Every Good Marriage

Every Good Marriage



She remembered the first time they exchanged words; a fleeting memory that returned to her more and more these days. Though she couldn’t say why.

It had been a dark spring night. The cold only just beginning to bleach out of the weather in time for what turned out to be a short lived summer. She remembered he'd been wearing an equally dark jacket that night. Something with sleeves of a different material to the body. God knows the decade of her youth wouldn’t be renowned for its sense of fashion. And his hair had been long, as it still was now. But fuller, unrestrained, with a sense of unbridled life to it. She used to laugh because it would bounce up at the back when he ran, reminding her of the old spaniel that would trail along behind him on occasion. 

“You look lonely.”

That was the first thing he'd said to her. Which was odd because she’d been surrounded by friends, laughing and swapping a plastic cola bottle that someone had filled with a sickly sweet cider; and she hadn’t felt that way. Lonely. Not until he said it.

They only went out together, ‘dated’, for two months. She gave him her virginity before the two months were finished. Willingly mind you. With abandon if truth be told. And why else remember the past if you’re not going to give it the good grace of being seen for what it was. She would have given him a lot more back then, whatever he’d have taken a mind to ask of her. But then his daddy died; his mom sold their property and they moved away. And that was that. For nearly twenty years.

They'd met again; in a bar, on the outskirts of the town she'd never left. Like in a movie; or something like one at any rate. She'd seen him sitting on his own, peeling the label from his beer bottle with tiny picking motions and she'd done what she'd done on five other occasions since her husband had died. Approached some single guy in a bar.

"You look lonely." She'd said.

And for a moment it had seemed like he didn't recognise her, and she stupidly thought she was going to have to try and explain who she was, why she'd used that particular line. But then he pulled out the seat next to him and said simply, "I was." And that was all it took.

He was a widower. Same situation as she had found herself in eighteen months earlier. Accident instead of heart failure, but with much the same outcome once the dust had settled. Just like the last time, they went out, dated, for almost two months. But this time, before the two months were finished, they were married.

Both of them had been through the whole white wedding thing the first time around. So she was happy enough with the smaller, registry affair they opted for. It freed up money for the down payment on the house they ended up buying together. A two-storey, old colonial on the outskirts of town with more land than they needed. Neither of them had kids and it was too late in the day to start trying. But space was important. ‘It's what every good marriage needs.’ That was what Ben had said when she'd questioned the purchase. He'd looked her straight in the eye, holding her gaze; and she hadn't questioned it again.

He'd never been much of a talker. She'd liked that in the beginning. She'd thought to herself, maybe naively, 'here's a man with hidden depths. He isn't going to give up all his secrets in one great wave. This is a man you can spend a lifetime with. Because it's going to take a lifetime to figure him out.'

Maybe it was her fault. Maybe she lacked the patience. Or the skills it took to get someone like him to open up. Maybe the strong, silent types are only ever good as fodder for chick flicks or trashy romance novels. In real life, people need to communicate. To talk.

She caught his reflection in the window above the kitchen sink just then. The sullen cut of his beard softened by the coloured light refracting off the bubbles on the dishes she'd forgotten all about. 'Ask me what I'm thinking' she thought. Ask me and I'll tell you. Ask me so I can ask you.

But all he said was, "I'm going into town for some bits. If there's anything you need."

She shook her head and went back to washing up.

Things had been good between them in the beginning. They'd stretched out and luxuriated in the space they'd created for themselves. Like most childless couples they became introverted and isolated over time. They didn't need or care for anyone beyond the two of them.

And over that same period of time she learnt how his first wife had been too needy, too clingy, always wanting to know where he'd been, where he was going. He'd felt trapped and untethered all at the same time. And she vowed to herself not to be like that. Her first husband John had been controlling and driven. Always wanting her to like the same things as he did, to want what he wanted, disapproving of the things she did like and want. She felt that she could trade with Ben. Space for space. So it was actually Sarah who came up with the idea of the boundary line.

"What have you always wanted? For yourself I mean. Something your first wife didn't understand, or wouldn't allow."

He'd thought for a moment.

"I always wanted a workshop. Maybe not even that, just some place where I could potter around, make a mess and not have to worry about cleaning it up. A place I could leave tools lying around, drawers open, cupboards unlocked. A place where everything was out in the open and I'd know next time I went there it would be just the same. Untouched. My space."

She'd smiled at the little boy wistfulness of his request, and felt like the greatest wife there'd ever been when she said, "Then that's what you shall have. From now on there's an invisible boundary line around the garage. And I swear, on my life." She'd dramatically, and a little drunkenly by that time in the evening, etched a cross over her heart. "That I shall always respect your space, and honour that line, and keep the hell away from your shit."

She'd laughed. And he'd smiled.

"And what about you? What have you always wanted?" He replied.

And that was more important wasn't it? That's what she'd wanted to be asked. Because she already had something in mind when she'd proffered the trade.

"I want a week. Just a week."

