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21
The morning is a tired haze of heavy limbs and scratchy eyes. I don’t want to be awake, though I’m not entirely sure I slept at all. For a few seconds, I try to convince myself that yesterday was a nightmare, but when I grab my razor and shave my thick stubble, the hot water runs into the recent furrows Amy left behind and burns.
Fuck.
I drive to work. The sky is like an ocean that’s gone still. Everything feels wrong.
My stomach churns slowly, like it’s moving dry cement in my bowels. My insides hurt and my eyes keep flickering to the clock. I spend most of the day watching the shadows moving across the floor and the web at the back of Ben’s chair. It’s abandoned now, just a few old strings hanging onto the fabric pulled down by gravity. I can relate.
Each time I look up, I catch the eyes that turn away from me. They all keep staring. The same thing happened last time too, after I got reprimanded, after I got told to sit down in the corner and wait for my punishment – a mixture of awe and disgust. Now all I see is pity. Fuck them. I don’t need pity. I just need to get home. I don’t trust Amy’s silence.
There is something familiar in loud anger. It resonates. It’s violence and frustration and once out it dissipates into the world. But silent anger, that is by far more concerning. It is insidious and calculating and hidden behind a sweet face.
The cement hardens inside me.
* * *
As soon as I get home, I know something is wrong. It’s silent. No blaring TV in the background, no screaming girls, just my wife and a half-drunk bottle of wine.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I reach for the bottle, but she snaps it away, the kitchen bench an island between us.
I look around. “Where are the girls—?”
“Who the fuck is Amy?” A pit opens at the bottom of my stomach and my heart starts to fall. It keeps falling into a dark, empty abyss as the question hangs between us.
“Annie.”
“Who is she?”
I wipe my hands on my jeans. “Where did you hear that name?”
“She dropped in. Invited herself for a cup of tea. Imagine my surprise that the girl who gave my girls balloons at the zoo and took a fucking picture with them has been fucking my husband.” Her face twists in a grimace. “She asked me to send you her love.” She scoffs at the words.
A cold wave embalms me as the hairs rise on the back of my neck and my mouth runs dry. “Annie…”
“How long?”
“Annie—”
“How long have you been fucking her?”
“Annie, don’t.”
“How. Long?” She shouts, and I look behind me at the stairs. Annie doesn’t take her eyes off me.
“A few weeks.”
“Weeks?”
I don’t answer.
“Do you think she’s prettier than me?”
“Annie.”
“Do you?”
I sigh. It’s long and heavy and I look into my wife’s drained face. “I think she is pretty.”
