Читать книгу Promiscuous Unbound - Bex Brian - Страница 10

I saw a mobile once. Huge, hanging down the middle of a spiral stairwell, it was comprised of black letters painted on red tin pieces forever circulating into nonsense words. But every few years, I was told, all the letters swirled into place and spelled out a word. “What word?” No one would tell me. The thrill of being the one to see it would be ruined if I knew.

There were perfect moments in my marriage. I mustn’t forget. I mustn’t forget he was like no other. Not that that changed anything. Still, it should have. I was shy with him, so shy. I never paraded around naked. I always closed the bathroom door, even just for a pee. And I woke early to brush my teeth. He was like no other. I was suspended, upended, waiting, always waiting for his attentions. When alone, which I was often—a coarser soul might say the marriage faltered because we were apart so much; not true—I would try to dissect what it was about Ralph that made him so elusive. Never came up with anything, other than that he was an entity unto himself. I’d play games to try to trick him into swooning love, hell-bent love. Pretend, I’d tell him, that you are kissing me like they do in the movies. Pretend, I tell him, that every time you see me you want to fall to your knees and kiss the hem of my skirt.

But for all my song and dance there were those unscripted moments. They seem so fleeting now, and few. He got a buzz haircut once and came home, transformed, boyish, burying his head in my lap with excitement. I also learned once, quite by accident, that he thought it was boring to dance to the beat of slow songs. From then on I could let him dance his bad dance, happy that the mystery of why I could never keep up with him was at last solved.

But it was in darkness that we had our best times. The middle of the night. Maybe we just needed darkness to free ourselves into. His disembodied voice would tell me secrets, his secrets. The scar on his rib case, the one he had told everyone was the result of a snakebite which had nearly killed him, was, in truth of fact, caused by a bad case of the measles. He told me he didn’t like his mother, that her love disgusted him. I held my breath then, afraid she and I might meld in his mind in the dark. But he said I was different, that there was a coldness in me that he found reassuring. I wanted to correct him, tell him it was heat, that I was burning up for him, but I didn’t dare. Then, with dawn and him turning away to sleep, it seemed as if our confessions evaporated. In the morning I would badger him, try to build on secrets told, but you can’t force these things. That I never learned.

I wanted. I wanted. I wanted. And when he would bow toward me, place me in the center of his thoughts, his affections, I felt sick with nerves, waiting for him to spring away again. I’d gnash my teeth and remind myself of the loves that had loved obviously and how deathly that was. I’d remind myself not to question Fate. I’d remind myself that nobody ever said marriage was natural. Pavlovian it was, and I, having grown up never knowing the habit, was probably sniffing at the wrong door looking for the biscuit.