Confessions

CONFESSIONS

         He comes home in a sea of unfamiliar perfume and thinks she doesn’t know where he’s been. “I went for milk,” he tells her, and takes the half-gallon of skim from a plastic grocery sack. He puts it in the refrigerator with the others.
         She says nothing. Crosses her arms and exhales heavily through her mouth, turning her eyes for the window over the sink as she pretends to watch the backyard. “You were gone over two hours,” her voice comes, monotonous and indifferent. There’s a little girl on the swing set next door; she focuses on her stream of blonde curls and lavender ribbons to keep from crying. “The grocery store’s barely a mile.”
         He turns his back and starts for the staircase in the far corner of the kitchen, running nervous fingers through his hair as he ducks his head. She knows, and he knows it. There’s no running now.
         “Traffic,” he mutters, and he’s up the stairs, around the corner, and shuffling down the hall. She hears the door of their bedroom close and breathes a sigh of relief and desolation as she sinks into a dining chair upholstered in Italian silk. The morning paper sits at his place at the table, unread. His napkin is stained with coffee.
         When they bought the house she’d fallen in love with the breakfast nook. The tiny half-circle of glass overlooked the expanse of green lawn and yellow roses, and filtered the shell pink and fire of sunrise into the room like a prism. The mosaic tiles of the pool and patio sparkle now in the late evening, gold and amber and dark flecks of aquamarine.
         It was all so perfect at first. Finding the perfect house in the perfect subdivision, paying the perfect price. They were married in a traditional ceremony, and everything was as it should have been. Winters in Maui, summers in Aspen. Slipping up the stairs in the dead of night; filmy lingerie and naked chests; kisses dipped and lowered for places they would never think to mention in the day. She dressed in pastels and kept tubes of pear-pink lipstick and gloss in her designer purse. She let her blonde hair grow long and styled it with French twists and soft curls. She wore diamonds and carried a silver compact. She had no babies to save her figure.
         She loved him more than anything.

____________

         He wondered where it had gone wrong. At what point she had made the transition from meaning everything to being second to last on his list of priorities. Their marriage was a joke; a game; the inevitable next step in their fairy tale relationship. She wanted the social standing. He wanted the trophy. Now he stopped more times for milk than was necessary. Driving home from work, catching the window of her apartment in his eyes, feeling that heart-wrenching tug of desire—she was the other woman. The affair. And God, she was beautiful. She was senior partner at the firm; they met in the break room over coffee, and were friends six months before lines were crossed and she became his reason. She was everything his wife was not. Independent and strong; tailored suits and short skirts; curving hips and legs shaped over black heels; full breasts sending waves of heat through his veins. She wore black lace and drank champagne. She had a son, and he was beautiful. She was his irrationality, his spontaneity; his weakness.
         Marie was his conscience, his sense. His wife.
         And she made it so easy to stray.
         It’s hard to say he ever actually loved her.

____________

         She climbs the stairs and enters their bedroom. Treads over the thick carpet and adjusts the cardigan at her shoulders. He’s at the bureau in his boxers and socks, laying out his tie for tomorrow. It’s an emerald silk with a striped pattern, and she realizes she bought it for him last Christmas.
         She doesn’t recognize her voice.
         “Do you love her?”
         He turns, casts her a glance.
         “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
         “Just answer the question, John. That’s all I want from you.”
         He shakes his head, looks around. She asks again, quieter now, whispering.
         “Do you love her?”
         The words go dead in his throat.
         “I don’t know.”
         “You don’t know.” She paces the room, wringing her hands at the waist, fighting tears. When she speaks her voice is raw. “You don’t know… Well. Neither do I.”
         “Marie.”
         “I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong. Why am I not good enough for you?”
         “It isn’t you.”
         She stops for a long moment, watching him from behind her clear blue eyes.
         “No, it never is, is it?” Her words sting. “It’s always been you.”
         She tires him.
         “Don’t do this. Not tonight.”
         “Where did we go wrong, John?” she whispers. “Why us?”
         “I don’t know.”
         “I love you, you know.”
         “I know.”

____________

         They go to bed and nothing’s changed. They dress in separate bathrooms. Their hands don’t stray beneath the sheets.
         “What are we going to do?” she asks and he looks at her in the dark, the moon shining silver along the line of her profile. There was a time she was the most beautiful woman he had ever known.
         It hurts to admit that time has gone.
         “I think I love her.”
         She nods, turns away, breathes deeply.
         “I know.”