[This story is part of a series of pieces, including Harder to Breathe, Seven Shades of Green, "Her Buried Hair", "A Tragedy", and "When Old People Dream".] - - - - Upstairs his wife turned off the television set. This was her way of letting him know she knew he was home, skulking as she would call it if she ever spoke to anyone of the way he came home. Everywhere he went in that house her resentment followed him. He stood in the hallway, by the wardrobe, peeling off his layers of winter clothes as he listened to the silence. She had been beautiful at seventeen but that was long ago. Tonight he would leave her. Her left things gathered dust throughout the house. Darling, he thought, Let me take you away from all this. In his mind a steamer floated over smooth waters, bearing him and his lover away to better and more exciting lands. Their baggage was safely stowed, their passports freshly stamped. She, his lover, leaned the top of her head into the crook of his neck, pleased at last as they fought off motion sickness. She was all there was. She was everything he was not. As a young man he had dreamt of a woman like her, though he had settled for his then beautiful wife, and so he had had little choice in the matter when the woman of his dreams chose to appear in the flesh: Oh my, he had thought, looking at her that first day of deception and betrayal, there isn't much choice about it really now is there? He was fond of speaking to himself in complete sentences. Like a man from an earlier time, distanced by oceans from his real life, he sent odd but earnest missives no matter what the weather or time of day. His wife turned off the television upstairs, implying by that he was to blame for both everything that had come before and everything that would come; Dammit, his thoughts went, no longer careful of their syntax and vocabulary, Dammit all to hell, he was to blame, he was, he wasn't, he was. He felt the sharp curve of his lover's graceful shoulders against his forearms. He wanted that, there was nothing else to want. She had said: Meet me tonight or else. He had met her not knowing what to say, and so they hadn't said anything except at the end when she said, Actions speak louder than words. She was fond of clichés and ultimatums, so fond of them that she didn't even know what they were. She was a stylish dresser. In their bedroom his wife wrapped herself in the sheets on her side of the bed. Her closed eyes took in the whole situation. For once in her life, she regretted nothing. In her dreams she was holding the hand of a quiet man who had retired to stay at home with her all day; sometimes they would go to the park and feed the pigeons as if they were in an old movie from the forties; sometimes they argued but they always made up for it at the end and, in the end, their relationship was stronger for the argument. Whenever she looked at him she felt that she knew what he was thinking. Content in this, her body followed her mind across the bed, putting the television to shame and to sleep, as her husband began to ascend the stairs.
OTHER McSWEENEY'S STORIES:
The Ghost of Jack Kerouac Trapped in the Body of a Six-Pound Chihuahua By Benjamin Jared Gilton Of a Piece: An Interview with John Orange, about Completing the Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, a Jigsaw Puzzle, Part Two By Michelle Orange Of a Piece: An Interview with John Orange, about Completing the Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, a Jigsaw Puzzle, Part One By Michelle Orange A Questioning of Aspects By Colin Mort Seven Shades of Green By Rachel Carpenter |
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