Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Out of sight out of mind. If he thought she didn’t need him then maybe he’d want to kiss her as badly as he wanted to kiss her that first time in the car. He was the only man she ever kissed. If he didn’t know how miserable she was without him maybe he’d think she was strong and sure like she once had been. If she acted tough there was a chance she was tough. If she didn’t show her pain then maybe it wasn’t there.
She acted like she didn’t love him anymore. It seemed like it was all gone. But it was there, she just tried to keep it contained, tried to show him she was still the same Maddy.
The air in the apartment became stiff, no matter how high the fan was on. No matter what she cooked the kitchen smelled stale. Dinner on the stove smelled like heaven while her face was in the pan, but once that was over, once she put the food down to eat in front of the TV, the stale smell took over again. She couldn’t eat, no matter what she cooked. Vegetables were like rubber in her mouth, bright and plastic. Chicken tasted like slime, no matter how she prepared it. She’d gag trying to force it down. Mark ate and ate. He gained weight. She lost weight. She began vacuuming every day, thinking maybe it was the carpet that smelled stale. She used carpet fresheners; floral scents, spring scents, pine scents. Sprinkling the sharp, scented white powder on the dreary wall to wall carpet, chasing it around with the vacuum cleaner. She dusted and put her nose to the furniture after wiping it down with lemon Pledge.
The longer she lived with him the less recognizable he became. His face, his body, what would come out of his mouth. What was going on in his head. The expressions on his face. He grew out of focus, strange and foreign.
Their apartment never had been cleaner. There wasn’t a speck of dust anywhere, a mislaid sock anywhere. The fridge smelled like a fresh box of baking soda and the chrome in the bathroom gleamed. She tried every recipe in every cookbook. Sometimes she went through them alphabetically. Pork Chops Almondine, Pork Chops Barbecue, Pork Chops Catherine. The freezer was full of homemade frozen dinners in Tupperware and various other food stuffs wrapped in aluminum foil. She cooked and cooked and cleaned and cleaned until her fingers were pink and raw from water and soap and rubbing up against things. But she stopped being hungry altogether.
It wasn’t like the time when she first started dieting when she was a kid and was forced to do it. Then it was hard and she missed eating so much. This time, it was just the opposite. Hunger left her first.
She didn’t want to eat and not eating gave her pleasure and made her feel stronger. The less she ate the less she wanted to eat. She felt blessed. She felt special.
Air tasted different and smells became stronger and everything became more textured. Sometimes the smell of a hamburger that she was cooking for Mark was so strong and sweet that she almost cried, so overcome by its power. A fresh washed blanket against her face felt like a cloud from heaven and smelled as sweet as talc. She felt thankful to be alive.
Her legs grew longer, or so it seemed. Her stomach became flat and the lines on her skin, the wrinkles she’d always had from losing weight when she was younger, became stronger and more defined. Dark, jagged lines running across her body, the flesh hanging loosely around them. She traced them over and over again. They comforted her.
For the most part she stopped sleeping more than a few hours a night. She’d lie next to him, like she always had, but now she tried to recognize him, tried to remember who he was to her.
And as she stared at his back in the dark, bent toward her in their bed, memories did come. But she didn’t trust them. The images were vague and as she tried to bring them into focus in her mind, she would get startled and think — is that his face I’m imagining leaning to kiss me and then she would wonder, but is that his nose? Are those his lips? And indeed they weren’t because she would slip around the bed and stare at his face, breathing deeply and no, his nose was different. His lips, stretched out in sleep, were rubbery and non-distinct. So she had imagined, remembered, the wrong nose and the wrong cheekbones. The face she crouched in front of in their bedroom was longer and thinner, the bones high and narrow. In her mind he had a rounder face, a pink hue, a broadness to his cheeks.
So she would press her face against him and smell him like she had, like she remembered doing and often what came back to her was too strong to bear and she would pull back, her nostrils burning.
Her memories lied to her. She became convinced she had conjured visions for her own needs of comfort. She didn’t know a bone in his body and her own were shifting slowly, steadily.
She stared at the sink and she stared at the dishtowels and she watched the television and occasionally they looked at each other and occasionally there would be a sign of comfort, a signal of recognition and caring, but more often they ignored each other.
And that smell. The staleness. It became so strong she could barely stay in the house. If she wasn’t busy cooking or cleaning she sat in front of an open window and stuck her face out to breathe the fresh air. She was terrified and the only thing that subdued her fear while she was in that apartment was her ability to not eat.
She began working extra waitressing shifts to get out of the house. She worked brunches and doubles during the week when she could. Adding checks and taking orders and filling ketchups with a newfound organization and efficiency. Her boss loved her. She always filled all the salt and pepper shakers and wiped down all the menus. The other waitresses loved her. They could always count on her to cover a shift, even if they called at the last minute because they were hungover and didn’t want to work. She’d rush off to work, her uniform spotless and ironed. She washed it lovingly in the sink every night, carefully rubbing out stains and hung it on her bedroom door, ready to be pressed and worn first thing in the morning.
She accumulated tons of cash. She wrapped a rubber band around each stack of five hundred dollars and put them in long, white envelopes that she sealed and hid in her underwear drawer — which she then locked. She saved thousands of dollars in a matter of months.
Her plans for the money changed. She thought of moving to California or New York. She thought of buying a gun or a car or a house. She knew whatever she spent it on, it would just be on her, not Mark. And she wasn’t saving for a baby. Sometimes he’d ask, what are you doing working all the time? He’d ask, what are you doing with all that money? Once he even said sweetly, let’s go on a vacation, on our honeymoon baby, we both have the money to do it. She ignored him.
And then the fights began.
12
Mark came home from work and put his bag down and kicked off his shoes. He walked into the living room and Maddy was sitting on the couch with her arms folded over her chest. He knew she was angry. She almost always was.
I’m not doing those dishes, she said.
Fine, I’ll do them, he said, his voice remaining calm, despite the anxiety mounting in his head.
She stood up and said, why didn’t you do them a week ago? Why’d you have to let them sit there for a week and stink up our kitchen and let the food get hard on them so that now when you do do them the shit will be impossible to get off? Huh? You were waiting for me to do them, right?
You are on the rag, he said and walked into the bedroom and threw himself down on the bed. He couldn’t take it. Her constant bitching. Maddy followed him and stood at the end of the bed, looking down at him.
Fuck you. You’re an unappreciative pig and I’m sick of wiping up after you. Grow the fuck up.