Dear God
, I said.
Please let his body be what he wants it to be.
I felt incredibly peaceful during all this praying. Like there was all this crazy noise around me and in the middle of it I had clear and focused thoughts. I was like a big line of lightning in the middle of a storm. I could strike, I could make something happen. I was channeling something in me. It was some kind of power.
VALKA TOOK A DEEP BREATH. “Would you pray for me sometime?” she said.
“I already have,” I said.
THAT IS HOW MY HUSBAND found me, on the ground, praying in the living room, with the television set blaring behind me. He had a smile on his face when he walked in the room, but when I turned to look at him, I watched it drop away. He held a bouquet of roses in his hand. Bright red with baby’s breath. I always liked baby’s breath. It reminded me of corsages and school dances. Everyone ignores it because it’s filler but I like what it’s called. And I love the delicate crumbliness of it.
He squeezed the bottom of the bouquet. The paper rustled. He put the bouquet on the couch, and there was an even louder rustle. Between that and the newscaster’s voice it was more than I could bear. I covered my ears.
“Moonie, what’re you doing?” Thomas grabbed the remote control. He put the television on mute. “Have you lost your mind, girl?”
“I was . . .” I felt dumb even saying it. I sat back, and my ass rested on the soles of my feet. “I was praying, I guess. I don’t know.” I smiled at him extra pretty. It was phony and I knew it but I just wanted him to love me and forget the rest. “I was just worried about you. Going to the doctor.”
He sat down on the edge of the couch next to me.
“Ain’t nothing to worry about.” He put a hand on my head and patted it and then slid it down to my cheek. And then he looked at me so tenderly it was like my heart would break in two, I could really feel that, that there was the possibility that something could
shatter
inside me. Everything was so swelled up on the insides. All my parts were fighting for room, fighting for air.
“I’m one hundred percent okay,” he said. “And I think it might be time to test it all out.”
17.
I
had decorated the bedroom myself, without any help from Thomas. Most stuff in the house, Thomas wanted to have some say, not just because he was paying for it, and not just because he was trying to find ways to fill his time, but because he was interested in home decorating. We watched a lot of those shows, all the time, all kinds of home decorating. There were the shows that had people decorating their houses for less than five hundred bucks, and the shows where they switched homes with their friends, the disaster zone homes, and the millionaire homes. We liked the poor people shows the best because they always cried at the end. A lot of people were out there fixing up their homes. Trying to make their lives just a little bit better. Thomas totally got that, and so did I.
But I said please let this room be mine. Let me do for you as a wife should do for a husband. I realize now that these are meaningless words. That I made up what was supposed to be right. I cobbled together this image of marriage from scraps of memories and TV shows and movies. God knows neither of our parents had a marriage we wanted to model ourselves after. It was all made up, our marriage. Thomas did it, too. We were trying to be normal, but we did not realize there was no right way or wrong way.
Still, I said: let me give you something special. When it came down to it though, I made it all white. All white with lots of patterns and textures, the curtains had layers of white stripes and there were white flowers embroidered into the comforter. White fluffy pillows, white carpeting, glossy pretty white walls. I wanted to feel really clean in my bedroom. I did not want any of that outside world, that dirty world, coming into our marital bed. None of that fake stuff Thomas liked to watch on late-night cable, and no memories of that day at the dirty magazine shop. It should just be our sanctuary.
I watched him take his clothes off. His nice dress shirt he had worn to the doctor’s office, with the pretty blue stripes and the crisp collar, the one I had bought for him in Lincoln, for all those meetings he had after his dad died. Underneath there was a thick patch of hair in the middle of his chest, and it turned me on, the way the hair spread out like ivy on the side of a building, down his stomach and around his nipples. He unbuckled his belt, and there was the sound of metal hitting metal, and it rang out high and clear like a bell.
“I love you,” I said. I was so nervous.
