He comes home for dinner three hours late, but at least he’s come home. It’s a good sign, she’s sure. A sign of healing, the first delicate crust of a scab. She’s made a meal of his favorites from long ago, from when she was good and attentive to that kind of thing—a real meal, one that demanded hours of preparation and produced a cruel steam burn on her wrist. A meal of remorse.
Honey, just sometimes? he’d pleaded to her months ago, jabbing at the Styrofoam, You’re a great cook, can’t we have a real dinner, not takeout, just once?
And just once can’t you open a fucking can? she’d bitched back, impatient and frayed.
Now she wishes she’d chewed off her tongue, met him halfway. Now, all ready for him: veal roast carved into limp petals, lobster risotto with saffron, asparagus with hollandaise, all served on the wedding crystal and china and silverware they’ve rarely ever used. A pear tart with fresh pears, and a from-scratch graham cracker crust. A meal made with much care.
Forgive me, all the food says.
She’s tried to keep the tart warm without drying it out. She’s tried to keep the sauces fresh with hourly infusions of butter and Marsala wine, tried to keep tamped down the impatience and fray. By the time he comes home, late, but at least he’s come home, it’s a good sign, she’s put Esther and Justin to bed over protests; it will be just the two of them at this dinner, him and her at the dining room table with vanilla votives lit, the first time in a long time. He’s come back, he’s home, so what if he’s late? This special, shared, intimate meal: Now they’ll be able to move on, heal. But instead of eating her dinner when he arrives, he just stands there a moment, not meeting her eyes and dumping his duffel bag on the freshly waxed entryway floor, and she can see pressed into his face the memory of the last time he came home, six days ago, came home early from work, three or four hours earlier than usual, earlier than he was supposed to, when he stood in the entryway hearing, first, the silence of the house, then, hearing. My house, in my house! he’d wailed, like wronged husbands in noir or camp, and he was right, she knew, although It’s my house, too! she’d wanted to assert back, even then, but didn’t. The kids at school and daycare, and she, his wife, supposed to be at work, and yet there was something to hear. He glowers now, he walks down the hall and away from her, she hears him pause at what would be the door to their bedroom, then he passes it, goes straight into the kids’ room, wakes them up to say hello, to let them know he’s come home. She hears crying, all of them wracked. He’s three hours late because he’s shattered, crippled, rent, all her fault, truly, and her heart goes out to him now, literally; she can see her heart cracking through her chest and hurtling toward him in dripping, contrite offering. Her sauces have congealed, but it’s all her fault, really, and at least he’s home. He has spent six days and five nights at his cousin Don’s, whom he cannot stand but was better than her, until the phone calls from Esther brought him back. Their little girl getting hysterical on the phone, pleading with him to come home, not understanding. I know you did something bad, Mommy, she said to her mother every day he was gone. She looked at her mother with an accusatory scowl, with his face, she’s such his child, but was too scared to really let her have it; she sensed, primally, her mother might be all she had left. You did something bad and that’s why Daddy isn’t here.
She knows he will stay with the kids until they fall back into reassured, open-mouthed, hiccupping sleep. Presents for them in his pockets, probably, candy or stickers or temporary tattoos, he’ll tease them and soothe. But his return won’t absolve her, in their eyes; he has come home a weeping open wound. He wants them to see him bleed. Now, he’ll turn them against her. She cleans up the kitchen, the offered and unaccepted food, and imagines with guilt the baby calf, force-fattened and cramped into a box, the live lobster thrust in boiling water, both of them dying for this showy display of contrition she’d tried to make, all for nothing.
