She went to the guest room and opened her sketchbook. She drew a woman sitting across the table from a stranger.
He was leaning forward.
She didn’t draw the stranger’s face. She only drew her own.
CHAPTER 11
The fight started over chicken. Chicken. Can you even imagine such a thing?
Claire had made roasted chicken for dinner. This was not an unusual thing. She made roasted chicken at least once a week because Greg liked it and it was easy.
She’d been cooking dinner for the same man for well over two decades, and at some point, the meals had stopped being choices and had become rotations.
Roasted chicken was on Tuesday, the way spaghetti was on Thursday, the way leftovers were on Sunday. Pizza from their favorite place was sprinkled in between.
She had seasoned it just the way she always did, with rosemary and lemon and a little too much garlic, because she loved garlic. Greg tolerated garlic.
She set it on the table for two with the everyday plates and the everyday napkins. She put the salt and pepper shakers that were shaped like little lighthouses that they bought on their honeymoon in Maine twenty-six years ago, back when they bought things together, back when a lighthouse seemed charming instead of ironic. Now, even a lighthouse couldn’t help her see the way home to her marriage that she used to love.
Greg came to the table. He sat down, and he looked at the chicken as if someone was about to walk him straight down to the electric chair.
“Chicken again?”
Claire counted to three. One, two, three.
“Yes. Is that a problem?”
“Well, no. I just feel like we eat chicken a lot.”
“We do eat chicken a lot. You like chicken.”
“I suppose I like chicken fine. I’m just saying we could mix it up a little bit.”
Claire sat down across from him. She picked up her fork, but then put it down. Then she picked it up again. The lighthouse salt shaker stared at her from the middle of the table, and she thought about how many meals she had eaten at this table, in this same kitchen, across from this same man. Thousands. Literally thousands of meals that she had cooked, every single one of them. And never once in the twenty-six years she had cooked had he offered to cook instead.
“What would you like me to make?” She kept her voice steady. Her hands under the table were not.
“I don’t know. Something different.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, Claire. I’m not a cook.”
She counted to three again. She’d been counting to three in her marriage for so long that she did it quickly now. There were no pauses. She held a tiny breath that nobody ever noticed, not even her most of the time. Right now, she noticed it. She noticed her jaw tightening, her shoulders rising to her earlobes, the way she braced her body every single time. She was swallowing words that she really wanted to say, and she had just grown tired of swallowing.
“You could cook,” she said matter-of-factly.
He looked up from his plate. He looked as if he’d just been told something in a language he didn’t speak. He was confused, maybe offended, uncertain how to respond.
“Excuse me, what?”
“If you want something different, you are able to cook it yourself. The kitchen is right there,” she said, pointing across the room. “It’s been right there for twenty-six years.”
Greg set his fork down. He wasn’t even angry. It was like he was doing it carefully, the way you would set down a tool so you didn’t accidentally cut off your hand. Or you’d set down a bag of steaks when an angry bear approaches.
“What is going on with you?”
“Nothing is going on with me.”
