As he pulled his keys from his pocket and opened the front door to the claustrophobic miasma of antiseptic, bleach, and sick, he promised himself he would renew his efforts to keep her happy. Later tonight, after she fell into her usual drugged stupor, he would give her a last chance. He would examine the emotional graph one last time, inspecting his heart for dishonor. He would convince himself that killing her was by far the best solution to her problem, and she would die securely in the warm bosom of their love.
Sad, things coming to this. If only he hadn't taken on the role of white knight. He was ill-suited to the position, he knew now.
Right after the accident, Clea had wanted to die. As soon as she had regained some mobility, she tried to overdose on pills, then tried to drown herself in the low laundry sink, holding her head underwater until she passed out and he had found her. She cried nonstop. She tore at her hair. She screamed at him. She hurled herself to the floor, and one time, tried to roll herself down the stairs. After that, they kept her on the first floor. When she couldn't do it herself, she begged him to help her die. Fortunately, or so he thought at the time, she hadn't done any real damage to herself. These incidents, coming during the full flush of his savior complex, made him feel protective. He had thrown all his energy into making her feel cherished so that she would never consider such a thing again.
Stupidity. Clea had been right. She foresaw the bitter ending before he did.
They could not continue like this. He hated the man she now made of him. He hated their life together. But what other life was there for her without him? He had taken the truth away from her. The lie she lived rendered her unfit to participate in these painful deliberations. As he had several times before, he pictured telling her the truth, that he didn't love her. A vision of her face hearing the news flashed before him. This repulsive image filled him with businesslike energy. He would decide what constituted a merciful future for both of them.
He cleared his throat, the better to inject false joviality. “Clea,” he said. “Darling.” He leaned over to kiss her lips, still soft, closing his nose against the smell of her, the dirty-hair smell the nurse had not managed to eradicate, the smell of ointments, emollients, and chemicals, with no aesthetics, no pleasures for a man with an educated nose.
The sight of Claude outside made Clea's heart pound shallow and fast. With him, came pressure. When he leaned down to kiss her, she felt afresh the wheelchair, the indignities of the day, her pain, her fears. She breathed harder, her asthmatic lungs contracting with her emotions. He floated in on a wave of fresh air, smiled, and made her wonder at his horrific tenacity. When had his love become such a burden?
He loved her so much and he so depended on her. Even in her immediate hysteria after the accident, she recognized that she had to protect Claude. Claude was squeamish in a way a woman never would be. He found earthly things squalid. He read the newspaper for its politics and sports, skipping over headlines of mayhem and crime. Everyday domestic demands puzzled him, laundry, dishes, cleaning. They didn't fit in to the picture he had of life, a kind of impressionistic bliss, removed from drudgery. Really, it was lucky, his father leaving him the shop. Perfume sugarcoated his world, keeping it sweet the way he needed it.
Unfortunately, Claude was more figurehead than businessman. The shop operated at a loss, and she did all of its business even now, figuring the accounts, writing his letters, signing paperwork in his name, covering his debts. She never publicly acknowledged his failures. In fact, she collaborated with him on his public pose as a success. She didn't mind. She felt useful in this one regard, and it did help keep Claude happy.
Soon after her injury, after recovering her spirit, she decided to stake out his arrival home from work with unwavering loyalty. She owed him that, even though many days, waiting endless minutes, often in pain, plastering a grin on her face at the sight of him while screeching inside, her daily waits for his return from work had become as much ordeal as tradition. He seemed to love the formal reception, saying once, “I feel so cherished,” and another time, “You are everything to me.”
Clea appreciated his devotion and knew she needed to show an equal commitment, but she wasn't foolish. They would never regain the closeness they had lost. They weren't two peas in a pod anymore. She lived in one, in an arid, harsh garden. He flourished nearby, in another universe where there was shade and moisture. She depended on him for nourishment, for things as basic as water.
She depended too much on him. That eroded everything every day. That compromised her love.
Nowadays the only acting she did was to maintain this sham of a relationship.
Awful the way things changed…
Agitated, as she always seemed to be in his presence these days, her heart continuing its erratic flip-flops, Clea could barely catch her breath to speak. “Claude?”
He nodded, but continued on his way toward the bedroom.
“I need to tell you something. I've made a decision.”
“Okay,” he said. His voice muffled as he went into the bathroom. He closed the door. She heard running water.
She wheeled herself away from the window, where air slipped through cracks and made her shiver, toward the fire. She ran into a plush armchair, one she used to sit in in the evenings, studying her lines and chatting with Claude. Joking, laughing, crying over a lost role, griping about her colleagues. He would sweep her up in his arms, turn on some music, and they would dance… She tried to kick it, but her foot ignored the message of her emotions. She passed by the chair consumed with frustration, settling in as close as she could to the fire without getting burned.
The nurse, an unkind, competent woman named Lucy, started toward her with a glass cup and a handful of pills. “You need to take these.”
“Not now,” Clea said.
“Doctor says,” Lucy began.
“I don't give a damn what ‘Doctor' says,” Clea said. At that moment, Claude came into the room.
“What's this? Ignoring Doctor's orders?” he asked, a tease in his voice, a finger lifting a lock of hair out of her eyes.
“We need to talk,” she said stubbornly, pleadingly. “Those pills knock me out. Claude, I want to talk. I can't stand the way those things make me feel.”
“Doctor says she needs to take them three times a day.” Sensing an ally, Lucy added, “She already put me off an hour. Plus he's been calling and she won't talk to him.”
“He checks up on me. He's a diligent guy,” Clea said. “I'm not sure I need that anymore. And you came home later than usual,” Clea told Claude.
“I'm so sorry, honey,” said Claude. “Today was amazing. I don't think I've had such a major sales day since you were…”
Something showed in her face because he stopped talking, but her thoughts rolled on: Since you were whole, intact, able. Since you were our model, the symbol of beauty for our product.
She had been replaced by Lucia, an expensive Italian model. One day the previous week, during a brief business meeting at the house, Clea had intercepted Lucia's come-hither glance at Claude. On the way out, when Lucia bent down to say good-bye to Clea, Clea had whispered, “Go after him and I'll see you dead. I have friends.” She had no friends, but relied on her stereotypes of Italian culture to make her point. She had smiled when Lucia jumped back and flounced out the door without another word. The threat made her feel powerful again. How she missed that feeling.