When a wife becomes wicked (and other small things)

It would be a lie to say I didn’t mean to do it.

That’s what I tell myself as I look down at you, or should I say at the body that was yours. With the person departed from it, it looks so benign, as though any spirit could have inhabited it. If only it had.

We sit at our kitchen table. You slam down the knives and forks. Shake your head as you throw our food down in front of us. I know. I should be grateful you cooked.

“Here”.

“Service with a smile,” I put on a cheery voice, I don’t know how I’ll eat this with this lump in my throat, but I’ll have to, please God let the kids eat it too.

“What’s up, you seem a little, tense”.

Fury pulls your eyebrows down over the top of your nose. You don’t make eye contact. In fact, I can’t remember the last time you did. Maybe it was last week when you texted me from upstairs and asked ‘for a cup of tea and chat’. I knew it wasn’t a chat you wanted. But it made no difference, it was straight back to huffing and head shaking afterwards. Not the ‘release’ you complain doesn’t come often enough. As if I have no needs in this situation.

“Grace, use your knife and fork”, you growl. She nods, grasps them carefully.

“What’s for puddin’”. It’s Charlotte our eldest, her mouth full. Her knife clatters to the floor.

You swear under your breath.

“Watch what you’re doing”. You reach down and slam it back on the table. “Pudding? You’re so damn greedy. You haven’t even finished dinner yet.”

Then turning to me. “It’s your fault. You spoils them.” You spit out your words.

I keep smiling, though I feel I may look like a maniac, roll my eyes a little at them, secretly. It’s the only way I’ve come up with to protect them. I should correct myself “was” the only thing I had come up with, at that point.

I concentrate on swallowing, try to ignore the black smoke billowing out of your nose, your ears, the small dark red barbed arrows you throw from your eyes that thud into the beams and plink plink against the dull black gleam of the cooker. I don’t know whether to hold my breath or breathe.

“What are you looking at?” I don’t know how to answer. Then I don’t have to because at that exact moment you notice that Charlotte’s sleeves are in her gravy.

“Charlotte, I have told you not to eat in that dressing gown. Take it off.”

“I can’t daddy, I’ll be freezing.”

“Take it off.”

She looks at me. I nod silently and she peels it off slowly; sits in her vest with her arms folded across her newly blossoming chest now tightening into goose bumps. My heart squeezes. I tell myself to hold on, dinner will be done soon enough.

Thank you for dinner daddy,” it’s Grace, her large, clear blue eyes.

“Thanks daddy, it was delicious.” Charlotte trying to hold her knife and fork correctly whilst covering her chest with forearms.

You scrape back your chair. Slam the door. I notice the whir of the extractor fan now and watch as it sucks out the black smoke and stretches out the arrows in a billowing stream.

We look at each other and breathe a sigh of relief. You will have gone into the living room to watch TV. There are other rooms in the house; we will go in those.

Charlotte puts her dressing gown back on, sucks at the gravied arm. Grace slides onto my knee, sucks her thumb.

I roll my eyes at them and do my best cheery smile. “Best keep out of his way when he’s like this.”

I try not to notice how Grace clings to me.

I’ve spent so long keeping out of your way. It’s what I did after conversation became impossible.  Waking when you’re asleep. Walking at dawn, letting the beauty of this place infuse me, pulling my power like water from the river with its glass surfaced reflection of the purple and pink morning sky, silhouettes of trees.

I stroke your face. We see dead things in the road often around here. Here. That was something else you complained about, which is ironic seeing as how the beauty of this place was how I sustained myself. I don’t believe in coincidence.

“We need to fix the fence”. It’s a necessary communication. We’re drinking coffee in the kitchen. It’s good coffee, but I get no pleasure from it.

“No need, we’ll be moved out before we need to do that.”

Grace looks up from her Weetabix from you to me and back again. It’s important at these moments to control my reaction. Charlotte reads a magazine that came home in someone’s school bag and doesn’t hear. But there’s no getting anything past Grace.

“Oh? But the children are at school.” I keep my voice bright.

“I never agreed to being stuck in this place so long.” You sweep your hand irritably in a gesture intended, presumably, to convey our home, garden and everything beyond.

“Nothing to do. And you’re so bloody boring.”. You stare moodily out of the window to the garden I have transformed and beyond to the bleak rearing hills and the wide cloud-greyed sky.

