In the short story Inventory, partnerships plays an important role in allowing us to see how the people who surround the narrator have an effect and leave their mark on her.  Although we follow her through a hard time in her life as there is a deadly disease spreading, we see who she decides to be emotionally vulnerable versus physically vulnerable with. She starts becoming more secluded because of the disease but also because she keeps running away instead of talking to people about her emotions. The further away from civilization she is the more she begins to open up to the characters that she interacts with. The story follows a very sexual theme like most of the other stories in Her Body and Other Parties giving us specific details on the vulnerability that comes with giving somebody access to your body. 

The narrator tells us she had been married and the relationship soured, they had an argument and as she said “I wanted to push her out the window. We had sex and I started crying. When it was over and she was showering, I packed a suitcase and got in my car and drove”. After that we don’t hear about her seeing her wife again but we see her talk to an older lady at the end of the story about it. Clearly she wasn’t emotionally vulnerable enough with her ex-wife this is a great example of a time when she chose to be physically vulnerable with a character instead. Even though she was the one who drove off, the failure of the relationship still lingers in her mind.  Later on she has sex with the guy she lost her virginity to and although this is after her divorce, the death of a friend, her mothers death, and the spread of a deadly disease she states “I did not want to cry in front of the man to whom I gave my virginity. It seemed wrong somehow”. Although she had been physically vulnerable with this man, to the degree of trusting him to be her first, she still felt she couldn’t talk to him about her emotions and be vulnerable with him in that way. 

Towards the end of the story when she is living in the woods people pass by and stop for a bit. She allows them into her home for as long as they need and usually gets to know them pretty well even if they have sexual interactions, which is something we don’t really see with the characters towards the beginning of the story. An example being as I said the older  lady at the end of the story was someone who she got to know on a deeper level and was able to be emotionally vulnerable with. The narrator talks about kissing this lady but she doesn’t go into detail about anything sexual the way she does for most of the other characters, but she told us what they talked about. She said “I told her about finding my mother, the perilous trek across Vermont and New Hampshire, how the tide was never still, my ex-wife”. Mentioning people like her mom and her ex-wife which she felt she couldn’t talk about with others.

She had been physically vulnerable with both her ex-wife and the man she lost her virginity to but we still see that these characters left an effect on her. After she lost her virginity she said  “I felt good, like an adult who has sex sometimes, and a life” clearly showing that this interaction made her feel more mature. Her wife could be a similar case scenario because marriage is another big thing in life that allows people to feel more mature. In the paragraph about her ex-wife she also says “I’m still not sure if I was with her because I wanted to be or because I was afraid of what the world was catching all around us”. She didn’t get married because she loved her girlfriend and felt secure in their relationship, she did it to feel a sense of control at a time when she had none. It’s no wonder her relationship didn’t last because she never allowed herself to be emotionally vulnerable and talk about the issues she is facing. Her relationship just became another issue for her to run away from like the diseases she is constantly trying to flee from.  The partnership in Inventory shows how the people we allow ourselves to be vulnerable with leave a mark, but it also digs deeper into how you can be emotionally or physically vulnerable with someone. The narrator allowing herself to speak with the older lady about the things that hurt her the most after feeling like she couldn’t for so long gave way for a stronger connection. Partnership throughout the story affected the narrator no matter if she chose to be physically or emotionally vulnerable with them, but she felt more impacted by losing the older lady then she did about losing people she had a mainly physical connection with.