“I love you, too,” he said. He slipped the pants down over his legs, never taking his eyes away from me the whole while, like if he did I might disappear. He looked serious. His legs were so skinny. I wanted to feel him more than ever in that moment. I spread my legs apart and bent my knees a bit. I tried to relax myself, from my belly on down. Let it flow.
But even as I did that, there was another part of me fighting, squeezing me close inside. A whisper in my ear. Just hold on tight. It will be over soon.
He pulled down his shorts at last, but he was on me in a flash, so I could not see it. I did not know if it had worked or not. There was the usual small, hard feeling against my leg, and then Thomas started kissing me and touching me all over, only breasts and stomach and hips and legs, fast and noisy, with crazy kisses that made smacking sounds.
His lips and his tongue felt nice against my skin. I liked the way he was rushing. I started to get into it. I made a few noises. I did not know where they came from, but there they were.
His thighs were on mine, and he was moving, and he was whispering in my ear, something, my name, his love, words mashed together. Everything was clenched inside me. Moonie, he said, over and over again. And then I became numb.
I held my breath. I held it in, so close inside. I wanted to feel. I prayed to feel.
But there was nothing there. I tried to reach deep and connect with him. But there was just a big gaping hole where a feeling should have been.
Is it possible to physically feel absence? Can you miss a sensation you have never known? It was not just the pressure of him in my body, of course. It was the connection, and it was his joy, or what would have been his joy. More than ever I knew I could not feel. I wondered for a moment if I were dead, or if something had died in me the minute Thomas and I had met. But I knew every part of my body was alive, except for this one part. I had been swollen with his life since I was fifteen years old. I was alive and young and I was healthy and yet I could not feel him. It was broken. We were broken.
I held his arms and he grunted in my ear. I knew he was moving inside me then. He had been for a few minutes. I tried to moan, and the noises would not come out of me, at least not any noise I recognized. He looked me dead in the eye, a look of love, and I turned away. I looked all over the room, anywhere but at him. My eyes felt crazy; it looked like someone was flashing the light switch off and on in the room. Dark, light, slow-motion, super-speed. I thrashed my head to the side, back and forth. I was in charge of what I saw. I could tell my eyes what to do, my neck what to do, my head what to do. Every part of my body except that one part. I kept thrashing. I would not let him concentrate on me. I would not let him see what was really happening.
He thought I was really turned on. He said my name over and over. I looked at the curtains, my beautiful curtains. The stripes were raised. They were not just white. There was a difference. The neighbor’s dog was barking. They let him loose again, I thought. Why don’t they care about that dog like I do? And it was not even mine to love. I started to cry. I could not stop. My cheeks were getting wet. Finally Thomas came. He laid his face next to mine. He felt the wetness, I knew he did. He sighed.
“It’s bigger now,” he said.
“I know it is,” I said.
He put his hand on my cheek. He brushed away a tear with a finger, then held it up to the light and looked at it. Evidence against me. Evidence I could not feel a goddamn thing.
“Why can’t you feel it, then?”
“I do not know, Thomas.”
He put his hand back down on my face and slowly slid it down around my neck.
“It drives me crazy,” he said.
“I know. It drives me crazy, too,” I said.
“I thought you said you didn’t care,” he said. He was trying to catch me. His hand tensed around my neck. I was stuck now. Outside a car sped by, and the sound of the thick motor choked the air.
“No, I just meant that you being sad, it drives me crazy to see you that way.” I was saying the words, but they were coming out all mangled. The pressure of his hand on my throat was starting to hurt bad. I was even tighter inside.
“Maybe you want me to be crazy,” he said. Now both hands were around my neck. My eyes were popping, I could feel them reaching out of my head toward him. I could feel
everything
in that moment. Everything except for his penis, now shrunken down. My eyes were wide open but I could not see.
“How can you not feel me, Moonie?” He was yelling at me, but it sounded quiet, too.
“I do not know,” I said. “I just can’t.” I choked out the words.