It’s enough to take your breath away.

I wonder, vaguely, when I gave up asking you not to speak to me like that in front of my children.

“I should just leave.” Then you drain your coffee and stomp out of the room upstairs.

You never did make good on that promise.

Both children turn to me.

My eyes burn. I start to panic. On the other side you would be even more formidable. In a lightening moment, I consider now all the after-school activities. Grace would have to quit cricket, Charlotte could still make gymnastics and dance but would have to give up swimming. More after school club. If you sent money I could manage. But you would want access and I wouldn’t be there. What about weekends on my own? What about Christmas?

But instead of running to the end of the garden and screaming at the top of my lungs I just roll my eyes at the girls. It’s impossible not to undermine you when you’re being like this.

Later that day, I went to the river and the woods. I watched the sun push a single golden beam through a pewter grey cloud straight onto my face and I dared to imagine.

He couldn’t believe how peaceful and beautiful it is here, the curve of the autumn trees following the stream until we were in a wood that felt like a cathedral and beyond to the hills the wide-open sky. He ran around with Charlotte, threw Grace up in the air and their laughter echoed. He led the way enthusiastically, he put his arm around me and told me how lucky he felt.

When I came through the door; he was happy to see me. Then he disappeared, right up into the clouds in a metallic grey swoosh.

You stomped out of the door in the early evening. I heard you come stumbling back in the early hours.

When the door banged open I woke sitting straight up, hands clenched ready to rip apart a mammoth. Charlotte in a bed on the floor and Grace breathing next to me. I watched the door, my heart knocking against the inside of my ribs. But you went to the spare room and though I thanked God I couldn’t get back to sleep after that.

The next morning we’re drinking coffee again.

You put your hand on mine and contort your features into what I think was intended as a smile. Then you hugged me up in a bear hug that I know I will have to reciprocate with sex. It’s all the apology I will get.

We kiss. And despite myself there’s some chemistry there. Maybe you’re not so bad. Maybe I get these things out of proportion. You even talk to me. Admittedly it’s about work. I listen dutifully. Ask a few questions. It’s better than nothing.

It’s hard to identify where the breaking point came, if you can call it that. Anything can become normalised after a while.

Maybe it was in the holiday house over summer. We were there with your parents, but they had gone out.

“I have a call in two minutes”.

I rushed around frantic, trying to get the kids out of the way. There’s no point asking why you set yourself up at the kitchen table rather than a bedroom.

“I want to stay here”. It’s Grace.

“Come on, we’re going swimming in the river.” I force a bright tone.

“Not the river” she rolled her eyes and whined, “I don’t want to”.

I consider hauling her up over my shoulder, but she’s got a little big for that, so I end up begging her instead.”

“Please Grace, come on it will be fun.”

“I just want to stay here”

To my horror I felt my eyes fill with tears.

“Look you made mummy cry” Charlotte hissed.

Grace looked at me doubtfully.

“It’s fine, it’s okay, you can stay here, just be quiet. Okay?”

“You should come, you made mummy cry”

“Shhh, Charlotte, it’s okay.”

Charlotte and I headed out. I told myself the grandparents would be back soon anyway. It was sunny on our backs as we flopped along down the path by the stream in our Crocs, towels warming on our shoulders.

“Mummy!”. I turn around and there’s Grace running along, barefoot, her favourite toy dog squished under her arm, a dirty thumb in her mouth.

“What are you doing here.” I don’t ask how she crossed the road on her own.

She’s crying, sad she made me sad. I comfort her, send Charlotte back to get her shoes because I’m too scared for us all to go back.

“Why can’t he just be nice”. For an answer I just held her shaking little shoulders and felt my own heart break. What was I supposed to do, tell her she was imagining it?

So, you see it is your fault. I would never do such a thing if I hadn’t been pushed to the limits.

I hold your head in my lap now, stroke your hair. I can feel you stiffening. Your eyes are ever so slightly open and though I try to press the lids down they won’t stay in place.

The feel of the eyeballs beneath the tensionless lids is unspeakable so I rest my hands on the bed instead intentionally, like when I’m trying not to bite my nails.

I hope you said your Hail Marys. That would have been important to you. Or you would have pretended it was, once upon a time, I never could work out which. You did have a sort of flat self-interested intelligence despite your superstitions.