She puts away the crystal, the china, because he hates it when she leaves things dirty or lying around, scratches the dead, smoky votives free of clinging wax and puts them to soak, polishes the sterling flatware by hand, accidentally slices a fingertip replacing the carving knife in its box, and when she comes into the living room she finds him on the living room couch, asleep, fully dressed and curled into an anguished fetal ball. He has made up a bed for himself with Esther’s little girl-sized Beauty and the Beast sheets, a scratchy sofa pillow under his head. She, as she has done for the last five nights, goes to sleep in their double bed, alone. She puts her fingertip with its tiny, trifling cut in her mouth, sucks. She curls onto her side, presses her knees together, feels her naked thighs feel each other, hard. It hits her in full. She’s soiled it, their house, their bedroom, their bed. She knows he’s still seeing her naked at two in the afternoon, their flowered bedsheets grabbed to her breast and her most extravagant lace bra and panties on the floor. He still hears the voice behind him from the dark loom of their walk-in closet, such nice closets this house has, a selling point for them six years ago, her pregnant with Esther and both of them so interested in cabinetry, termite inspections, the condition of carpet pile. She still hears that voice, too, male, nervous, stupid—Hey, man, you caught us, I’m sorry, man, a sheepish huff of laughter—and thinks, What was I doing, what was I thinking? Wrapped in the cheap percale sheets he’d always hated but she’d insisted on buying—Honey, can’t you make the bed in the mornings, how long does that take, really? he’d complained, Hey, I have to be at work earlier than you do, she’d carped right back, You make the damn bed—two ugly sets for the price of one. She’d been trying to save money, she wanted to have another baby, have four of them together in this magazine house, symmetrical and sheltered. But now she knows he still smells it in this house, in their bed. The acidic, musky leak of what she’s done. The stain it’s left. He can’t be expected to forgive because of a silly pear tart and lobster risotto. He can’t be expected to ever breathe that taint in again, of course not. What was she thinking, pinning hope on that one take-it-all-back meal, that one weak try at cleansing, restoring, that one sad chalkboard sweep?
She gets up early to make him breakfast, another thing she’d let go of doing but it’ll be easier now that she’s going to quit her job, won’t be working anymore, and finds the Beast wrapped around his neck, Beauty in a kicked-off crumple at his feet.
No one could ever love you as much as I do, he’d said when he proposed, the sweetest, purest vow she’d ever heard, a happy promise, all that love.
WHEN HE COMES home a few nights later, he sniffs at the scent of blister and singe. He doesn’t look at her, just around the house, sniffing, a question on his face. She opens the sliding glass door with a sort of bow and he follows her out to the backyard, where she shows him the barbecue pit’s fluttery, charred mound: two flowered, percale double-sized sets, fitted and flat, pillow-slips, matching comforter, all now blackened with flame or drifted away as smoke. She shows him around the side of the house, near the trash cans: the maple bed frame, the mattress and box spring, all disassembled and dragged outside on her back, now waiting for Goodwill. She’s purified the tainted air. She’s cleansed the soul of the house. He kicks at the barbecue pit heap; ashes float, something cracks. He follows her back into the house, then, yes, into their bedroom, where he stops this time at the sight of newness, the alkaline smell of laundry detergent and carpet deodorant and lemon-oiled wood. A new oak bedroom set, a California king mattress this time, new pima cotton sheets and duvet with fresh sateen comforter, everything unused, unslept in, unsoiled.
You will be the only man who will ever lie in this bed, it all announces, Please.
They get into the new bed that night, the sheets’ uncrushed fibers scraping their elbows. They get in wearing long T-shirts and underwear, but they get in together. They get in together, but on opposite sides of its wide, crisp, California-king expanse, and they stay there, a gutter of space still between them. He is turned protectively away from her, like children are taught in grade school to curve away from bomb-blasted windows, from flying and dangerous debris. Protect your vulnerable organs, your face. But she wants to touch him; she wants him to touch her. She wants him pressing her knees apart, her thighs. She slides her hand across the bed toward him, she sees his shoulders cringe away, and she stops. He might succumb to the pressure of new sheets, yes, he might lay himself on those virgin sheets free of sweat, hairs, flakes of skin, but no, he won’t bear even the slightest touch of her hand. New sheets, bed, what a ludicrous, superficial try. Every inch of her skin, she understands now, finally, is stained with someone else’s breath, tongue, come—You’re a bitch, you know that? he’d yelled, throwing shirts and slacks in the duffel bag, The mother of my kids, you didn’t think about that?—and she wonders how to burn the reek of that away, sear from her every dirty layer, cell, molecule ever possessed by someone else. She can’t, and it takes seven years for a body to regenerate itself, cell by cell, marrow and organs and bone; can she live this way for seven years, her children lured away from her—They’re my kids, too, she’d thought back then, in protest, thinks even now—and every night having to face the thickening fence of her husband’s back, until she’s clean and new again? If she has to, she will, but he can’t. He doesn’t deserve that, any of this, he doesn’t deserve a used, handled, loaned-out wife. A wife she made common—fucking bitch, slut—public.
No one could ever love you as much as I do, it’s still true now, she knows, despite what she’s done and although they’re sharing the house, the bed, like strangers. It will always be true; he will always be true. So what was she doing, what made her do it, and how does she show him she believes him, that she knows he’s right, and that she’s still, forever, his?
