Mark Doten - The Infernal

We kicked it around for a while. Where we should call for a reservation, and the odds that if we got one we’d manage to line up the babysitter in time.

“We’ll get her,” I said. “We always do.”

“She’s got a boyfriend now.”

“Jenny does?”

Shawna nodded.

“You sure?”

“You seem very interested in this, Tom.”

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she said, “I’ll go up right now and change. Let’s just figure out where we’re going, then I’ll change.”

She took a breath — and there was a look. She was holding her eyes very still, and something was going on below the surface — something turning faster than you could see.

She said, “You remember what you said last year when you called? You said next year you’d be back, and the day we’d have would be the most special possible.”

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something she was trying to summon up or to let go.

I tossed out some restaurant ideas.

And bing-bang-boom, she knocked them down.

I gave an ice cube a festive crunch of the molars.

Look, I’m not stupid, I know it was mostly my fault. Wedding anniversary, and here I was, no cards, flowers, or reservations, unshowered, unshorn, nails even a little long. In short, all boxes historically the gentleman’s to check unchecked. But I couldn’t help thinking: Once I’d apologized and she’d agreed to go out — once I’d explained about the money — shouldn’t we have tried to pull our shit together? Or if she had no intention of agreeing to anything, couldn’t we be honest about that?

I opened my Swiss army knife — the clipper tool — and went to work on my nails. I got into a little rhythm. Suggestion— clip. Rejection— clip.

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I knew soon enough she’d just throw it in my face and say, “You choose.” I didn’t want it thrown in my face like that, but I wanted to start nudging the conversation in a certain direction. See, I’d been thinking about a place down in the city my buddy Michael had recommended. Best food he’d ever tasted. The Gallant Arms. My best buddy Michael, he’s dead now, but he used to talk about the Gallant Arms all the time. We’d be on night patrol and he’d say, I wish we was at the Gallant Arms right now. Or staring down some MREs, he’d say, The Gallant Arms this is NOT. So as the back-and-forth continued, as I trotted out our classic joints, which she claimed to have forgotten, or said were probably out of business — and for all I knew, they were —I was thinking about the restaurant with the best food and the best service , an establishment that Michael had once said was the place to go if you need to save your marriage.

The clippers were poised over the last nail — my right thumbnail.

But I had no intention of clipping my right thumbnail.

I waited. I kept waiting until I could feel something in the air cracking — the kind of crack you can worm your way through.

“ You choose,” she said.

“The Gallant Arms,” I said.

“Never heard of it.”

I snapped shut the knife. And something must have flashed in my face, because she said, “Hey!” Then, more gently, “Where is it?”

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“I don’t know. It was Michael’s place. He said it was good. It’s around here. I’ll look it up.”

I was opening the browser when she came up behind me. She put her hands on my shoulders. “Just stop. Relax a minute.”

“I need to look it up.”

“No computer for a minute.”

I pushed the keyboard away. “Just so we both understand — and I know we understand — time is of the essence. If we’re going to do this.”

She was working my shoulders, then she moved to the upper back. “Let’s just be calm for a moment. Please? For me. One thing at a time.” She rubbed alongside my spine with the ball of her hand. “Feel good?”

I tried my best to lean into it, one of those world-famous back rubs.

“How’s the leg?” she said. “You need me to rewrap it?” she said.

“Already done. Things are good,” I said. “It’s been a good day.”

Then — all at once — I surrendered to it. To my wife’s back rub. And I felt all my bad psychic shit (e.g., the desire to keep being the huge asshole I knew perfectly well I was being) drain away. Her hands on me, plus the way she’d expressed concern , plus the psychic crap draining, our son asleep upstairs, and this drink, and this anniversary — all of it together kicked open a door inside and at last: I saw myself perfectly. I mean, I knew why I hadn’t taken action on the Gallant Arms earlier — weeks, maybe months back. The truth was, I didn’t think I deserved my marriage, my wife and child. Sure, that’s therapy talking, but why go to therapy if you don’t take it in, internalize it, every once in a while? You sit on the couch week after week — I hadn’t been in a while, but maybe that’s when the lightbulb comes best, when you haven’t been in a while — you just sit there on the couch and you try to listen and understand, but you don’t listen. You don’t understand. And then, at last, in your daily life , you understand.

You see?

All at once I understood.

Of course, there’s the question of my childhood. My mother’s early death, my father’s misery. Sometimes when I think about the war, I think, Wow, that’s the best thing that could’ve happened to me. The necessary thing. Now at last I’m in therapy, or I was, with a shot at addressing all the residual childhood bullshit. The open casket. My father bawling. Those months he stumbled from living room to bedroom, my arm around his waist, holding him up WEL9 P8RT 3XTO CMETF30E1BCCCERA# OTE5SBR=CKSOAS/OMQ0T

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All this to say: there are things in my life I haven’t processed fully.

The baby monitor crackled. And I could feel it in her fingers — that it’s like her bones lit up.

“C’mon, he’s fine,” I said.

“You didn’t even look.”

“It’s sitting behind me across the room. No, I didn’t look at it. But I happen to be really, really, really enjoying your back rub.”

She lifted her hands off me, and I heard her cross the room and take it off the TV.

“Bring it to here,” I said, still not turning.

She set it down — too hard — on my desk.

There he was on the little black-and-white screen, sleeping on his side, blankets pulled to his chin.

She went upstairs.

“Babe,” I called after her. “I’m right, right? He’s fine?”

I heard her open the door and go into the bedroom. I watched on-screen my son’s sleeping form, but my wife wasn’t where I could see her. She was in the room with Charlie, sure, but back where the camera couldn’t see.

Here’s the thing that gets her — gets us — so stressed sometimes. It’s what the pediatricians say. That on top of everything else, he’s got this condition where when it gets aggravated, he can start to cough — real bad. And if he’s coughing and stuff comes up while he’s on his back, he can even die if you don’t clear the windpipe. Keep him on his side all the time, no problem. But there’s multiple disabilities, and it’s not comfortable for him to be on his side twenty-four hours a day. He’ll go nuts, in fact. Who wouldn’t? And he can’t be on his stomach, because of the gastric bypass button. So you have to keep an eye on him, and sometimes put your arm under his body and turn him until the coughing stops.