You enter from the garage to the wag of dog tails and the sound of their sharp nails on hardwood. Work has drained and exhausted you. You have reflux, eyestrain, a slight throbbing in the temples. You say hello to your wife and meet her at the kitchen sink for a kiss.
She does not keep her back to you and continue peeling carrots. She doesn’t ask dryly how your day went because she detects it in your eyes and spares you from answering this question you don’t want to answer.
The days are getting longer. Evening light shines through the windows around your breakfast nook, revealing streaks in the glass. A flower vase sits atop the round wooden table, its arrangement running out of water, dry petals catching low sunbeams, turning slowly into silhouette.
Your wife does not tell you how tired she is, and you don’t rifle through the mail. You don’t read the balance on the credit card bill and then mix yourself a stiff cocktail without further delay.
Your wife is beautiful in any version of this story. Curly auburn hair cascades around her face. Thin brows arch dramatically over blue-gray eyes. High cheekbones, red lipstick and a smile that brightens all manner of dreariness, if she chooses to favor you with it.
She chooses to favor you with it. You touch the nape of her neck and pull her against your chest a moment.
You do not sit on a barstool with your martini and your cashews. You don’t ask her halfheartedly if she needs help with dinner and she doesn’t tell you no, that she has it under control.
You grab an apron from the pantry and ease her away from the cutting board. You chop vegetables, wash the skillet and mixing bowl.
She does not start clinking around stainless-steel pots and utensils more loudly than seems necessary, and you don’t ask her if something is the matter. She doesn’t tell you it’s nothing. She doesn’t dry her hands on the dishrag and shoot you that icy look that scares the hell out of you, the one that says she knows more about you than you know about you, the look that says she is reconsidering everything.
A wiser man once told you, “You have to think about what’s best for everyone involved, not just what’s best for you.” These words ring true, no matter how much you try to bargain with them.
The closer you study the pattern of your granite countertops, the more different colors you see. Tiny flecks of green, orange and gold hide within the larger patches of white, silver and black. Sometimes you mistake these bits of color for crumbs or smeared food and try to wipe them away.
You do not go upstairs now to see your kids, find them in their usual spots staring at their screens. You don’t nag them about homework or chores, and your younger daughter doesn’t groan and pull a pillow over her head.
You remain downstairs with your wife until dinner bakes in the oven. You pour wine, topping off her glass. The two of you step onto the porch, take a seat and hold hands across the metal table. Each of you has a small dog in your lap. The clouds blush with sunset, and a hawk perches in the trees beyond your back fence.
Your younger daughter comes downstairs and joins you, and you kiss her forehead. She is adorable in any version of this story. Straight, silky brown hair and round cheeks you can’t help but touch. Thick eyebrows bent in the middle like Audrey Hepburn. Crooked little teeth in a perfect U-shaped smile.
You do not take this moment for granted and stare blankly at the sky.
You remain in the moment, content now in the solace of your family.
Your wife does not grow annoyed with your inattention, slip off to peek at her phone or busy herself in the kitchen.
The kitchen timer goes off.
“What would you do without me?” your wife once mused in the grocery store checkout line. She had remembered a small but crucial detail that never would have entered your mind.
“I wouldn’t be without you,” you had replied.
You call your older daughter for dinner and ask her to set the table. She is lovely in any version of this story. Curly brown hair cut short. Gray-blue eyes like her mother’s. Elegant cheekbones and a delicate little ski-jump at the end of her nose.
She doesn’t stiffen or pull away when you kiss her head. Hers is a difficult and delicate age. So many things she can’t discuss with you or your wife, so many things beyond your control. You don’t let your worry show.
No matter how tired you felt when they were little, rocking them as babies, pushing swings, chasing in circles, carrying on shoulders, running behind bicycles, you always knew that one day you would miss those times. “Stop growing!” you begged your older daughter. “You’re the perfect size.”
“But I can’t stop growing.”
She sets the table without argument or complaint. Your wife spoons food onto plates and you set them on the placemats.
You are not having your third drink already. You haven’t downed a martini and a glass of red wine before dinner.
You are sipping your first glass. You carry the bottle to the table. The four of you talk about your days.
You do not eat dinner sullenly, annoyed about your wife’s coldness. Your older daughter doesn’t a make snide remark to her sister, and your younger one doesn’t lash back. You don’t sit passively and drink wine as your wife tries and fails to enact peace and you don’t finally snap, ordering both girls to silence, telling them the sarcasm and yelling must stop, or they will lose their screens. Your wife doesn’t scowl at you. “Oh, I see, I’m the problem.” You don’t say this.
Perhaps your older daughter is snide to her sister. Typical for thirteen. Your younger one raises her voice. Understandable. Your wife shushes them, and you change the subject, asking if anyone would like to play ping-pong after dinner. Your younger daughter jumps at the invitation. Your older daughter says she will join you if she gets to pick the music.
Your kids do not slip away after dessert, leaving dirty plates and glasses behind. Your wife doesn’t follow them upstairs without a word. They don’t leave you in the kitchen with your empty wine glass, which you then refill, polishing off the bottle. You don’t contemplate the wrecked kitchen and say to yourself, “I am so damn tired of this bullshit.”