And after a quizzical look, he'd agreed.

---

It wasn't anything to do with sex. She'd had that conversation countless times with other women over the years.

"He just lets you go where you want? Do as you please? For one whole week every year?"

And they always gave her that same smile, with sometimes a knowing wink tagged on at the end.

"Well alright then. Hell yeah. You go girl."

She made three separate trips to various States before she slept with another man. It just kind of happened. And she’d felt terrible about it. But the fact that Ben never asked her about her trips, or what had happened on them, made the guilt an easy pill to swallow. Maybe too easy, because the men got to be as much of a regular occurrence as the travelling.

Part of her put it down to Ben's interminable silence. His implacable lack of interest in where she went or what she did during these times away. Not once did he break his promise and ask her about her annual trips. And he never acted any different to her when she came back either. No stubborn cold shoulder, no suspicious glances. No growing resentment or build-up of animosity. Nothing.

It drove her mad.

And that's when, after about the tenth trip, she started to wonder just what he did during her week away. How he occupied his time. What it might be that he did in the garage that consumed his concerns so avidly.

---

"Did you hear that?"

She sat bolt upright in bed. Sweat holding the singlet tight to the hollow of her back, her hair plastered down against the side she'd been sleeping on.

He didn't move, didn't stir. She felt entirely alone in the dull, bluish tinge of pre-dawn light.

Then the sound came again. A scrabbling noise, like tiny claws. So close and yet with an after-wash of reverberating echo that let her know it couldn't be. The sound bounced around the walls until she couldn't tell if it was above or below her.

She was about to ask him again if he'd heard it, but figured she'd be wasting her breath. Instead she swung her legs over the side of the bed and was planning to go investigate when his voice grabbed hold of her.

"It's nothing. Rats. Go back to sleep."

She turned her head and looked at him, but all she could make out was the blurred outline of his shoulder, appearing to flicker and buzz in the gloom. She pulled her feet back under the covers and lay back down. But she didn't sleep again that night.

---

The noises didn’t return every night after that, but the disturbance to her sleep settled into a fatigue ridden routine. She would invariably wake after an hour or two of fitful sleep and look to her side, where he slept, apparently never moving, always facing away from her. And she’d wait. For what she couldn’t say. For him to stir, to not be there, to be awake and staring back at her. More often than not there’d be no sound but the working of the water pump on the property. But every so often there’d be that noise. That scrabbling sound she couldn’t place. Like something trying to get in. Or out.

Sometimes when sleep escaped her for two or three hours at a stretch she’d give up and go downstairs to the living room. There she’d sit until dawn started to warm her up, flicking through silent news channels, local reports of the long missing, the freshly taken, looking and waiting for something to be shown by way of an answer.

---

Before she knew where the time had gone another of her trips rolled around. Usually the preceding weeks dragged out as she planned and checked and double checked and re-planned. This year she hadn’t even thought about  where she wanted to go.

“I was thinking. I might skip my trip this year.”

He looked up at her over his bowl of cereal.

“How come?”

“I don’t know. We’re getting a bit old for all these secrets still between us. Why don’t you come with me?”

He took a spoonful, chewed, swallowed.

“I don’t know. You should go. That week away is usually the time I use to clean out the garage. After a whole year of me working in it she usually needs it.”

A sliver of smile broke through his beard and he went back to eating breakfast.

---

Two weeks before she was due to leave she became convinced that the night time sounds had ceased altogether. She still woke up at regular intervals, but now there was an agonising, haunting quality to the silence that greeted her.

On the day the taxi was due to collect her she stood with her bags all packed in the kitchen and looked out across the driveway, freshly painted with a fine patina of early frost, as Ben pulled up in his Ute. She watched him drop down the tailgate and struggle to drag some canvas roll from the truck bed. It landed with a soft, deadened thud on the frozen ground and left a dark trail like a pencil line across a fresh page as he dragged it towards the garage.

Once he was inside and the garage roller had descended, she called the taxi firm and cancelled the car she'd booked.

She placed her two empty cases in the cupboard beneath the stairs and slipped into the spare bedroom.

She spent the day lying quietly on the bed watching fine wisps of mare tail clouds drift across the small span of sky she could see. She heard him come in and make himself something to eat mid-afternoon. But the rest of the day he spent in the garage making no sounds that reached the house. Had he discovered her lying there she planned to say she had a migraine and had rescheduled her flight. She’d pout and tell him she’d shouted out to him but he’d obviously paid her no mind and wait for him to apologise. But she needn’t have worried. Aside from the one trip inside for food he never left the sanctuary of his workshop.

---

She woke suddenly to the sound of footsteps on the stairs. She couldn’t even remember falling asleep and the stupid mistake made her heart race with such ferocity she was sure it must have been audible even through the closed door. But the footsteps didn’t falter until they were inside the main bedroom, and another door had shut on them.

She gave it another hour or so, to be sure he was asleep. Then she crept downstairs, and in the kitchen removed the key to the garage, from the drawer she’d seen him tuck it into six weeks earlier.