“Four and a half inches,” he said. “That’s what he told me.” Thomas started to cry. He loosened his grip. I gasped for air for a minute and then I pushed him off me. I rolled off the bed and onto the floor. I pulled away into the corner of the room. My eyes still felt like they were coming out of my head, like they would never settle back into place. I closed my lids and prayed for everything to go back to normal. My eyes still hurt.
“Just sit there, that’s right, like you always do,” said Thomas. I opened my eyes. He crawled across the bed toward me and then stayed at the end and stared at me. “It’s either you or it’s me,” he said.
I shook my head, I raised my hands. I did not want it to be me, even if it was. “It is not me.”
He reached out and slapped my face. “It is you.”
I put one hand to my cheek. I ran my tongue against the inside of it. I did not taste blood.
“It is not me,” I said.
He slapped my other cheek, harder.
That was it. That was enough. There are things a wife does for her husband, and there are things a husband does for his wife, and this was not one of them, on either end. Outside the neighbor’s dog barked as if he were in pain.
I stood. I walked to the closet. I pulled out a sun-dress and slipped it on over my head. As it fell down my body, Thomas grabbed the back of my head with his hand and pulled. It hurt. I tried to stay calm but inside everything that had been tight suddenly gave way, as if I were a balloon full of water and he had popped me with a needle. But it was not a joyful release. I felt it, I felt it all open up and flood me. Whatever control I had of myself was gone.
I reached behind me and grabbed at his crotch and squeezed. His flesh felt funny in my palm. In the past I had always touched it so tenderly, and it was something special, that it was so delicate. Now it became his weak spot. Finally he let go of my hair. I elbowed him in the gut and he bent over. Then I shoved him. He was easy to take, my husband. He had never been in a fight in his life.
I ran into the living room and grabbed my car keys. Thomas came out after me and bent me over the couch and tried to hold me there. I squirmed against him. I pretended I was a slippery snake, I could feel myself turning, turning, and his hands were useless, they could not hold me. Then I reached out and grabbed the remote control. I turned and started whacking him on the head with it. He looked so surprised that I was doing it, I almost stopped—I loved him, didn’t I? Where had the love gone?—but then I kept going. He put his hands up and backed off against the wall.
“Enough, Moonie!” he said.
I threw the remote control across the room at his head and he ducked but it still bounced off him. I left the house, and he yelled things after me—nasty things—but I could not hear him. I did not care anyway. What he had to say.
I got in the truck and I drove. First I drove around the fields for a while. They were beautiful. Stalks reaching toward the sky, dry to the touch yet full of wetness and life. Every year, the farmers were so full of hope. I had known that hope, even if I did not understand it.
I could turn around, I thought. But I thought about the hitting, the way it was so easy for us to slip into hate. Even if we worked our way out of that hate, now we knew how to get there, where to go. We thought love was easy, but it turned out to be hard. But maybe that was the way it worked sometimes. Maybe we were just normal. That was all Thomas had ever wanted, to be normal.
Next I headed toward the house I had grown up in. The streets were empty. Everything felt empty, this whole town was empty. I wished I were full. I wished I knew how to be that way. I was crying. I heard a gurgle in my throat. I did not know where it had come from. Where would I go? Who would have me? My mother would have me, but it would be hard there. There would be so much
noise
. There would be battles, the never-ending war of mothers and daughters.
I skipped the turnoff and headed toward the diner. I was gasping. The tears on my face were so hot and salty I wondered for a moment if I were bleeding instead. I cannot describe what I was feeling as anything other than tragic. He was the man I loved for so long, and suddenly he was something else. I did not think of my love as a light switch, but there it was, right in front of me. Up or down. Up to me.
18.
A
nd just like that, things between me and Thomas had changed forever. I moved back in the apartment above the diner. Timber’s dad let me move in quietly. No one in town knew I was there at first, except for my family and Thomas. I did not go anywhere much at all. Sometimes I sat downstairs at the diner and listened to the farmers talk about harvest. I tried not to stay too long. I wanted to go back upstairs and think. I got angrier every day. I thought about leaving town, but where would I go? And it was not in me anyway. To leave.