already. Relax a minute, will ya. I’m just gonna have a quick shower.”
“Bobby! You can’t have a shower, they’ll be—” The roar of water crushed her protest mid stream.
Tears stung in her eyes as she whirled around, clenched fists powerless to stop him. Shit! He could be such a jerk. He knew how much she hated it when he came home late on Saturday nights. Hated having to fend off the abrasive, arrogant John Jr., who amused himself while waiting for his friend by tormenting his friend’s wife. Frustration burned up into her throat and spread out to her limbs. She wanted to punch something, break something. Yell. Scream. But she turned her fury in on herself, swallowed her rage as clenched fists drove hard nails into tender palms. Saturday was poker night. No one had planned it that way, it just was. Started the Saturday night of their wedding. Started as a big drunken joke: the boys thinking it would be immensely funny to barge in on the newlyweds at three o’clock in the morning and haul Bobby out of bed to drink whiskey and play poker.
It was not funny, however, and Bobby had sworn vilely into the black bedroom as they thundered on the trailer door demanding in a slurred, howling chorus to be let in. She’d been sure Bobby was going to set them straight in no uncertain terms. She’d even cautioned him to remember that they were his best friends and drunk, and that he should go easy on them. Ignoring her, he’d ripped open the bedroom door and exploded down the hallway like a bullet through the barrel of a gun. But, by the time he’d traversed the short distance to the porch door, his Hyde had turned to Jekyll, and he greeted his friends with good-ol’-boy slaps on the back and an overly loud, upbeat invitation to come on in.
She’d lain awake until morning had pushed itself in around the edges of the tattered blanket nailed across the window. Lain awake listening as the four of them drank themselves into a silent stupor, and then she’d got up to repair the damage. Emptied the ashtrays, picked drowned butts out of glasses, washed the dishes, swept the floor. The first few years she’d even found blankets to lay over the comatose bodies lying inert wherever the alcohol had declared victory and the muscles had failed. The rocker, the bathtub, the floor. After a while she’d just saved herself the bother; they never acknowledged her kindness anyhow, as oblivious to it as though the blankets had just arrived on their own accord. On the good nights, they drank themselves sick before they drank themselves dead, and they could still find their way home again. It was a weekly ritual that played over and over again, like a reoccurring nightmare she couldn’t escape and gradually she came to accept as her life.
Bobby had been repentant, if not apologetic, after the first night. Promised her a real honeymoon once the crops were in. Somewhere exotic. Somewhere neither of them had been, which was pretty much anywhere. But the extra cash was needed for tractor repairs that year and for trailer repairs the next. And each year brought the promise of the next, until she gave up waiting and he gave up promising.
The pounding of water joined her thoughts. Her hands white-knuckled around a carving fork; she stuck it deep into the roast and returned it to the oven. She wiped her hands on her jeans, struggled for a full breath. Elliot was right. She was uptight. Needed to relax, have fun for a change. But relaxing seemed a foreign word to her, partially grasped but not fully understood. Relax. Have fun. Sure, sounded simple off his tongue. But how could she relax when life kept coming undone, the whole damn thing instantly fraying every time she took her finger off the knot.
She tucked her fingertips into the softly rounded groove of the windowpane and yanked at it several times before it finally relented with a resentful crack and let itself be slid open. More and more often now, she found herself opening the
“Bobby! You can’t have a shower, they’ll be—” The roar of water crushed her protest mid stream.
Tears stung in her eyes as she whirled around, clenched fists powerless to stop him. Shit! He could be such a jerk. He knew how much she hated it when he came home late on Saturday nights. Hated having to fend off the abrasive, arrogant John Jr., who amused himself while waiting for his friend by tormenting his friend’s wife. Frustration burned up into her throat and spread out to her limbs. She wanted to punch something, break something. Yell. Scream. But she turned her fury in on herself, swallowed her rage as clenched fists drove hard nails into tender palms. Saturday was poker night. No one had planned it that way, it just was. Started the Saturday night of their wedding. Started as a big drunken joke: the boys thinking it would be immensely funny to barge in on the newlyweds at three o’clock in the morning and haul Bobby out of bed to drink whiskey and play poker.
It was not funny, however, and Bobby had sworn vilely into the black bedroom as they thundered on the trailer door demanding in a slurred, howling chorus to be let in. She’d been sure Bobby was going to set them straight in no uncertain terms. She’d even cautioned him to remember that they were his best friends and drunk, and that he should go easy on them. Ignoring her, he’d ripped open the bedroom door and exploded down the hallway like a bullet through the barrel of a gun. But, by the time he’d traversed the short distance to the porch door, his Hyde had turned to Jekyll, and he greeted his friends with good-ol’-boy slaps on the back and an overly loud, upbeat invitation to come on in.
She’d lain awake until morning had pushed itself in around the edges of the tattered blanket nailed across the window. Lain awake listening as the four of them drank themselves into a silent stupor, and then she’d got up to repair the damage. Emptied the ashtrays, picked drowned butts out of glasses, washed the dishes, swept the floor. The first few years she’d even found blankets to lay over the comatose bodies lying inert wherever the alcohol had declared victory and the muscles had failed. The rocker, the bathtub, the floor. After a while she’d just saved herself the bother; they never acknowledged her kindness anyhow, as oblivious to it as though the blankets had just arrived on their own accord. On the good nights, they drank themselves sick before they drank themselves dead, and they could still find their way home again. It was a weekly ritual that played over and over again, like a reoccurring nightmare she couldn’t escape and gradually she came to accept as her life.
Bobby had been repentant, if not apologetic, after the first night. Promised her a real honeymoon once the crops were in. Somewhere exotic. Somewhere neither of them had been, which was pretty much anywhere. But the extra cash was needed for tractor repairs that year and for trailer repairs the next. And each year brought the promise of the next, until she gave up waiting and he gave up promising.
The pounding of water joined her thoughts. Her hands white-knuckled around a carving fork; she stuck it deep into the roast and returned it to the oven. She wiped her hands on her jeans, struggled for a full breath. Elliot was right. She was uptight. Needed to relax, have fun for a change. But relaxing seemed a foreign word to her, partially grasped but not fully understood. Relax. Have fun. Sure, sounded simple off his tongue. But how could she relax when life kept coming undone, the whole damn thing instantly fraying every time she took her finger off the knot.
She tucked her fingertips into the softly rounded groove of the windowpane and yanked at it several times before it finally relented with a resentful crack and let itself be slid open. More and more often now, she found herself opening the
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