bubbles flying under the gushing faucet, and he sings the songs addressed to servants: Get me this, love, bring me that, love-- the servant-girls he later tries to have in the pantry, in the operettas, the light ones. But at home, he has nothing to ask for. The thick pale towel--bath sheet, it was called in the store-- warm and waiting for him each time he descends from those two marble steps the realtor called an affectation of the original owner. On winter mornings his wife sets his towel on the radiator before his bath. In spring she lays the terry cloth on the bathroom floor and stretches out, uses her entire body to heat it, as if warming the side of a bed. S.L. Wisenberg teaches creative writing at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. Her third book, based on her Cancer Bitch blog, will be published by the University of Iowa Press in 2009. Contributors.htmlshapeimage_3_link_0
COMMENTARY | POETRY | FICTION | SUMMER 2008  
THE BOBOLINIS S.L. WISENBERG HARD JOHN M. ANDERSON SEICHE JOSEPH DROGOS PARABLE OF SENSITIVE SKIN MEG FRANKLIN ALONE IN PARIS SUSAN ANDERSON BEGINNINGS EDWARD MC WHINNEY SEAMUS, THEN J.M. PATRICK WILL DEIRDRE BEAT THE ODDS? A.S. KING INSTEAD OF WHAT WE COULD HAVE SAID VINCENT REUSCH FROM THE EDITOR REVIEWS SUSAN MILLAR DUMARS FRANK CONROY ALEKSANDAR HEMON JEAN VALENTINE BETH HELMS ROBERT MACFARLANE ED REGIS DONALD RAY POLLOCK ABOUT US SUBMISSIONS ARCHIVES | SEARCH RECENT AWARD WINNERS:Hard.htmlHard.htmlSeiche.htmlSeiche.htmlParable.htmlParable.htmlParis.htmlParis.htmlBeginnings.htmlBeginnings.htmlSeamus.htmlSeamus.htmlDeirdre.htmlDeirdre.htmlSummer-2008.htmlSummer-2008.htmlContradiction-4.htmlReviews.htmlDuMars.htmlConroy.htmlHemon.htmlChalupa.htmlHelms.htmlMacfarlane.htmlRegis.htmlPollock.htmlContrary.htmlSubmissions.htmlArchives.htmlshapeimage_5_link_0shapeimage_5_link_1shapeimage_5_link_2shapeimage_5_link_3shapeimage_5_link_4shapeimage_5_link_5shapeimage_5_link_6shapeimage_5_link_7shapeimage_5_link_8shapeimage_5_link_9shapeimage_5_link_10shapeimage_5_link_11shapeimage_5_link_12shapeimage_5_link_13shapeimage_5_link_14shapeimage_5_link_15shapeimage_5_link_16shapeimage_5_link_17shapeimage_5_link_18shapeimage_5_link_19shapeimage_5_link_20shapeimage_5_link_21shapeimage_5_link_22shapeimage_5_link_23shapeimage_5_link_24shapeimage_5_link_25shapeimage_5_link_26shapeimage_5_link_27shapeimage_5_link_28shapeimage_5_link_29shapeimage_5_link_30