Deconstructive Criticism Tepid Water by Maryanne Moll
Roland Raymond A. Roldan
A close reading to Maryanne
Moll’s short story reveals a pervading of uncertainty of the binary theme of
betrayal/forgiveness that pervades the whole story. A careful rereading of the
text gives out a language is dynamic, ambiguous, and unstable, continually
disseminating possible meanings, which exposes Pat’s predicament of
unfaithfulness having no fixed ground; her humanity betrays her own choices,
her efforts for cleansing arbitrary and nil.
The central character Pat,
who is married to Michael, has a phone conversation with Allan, a friend of her
ex-boyfriend Bobby. “Allan was an offshoot of an affair Pat had once,” the
story starts, referring to her relationship with Bobby, “…in that uneasy stage
of rebounding,” which would refer to a post-break-up fling. She later meets and
has sex with Allan, and is filled with distaste, as she inwardly criticizes his
undesirable looks and lifestyle. She goes home and takes a bath, and is rejuvenated
by that cleansing ritual: “Smiling against the steady stream,” the narration
describes at the end, “she felt Michael’s detached love, absent yet definitely
omnipresent, and caressing her with constancy and indifference, bathing her in
tepid water and retribution.”
At first reading, the
story seem to go through the eventuality of a wife’s realization to her
unfaithfulness to her husband Michael, with the last phrases of the story telling
us that she has repented from her sin, and that she will not do it again. However,
a careful reading would point out otherwise, and that the “betrayal/forgiveness”
theme is more complex than it appears to be.
Many
possible meanings abound in the text, among them the rather disturbing
possibility that Pat seem to be a habitual adulteress. Did Pat have a relationship
with Bobby—and afterwards with Allan, being jilted by the former—before her
marriage with Michael, or did it happen during the marriage? Has her sexual
encounters with Allan, except for the actual meeting being narrated, a thing of
the past, or a ritual of sorts she resorts to? Does she have sex outside
marriage as a habit?
Pat’s offer of the answer
From Here to Eternity (a play of
words “here” and “eternity” implying repetition ad nauseam doing things again and again) that Michael is solving in
his crossword puzzle seem to be a subtle insinuation of an old-fashioned marital
relationship that has become bland, even as Pat “started brushing her hair,
absently wondering how she had become so placid with her marriage.” In contrast,
the description of her postcoital dysphoria with Allan, eating potato chips in
their underwear listening to Eminem’s The
Real Slim Shady offers fresh, adolescent way of having sex, a thing that
Pat guiltily enjoys: “…like her hip bones were shifting, becoming more rounded,
her breasts growing larger and her waist cinching in, reshaping her entire
structure, as if having orgasms was the catalyst to a more womanly body.”
The assumption that it
would be her last tryst with Allan is also unclear. His salutation, “You okay,
princess?” seem to imply a habitual foreplay that has been going on for a long
time, that cycle of Michael, Bobby and Allan playing once more, proving that
there is no conflict to start with. The cycle of being dirty and being cleansed
by tepid water, being unsolved, will again be repeated, and pretty soon she
will be back in Liboton Street (Liboton
is a Bicol word that means “the act of making a cycle”), past the mosaic of
Bong Villafuerte posters on the high concrete walls.
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