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.