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He searches my face.
“I need money.”
“I gave you money.”
“I spent that.”
He tilts his head. The muscle in his jaw flexes. “You spent six thousand dollars in two days?”
“I don’t know,” I say, rolling my shoulders. “Maybe. I guess.”
“On what?”
I suck in my bottom lip and once again, I shrug. “Just because you’re an accountant, doesn’t mean I am.”
“Well, sorry,” he tells me.
“Inflation,” I say. This seems like a word he will understand. “Me, too.”
Then he catches me off guard. “But you should have started with the necessities.”
“So, what…I’m on an allowance?”
“Not an allowance. A budget.”
That word. He might as well have taken the knife and shoved it through my windpipe. Seems like that would be more pleasant.
“I can’t believe this,” I say throwing up my hands. “What am I supposed to wear?”
I’ve never felt more locked down, more trapped. I could change that. Before it’s too late. When he lets go of the knife, I could decide to end this. It would be so easy. Just a short stumble forward, and I could make contact, carefully shoving his former wife’s very expensive, very proper knife into his stomach. I’m fairly confident I could even make it look like an accident. He just slipped, that’s what I would say. Surely it happens all the time.
“You look pale,” Tom says. “Are you sure you’re feeling up to this?”
“I’m fine.” One tiny decision, that’s all that stands between him and oblivion.
He pulls back and studies my face. “Seriously,” he says. “You really are so beautiful. I don’t know how I got so lucky.”
Maybe next time.
“I think it’s your hair,” he mentions, stopping at the back door. It’s like he’s forgotten all about the money. “I like the way it’s done up like that. Very classic looking.”
I press my lips together, and then I offer a slight smile. I knew he would like it. His first wife wore her hair like this in most of the photos that still line the walls of our home. Of his home, I should say. Her home, really. Who cares if she’s dead? She’s everywhere.
I let the knife slide into the thick skin of the cucumber. Chop. Chop. Chop.
“I thought you might,” I call out, as he’s halfway out onto the covered patio. Lie. Lie. Lie. Tom might love my hair, but he doesn’t love me. Three times now, he’s lied. Once at our small ceremony, after our I-do’s, and once after he first brought me to live here, in this shrine to his dead wife. He threw a party to show me off to his friends, his church friends, and I guess I must have passed the test. “To Melanie—I love you,” he’d said as he toasted our marriage with champagne neither of us drank.
I study my reflection in the blade of the knife. I hate my hair like this. I reach up and release the pin. I don’t want to look like Tom’s old wife. What I want is to get a reaction out of him. I don’t tell him that. And I don’t tell him I wasn’t actually sick or that instead of reading his agreement, I spent hours watching YouTube video tutorials to learn the updo. I don’t tell him I’m thinking of starting my own channel. Or that I might name it ‘the most bored housewife in the world.’ He lies, so I lie. I hear that’s the way this whole marriage thing works.
I watch through the window as he makes his way around the outdoor kitchen. Is his hairline thinning? God, shoot me now. All the things you notice after you marry someone. Why does no one warn you? What I wouldn’t give for a drink. Tomorrow, I tell myself. Tomorrow, I’ll replenish my secret stash.
Speaking of which, it’s no secret what Tom sees in me. I’m young and I’m attractive, and obviously there’s the tiny issue of him thinking I’m knocked up. But minus the make-believe oopsie and the ensuing shotgun wedding, the truth is, Tom could have found any number of girls just like me. He’s not terribly unattractive, and more importantly, he has what most women my age want more than anything: money.
Plus, he’s stable. A sure thing. He comes home every night, doesn’t drink, and doesn’t smoke. Apparently, the kind of husband everyone wants. I know because when we go out, women flirt with him even though he’s standoffish and rude. They bend over backward for him. That says something. It’s sickening, sure, but I guess I should be counting my lucky stars he chose me. And, that’s not all. There’s something else I’m counting: the dollar bills in my future.
I can’t see this now, of course. Here in this kitchen, there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Not like before. Not like in the beginning. I think my period is coming. Hopefully that explains why I feel so down. I don’t know if I can hide it another month.
But I’m not worried. Not about the hidden things or the women. They could never give Tom what I can, and that’s the edge I ride in him. Unexpected and impractical, I was the kink in the tidy corners of Tom’s orderly life, and now, the thing that threatens to further unravel it all. And he likes that, even if he can’t see it yet, the probability of danger. But he doesn’t really want to find out what I’m capable of, the damage I can do. I’ve only just scratched the surface, toying with the pressure. How much can he take before he realizes the truth?
