SmokeLong Quarterly

The point of view in “Two Towels Drying” is evocative and feels essential to the narrator expressing herself. How did you choose the unique viewpoint? Do you have a personal connection to the story?

While I’ve never shared a husband with another woman, I’d bet most women have found an old hair tie in their partner’s bathroom and fabricated an entire story about a gorgeous woman with mile-long legs and perfect hair. Objects like this can be terrible little clues, and I wanted to drop myself into the mind of someone who is constantly tortured by them.

I think this piece relies on the kind of mystery only first-person narration allows. Additionally, addressing the husband brings another level of sadness to the surface: Here is a wife who feels ostracized in her marriage, attempting and failing to communicate with a husband she can no longer reach.

What is the significance of the ordinary objects here that define and delineate the narrator’s life?

The objects serve several narrative purposes. The shirt and shampoo bottle, for example, show how the speaker is constantly measuring herself and her relationship against the invisible other. The enchilada, newspaper, and lipsticks signify an unspoken shared bond; small acts of solidarity and kindness that both comfort and haunt the speaker. The earrings symbolize her desire to transform, to adopt the other woman’s desirability. Once the earrings are on, however, she is still only herself, but heavier. With the earrings, the shift from pair to individual is important. After putting them on, our speaker is left feeling singular, even more alone, not part of a pair at all.

The title bears so much weight. How did you choose it?

I wanted to begin with a strong visual that conveyed the everyday heartbreak of a love triangle—small and undramatic, but also crushing in its plainness. For me, there are two possibilities. Either the speaker’s towel is drying beside the other wife’s, symbolizing the neverending side-by-side comparison. Or, alternately, the two towels belong to the husband and other wife, symbolizing how there is no room for the narrator. Kicked out of the relationship, her towel has no place to dry. Both situations, I think, are devastating.