The family assembles in the basement rec room. Your older daughter dances around to her Twenty One Pilots record and your younger one aces you with a top-spin to your backhand. Your wife grins at you and cuddles a dog, cooing to it, reminding you of the young woman who stole your heart eighteen years ago, because she is still that woman and you are still that man, only kinder and wiser. When you step by her to retrieve a stray ping-pong, she takes your arm and pulls you in for a kiss. Your older daughter covers her eyes and says, “Ewe!”
You are not at the kitchen sink scrubbing noodles from the bottom of a pan.
In your single days, the men at your office would complain about marriage. “Don’t do it,” they told you, knowing you would anyway. When you met the girl of your dreams, you never doubted you would be happy forever. The married men congratulated you. Another poor sucker, they probably thought. “I’ll be OK,” you told yourself. “I’m not like those guys.”
And you aren’t.
You do not go upstairs now and change from your work clothes. You don’t avoid the sound of the TV or the sight of your wife, who hasn’t spoken to you since dinner.
You are in the basement, announcing that it’s time to get ready for bed. The girls protest because they are having fun, and this reminds you of your own childhood, how you always begged for another half hour. “Tomorrow night,” you promise. You turn off the stereo and slide the Ramones record into its sleeve. You usher them upstairs, carry your younger daughter, who is too big for that. She giggles and does her best baby impression, resting her head on your shoulder and nuzzling into your neck. You close window blinds and dim lights as you make your way slowly upstairs against her weight.
At age twenty-nine, you and your wife purchased your first house together. For the dining room, you selected a rectangular table with green tinted glass and a metal base. You didn’t consider child safety for a moment, not until your older daughter began to pull herself up, and you realized her head would soon reach the table’s sleek hard corners. You bought a cushioned bumper to wrap around the table and never made another decision again without considering kids.
The two of you settle now in the living room while the girls finish homework and change for bed. You turn on jazz, and she lights a candle, its cherry blossom scent sputtering from the wick. You discuss the future. Not soccer practice or dance lessons. You plan a sick day. A family trip to Tokyo.
You do not push away thoughts about your future together. It doesn’t occur to you that maybe the two of you don’t have one. You and your wife don’t busy yourselves with chores, like washing towels or cleaning the fish tank. You don’t step around each other without a word.
You are cuddling on the couch. She lays her head on your shoulder while you run your fingers through her locks. She kisses your neck, breathes softly in your ear, says it’s almost time for bed. You pad upstairs together, tuck your little one in and close her door. Your older daughter has finished homework and strums her guitar.
You do not head for the guest bedroom alone and turn on the reading light. You don’t picture your wife sliding in beside you. You don’t hear footsteps or a door creak somewhere and hope to see her tiptoe into the room, saying all is forgiven, asking you to come back to the bedroom. Your heart doesn’t race, and you don’t get a lump in your throat.
You imagine sometimes that your desire is a separate being from yourself, a younger, petulant version of you, who wants the key to your car and won’t suffer temperance or reason.
You do not check the bedroom and find her asleep, TV flickering and lights on. You don’t regard the white leather headboard or the tangles of hair across her pillow as you close the armoire. You don’t run your finger across the surface of your dresser, displacing a fine layer of dust, creating a slightly darker streak in the espresso finish. You don’t return to the guestroom.
You lie in your bed and your wife reads her book beside you. Your older daughter comes to say goodnight and you rub her back.
You and your wife turn off reading lights and hold each other in the darkness. The two of you curve like quotation marks around a statement that neither of you needs to say because you have said it a thousand times in a thousand soft touches and a thousand gazes and will keep saying it without saying it thousands more times over every day you share together.
Maybe you fall asleep this way or maybe you lock the door and make love in the darkness, the scent of her face cream and the floral perfume on her neck mingling, her skin so delicate against yours, her eyes and the outline of her face all you see.
You do not listen to her deep breaths and wonder how she can slumber so soundly.
Blackout shades block the city’s night sky as you lie in bed. The air conditioner clicks on and off. Red numbers from your old clock radio glow on your dresser, your vision too poor now to read them. Here in the cool of your bedroom, you drift somewhere between asleep and awake, and the versions of the story converge.
You roll from your back to your right side and turn the page on another day. Tomorrow, you will not yell or drink too much or feel sorry for yourself. You will not overwork, no matter the pressure.
You realize now that you are awake. You don’t know what time it is or if you have slept and, if so, how long. The hardwood floor groans as you creep downstairs and adjust the thermostat. You turn the temperature down and recline on the living room couch, staring at the ceiling. A porch light shines through the front door’s glass panes.
You cannot lie to yourself at this hour.
You turn to face the porch light, though its brightness hurts your eyes. You imagine emptying your bedroom drawers and your side of the closet, loading your clothes into the car.
You have never felt this way, as if the ground has opened at your feet, revealed a cavern into which you must descend. You will climb inside and plod forward in its darkness, sink your hands into the wet soil, the fragments of yesterday, the doll parts and Lego pieces, VHS tapes full of home movies, the dining room set you’re still paying for, the electronics that only you know how to operate, the baby teeth traded for silver dollars and forgotten in jewelry boxes, storage bins full of parts for appliances you no longer own, everything you must divide or leave behind. Binoculars and emergency whistles, artwork you hung so carefully, novels you read or meant to read or meant to write, and all manner of everything you will excavate, as you begin a single version of the story.