Opening the garage from the door outside would have made less noise in the house, but the cold made her think twice about trying it. Instead she made her way down the small adjoining corridor that the estate agent had gleefully described as a ‘shopper’s entrance’ when they’d first viewed the place.

She placed a hand on the door to the garage and left it there for a long moment. She tried pitifully to sense what was on the other side, all the while summoning up enough courage to open it or enough trust to just walk away. Finally she slipped the key into the lock and pushed on through.

The garage was dark, and disconcerting not only because of that. It was as though she'd somehow walked into someone else's home. It was the first time she'd seen this part of the house in years, and everything looked different, rearranged, not quite right. Cupboards existed where she thought there'd been bare brickwork before and a door receded into the far wall that she didn't recall being there previously.

She looked down at the key ring in her hand and noticed a second, smaller key hanging next to the one she'd already used.

"What are you doing Sarah?"

Her world suddenly became a blaze of harsh, fluorescent white as the over head strip lights flickered into life.

She spun on her heels to see Ben standing in the open doorway still dressed in the clothes she'd seen him in earlier, dark patches mottling across his skin showing that he hadn't even showered yet.

His head twisted to the side in quizzical confusion. "Why are you still here?"

"This isn't about me." She snapped back. "What have you been doing in here Ben? What the fuck is beyond that door?"

He shook his head. Not in denial but as though he was trying to clear his thoughts.

"You stayed behind to check up on me?"

There was a hint of genuine hurt in his voice.

"Don't turn this around. How else am I supposed to know what you get up to?"

He took a step forward and she found herself reciprocating with a hesitant step back.

"You could ask."

"Because you're so forthcoming whenever we talk? You never ask what I do either. You never..."

"I don't ask because I don't want to hear it. You think that doesn't mean I don't know?"

She felt her blood run cold, a sluggish flow of ice filling up her veins. The pounding of her heart grew until it almost drowned out his words. Almost, but not quite.

"You think I don't know what your trips are all about? Where you go? What you do? And with who? You think I'm stupid enough to not know that every time you go away you're letting some..."

"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!"

She just wanted him to stop talking, to suck the words back in and disappear. Her hand grabbed something from the bench-top at her back and flung it at him without her brain seeming to engage in the action. It wasn't until the object was ridiculously arcing through the air toward him that she realised it was something so large and potentially lethal.

The paint can tumbled toward her husband in bizarre slow motion. To the point where she just expected him to side step out of its way and carry on berating her. But he didn't move, and the can struck him full in the face with a resounding crack.

For an instant he just stood there, comically dazed, and she half expected cartoon canaries to circle round his head. But then he howled, a ferocious, animalistic scream and staggered back.

There was red across his face, down his clothes and trailing away a good metre and half over the concrete floor. So much red. Too much red. Thankfully she noticed the paint can's lid had sprung open and it was the garish red he'd used on the guttering last year. The one she'd said made the house look as though it was bleeding out.

"You bitch! I can't believe you..."

He cut off the end of his sentence and hawked up a gob of blood. More red on red. Although when he pulled his hands away from his face she could also see shards of white across the bridge of his nose.

Jesus, something had to be broken.

"We need to get you..."

But her own sentence was cut short as she lost her footing on the paint spill and lurched violently at her husband.

Ben's hand came up in a blur of motion, twisting to reflect each turn of thought running through his head. First open to catch her, then flat to push her away, and finally, as it connected with her jaw, clenched tight into a hard ball of flesh and bone.

The world brightened, when she would have expected crashing darkness. There was a light blue swirl of cloud across her vision and everything seemed to slow down at the same time as it was quickly pulling away from her. Noise bubbled toward her as though from a deep well, and then she felt the floor, cold on her cheek and came to.

Ben was reeling and screaming still, blood filling his eyes so he could barely make anything out. He stopped by a worktop and fumbled for something, but Sarah was already up and upon him before he could arm himself with whatever was there.

Her hands grabbed him from behind and laced a trail of deep gouges across either cheek. She felt a nail snap and snag as it caught in the chewed up remnants of his nose. His scream grew louder and he dropped the mobile phone he'd picked up, swung around and pushed her with all the strength he had left.

She toppled backwards, her head cracking on the corner of a bench, her teeth jarring and biting into her own tongue. There was something very wrong with her head she thought, just before her fingers closed around the shaft of a claw hammer, and she lurched forward, driving the hammer forward, driving it down, driving it into the spine of her husband.

Metal broached flesh, and the head of the hammer sank deep into his back. When she tried to pull it out there was a terribly harsh grinding sound, so she left the hammer sticking out of him as he flailed feebly to remove it.

Sarah sank to the floor. She didn't feel quite right. From the corner of her eye she saw the garage key, just out of reach. And above the screaming and the struggling of her dying husband she could hear a noise. A scrabbling. Like tiny claws. Like something trying to get in. Or out.

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