Dawn Raffel: In the Year of Long Division

There was noise in the hall, a deep cut of light beneath the door.

“The trick,” she said, “is what again? Refresh me, please.”

“Remember this: She was good enough to lend you her bed,” he said.

“Stay put,” he said.

Rita was stepping on her — or someone’s — thrown-off clothes. The rug was bunched. Nob, edge, bristly surface, fingers to the bureau top; things revealed themselves by touch: cold throat of a vial, head of a pin, the absences made plain by implication. Lace — what felt to her like lace — was at her wrist.

Words were said. One of them might have been dear .

“What are they saying?” Rita said.

“Sleep,” he said.

“His as well as hers,” she said.

“Theirs,” she said. “Their bed.”

“The trick is ‘go to sleep,’” he said.

“Dolan?” she said.

His head was on the pillow, as best she could tell.

“Where were you?” she said. She fingered something hard. “Where are you?”

“You would think you would know,” he said, “that you gave her a scare.”

Rita identified blades, as of quality scissors, snappable. “Dear,” she said, “who’s scared?”

BREAKFAST was boiled: coffee, oats — the latter congealing in the last clean pot. Every utensil was crusted, mealy. Dolan had gone. Vera had gone along in the car, her car. They had gone to get eggs, milk, gauze.

“Cowboy,” Vera’s husband said. He raised his cup.

Rita blew over the rim of hers.

“Do you know what I mean?” he said.

“Strong,” he said.

“I’m not in the mood to talk,” she said. “Turn some music on.”

He drank.

“So tell me, then,” she said. “Do you know what they’re doing? Say it.”

“They’ve gone to get more food,” he said. “Victuals. And something for the wrist.”

“Provisions,” she said.

“Fog,” he said. The slope appeared empty.

“Awful,” she said.

“For now,” he said. Meat, sweat, curdling cream, a soupy, florid perfume — the house stank of everything in it. “Rita,” he said, “do you know what it is that Vera says is awful?”

Rita turned a cuff. “This?” she said.

“Whose shirt do you have on?” he said.

“It’s hers,” she said.

“Mine,” he said.

“When did they say they’d be back?” she said.

“Who knows?” he said. “More?”

She touched her wrist. It oozed.

“Please,” she said. “More hot.”

He led her to the sink in the kitchen. Overfilled. The counters overtaken.

Her hands were on a sponge, a dish, a bowl.

“Leave it be,” he said.

“I can’t,” she said. “Can I?”

Sock against sock on the way to the bathroom.

Blush was in the sink — great, violent smudges of feminine color.

The faucet had power.

“Piping,” he said.

A steam came up.

“Okay?” he said.

His face was near to hers, sinewed, damp, a foreign expression in the eyes. “Say it,” he said. “Do you know what I want?”

“Not this,” she said.

“Clearly not this,” she said.

He let his breath out thickly. His breath smelled of her.

“Infected,” she said.

A slam seemed to come from the house’s entry.

“You,” she said. She held his wrist.

“No, you,” he said. “Why can’t you even call me by my God-given name?”

SHE flushed: cream, pins — safety and bobby — gel and balm, lace she had spoiled discreetly in the night. It was exactly as Vera had said: a reverie of flushing. Pungent. Rita rubbed her eyes. She tossed down the last of the fluid in a bottle, wiped her reddened mouth. She closed the jars, replaced them, empty, on top of the bureau: Nothing would seem amiss at a glance.

She opened things, slitted things.

“What took so long?” she said.

Stride, sweat, height — it was Dolan in the door frame, Dolan in the room.

She was holding a brush as if looking for hairs.

He took it right out of her hand. “That husband of Vera’s,” he said.

“He knows,” she said.

“What do you think he knows?” he said.

A painting — an oil — looked crooked on the wall.

“Why don’t you lower your voice?” she said.

“Too late,” he said. “Who are you really jealous of?”

Her back was to the bed.

“Did I warn you?” he said. “Don’t say I never did.”

THERE should have been some kind of scenic relief: snow, wind, hail, a bloody commotion on the slope. But it was nightfall again. There were only the people in the house — the gaping brook, the treeless runs, the localest of elements were too removed to be of any consequence to them.

Parquet was at their legs. They sat there, chairless, eating with their fingers out of cartons. A vase had been felled. A bird had flown into the window, snapping its neck, but this was not evident, dark as it was. Wads of gauze were strewn about.

“This is what you wanted,” Vera said. “I believe.”

“Is it?” Rita said.

“What is it you believe?” Vera’s husband said to Rita.

Dolan said, “Salt.”

Vera’s husband was licking his fingers. “Taste and smell,” he said. “The same. One is like the other.”

Rita was using a hand, an arm. Sauce was on her skin.

“Do I owe you?” Dolan said.

The coil of Vera’s hair had come undone.

“How much is the damage?” Dolan said.

Vera’s husband said, “Plenty.”

“For what?” Vera said. “The food? The tow? That awful, awful incident?”

Rita filled her mouth.

There was a spitting in the grate.

Vera’s husband said, “A wager is a wager.”

“A what?” Rita said. “A what is a what?”

“Right,” Dolan said.

Vera set a carton of rice on a square of the floor. “Translate,” she said.

Rita was looking at Dolan. She tore off a festering gauze. “Translation,” she said.

Vera said, “Stop. Just stop.”

Dolan took his wallet out. “Get alcohol,” he said.

SO they brought out the sheets.

There were duties to attend to, involving the ashes, sinks, the bed; there were chores with which a guest was expected to help. The house was of a type, after all, that was not meant for living.

The women had done what they could with rags.

The men were hauling gear; they were tying the skis to the racks with rope.

It was the women who would be the last to leave. “A form of protection,” Vera said: sheet by sheet, room by room, every stick of furniture, Vera at an end and Rita at another — fresh, these sheets. Oak went white. Things would be tidy, Vera said; and quiet, Rita said, and dry — as if pristine, as if, in fact, untouched.

SHE is every place there is inside my house. She is here inside the cases with the books and files and records; she is rattling in the cupboards with the saucers and the cups. She is in the window sashes. She is dripping from the faucets; she is creaking in the hinges; she is matted in the brushes, tooth and fingernail and hair. She is in the dresser drawer with the bras and socks and underpants, the panty hose, the pills. She is blowing through the radiators, waiting in the hamper, frosting up the Frigidaire. She is in my husband’s closet with the ties and the trousers. She is in between the sheets and on the pillows, breathing breath.

I NEVER answer the phone.

WHEN my sister sends a letter, I save the envelope.

SHE is sitting at my kitchen table taking soup.

I say, “A little table talk.” I say, “What happened to your hair?”

She says, “Just look why don’t you maybe at what happened to my wrist.”

I say, “You’d better see a dentist.”