Maybe vocabulary was the problem, or expression. I expected the complexity of human experience condensed into words and actions. But for you, words were just something to get what you want or placate people with. The fewer the better.

I look up and down this body that was yours. It’s odd to think now it had such a hold on us all.

It doesn’t criticise me or complain I didn’t cancel the milk, that I’m “only a teacher” (all the school holidays taken care of forever), that I don’t wrap things up properly in the fridge, that I don’t do your laundry, that I don’t spend enough time on housework, that I am lazy, that I am boring, that I’m not grateful, that I’m ageing.

It doesn’t tut and make me wring my hands. I was never a hand wringer, before. Come to think of it, I’m looking forward to not being a hand wringer.

And I feel a kind of euphoria, freedom stretching out in front of me like the wide sky and hills that fan out in every direction around us here. In this place.

I wish I could say it was the small things that did for me. Small things that made up our minutes, hours, days, decades, shaped our children’s brains and their experience of the world. It should have been. But that fact is that it was watching a cliché unfold that did it.

I watched from the doorway, you in your brown leather reclining chair (I can’t wait to get rid of the damn thing). Watching your phone from behind. Full of smiley faces and emojis I didn’t even know you knew how to use. That’s how I knew she must be younger than me.

The next day, when you got ready for work you spent a little longer on your hair. I even saw you trying to trim your eyebrows. You wore a shirt you just bought, kissed me on the cheek and actually whistled on your way to the car.

It crossed my mind that if you were happier; perhaps we would be too.

When you came home that evening, I made sure I had the children in bed early.  You sat in the leather chair and flicked on the television. I flicked it off again.

You didn’t even deny it when I confronted you.

“It’s your fault. You have been ignoring me for years.” You settled back into the chair, smiling a bit, preening I’d say.

And though fury boiled through my blood right to the roots of my hair I’ve been silent so long that it was as though I had forgotten how to speak. Then I was underwater, watching the looming shape of you in that stupid chair appear fuzzily. I tried to speak but my lungs filled with water; I just made a choking noise instead. Then I collected myself.

“You have to move out”. The words just trickled out. It was an anticlimax.

“I’m not moving out. It will be better for the children this way.”

And that was that. I crept into bed with Grace and smelled her warm hair, trying to sob silently.

A few weeks later, we all went for lunch with your work people. I knew who she was immediately. The way you smiled at every silly thing she said, how she found everything you said hilarious, throwing back her head. Watching how you sucked in your belly and pushed out your chest. Afterwards you told me I had the wrong tone of voice; I wasn’t polite enough.

The next time I saw her I just smiled and said hi. I tried to focus on getting my tone of voice right but something inside me, something that had been soft and malleable, perhaps it was my soul, hardened.

I thought it was my imagination but then I saw it glinting at the back of my throat when I brushed my teeth and I could see it behind my eyes when I looked in the mirror. I put on sunglasses.

You were right. It would have been hard to tell the kids. It will be hard to tell them I correct myself. On the plus side, you will be able to be their hero now. They are young enough for me to rewrite our history. The great provider. You see, I would do anything for my children.

I lay you down tenderly on the spare bed, which I now officially rename “your bed”. From now on, we will give the correct names to things in this household. Deceit. Control. Murder. Well maybe not the last one, that wouldn’t do anyone any good.

No one will ask me how I did it. That’s the beauty of being a chemistry teacher who dreamed of being a doctor. When the girls describe me they say “mummy’s just a teacher”. I’ll be able to fix that now. It turns out I did remember something useful from my degree after all.

You really should have listened. Even as I think it, I wonder if that’s a little unfair. I had most of the discussions on our relationship with myself after all. But I push those thoughts aside, it’s that sort of self-doubt that paralysed me for so long.

It’s your fault and I hate you for it. I beat my fists against your unresisting chest. It makes your head jiggle and your mouth loll open. The helplessness of it appals me. But I have no right to be appalled so I close my eyes and breathe instead. I tuck the quilt around you, but not too tidily.

Or you could say it was my imagination that did it. That was how I saw the gap between what we had and what I needed.

I look at my watch, but it’s too early. I wouldn’t normally come in here until you summon me for tea. I creep back to my bed and hold onto Grace’s foot. She stirs.

“It’s okay,” I tell her. “Go back to sleep”.