*Fiction — January 23, 2020
Husbandly Things
{
}
.firstcharacter {
float: left;
font-size: 100px;
line-height: 60px;
padding-top: 4px;
padding-right: 8px;
padding-left: 3px;
padding-bottom: 0px;
margin-bottom: 0px;
}
THE MORE SHE EXPRESSES doubt about her husband,
the more I fall in love with him. She tells me things he
would not want me to know.
the more I fall in love with him. She tells me things he
would not want me to know.
I have learned of his regrets and accidents, the swirls
of too-thick hair in hidden places, the dust and residue around the
house that only she sees.
of too-thick hair in hidden places, the dust and residue around the
house that only she sees.
He disappears up to his attic studio the way a falcon would,
swift and mean. There, he writes alone by hand for hours. Then he
swoops back down, unexpected, wanting sex. But she’s asleep by then.
swift and mean. There, he writes alone by hand for hours. Then he
swoops back down, unexpected, wanting sex. But she’s asleep by then.
Of course she is conflicted, still in love and aware of his merits. I, too, am in love and aware of his merits, and so I let her doubt.
I did not try to be her friend. It is that way with me and wives.
But I have given in, would like to be a better woman, united with her as I am in my doubt for my own husband.
But I have given in, would like to be a better woman, united with her as I am in my doubt for my own husband.
Her husband spends more time apart from her now.
She asks husbandly things of me now.
I have removed spiders, millipedes and roaches from her drains and corners. I have braided her hair.
But as she and I sit on her porch beneath the orb-weaving spider, who unfastens its web each day and builds a new one each night, I do not tell her of the husbandly things her husband asks of me.
I have helped him move writing desks and bookcases, heavy and sharp-cornered, up his attic stairs.
I have taken him on long drives down secret dirt roads, roads my husband showed to me, leaving golden wakes of dust.
In red pen, in loops of cursive, letters endlessly admiring, I have marked his drafts of prose.
And in my car, in the woods, as small birds have flown near and broken his thoughts, I have heard him doubt his wife.
She has no need for books, plans her life by the planets and suns. Her worries spread about the house like vines, creeping up into his attic. From the doorway she accuses him of tinkering, as though his craft has no ends.
She talks through problems.
Always out loud. For she is not a writer, does not write.
And as I drive with him, flushing birds from thickets, he cannot know I think of him, alone behind my book at night, wishing he was with me, waiting for my husband to come to me.
He cannot know that I encourage her to leave him, under the premise that all men should be left.
I want to believe that if it were me in her important wifely role, I would not linger in his doorway. I would not interrupt or ask. I would be diligent and distant, out of sight.
And if I were in her place I’d be awake when he came down, my books piled up around me, the words I’d say to him only brief and only smart.
Then in the morning I’d be out of bed before him, locked up tight and writing somewhere.
Writing so hard I would hardly exist.
But I think of my own wifely impulse, gravitating towards my husband when he is most withdrawn, the things I say growing more urgent the more he backs away. How I talk across our distance. Talk and yell.
A writer wouldn’t do such things, her husband says.
But a woman would.
I have been watching the spider on her porch grow all summer, planet-shaped and larger than the rings we wear. Dead center in a swaying web above her door, it is not quite a protector, not quite an intruder.
Each night, her husband passes beneath the web with wine, pretty bottles with feathers on the labels, to briefly drink with her before he goes upstairs. These gifts are one of his merits.
She cannot know the care I give to insects.
I trap them alive in her husband’s wineglasses, and leave the glasses tipped in the grass outside.
Originally published in No Tokens Issue No. 5. View full issue & more.