SHE WEARS ONLY a nightshirt a few weeks later, one of his, an old-fashioned pajamas’ top cut like a man’s shirt, soft checked flannel, with a pocket and three buttons down the front. Her drawerfuls of lingerie, all that fancy lace, won’t do right now. It didn’t take a holiday or special occasion; he’d come home once or twice a month with small bow’d boxes and tissue-stuffed gift bags crammed with lace, frills, gauze, pricey little wisps for her to wear. She’d model for him, walk around the house like that, No one will ever love you, this body, all of this body as much as I do, he’d say, his eyebrows making it a mock-threat, putting his hands, his mouth, on her breasts, pushing fingers between her legs, until Esther was maybe twelve or eighteen months old, then she’d just wear those things underneath her clothes, give him a flash in the morning as she left for work. But after Justin was born, two years ago, she had trouble losing the weight. She’d always been full-breasted, full-hipped, Voluptuous, he used to say, making chomping noises, but after having Esther and then Justin, it was hard. Her flesh looked awful, she thought, clumsy and bulging against net fabrics and elastics and lacy strings—Honey, you’re so beautiful, what about those diet shakes, what about aerobics? he’d suggest oh so helpfully—and all that lingerie, forget it, she could barely squeeze into her old suits for work. She tried, but nothing she tried had any effect. What about getting up early to go running?
Then, Michael, you have to meet the real power here, she’s who really runs the place, Nancy had said, leading over the new guy, the new operations manager, who shook hands pleasantly and laughed at her embarrassed retort to Nancy and later that week saw her drinking peppermint tea, day after day—Honey, what about that cabbage diet, what about fasting once a week?—all day with no lunch, and so a few weeks later brought her a Lipton’s Herbal Mint Sampler, who two months later invited her for a cheesy afternoon high tea at the Hilton to discuss accounts and blinked, bewildered, when she refused cake, then ordered her a bowl of fresh berries instead and fed her the first one, spread with clotted cream, by hand. She remembers touching her throat and neck, confused, ruffled, and suddenly feeling the strap of her bra, still wearing a maternity bra then, although Justin was two, the huge cotton cups the only kind that felt like support. This new guy, this Michael, this now faceless and arbitrary person, smiled, and she remembers hoping he wouldn’t see the strap, and then hoping that he would. And she remembers remembering those drawerfuls of abandoned lace, the feeling of blood rushing to a hot swell.
But she can’t wear any of it now, maybe ever again, not after he saw it on the floor, his lingerie, his peach lace bra and panties on the floor. She knows he still sees it. And it still hurts. It hurts both of them, still. She can’t even wear a bra right now, not since she had it done. She gets into bed wearing his nightshirt, and this time she does reach over to him, she reaches determinedly for his hand. For the first time, he lets her. She tugs, and he rolls over toward her, but not meeting her eyes. She puts his hand on her neck, her throat, she wants him to reclaim her. She wants his weight pinning her, flattening her out. His fingers tighten a moment on her throat and then stroke. She unbuttons the three buttons of the flannel pajamas’ top and brings his hand down to her breast, her left breast, it’s still sore but the itching has stopped, the slight scabbing has worn away.
Look, she says to him, but he shakes his head, this is agony for him, and he closes his eyes. The needles had hurt most around her nipple and over her breastbone, her collarbone, the thicker needle for the outline a deeper, sharper pierce, the finer needles for shading like a ruthless scratching of cats’ claws, like relentless bee stings. A good hurt, a willing, penitent hurt. Please, look, she implores. He opens his eyes and sees what she’s done: his name, thick, black, cursive, etched wide across her thorax, her left breast engraved with a scarlet heart. A seal, a label, a brand, she’ll wear it forever, I’m all yours, forever, it pleads. He covers his scripted name with his hand, his face warps; he presses his mouth against her throat and starts to cry. She kisses the top of his shaking hair. Believe me. His grip on her breast grows tighter, distorting the scrawl. He cries, and she cries, too, grateful, thankful that he’s crying like one of her babies she can comfort, do for, make everything right for, finally, then he takes her nipple in his mouth with a hard suck, a bite. She’s grateful for that, too, remembering the needle there, the black ink stabbed into the thin rosy skin of the areola, but then he bites harder, beyond bruise, beyond show, grinding his teeth on her flesh. He’s going for blood, she realizes, and she cries out for him to stop.
He does, he shoves her away, and she closes her eyes in failure. And shame, that she couldn’t take it, couldn’t begin to bear what he has had to. She hears him leave their bed. She hears the faucet blast violently in the bathroom, hears the splash of water and the slick, lathery rub of soap.
