Tabula Rasa

         They were married in the summer of 1968, in a tiny church outside of Albuquerque with no air conditioning and peeling paint. The guests threw rice at them and the children blew bubbles, and the bride laughed as she threw the cheap bouquet of carnations and babies breathe, watching as it landed in the grabbing arms of a seven year old neighbor who would die in a boating accident a few months later.

         The honeymoon lasted only a few days (a seedy-but-scenic hotel on the edge of Cancun), but really it lasted a few years. They kissed everywhere; at the post office picking up stamps, out to dinner on a Thursday night, in the canned goods isle of the local supermarket, where their intimacy could be seen from a security camera. They did things in reverse, making hasty love in the mornings before work and staying up through the night to talk, huddled together on the barebones mattress in the corner of the room that served as their bed. They felt little desire for children; in fact, they felt little desire for anyone but each other. On the night before their third anniversary, she waved goodbye to him from the front porch of the bungalow as he pulled out of the driveway in his blue pickup, off to go pick up a bottle of celebratory champagne at the spirit shop on the corner. She was still waving when the truck smashed into the thick wooden post of a telephone line, rapping around it like a wedding ring.

         Unfortunately for him, he did not die that night. She twiddled her thumbs anxiously in the waiting room of the ER, nearly jumping out of her seat when the doctor finally came out to update her on the situation: your husband is alive, and that’s the most important part, he told her. What the doctor did not tell her was that he was paralyzed from the neck down; that he would require full-time care from now on and, while he appeared to have no significant brain damage, it was virtually impossible that he would ever walk or have normal function in his limbs again. She wondered, years later, as she changed the sheets on his special medical bed, if knowing that would have made a difference that night; if she would have run away right then and there, pulled out of the hospital parking lot with nothing but the contents of her car and never looked back. But she didn’t, and so the next week, as she struggled to pull his wheelchair up the steps of their home, it was only then that the sour taste of resentment began to hide in her mouth and flow through her veins. She did not acknowledge it at the time, because it scared her. Any bitterness she may have felt at the situation was immediately replaced with appreciation when he looked at her, his eyes still soft and syrupy in color, and said, in his tenderest tone, you’re amazing, you know. I really am the luckiest man in the world. She gave a small smile and kissed him on the cheek, pushing the bad feelings to the back of her mind, leaving them to bubble and fester, as she felt guilt for even acknowledging them in the first place.

         The doctor hadn’t lied; the care he needed was indeed extensive and, although it became routine as time went on, it was never any easier for her. She felt embarrassment not only for him but for herself as she spoon-fed him dinner, changed his diapers, filled a tub with water to sponge-bathe him every Sunday. She had never wanted a child, but now, whether she liked it or not, she was stuck with one. There were no more weeknight jaunts to ethnic restaurants or stolen kisses against the Campbell’s soup shelf. For a while, they both made an effort to maintain the life they had previously known together; they took trips to the local lake, him sitting in the shade and watching her as she swan-dove off the pier, and then she would nuzzle up next to him in a folding chair, fingers matted between his, trying too hard to pretend like nothing had changed. It was bullshit, of course; everything had changed. The months flew by, and then the years, and somewhere in between they both stopped trying to fool themselves. The unnamable thing that had forced itself between them had been almost ignorable at first, but now it had created a gap so large that it seemed impossible to breach. If their relationship had once been solid ground, now it was a ravine, a ditch wedged in the middle while one of them stood on either side, trying to call to each other, but never quite able to find the right words.

         She woke up one autumn morning to find that, while she had been busy taking care of him, seven years had passed. The youthful twenty-one year old who had married her dream man at St. Mary’s altar during the longest heat wave of the century had been replaced by a tired, trapped housewife rapidly approaching thirty. She looked in the bathroom mirror, and she did not recognize the person staring back at her; the small pink hands that were rubbed raw from housework, the lips that had started to crack from faking too many smiles, the crow’s feet around the eyes; all of it seemed frighteningly alien and yet disturbingly familiar. He called to her from the next room, and she turned away from the medicine cabinet, slamming it shut in the secret hope that it might break the mirror that seemed to be taunting her.

         The next day someone new came. He worked for the local hospice center, and they had sent him, at her request, to help handle medical things around the house and take some of the stress off of her. She leaned against the wall, watching him, not saying anything, but simply observing. He was young, maybe twenty-two, twenty-three, fresh out of college, and utterly beautiful. The first week, she shrugged him off, brushing away his attempts at conversation as if she had no interest in him at all, but that was far from the truth. She sat in her husband’s room, pretending to be keeping him company, but instead she watched the boy, amazed by the way his body worked, how his muscles moved under his skin, his lean arms capable of lifting things she always struggled with. She studied his face, the tan skin around his cheeks, the straight line of his nose, the way his full lower-lip jutted out in concentration when he was moving something, and how his eyes crinkled at the corners when he laughed. She memorized every feature, mapping his body in her brain and allowing herself to see it in the constellations late at night, when she let her hands wander and touch her body in ways that it hadn’t been touched in years.

         The first time they fucked was nine days later, against the wall of the garage, biting their fists so he wouldn’t hear them inside the house. The combination of resentment and guilt that had been her default mode since the accident was momentarily replaced with lust, desire, the hot embers of a need to want and be wanted that had been burning in her belly for years finally igniting. When she finished, she did not say the boy’s name, nor her husband’s name; she said nothing. When her vision went white and she collapsed against the boy’s naked chest, the only thing on her mind was whether she had to vacuum the bedroom today or not.

         The affair had been going on for a little over three months. She was sitting on the couch, pulling up her nylons (“Going out with girlfriends,” she had told him, despite the fact that neither of them had been out with a friend in years), and he was watching a news report on the TV about a wildfire in Colorado. She hummed to herself as she primped, a pretty Spanish lullaby that her mother had sung her when she was a little girl in Tuscan. Ever since she had started seeing the boy, things seemed to be going better for both of them. She was all-around happier, singing as she watched dishes, putting on lipstick every morning, and consequently, so was he. She lifted her foot to close the ankle strap on her high heels, and he opened his mouth to speak.

Our tenth anniversary is coming up soon.

I know, she replied, even though the date had not held any importance to her for a while now.

I know we haven’t really celebrated the past few years, but I thought maybe this year, we could do something special, maybe. Or I could get you something special. As a thank-you. For taking care of me. I know I’m not an easy person to stay with.

Nonsense. I wouldn’t have it any other way. She could feel her tongue turning black from lies. You don’t need to get me anything.

I want to.

It’s okay.

How about a trip? A vacation somewhere, maybe the place we went for our honeymoon?

No, no.

A new car? I know you always liked my father’s Mercedes, if you wanted…

We don't have money for that. I’m fine. I don’t need anything.

What if I got you a new ring? I know I wasn’t exactly rolling in cash when I got you that one, but if you wanted to go pick one out downtown this weekend…

Sweetie, please. Really, I don’t want anything. Your love is enough.

No, it’s not.

She remained silent. He was right. Nothing, no matter how expensive it was, could make her want to stay.

I’m going to ask you one last time: what do you want?

A divorce, she told him in her head. The chance to leave and know that you won’t wither away by yourself. Money for gas to take me out of this town, out of this state. A haircut and a change of name and a place where I can start over and forget the last ten years.

         But she did not say any of that. Instead, she said, a ring sounds lovely, honey. She got up, leaning over to kiss him on the cheek, and walked out the door, content in the fact that she would not be around to receive it.