The husband had been a crazy fool, that was all. He’d cut his wife to bits, no rhyme or reason. She hadn’t asked for any of it. She was a victim of another person’s unvoiced and unfulfilled desires, just like Maybelle.
Ricky spun and thrust his fist down into the melon, squeezed the red wetness of its heart. He ripped the rind open and the air grew sweet. He pulled at the pink insides, clawed as if digging for some deeply buried secret. He was sobbing, and the pulp spattered onto his face as he plunged his hands into the melon again and again.
A voice pulled him from the red sea of rage in which he was drowning.
Maybelle. Calling from upstairs.
“Ricky?”
He held his breath, his pulse throbbing so hard he could feel it in his neck. He looked down at the counter, at the mess in the kitchen, at the pink juice trickling to the floor.
“Ricky?” she called again. He looked toward the hall, but she was still upstairs. So she hadn’t heard.
He looked at his sticky hands.
“Are you coming to bed?”
He looked at the knife on the floor. His stomach was as tight as a melon. He gulped for some air, tasted the mist of sugar. “Yes, dear.”
She said no more, and must have returned to bed in her silly and slinky things. The room would be dark and she would be waiting.
Ricky collected the larger scraps of the watermelon and fed them into the garbage disposal. He swept the floor and scooped up the remaining shreds, then wiped the counter. He wrung out a dish cloth and got on his hands and knees, scrubbing the tiles and then the grout.
The husband had harbored no secrets. A pathetic man who made another person pay for his shortcomings. He was a sick, stupid animal. Ricky would think no more of him, and tomorrow he would throw the newspapers away.
He washed his hands in the sink, put the knife away, and gave the kitchen a cursory examination. No sign of the watermelon remained, and his eyes were dry, and his hands no longer trembled.
Tomorrow, summer would be over. It was the end of something, and the beginning of something else. Maybelle was waiting, and he might get lucky. Ricky went to the stairs and took them one step at a time, up into darkness.