I’m so disgusting, he says. I’m so sorry.
I’m sorry, too, she says. For all of it.
He cries and cries, until she goes to him. She edges onto the cliff of nylon comforter, rubs his arm, gives him a pat on the head like a pet, but not like a dog. He grips her T-shirt hem.
Please lie here with me, he says, his voice cracking. That’s all, I promise. Just lie.
She moves, lies carefully on her side in front of him. He curls behind her, sour mouth gulping at her hair, arm locked around her ribs, like they do.
This is all I ever wanted from you, he cries. All I want, I swear. Why can’t I have just this?
APOLOGY
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 meaclass="underline" 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.