Positive

Hearing the familiar scraping sound of the key cleaving to the front door lock, she allowed the pain and rage wash over her again.  The mirrored motion of the front door closing to the hallway closet opening, the graceful sleight of hand of hanging a raincoat on its hanger and the clink of dropping keys in a porcelain bowl on the cherry wood table were all etched in her memory, a cinematic experience from years of seeing it unfold everyday for years.  Her trust in the familiar constancy of action now rusted under the weight of fact, the corrosiveness of symptoms.

              “Hi honey, I’m home,” he said down the hallway.  She knew he was waiting for a response. She pictured his own movie version of unfolding events -her chopping the vegetables for dinner, or stirring a pot as she was often found when he crossed the threshold of the kitchen.  This greeting was laced with insult, crossing the threshold he had carried her over when they bought the house, before the kids, before the promotions, before today.  His imagination indubitably had her involved in a culinary activity, but he probably always hoped to find a naked chef, or something kinky and disturbing, something typically not her.

            He had reached the kitchen which he found empty.  Her vision of him had him thinking in the door way to himself.    Her car is here, but where is she?  “Honey?”

            It was time to speak.  “In the den,” she said.  Distant voice and empty tone.  She had conceptualized her rant since returning this morning; it was filled with venom and all the true things a lover never says.  In it, she was victorious in her rage and closed the argument with a slap, a punch and a beating on his chest.  But now, she knew that this would not be her planned speech.  This would not be civil.

            His head peeked around the corner, surprised to see her proper posture in an antique armchair never used, in a room they never went in.  She could see him slightly reeling from the fact that she had turned the chair around to face him in the doorway.

            “What are you doing in here?”

            Simply staring him down, she waited and he made no effort to move from the doorway.  “Honey?”

            “Aaron, is there anything you want to tell me?”  This was not in the rehearsal.  “Anything new today?”  She decided to be true to the daily post-work kitchen script reserved for small talk before dinner.

            Frozen, he looked for some indication as to why his wife was in the family museum, why she sat in a chair she never allowed anyone to sit in, and why his dinner was not almost ready.  Then the comprehension of danger dawned on his face, kicking in the fight or flight mechanism that told him that this doorway was not where he really wanted to be right now.

            “Nothing new.”  The silence between these words allowed him to really look over the room – the mantle supporting his mother’s ashes and her grandmother’s golden clock, the Victorian furniture, the oak barrister bookcase with crystal goblets lining the shelves, the resonance of the grandfather clock ticking seconds before the hourly chime- a lifetime of collecting pretty things they never ever used filled this room.

            “Oh,” she said, gazing off past him somewhere, “I thought you might have something new to tell me.”

            Aaron felt calm again, as if the storm had just missed port, so he stepped into the room toward her.  Perhaps, he thought, she just needs a hug.

            “Who is she, you sonovabitch!!!!!” She darted forward and started berating him with punches to the chest, nails to the face.  Raising his arms before his brow, he sensed this would be the most pleasant part of this. “Who is she?  WHO IS SHE?”

            Aaron crumpled to the floor when she kicked him in his bad knee; he rolled onto his side.  She continued to kick while digging her high heels into him.  He shrieked.  “Stop, stop, please stop.”  She pulled back, winded and suddenly awakened in the newfound joy of bloodlust.  Struggling to one knee, he reached out to her. 

            “Don’t touch me.”

            Drips of blood from his nose had landed on the virgin eggshell carpet, the first blemish within these four painted and papered walls.  He found it amusing when he considered how far from the intended essence of this room, this perimeter of pride and possession, they had gone in a matter of minutes.  Aaron didn’t even try to lie to a woman in with sharp-heeled shoes.  “When did you find out?”

            Surprised there would be no subsequent lie or immediate round two needed, she relaxed her stance and dipped back into sorrow rather than rage.  “Today.  At the doctor.”  She regarded him like a tiger admires a gazelle. “Your filthy whore gave me something. Who is she?”

            Painful cries telegraphed in to his brain from all over his body, only allowing him to change his perspective just enough to see the truth.  He saw everything in halves-  half a cherry wood coffee table filled with half books, some with a vertical split and others with a horizontal split, half a loveseat, half a buffet with only half a silver candelabra- but with certainty he knew that all of it was simply half, no matter what truths or half-truths her gave her right now.  Suddenly aware of his surroundings, he realized he’d only heard three of the six gongs from the grandfather clock.