(This is the first story I've written in 3 years. Its not too long, so hopefully it is readable. I am still nervous about posting. I had a friend look at it for me before posting, but it presented here in unedited form.)
If Only
A gasp. A lurch. Another nightmare.
He wakes, rolls toward her and puts his hand on her shoulder. She starts, shrinks from his touch.
“Don’t.” Her voice is thick. Did she start crying before or after the dream woke her? She seems to sound like that all the time now.
“I just wanted to…” Comfort you. Make it all right.
“Just don’t.” She sits up, reaches for her bathrobe and pulls it around her shoulders.
In the lurid green glow of the clock, he watches her hold the robe tightly around herself as she stands and makes her way on naked feet across the cluttered floor to the bathroom, shuts the door behind her, shuts herself from his sight. He hears the door lock, a cabinet open and shut, water running in the shower.
In the hall outside the bedroom, the dog stirs, whines, and resettles with her back against the bedroom door, which thumps against the door jam.
Sorry Sweetie, you’re not allowed in here anymore.
He rolls back to his side of the bed and looks at the clock. 2:ooa.m. How many nights like this? How long since they slept through the night, together, curled one with the other? It hasn’t been that long. A few weeks? The change had been sudden, traumatic. He knows what caused it, the nightmares, the distance. Would never forget. It had been traumatic for him too, hadn’t it? No. He can’t even think that. That’s just his guilt, his pain.
It shouldn’t have happened. It wouldn’t have happened if only… If only. Stop thinking about that. It won’t help her now.
He rolls over so he is facing her side of the bed. His eyes are accustomed to the dim light of the clock, and he can see the impression her body left in the sheets, the dent her head had left in the pillow. He listens to the roar of the shower and imagines the steam filling the small bathroom, his wife standing under the hot stream. Or does she sit, too tired and weak to stand? He doesn’t know which. He knows the water would be hot, much hotter than he could stand. He knows that she would scrub her skin, wash over and over. Would she scrub at the nearly faded bruises on her wrists and thighs? Or would she shy from the tender healing skin, from all the tender places? He only knows that she will come back to bed only when the water runs cold and her skin is red from the scrubbing. That she will lie down as far from him as possible, curl into a ball, make herself small. This is the routine now. How long would it continue?
He closes his eyes and listens to the water. He w on’t sleep until she comes back. Until he
knows she’s coming back. The unbidden thought comes upon him, the one that has haunted him every night since it happened, every night of these nightmares and mid-night showers. The thought of her lying in the bathtub, over-dosed on painkillers and anti-depressants, bleeding, both. He listens closely through the sound of the water, listens for sounds of her movements. He thinks about how to pick the lock on the door if it becomes necessary. He made sure to learn soon after she began to do this. He has to protect her from herself. Protect her like he should have then.
It would have been a simple thing. Just go with her. She had asked him to come with her. It was late; he knew she didn’t like to walk the dog after dark. It had just been so hot that day. It was cooler after sunset, but still he had said no. It was still too hot.
If only he had gone with her; two people look less vulnerable than one woman with a small dog. If only he had gone, they wouldn’t have taken the shortcut through the park. Stay on the sidewalk, he always said. Stay where it’s lit.
If only… But it was too hot. Too damn hot. And, “if only” doesn’t help her. It just feeds the guilt. He can’t indulge in that now. Not when she can come back to bed any minute.
Later, when she’s asleep, he will think of everything he had done wrong. Everything he should have done right. Later, he can cry.
He puts the thoughts of “if only” aside and listens to the water again. Vigilant. Protective. Just like a husband should be. And he waits for the water to turn off. For his wife to feel clean enough and calm enough to sleep. For the memories and nightmares, they are the same thing after all, to wash away for the night.
Silence replaces the roar of water, then he hears her footsteps pad across the linoleum. He closes his eyes and concentrates on slowing his breathing. Let her think he slept, that he dozed off after she left him, that he doesn’t wait up for her, that her pain isn’t his own. She doesn’t need that burden.
She sits on the edge of the bed and removes the bathrobe. He stirs, yawns, pretends that she’s woken him. He reaches out to her, brushes his right hand against her left, across the naked finger that once wore his ring before, in a final insult, it was taken from her. Taken along with so much else. She pulls her hand away, lays down with her back to him.
“I’m sorry,” he says. For so much more than you know. He wants to tell her that he loves her, that he wants to help her get better, that he blames himself, that… But he can’t. His guilt and pain have risen as a lump in his throat. To speak more would be to sob, to let her know his pain. He rolls away form her and forces the lump back down. Later. He will keep it to himself. Take her pain on him and put none of his on her. This is his penance. His suffering. And what is his suffering compared to hers?
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