That’s how these tales are spun?
Like it matters.
That kind of stuff was like the water all around, and I was just a fish in the bowl, bumping up against the glass.
I sure wasn’t thinking about any of that on my way home, an awful ache in my belly from eating at some damned new Mexican place down the street for lunch. I’d asked a buddy to punch me out and left an hour early just to get home to the minimal comfort of my own toilet, and I wasn’t sure I was going to make it, even then.
Molly’s car was in the drive, and I smelled supper before I even opened the back door. Something experimental, I could tell already, thick and heavy with spice, and that made my bowels clench in agony as I passed the stove. The menu was on the refrigerator-she liked to print them out, for me, she said, so I’d know every day what we were having, no surprises, on thick white paper with funny dancing silverware on the top-but I didn’t stop to read it.
I only had one thing on my mind. Two left turns, and I had my hand on the bathroom doorknob. I hadn’t even stopped to wonder where she might be-the TV was off, but that wasn’t unusual. Her laptop wasn’t open on the kitchen table, either. No music was coming from the basement, where she had her elliptical and her rowing machine all set up. But I wasn’t thinking about any of it-her routine, how she moved through her day without me there-it was like water, air, life. It just was.
And then, it wasn’t.
A man knows the sound of his wife’s pleasure. He knows it like he knows the sounds of his house settling, the ticking of the furnace, the creak in the boards by the stove. After a time, it becomes a familiar sound, a comfortable sound, one that carries heat and light, like the lamp that goes on by the front door every night at six.
I understood that sound, and how to elicit it, as well as I understood how to turn on the switch to the light above our bed. My fingers knew their way in the dark, where to touch and grope, just the right pressure, how to ease that tension past the point of resistance. It was an easy movement, practiced, sure. No surprises.
Dusk was settling outside. It was almost that time of year when we set the clocks back, and dark came earlier every day it seemed, so they were just shadows rolling under the covers until I turned the lights on. She knew I was there, I think, even before I flipped the switch. Something about her shifted, the sound of her changed, and for a moment her soft moan sounded like a lament.
“Jim…” My name in her mouth, the same mouth I had kissed a thousand times, a mouth cherry-red from kissing another man-the man poised above her in our bed.
My bowels turned to water in my belly. I turned out the light and bolted into the bathroom, barely making it to the bowl.
She said, “You’re not the man you used to be…"
He said, “Neither is this guy…"
Not the fucking man I used to be. Right. Twenty pounds heavier, I was considerably balder and grayer, my hands calloused and work-worn. The man I used to be was younger, thinner, a little less rough around the edges, sure. At least on the outside.
But the man I used to be drank a fifth every night. The man I used to be liked to fight, anyone or anything, it didn’t matter. It was the making of a fist that felt good. The man I used to be had left them all once, on a Christmas Eve, of all nights. The man I used to be had spent that night in a motel, considering options, points out west and beyond. That man had come home in time to see the kids open presents.
No, I wasn’t the man I used to be. Thank fucking god. And neither was the guy shoving the tail ends of his dress shirt into his suit pants, glancing furtively at me as he gathered his tie and suit coat and slipped on his expensive shoes. I was never this guy-soft hands, soft life. What did she see in him? I watched from the doorway as he turned to face me fully for the first time, his eyes only holding mine for a moment before dropping to the floor.
“I’ll call you—” he murmured, glancing at my wife.
“No, you won’t.” I stood fully, putting my hand across the door frame and blocking the exit. “What you will do is walk out of my house. And count yourself lucky for that.
Walk out of my house, away from my wife, and if you ever…” I took a deep breath, swallowing hard, the hand by my side clenching into an involuntary fist. “If I ever see you… hear you… if I fucking SMELL you anywhere near me or my family again…”
I let the threat trail off and watched his eyes move from me to the space under my arm, and I knew he was thinking about running for it. I dropped my arm, stepping into the room, and waved him out. The urge I had to shove him through the wall was so strong I had to clasp my hands behind my back as he passed.
When I heard the side door swing shut, I turned back to my wife. She was still nude and hadn’t moved to cover herself. Her body and her eyes made no apologies.
Instead, she just looked incredibly sad. I sighed, sitting on the edge of the bed, and put my head in my hands.
All these years…
Where have I been?
Well, I’ve been down the road to work and home again…*
She couldn’t answer my question. It was simple, really. “Why?”
Was it me? What had I missed? How had I failed her? Those thoughts occurred to me as I turned to her and asked that one, simple question. I saw the endless days, the routine that had become our life, stretching out behind us and disappearing into a vanishing point.
But we’d made it so far, I thought, looking at the tremble of my wife’s mouth, the fists her hands made on the sheets. The various life dramas had never derailed our train. Yeah, I felt the same ice water needling in my chest when she told me about the lump in her breast, and there was the low ache of those two miscarriages between Henry and Clara.
And the worst, at least for me, was the time the baby ran out into the street and I couldn’t catch her in time. It had been months afterwards, Molly sitting by her side in the hospital, and me, still back and forth to work every day, coming in exhausted at night to see the baby, little Sassy I always called her, so still and quiet and small. She recovered physically, but she never was quite right again. A lot of my paycheck still went to pay for the special school half a state away.
Was that the point when it had broken? I wondered. Like some crazy cracked cup that we superglued together and used anyway, hoping it wouldn’t leak? Something in me knew, though. It wasn’t any of the big things, the storms, the hurricanes that had hit us over the years. It was that endless, gentle lapping of the waves against the shore, wearing away the sand. Erosion. That’s what they called it.
I looked at my wife and I wanted to touch her. I didn’t know if I wanted to hold her or hit her, but I wanted to feel her in my hands, her familiar flesh under my fingers. I fought the urge, gripping the edge of the mattress as I watched her face change-
sadness, fear, regret, love. So much love. Still. After all these years.
“I just want to know why, Molly.”
That’s when the dam broke. The leak became a deluge and she spilled past the cracks that I hadn’t even seen in the surface of our marriage.
All these years…
What have I done?
I made your supper and your daughter and your son…*
“Do you remember last year, when my sister offered us her timeshare?”
I stared at Molly, knowing that she was going to make some impossible connection, and just nodded.