Джонатан Кэрролл: Mama Bruise

She was the first to fall. As she walked the dog one night, it saw something off to the side and bolted. The strength of the big animal’s lunge on the leash spun her violently around and she lost her balance. Falling into that awful moment we’ve all known, the “I can’t stop this” moment, her only thought was: Not my head. Not my head — But the drop was brutal and when she went down her head hit the curbstone. Luckily she wore a thick woolen cap, so the blow was softened. But her body took a full hit. She stayed down on the pavement long moments—breathless, shaken, and heart-poundingly disoriented. The dog stood calm nearby, staring at her.

When she got back to the apartment her stricken face said it all. Doing the dishes at the kitchen sink he looked up, saw her, and hurried over. “What’s wrong? What happened?” He made her sit down and drink a cup of tea. Unsteadily, she recounted the trauma. Talking it over with him helped a little to lessen the aftershocks but not enough. A fall like that always reminds us how, in a second, life can skid off the road straight into our very own black hole. Down deep we know sooner or later it will, God forbid. A trip, a bad stumble, stagger, and fall shouts the ugly fact we’re never really in charge or control of our steps, our days, our lives. No, not really.

As soon as she woke the next morning, she walked naked into the bathroom to look at her body in the full-length mirror there.

He stayed in bed as long as he could stand it, waiting for her to come out and tell him what she saw. But the anticipation was too great and he had to get up and go see.

She stood in front of the mirror, twisting from side to side, hands on her hips. The livid black bruise on her thigh was about ten inches long and spelled out in perfectly shaped block letters: MAMA BRUISE.

He winced when he saw it. “Jesus!”

“Where is he?” she asked quietly, still looking in the mirror.

“I guess in the kitchen in his bed.”

She looked at him. “Are you sure?”

“No. Do you know what you did? What might have caused it?”

She shook her head. “No, nothing—I did everything as I always do. Gave him the same amount of food, took him out when he likes to go… but then this. It’s getting worse. You know that—it’s getting worse.”

“What can we do? We’ve tried everything but nothing works. He just seems to get angrier. It’s almost every day there’s something that bothers him.”

It had begun weeks before, on the night they went to the opera. In the excitement of preparing for the special night out, they’d forgotten to feed the dog. During intermission, the man went to the refreshment stand to buy two glasses of champagne. Taking his wallet out of his pocket, he saw written in what looked like thick, purple magic marker on the back of his right hand the word LADDIE. He stood there, scowling. When and why the hell did he write that there? He had absolutely no idea. It was just weird. Wetting his left thumb, he tried to wipe the word off but to no avail. Days later, it was still there, although it had just recently slowly begun to fade.

That night, after they returned home late from the opera, the man was opening a can of the dog’s food and half-consciously noticed the name on the label: LADDIE.

A week later it was the cookies. For his birthday, she baked a dozen of his favorite chocolate chip cookies and left a plate of them fresh out of the oven on a corner of the kitchen table to surprise him when he came in from work.

When he entered the living room she raised her eyebrows in anticipation. “Did you go in the kitchen?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Didn’t you see what was on the table in there?”

He looked puzzled. “No—there was nothing.”

“What?” She got up from the couch and crossed the room to enter the kitchen. The table was empty. No cookies, no green plate. She looked quickly around, then down at the ground just in case. For a moment she questioned whether or not… Damn it, of course she did! She’d baked the cookies half an hour ago and put a plate of them out on the table for him when he got home. Happy birthday. The room even still smelled of baking. So where the hell were they? The dog lay on its bed at the far end of the room, watching them. She looked its way, wondering for a second if maybe it had eaten them. But if that were so, where was the plate?

“This is nuts! Where did they go?”

He stood behind her. “Where did what go?”

“Cookies! I made cookies for your birthday and— Wait a minute.” She went to a cabinet over the sink and opened it. Inside on a shelf was a plate with the rest of the cookies. That didn’t calm her. She pointed to them and made a face. “There you go—that’s the rest. But where are the damned ones I put on the table?”

He had to fight to keep from smiling. She was getting pretty wrought up over… uh… cookies.

“Oh, anyway…” She moved over to the broom closet and, opening the door, took out a big, gray, nondescript box with a red bow tied around it. “Happy birthday, sweetheart. I hope you like it.”

But she already knew he would because he’d been talking about getting a really good cowboy hat for months. She thought they looked dorky on anybody except cowboys a hundred years ago. But he loved them so she kept her opinion to herself and bought him a genuine, top-of-the-line Stetson Silverbelly 10X Shasta Fur Felt Hat—the gold standard of cowboy hats.

Taking the box over to the table, he put it there and sat down in front of it, placing his hands on the red bow. He grinned and she was really excited to see how he would react when he saw what it was, although she kept thinking about those stupid cookies.

“What is it?”

“See for yourself, birthday boy.”

“You always give great presents.”

“Open it.” She stood a few feet away from him, so at that angle she couldn’t quite see into the box.

He pulled slowly on the red ribbon and it slid off. He took off the top of the box and looked inside, his expression all happy anticipation—for a few seconds. Then it changed. It torqued into a sort of quizzical smile, an “am I being tricked?” smile. An “I don’t get it” smile.

She read the confusion immediately and came over to look. Inside the box was a green plate with five chocolate chip cookies on it.

The couple looked at each other skeptically, wondering if a trick was being played. Had he discovered her present and slipped the cookies into the box to give her a nasty little freak-out? From his perspective—was she playing some kind of not terribly funny prank on him on his birthday?

They’d been going through a rocky period lately, and at one point had only just brought their boat into shore before their emotional storms grew fierce enough to capsize them. Sometimes they still looked at each other warily, sadly, worriedly, both wondering if their marriage was strong enough to survive. In happier times they would have taken this moment to look slyly but delightedly at each other and assumed the best kind of joke was being played on them by their partner. But now, if this “what’s in the box?” was a joke, their gut reactions were mixed.

“There’s only five.”

“What?”

She pointed at the cookies. “There’s only five there. One is missing. I put six cookies on that plate.”

They looked around the kitchen, as if the missing cookie might have escaped the plate while it was being put inside the box.