Pan de Muerto

First come the teacups, and the cereal bowls crusted with milk, and saucers sprinkled with toast crumbs. Easy stuff. I usually tend to my clients and distractions on my screens while Daphne does the washing. But tonight it’s my turn. Tonight I want to be close.

“I haven’t been a good husband,” I say.

Daphne hovers over a pot of caramel sauce on the stove. She turns and smirks. Her hair is held back by a claw clip, chewed at the ends, from when Dale was a baby and chewed everything in sight. She has dozens of those clips, and yet somehow that one is always ready at hand.

“Rotten,” she says. “No good. In fact, I’m about to call the police. After you’re done there, of course.”

“I’m serious.”

“You’re the one who said, `I don’t want to think about it, I want bread pudding with caramel sauce`. Have you changed your mind? Do you want pity now?”

“I’m stating a fact. It has nothing to do with pity.”

“You’re looking for the counter claim.” She comes close and holds my cheeks. “You’ve been a wonderful husband.” She kisses me. My hands are sopping, but I pull her in. I stay in that kiss.

“You’ll make it through this,” she says.

“I’m not talking about it. Not tonight.”

“I know.”

She relented. I remember our fights when I started my practice and we started our family. Two children, fifteen months apart, with me working fifteen hours a day to get us ahead. I’d come home to a warzone. Especially after Cassie. That purple-faced colicy air raid siren signalled the bombs.

I can’t do this. I need help.

My mother can.

No. Not her. I want a nanny. I’ll go back to work part-time.

We talked about this, you said–

I changed my mind.

I don’t want them raised by a nanny.

Then you stay with them. It’s been two years and I’m out of my mind. This is not what I wanted.

It’s not about what you want. And what? You can’t earn half as much as me. This house, your car, your shopping trips on my card–

Shopping trips? You mean the clothes and food I buy for your children?

Oh it’s all for my children, right. That watch, those earrings, those too?

A teacup shatters. The one missing from the set on the drying rack. She didn’t come to bed that night, but she did the next, and we didn’t have that fight again.

Did she give up? Did she surrender to an unwanted life? To a man who put his wants above hers?

Next come the plates from lunch and a cutting board speckled with cucumber rinds. The kids asked for Dad sandwiches today: Bacon, tomato, cucumber, with a dab of thousand island, all on toasted rye. Over our seventeen years of marriage, Daphne learned to make Italian pastas and minestras, Mexican enchiladas and rellenos. She mastered the roasts and mash and gravy, and yet, when asked what they want, the kids asked for a Dad Sandwich. I know what it means to them.

“I kissed her,” I say.

“Who?”

“Rae Taylor.”

Daphne returns to the stove. “I assumed so.”

“It was consensual.”

“Why are you telling me this? It was so long ago. It seems silly now.”

“You know why.”

“I thought we weren’t talking about it.”

“We aren’t. Forget it.”

Even now, I can’t tell her the full truth. The kiss was consensual. I was drunk on scotch and high on power. It was the case of my career. A circus. Where I was the ringleader, giving speeches after every trial day to the pit of cameras, and suits, and painted faces. I stared down the prosecutor. I towered over him, and won. I celebrated the night with my firm, until it was only me, Rae, and a quarter bottle of Macallan.

You're married, she said. I should go.

I felt disrespected. As though I earned something with her. I was a powerful man, a winner, finally.

Stay for a bit.

Let me go.

It’s three thousand quid scotch. Are you going to let me drink it alone?

Richard. Let me go!

My arm was tight against her waist and she was tense. In those seconds between resistance and release, who was I? Had Rae not had the sense I lacked, had she surrendered, I would’ve lost everything. When she brought the case against me, I called it frivolous, and gave her every penny she was seeking.

I told Daphne that Miss Taylor was a disgruntled law clerk, angry at me for not helping her secure a pupillage. Daphne took the kids and left. For three weeks, I had an hour a day on the line with my children, and no more than three words from my wife.

I’m not ready.

When I opened the door to them, it was like all color had returned, bursting through a suffocating gloom. I made Dad sandwiches, and we talked about Nana and Papa’s, and Fritzy the lamb, and fishing in the creek. Laughter filled the house. And when the children left to check on the order of their rooms, I wept.

I have one question, and I want the truth. Did you assault her as she claims?

I swear to you, I didn’t.

Okay.

And that was the last time we talked about that.

Next come the dinner dishes. Tougher. Little bowls with their little remnants: shredded cheese and sour cream, chives and cilantro, green and red sauces. All from Daphne’s own creation of Tandoori tacos - birthed from leftovers one hurried night, between a recital, and a football practice and a two trips to the dentist.

“I found the butt of a joint in the yard.” I say. “Do you think it’s Dales?”

There’s no response. Daphne’s not in the kitchen.

I grab silverware through greasy water and bits of soggy lettuce. Spoon after spoon, fork after fork, all the little things that add up. Is Dale smoking pot? Who was that boy that Cassie was with? Everyday there are new stresses and new questions.

How can you do this alone?

A hiss comes from the stove. Foamy caramel sauce pops and spills over the edge of the pot. I scramble for the burner dial. “Daphne! I need you.”

“I’m here,” she says.

She’s at the fireplace. Her urn is painted with bright orange and pink flowers among dancing skeletons. She found the motif out of a cookbook, next to a recipe for Pan de Muerto. She cut out that page and stuck it on her funeral mood board, and now she rests between my mother’s candelabra and our last family photo. Until the end, she had her style, and a laugh.

“I need you,” I say.

“You’ll make it through this.”

“I won’t.”

“Shall we talk about it?”

“No,” I say. I’m not ready.