Stephen King: A Good Marriage

A cat was stroking her cheek with a velvet paw. Very lightly but very insistently.

Darcy tried to brush it away, but her hand seemed to weigh a thousand pounds. And it was a dream, anyway—surely had to be. They had no cat. Although if there are enough cat hairs in a house, there must be one around somewhere, her struggling-to-wake mind told her, quite reasonably.

Now the paw was stroking her bangs and the forehead beneath, and it couldn’t be a cat because cats don’t talk.

“Wake up, Darce. Wake up, hon. We have to talk.”

The voice, as soft and soothing as the touch. Bob’s voice. And not a cat’s paw but a hand. Bob’s hand. Only it couldn’t be him, because he was in Montp—

Her eyes flew open and he was there, all right, sitting beside her on the bed, stroking her face and hair as he sometimes did when she was feeling under the weather. He was wearing a three-piece Jos. A. Bank suit (he bought all his suits there, calling it—another of his semi-amusing sayings—“Joss-Bank”), but the vest was unbuttoned and his collar undone. She could see the end of his tie poking out of his coat pocket like a red tongue. His midsection bulged over his belt and her first coherent thought was You really have to do something about your weight, Bobby, that isn’t good for your heart .

“Wha—” It came out an almost incomprehensible crow-croak.

He smiled and kept stroking her hair, her cheek, the nape of her neck. She cleared her throat and tried again.

“What are you doing here, Bobby? It must be—” She raised her head to look at his clock, which of course did no good. She had turned its face to the wall.

He glanced down at his watch. He had been smiling as he stroked her awake, and was smiling now. “Quarter to three. I sat in my stupid old motel room for almost two hours after we talked, trying to convince myself that what I was thinking couldn’t be true. Only I didn’t get to where I am by dodging the truth. So I jumped in the ’Burban and hit the road. No traffic whatsoever. I don’t know why I don’t do more traveling late at night. Maybe I will. If I’m not in Shawshank, that is. Or New Hampshire State Prison in Concord. But that’s kind of up to you. Isn’t it?”

His hand, stroking her face. The feel of it was familiar, even the smell of it was familiar, and she had always loved it. Now she didn’t, and it wasn’t just the night’s wretched discoveries. How could she have never noticed how complacently possessive that stroking touch was? You’re an old bitch, but you’re my old bitch, that touch now seemed to say. Only this time you piddled on the floor while I was gone, and that’s bad. In fact, it’s a Big Bad.

She pushed his hand away and sat up. “What in God’s name are you talking about? You come sneaking in, you wake me up—”

“Yes, you were sleeping with the light on—I saw it as soon as I turned up the driveway.” There was no guilt in his smile. Nothing sinister, either. It was the same sweet-natured Bob Anderson smile she’d loved almost from the first. For a moment her memory flickered over how gentle he’d been on their wedding night, not hurrying her. Giving her time to get used to the new thing.

Which he will do now, she thought.

“You never sleep with the light on, Darce. And although you’ve got your nightgown on, you’re wearing your bra under it, and you never do that, either. You just forgot to take it off, didn’t you? Poor darlin. Poor tired girl.”

For just a moment he touched her breast, then—thankfully—took his hand away.

“Also, you turned my clock around so you wouldn’t have to look at the time. You’ve been upset, and I’m the cause. I’m sorry, Darce. From the bottom of my heart.”

“I ate something that disagreed with me.” It was all she could think of.

He smiled patiently. “You found my special hiding place in the garage.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, you did a good job of putting things back where you found them, but I’m very careful about such things, and the strip of tape I put on above the pivot in the baseboard was broken. You didn’t notice that, did you? Why would you? It’s the kind of tape that’s almost invisible once it’s on. Also, the box inside was an inch or two to the left of where I put it—where I always put it.”

He reached to stroke her cheek some more, then withdrew his hand (seemingly without rancor) when she turned her face away.

“Bobby, I can see you’ve got a bee in your bonnet about something, but I honestly don’t know what it is. Maybe you’ve been working too hard.”

His mouth turned down in a moue of sadness, and his eyes were moistening with tears. Incredible. She actually had to stop herself from feeling sorry for him. Emotions were only another human habit, it seemed, as conditioned as any other. “I guess I always knew this day would come.”

“I haven’t got the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

He sighed. “I had a long ride back to think about this, honey. And the longer I thought, the harder I thought, the more it seemed like there was really only one question that needed an answer: WWDD.”

“I don’t—”

“Hush,” he said, and put a gentle finger on her lips. She could smell soap. He must have showered before he left the motel, a very Bob-like thing to do. “I’ll tell you everything. I’ll make a clean breast. I think that, down deep, I’ve always wanted you to know.”

He’d always wanted her to know? Dear God. There might be worse things waiting, but this was easily the most terrible thing so far. “I don’t want to know. Whatever it is you’ve got stuck in your head, I don’t want to know.”

“I see something different in your eyes, honey, and I’ve gotten very good at reading women’s eyes. I’ve become something of an expert. WWDD stands for What Would Darcy Do. In this case, What Would Darcy Do if she found my special hiding place, and what’s inside my special box. I’ve always loved that box, by the way, because you gave it to me.”

He leaned forward and planted a quick kiss between her brows. His lips were moist. For the first time in her life, the touch of them on her skin revolted her, and it occurred to her that she might be dead before the sun came up. Because dead women told no tales. Although, she thought, he’d try to make sure I didn’t “suffer.”

“First, I asked myself if the name Marjorie Duvall would mean anything to you. I would have liked to answer that question with a big ole no, but sometimes a fellow has to be a realist. You’re not the world’s number one news junkie, but I’ve lived with you long enough to know that you follow the main stories on TV and in the news paper. I thought you’d know the name, and even if you didn’t, I thought you’d recognize the picture on the driver’s license. Besides, I said to myself, won’t she be curious as to why I have those ID cards? Women are always curious. Look at Pandora.”

Or Bluebeard’s wife, she thought. The woman who peeked into the locked room and found the severed heads of all her predecessors in matrimony.

“Bob, I swear to you I don’t have any idea what you’re tal—”

“So the first thing I did when I came in was to boot up your computer, open Firefox—that’s the search engine you always use—and check the history.”

“The what?”

He chuckled as if she’d gotten off an exceptionally witty line. “You don’t even know. I didn’t think you did, because every time I check, everything’s there. You never clear it!” And he chuckled again, as a man will do when a wife exhibits a trait he finds particularly endearing.