A key in a lock. The front door opens and is slammed shut. Booted footsteps march to the beat of her startled heart. Boom-boom boom-boom. From the front door to the kitchen. Boom-boom boom-boom.
She lies on the bed, facing the wall. Curved into a question mark. Head, spine, legs. A book lays abandoned by her side. She had been reading in the yellow sunshine that made patterns through the lace curtains. She traces the lines in the patterns on the bedspread with her fingers. Delicate flowers. Stems and leaves and petals. In swirls and twirls. Swaying in the breeze coming through the open window. She shivers.
An intake of air, lost suction, as the fridge door is opened. He would be at the fridge with the cool air creeping into him. In through his fingertips. Spreading in through his skin and into veins and capillaries, pumped through the atriums and ventricles in his heart and down, down to his toes. He is always cold. She hears the soft click of the fridge door closing. There is the scrape of a chair being pulled out. The clunk of a plate on the wooden table. Small and wet noises as he eats with his fingers. He is always hungry.
He had been gone a month. He was home two days early.
Breathing. Expanding her lungs out, her ribcage. Her ribs splaying out like fingers. Clutching and holding onto each breath.
She is dressed in harsh black, a sharp contrast to the pale blues and pinks that drip from the room’s surfaces. Pale blue walls, pink shelves, doilies. Paisley bedspreads and floral rugs. Drip drip drip. Melting into puddles.
Softer footsteps, still in time. Boom-boom boom-boom. His boots would now be sitting abandoned in the corner, the edges crusty with dust and dirt. If she pretended to be asleep, he might not talk to her. The creak of the bedroom door. She could smell him. He smelt like the desert, like dry sand and dead leaves. She knew he would be standing there, watching her for a moment, his nostrils flaring with every breath. Boom boom boom. He touches her.
It is rough at first, his big fingers seem to put too much pressure on her bones as he takes her clothes off. She feels fragile. Her bones poking out, a skeleton. She would trace the outlines of the bruises afterwards. Like petals in her skin. She keeps her eyes closed when she can feel him looking at her. She can’t look him in the eyes when he is inside of her. He kisses her mouth and she opens one eye. The familiar lines of his face are wobbly. He looks like a goldfish drowning in air. He buries his face into the crook of her neck as his rhythm increases.
A wave of nausea crashes into her and nearly drowns her, rising up her throat and filling her nostrils. She takes a deep breath. Clutch and release.
She lets her eyes slide around the room. All of the furniture is old, the edges and corners dull with use. The corners of the room seem dim with clutter, like the corners of old photographs. Wicker chairs, worn down by the harsh sunshine. The big dresser is missing two dull brass handles. One had come off when he’d opened the drawer in a terrible rage, over missing socks, or a wrinkled shirt, back when he used to yell at her, and she would scream at him, and they would fight and collide into each other and love each other all at once.
The mirror above the vanity is flaking small silver snowflakes. It is ringed with light bulbs, the kind that movie stars have. They had stopped working long ago, but she liked to keep them there. The books on the bookshelves all have cracked and peeling spines, romance novels next to poetry books and science fiction from the sixties. The little figurines she collects have missing limbs, and cracked smiles, and chipped faces. She puts them into little, happy families and names them all. Blu-tacked to the cupboard walls are other people’s post-cards, from places she’d never been, never go, written to people she didn’t know. She likes for her things to be old, for other people to have touched them, and loved them, and lost them.
As he buries deeper inside of her, she starts to feel her body responding to him and twists her head to face the blank blue wall. Her toes flex and she arches her back, stretching, spreading herself out thin, increasing her surface tension, a rubber band about to snap. Then with a grunt it is over. He stickily rolls off her and closes his eyes and falls asleep. She tries to remember the exact shade of gray that his eyes are, and she gets confused. She can’t remember and she starts to drift down down down into a spiral.
She holds onto the years they have spent together. She holds on because she doesn’t know who she is without him. When he is gone, she is empty. He fills her up with himself. And it makes her small, and sad, but it is better than being nothing.
She needs to shower but her arm is trapped under his meaty shoulder. She stares up at the ceiling, at the crooked light shade faded to an indeterminate colour, at the cobwebs and faint dust that make odd shapes. The cracks that make scribbles, like childish scrawling on the ceiling. Everything needed a good clean. She slowly extricates herself from underneath his bulk, wriggling and gently pushing him, so as to not wake him up.
She locks the bathroom door. Turns the shower on hot so the air would turn thick and sticky and fog up the mirrors. So she wouldn’t have to see. She only sees the bad things. Life has left its fingerprints on her skin. She doesn’t see the perfect way she is put together, a puzzle, the big picture. She scrubs and scrubs and scrubs until she feels clean. She lets the dirtiness get sucked down into the hungry drain. Being naked scares her, it is too brutally honest. She puts her clothes on and makes her way to the kitchen.