INTERESTING, WHAT HURTS and what doesn’t. Piercing the fleshy lobe of your ear is a dull crunch, there are no nerves there, really, no blood, no pain, or you misinterpret the sudden needle punch as pain when it’s really just something abrupt. Esther wants to get her ears pierced like her mother’s, but she’s told her she can’t until she’s thirteen. Esther hates her for that now, too. Five years old, and she’s lost the right to be her mother. Esther knows that, she wields it, and she’s right. She’s glad Justin is still too young, too innocent, to really understand. Maybe there’s still a chance for them, a chance for her little boy’s unadulterated love.
Ice helps. She bleeds, she swells, but the ice pack, clutched clumsily as she makes her way to the car afterward, numbs her out. It didn’t, doesn’t really hurt. Not like the hurt she’s caused him. Not like the hurt of knowing how what she’s done to him hurts.
Feel, she says to him a few weeks later. Here, feel. His back is to her, still, always, but the curve of it is less tight, as if his exhausted spine and muscles can no longer sustain such rigid guard. She slides her whole body toward him, carefully, and presses up behind. His hand is lying on his thigh, unclenched, the fingers limp as a child’s. The fingers tremble a bit. She puts her hands on his shoulder and gently tips him onto his back. He lets her. She lies carefully on top of him, careful not to crush, her head in the pillow above his shoulder so he doesn’t have to see her face, and after long, tense-relax, tense-relax moments, she feels his arms steal around her body, a hand caress her hair, his fingers pressing into her waist. She takes his hand, carefully places it between her legs.
Here, feel, she says. She feels before he does, though, she feels his fingers clutch at the heat, the damp, the hair, then stop. She feels the jolt in her nerves, and then she feels the confusion in his hand. His fingers fumble with the two tiny rings in her swollen flesh, the cold surgical steel chain. The links clink. A tiny metal lock, too, in the shape of a heart, like you’d find on a young girl’s diary, the kind that opens with a tiny medieval-looking key. She hands him the key.
No other man will ever touch me again, it vows.
She rolls onto her back and draws her legs apart. There are tremors all through him, but he’s growing hard; he grasps the key tight, determined, his eyes narrowed on it, and unlocks the tiny locked heart that seals her closed, unthreads the chain from the rings, and spreads her wide. He sits back on his knees, pulls her toward him from under her hips, his eyes still focused there, and enters her abruptly, good, an abrupt and tearing drive. She’s waited until she was mostly healed but not all healed, because she doesn’t have the right to be all healed before he is. Then, he does it harder.
You’re a whore, you know that? he says, moaning. You’re just a fucking whore to me now.
She hears a padded shuffle in the thick carpet pile outside their bedroom door, a hiccup, Justin’s sweet baby hiccup—Whore, cunt, he says, louder, and a crueler plunge—and she cringes at her little boy on the other side of their door, needing her and hearing this. She cringes, and then she hears a soft, hesitant pad of retreat. It’s too late, there’s nothing she can do but stay where she is, wide open, apart, and flat. Each deeper thrust he makes is both a splitting and a pact. She arches and spreads wider for him, the only way to show him she’s his, all his, that she’s willing to sacrifice. To exist with him wholly in a slick open pain, to become all wound.
No one will ever love you as much as I did, he groans, and now, she realizes, it is a curse.
THEY WERE GIVEN service for twelve: the Rosenthal china (“Eden” pattern: dinner, salad, bread and butter, coupe soup) and Baccarat crystal (wine goblet, champagne flute, tumbler) she’d cut from a magazine. She chooses a flute, sets it at a place for one. An ivory lace cloth on the dining room table, and the kids, his kids, gone to bed without protest, a brief hug from Justin, a cold, resigned peck from Esther. This is how it is now, how it will always be, as long as she lives in this house, his house. She sits, takes a deep breath, admires the silverwork on the polished handle of the sterling knife, steadies herself, then cuts with much care. She slowly fills the flute, and the crystal turns warm in her hand.
He comes home late, just as she expected, because she understands now that he will always come home late. But he will always come home.
She offers the glass to him with a shaky hand.
Is this what you want? she asks. Will this finally do it?
He takes the glass from her, looks at it; in the fading light its contents glow a thick, sanguine red. She feels her very marrow has begun, at last, not to regenerate but to seethe. Too late. She’s shaking, she’s limp and drained.
Will this be my life now? she asks. Will it?
Yes, he says, looking her dead in the eye. He raises the glass.
I’m sorry, he says, and drinks.