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It’s only a matter of time. She’s been expecting it for years, the eventual undoing of his resolve to be patient, to be kind, to be a lover and to suppress all the parts of himself that chafe them both. One day, she knows, the dam will break.
She thinks it will be about their son. She’ll be upstairs but she will know what’s happening. He’ll bunch his shoulders, suck all the air out of the room with the storm of his rage, prowl through the house in search of his prey. He’ll find her in the bathroom. He’s been working out, so his frame will fill the only point of escape to bursting. She’ll ignore him, and he’ll stand there, a lighthouse sending out a warning straight into her eyes: Beware a man’s last straw.
It’ll start quietly; he’ll tell her he’s been thinking. He’ll tremble and ooze thirteen years of unreleased poison. He’ll tell her he’s been thinking about their son - Will, he calls him, like he knows him, god - dreaming about him, dreaming about them, the three of them, and his voice will rise and rise until it’s ringing in her ears. When he crowds her against the sink, she will know no other option but to flee, so she will step under his arm and stalk toward her wardrobe.
She’ll know he knows he can’t be starting this; she can’t engage; he’s giving her just enough rope to hang herself, with his wild, desperate eyes and those hands she knows are so soft even as they flex into fists at his sides.
She won’t be able to look at him, shame and anger too close to the surface. She’s never been able to let him see. He’s never been able to ask to see.
“I can’t believe you’d do this t-,” he’ll start and grunt and look away, behind her where she’s bent over her shoe rack, vulnerable in a silk slip, without her armor. He’ll breathe close to her ear and then tear himself away, groaning, and she’ll allow herself to feel her own shallow breaths hitch over the rabbit’s pulse inside her chest.
A mile of silence will stretch between them, a woodpecker in the oak outside the bedroom window pecking a sorrowful ballad until even that stops.
“To whom?” She will be brash rather than bold, unfair and in his face. She could be the lance that taps the venom from both their bodies, but she’s tired of always propping them up.
He’ll breathe a deep, thrusting breath and rub his face, still not making eye contact. “I don’t know,” he will say simply. “Me. Us. I don’t know.”
“What did I do?” She will spin around and fix him with her gaze, steel and nails.
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This is where the thought always stops. She can’t see his eyes and can’t access what comes next. She used to hope for stormy green; she used to hope for a fist fight and catharsis. She got nothing.
She zips up her final suitcase, tastes the bitter packing tape on her tongue as she closes the last box. Lugging her stuff, her insignificant stuff, down the stairs, she passes the office, quiet and ghostly despite the warm body in there.
There is no oxygen in this house and she can’t continue to bring her own every time she steps into her home. She’s engineering her own release with a moving truck and a vague promise to talk soon.
She stands on the porch for a moment, listening for footsteps behind her, for a black hole of anger, hurt and humanity, ready to suck her in. Nothing comes.
She leaves. She doesn’t know who is it is that is gone, who the coward is here. She leaves a trail of loss behind her like breadcrumbs.