She knows he will be hungry when he wakes up. She cuts the vegetables, her hands moving fast and sure with the knife. She lines up the food into colours, the greens and oranges and yellows into little piles. She does it all without thinking. Not even daydreaming, just blank. She boils and shreds and fries. A robot. In the midst of the blankness, she notices the sounds of him waking up. The sighing, the groaning mattress, feet connecting with the floor.
She sets the table for two. The patterns on the plates match with the cups, everything belongs together. Plates and knives and forks, opposite each other, in perfect symmetry. Like the houses on the street they live in, perfectly matching mirror images—lace curtains, red brick and gravel driveways. All the streets in the town, in perfect unison. Black bitumen crosses in the earth. Everything is the same, everything fit and everything is square and perfect and boring.
She has her back to him as he scrapes the chair along the ground and sits down. She has her hands in the sink, swishing her fingers in the dirty, soapy water. He would wait until she sits down to start eating. She gives the bubbles one last flick, popping the tiny rainbows, revealing the potato peelings underneath. She turns around.
The sight of him staring at her face makes her insides curl up into tiny knots. She sits down opposite him and picks up her knife. Then fork. The food smells delicious. Nausea washes over her again, from deep down inside, creeping into her cheeks and nearly exploding out of her mouth.
“I only did it once this time,” he shovels mashed potato into his mouth.
She starts to dissect the food on her plate, cutting everything into bite-sized pieces. Into triangles and small squares. She takes a mouthful. The potato tastes like cardboard.
“Can you pass the salt, please?” she says with her mouth full.
“Joy, I love you, you know.” He eats with his mouth open, so she can see his teeth grinding and tongue squirming.
“I know, I love you too,” she swallows, “I know you try.”
“I’m getting better, I didn’t even really enjoy it this time. Please forgive me.” Chew, chew, chew, his teeth clicking and tearing.
“Of course, darling,” the term of endearment feels sharp and brutal in her mouth, the corners of the word almost get caught behind her tongue. It tumbles out of her mouth and falls into his lap. He picks it up and smiles.
“I think this was the last one, she has to be the last one, I promise you. Man, you should have seen her struggle, this one took the longest. She was the prettiest so far. I mean, big fuck-off eyes and real pretty blonde hair. She reminded me of you. But everyone gets ugly when they’re dead.” He doesn’t break eye contact with her, not even to blink.
“Are your potatoes alright? Mine taste a little funny. I must have burnt the bottom of the pot or something. Sorry. Give me your plate, I’ll throw it in the bin.”
“It’s fine, don’t worry about it.”
“No, I ruined dinner. I must have been daydreaming or something. Not concentrating properly when I was cooking. Sorry.”
“You’re right, they taste bad. I can’t eat them. You know, you’re not usually like this. Are you alright?”
“I’m fine, don’t worry about it,” she stabs at the potato with her fork.
“You’re not angry with me are you?”
“Of course not, why would I be angry at you?”
“I don’t know. But I fucking love you Joy.”
“I’m sorry.”
She stands up. Takes their plates and scrapes the food into the bin. Watches as the mashed potato clump into little clouds, as it rains peas and carrots. Scrape scrape scrape. When she turns around, his seat is empty. The television starts to quietly murmur. She hears applause.
She puts the dishes in the sink. Fills it with hot water and bubbles. The steam makes her face damp. She puts the tips of her fingers in. A good sort of burn. She is feeling something. She plunges her hands in, seeing how long she can hold them under. The pain makes white starbursts behind her eyelids, and in her brain. Exploding. Then waning. The pain fades to a dull throb. She stands at the kitchen sink, her hands submerged and her eyes on the starry sky outside. She is mesmerised by the blackness between the points of light. Emptiness scares her.
Sitting next to him on the couch, their faces bathed in the glow of the tv, she holds onto his hand. He smiles with his teeth at her. Everything is okay. They watch the news. Riots and lottery winners. A plane crash. The upcoming election. Sunny for the next few days with the chance of a thunderstorm later on in the week. As long as he isn’t talking, he couldn’t be lying.
She went along with the lies because it was easier. He had always told her stories, and at first she had believed him. But then the stories got bigger and bigger and harder to swallow. He would forget, give conflicting details, get things wrong. The lies got so big they filled the silences and spaces between them. Made it hard to move. She didn’t know why he had started telling her stories about killing pretty girls. She didn’t want to know.
He drives trucks across the desert. Truckloads of cigarettes. That’s how they had met. She was running away and he was going home. He picked her up from the side of the road and had never let her go. He didn’t ask her where she came from or where she was going. He was overwhelming, he had gravity. She followed his lead because she had nowhere else to go. And they had stayed together. Even when they were apart. She loves him, but she had planned to leave him tomorrow, while he was still supposed to be away.
He falls asleep on the couch, like most nights when he is home. He breathes through his nose and makes slight snoring noises. She traces the shape of his face with her eyes. The ovals and circular motion of his cheekbones. The strong line of his nose. His pointy mouth. She switches off the television and the room falls into darkness.
As she walks up the stairs she leaves him behind. She goes to bed alone. Maybe next time she’ll leave.
