12/12 Short Stories in 2017
2/12
word count: 1200 words
prompt: a conversation with your spouse
Part 1 can be found here.
She
was sitting on the counter, feet in the sink.
“You
okay?” he asked.
The
water gushing from the faucet steamed, fogging the window. Outside, winter had
taken a last, desperate hold on the valley.
“Did
you hear me at all?”
She
watched him from the shelter of her hair. He leaned against the door frame,
crossed then uncrossed his arms. He was trying hard not to be angry. “He’s
fine. I just finished talking to him.” A pause. “You want to go see him?
Straighten things out between you?”
“No,
not right now.”
“Okay.
Fine.” He pushed his glasses up his nose, then continued the upwards motion and
ran his fingers through his hair, left it sticking straight up. ‘Engineer
hair’, the boys called it. ‘Show some respect’, he’d growl at them, and they’d
collapse into laughter.
She
adjusted the water. It wasn’t hot enough. It was never hot enough. She’d asked
him to raise the temperature on the water heater, but it was as high as it
would go. He worried about the boys scalding themselves, she knew he did, but
he never said a word about it.
God,
he was a good man.
Why
had she had to choose a good man?
“I
was thinking to take them out for a bit. Robbie needs shoes, you know. Maybe if
you had some time alone? Maybe that would help?”
She
pulled the hair back from her face so she could see him clearly. He looked
tired. No wonder. “I don’t think so,” she said. He blinked at her and she
realised she’d not said it out loud. That was happening more and more these
days, as if her mouth had entered into a kind of collusion with her heart. Let
him think it’s going to get better, her heart said. Her head knew better.
“What
can I do?” he said. He held his empty hands towards her. She had always loved
his hands, the boxy shape of the palm, the long, sensitive fingers. But no
matter that she loved them, they remained empty, and nothing was all he had to
offer.
“There’s
nothing you can do,” she said, and this time she managed to speak in a way he
could hear. His face closed and his hands dropped. “We knew that this would
happen,” she said.
“We
knew this might happen,” he corrected her. “And it’s been so long, I thought.”
She
nodded. “I did, too.” She glanced into the sink. The water wasn’t helping. The
skin from her lower calves to her toes had gone bright red from the heat. She
was afraid to rub at it, afraid it would spread further. Maybe if she wore
gloves? Did they even have any gloves? She’d have to add them to the grocery
list.
Still
leaning in the doorway, her husband grasped at straws. “Maybe this isn’t it,
not really,” he said. “Maybe it’s just a phase, you know?”
“I
don’t think so.” She dipped her hand into the sink. Her nerves, confused,
screamed at her that the water was too cold before admitting their mistake.
Hot! Hot! She held her hand there, biting her lip from the pain.
“Maybe
a doctor?” he said. “Someone different? Someone you like?”
She
touched her left ankle. She couldn’t really feel it, not exactly. Her sense of
touch was overwhelmed by the scalding. It was better this way. She couldn’t
feel the change, either. If she closed her eyes, it was almost as if it wasn’t
happening at all.
“Tell
me what I can do.” She did close her eyes, then. He thought it was to shut him
out. He couldn’t see what she was doing in the sink. Her bent figure blocked
her left arm and hand from view. “Listen, Maybe I.” And he took a step into the
room.
“No!”
Her eyes had flown open and her right arm was extended, hand out, to stop him.
“I said not to come in here. I meant it.”
“Sorry,”
he said, backing away. He was crying. She could hear it in his voice.
“This
was always a possibility,” she said, attention back to the sink and whatever she
was doing in there. “You knew it from the beginning. I never held anything
back. You knew.”
“Yes.”
“And
we had a good long time together, longer than most. But this is happening now,
and there’s no doctor going to stop it.”
“But.”
“No.
No ‘but’. ‘But’ isn’t going to do either of us any good.” She frowned into the
sink, twisted, took a wooden spoon from the drawer under her, went to work
again.
“The
boys.”
She
stilled. Her hair had fallen over her face again. She pushed it back behind one
ear. “They adore you,” she said. “You’re a wonderful father. They’re lucky to
have you.”
“They’re
lucky to have you, too.”
“You’ll
explain it to them. They’ll be fine.”
“Explain?
Are you kidding me? Explain how?”
“You’ll
think of something.”
“No!
You think of something! This is your thing! You explain it! …what are you
doing?”
She
grinned at him unexpectedly. “I think I got it,” she said, and pulled
something, dripping, out of the sink. She turned it this way and that. “I
wasn’t expecting anything like this,” she said conversationally. She tossed it
into the other sink. It landed with a splat and steamed there, quietly.
“Doesn’t
that hurt?”
She
considered this. “I’m not sure,” she said. “It’s kind of hard to explain. I
don’t think so?”
She inspected her work. “There’s still some here.”
He
expelled air in a puff. “So.” He kicked at the baseboard. “How long, do you
think?”
“No
idea.”
“What
do you mean, ‘no idea’? Surely you know. Surely, you’ve got some kind of
inkling. Some kind of time frame?”
“It’s
not like I’ve done this before.”
“I
know, but Cameron’s turning seven next week. We’ve got a birthday party
planned. Will you even be there? Should we cancel?”
“Of
course I’ll be there. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“What?”
he spluttered. “Don’t be ridiculous? Are you freaking kidding me? My wife is
sitting in the sink, coming apart, literally, at the seams! And you’re telling
me not to be ridiculous?”
“Calm
down.”
“I
don’t feel like calming down! I feel like shouting!”
“The
boys will hear you.” She was giving him her full attention. About bloody time.
“So?”
“This
is how you want them to find out?”
“They’re
going to find out some way or another.” He smacked the wall.
“Don’t.”
“Oh,
yeah, we could do it your way. Say nothing. That’s a brilliant idea.”
“Paul.”
“Don’t
give them a chance to spend time with you.”
“Paul.”
“Or
say goodbye.”
She
frowned. “Who says it’s going to be goodbye?” That stopped him. “It doesn’t
need to be goodbye. Does it?”
He
shook his head. “Are you kidding me? Have you looked in a mirror lately?” he
turned, walked away.
She
sighed, and peered back into the sink. They’d said this wouldn’t be easy. She’d
been warned that Paul probably wouldn’t come around.
At
least the heat seemed to be working. She retrieved the wooden spoon. She was
going to need a bigger sink.
