Tara Ison - Ball - Stories

She puts away the crystal, the china, because he hates it when she leaves things dirty or lying around, scratches the dead, smoky votives free of clinging wax and puts them to soak, polishes the sterling flatware by hand, accidentally slices a fingertip replacing the carving knife in its box, and when she comes into the living room she finds him on the living room couch, asleep, fully dressed and curled into an anguished fetal ball. He has made up a bed for himself with Esther’s little girl-sized Beauty and the Beast sheets, a scratchy sofa pillow under his head. She, as she has done for the last five nights, goes to sleep in their double bed, alone. She puts her fingertip with its tiny, trifling cut in her mouth, sucks. She curls onto her side, presses her knees together, feels her naked thighs feel each other, hard. It hits her in full. She’s soiled it, their house, their bedroom, their bed. She knows he’s still seeing her naked at two in the afternoon, their flowered bedsheets grabbed to her breast and her most extravagant lace bra and panties on the floor. He still hears the voice behind him from the dark loom of their walk-in closet, such nice closets this house has, a selling point for them six years ago, her pregnant with Esther and both of them so interested in cabinetry, termite inspections, the condition of carpet pile. She still hears that voice, too, male, nervous, stupid— Hey, man, you caught us, I’m sorry, man , a sheepish huff of laughter — and thinks, What was I doing, what was I thinking? Wrapped in the cheap percale sheets he’d always hated but she’d insisted on buying— Honey, can’t you make the bed in the mornings, how long does that take, really ? he’d complained, Hey, I have to be at work earlier than you do , she’d carped right back, You make the damn bed —two ugly sets for the price of one. She’d been trying to save money, she wanted to have another baby, have four of them together in this magazine house, symmetrical and sheltered. But now she knows he still smells it in this house, in their bed. The acidic, musky leak of what she’s done. The stain it’s left. He can’t be expected to forgive because of a silly pear tart and lobster risotto. He can’t be expected to ever breathe that taint in again, of course not. What was she thinking, pinning hope on that one take-it-all-back meal, that one weak try at cleansing, restoring, that one sad chalkboard sweep?

She gets up early to make him breakfast, another thing she’d let go of doing but it’ll be easier now that she’s going to quit her job, won’t be working anymore, and finds the Beast wrapped around his neck, Beauty in a kicked-off crumple at his feet.

No one could ever love you as much as I do , he’d said when he proposed, the sweetest, purest vow she’d ever heard, a happy promise, all that love.

WHEN HE COMEShome a few nights later, he sniffs at the scent of blister and singe. He doesn’t look at her, just around the house, sniffing, a question on his face. She opens the sliding glass door with a sort of bow and he follows her out to the backyard, where she shows him the barbecue pit’s fluttery, charred mound: two flowered, percale double-sized sets, fitted and flat, pillow-slips, matching comforter, all now blackened with flame or drifted away as smoke. She shows him around the side of the house, near the trash cans: the maple bed frame, the mattress and box spring, all disassembled and dragged outside on her back, now waiting for Goodwill. She’s purified the tainted air. She’s cleansed the soul of the house. He kicks at the barbecue pit heap; ashes float, something cracks. He follows her back into the house, then, yes, into their bedroom, where he stops this time at the sight of newness, the alkaline smell of laundry detergent and carpet deodorant and lemon-oiled wood. A new oak bedroom set, a California king mattress this time, new pima cotton sheets and duvet with fresh sateen comforter, everything unused, unslept in, unsoiled.

You will be the only man who will ever lie in this bed , it all announces, Please .

They get into the new bed that night, the sheets’ uncrushed fibers scraping their elbows. They get in wearing long T-shirts and underwear, but they get in together. They get in together, but on opposite sides of its wide, crisp, California-king expanse, and they stay there, a gutter of space still between them. He is turned protectively away from her, like children are taught in grade school to curve away from bomb-blasted windows, from flying and dangerous debris. Protect your vulnerable organs, your face. But she wants to touch him; she wants him to touch her. She wants him pressing her knees apart, her thighs. She slides her hand across the bed toward him, she sees his shoulders cringe away, and she stops. He might succumb to the pressure of new sheets, yes, he might lay himself on those virgin sheets free of sweat, hairs, flakes of skin, but no, he won’t bear even the slightest touch of her hand. New sheets, bed, what a ludicrous, superficial try. Every inch of her skin, she understands now, finally, is stained with someone else’s breath, tongue, come— You’re a bitch, you know that? he’d yelled, throwing shirts and slacks in the duffel bag, The mother of my kids, you didn’t think about that? — and she wonders how to burn the reek of that away, sear from her every dirty layer, cell, molecule ever possessed by someone else. She can’t, and it takes seven years for a body to regenerate itself, cell by cell, marrow and organs and bone; can she live this way for seven years, her children lured away from her— They’re my kids, too , she’d thought back then, in protest, thinks even now — and every night having to face the thickening fence of her husband’s back, until she’s clean and new again? If she has to, she will, but he can’t. He doesn’t deserve that, any of this, he doesn’t deserve a used, handled, loaned-out wife. A wife she made common— fucking bitch , s lut —public.

No one could ever love you as much as I do , it’s still true now, she knows, despite what she’s done and although they’re sharing the house, the bed, like strangers. It will always be true; he will always be true. So what was she doing, what made her do it, and how does she show him she believes him, that she knows he’s right, and that she’s still, forever, his?

SHE WEARS ONLYa nightshirt a few weeks later, one of his, an old-fashioned pajamas’ top cut like a man’s shirt, soft checked flannel, with a pocket and three buttons down the front. Her drawerfuls of lingerie, all that fancy lace, won’t do right now. It didn’t take a holiday or special occasion; he’d come home once or twice a month with small bow’d boxes and tissue-stuffed gift bags crammed with lace, frills, gauze, pricey little wisps for her to wear. She’d model for him, walk around the house like that, No one will ever love you, this body, all of this body as much as I do , he’d say, his eyebrows making it a mock-threat, putting his hands, his mouth, on her breasts, pushing fingers between her legs, until Esther was maybe twelve or eighteen months old, then she’d just wear those things underneath her clothes, give him a flash in the morning as she left for work. But after Justin was born, two years ago, she had trouble losing the weight. She’d always been full-breasted, full-hipped, Voluptuous , he used to say, making chomping noises, but after having Esther and then Justin, it was hard. Her flesh looked awful, she thought, clumsy and bulging against net fabrics and elastics and lacy strings— Honey, you’re so beautiful, what about those diet shakes, what about aerobics? he’d suggest oh so helpfully — and all that lingerie, forget it, she could barely squeeze into her old suits for work. She tried, but nothing she tried had any effect. What about getting up early to go running?