Henry's Wife

by Rachel Pacitti  

She gives Henry her body, Henry gives her the house and a reasonably uninterrupted quiet. Everything else she gets from Martin over Facebook Messenger.

Martin asks how she’s doing, he sends stupid little pictures and has a sweet self-deprecating humor. He always responds quickly and never eats dinner with his cell phone. He’s a street vendor breaking into New York City's fast-growing tourist market—he’s interesting. And he wants to spend the rest of his life with her. They plan on meeting sometime in the spring, or early summer, he's not sure about the timeline.

Henry comes home early and finds her with her underwear around her knees, unfolding the flaps of a feminine pad. He lets the bedroom door slam as he retreats to the kitchen. She can hear him turn on the faucet, and as she buttons up her pants, she imagines him splashing water into his eyes, and then picking up the phone. He calls his mother when he gets home from work.

Martin thinks it’s ridiculous that Henry slept on the couch that night. He threatens to phone Henry and tell him so. She tells Martin not to be so aggressive about her husband, which sets him off typing in a mad fury. She begins to reply but does not push the send button. She imagines him sitting there on the other side of the screen, waiting. She smiles to herself, then calmly finishes her scrambled eggs, and logs off.

It’s been four days since Martin has gone online. She checks Facebook every half hour. It’s quiet outside like the day she was married.

Henry comes home again to find her in their bed balancing a laptop on her knees in the dark. The screen lights up her drawn face in blue, and her eyes are fixated on the screen in front of her. When he comes over to place a cold hand on her shoulder, she does not look up.

My mother’s been asking…he begins

Finish your sentence, she says.

When will you be ready…

I’m ready. She says.

Now? He asks.

Yes, why not?

Why not, he repeats, rubbing circles down her back.

What do you want me to say, she says.

She wakes up to his heavy breathing on her chest. She checks Facebook. Martin has logged on but has not sent her any message. She logs off. She makes eggs and they burn.

Henry brings home a little dog with a pink nose but she will not feed it. It cries outside their bedroom door. That night she dreams that she is holding a child, and the child is growing increasingly large in her arms. It grows so fast, yet it is still screaming like an infant and she is falling over, but she cannot put the child down. Martin is standing next to her, and she looks up at him, begging him to help her, but he is talking to Henry and they both face away from her. Neither of them wants the child.

She woke up resentful and would not look at Henry. They are silent as he prepares to leave for work except for the dog begging at the door. She hates the way he walks, one foot dragging behind the other, his chest jutting forward like a man swimming in the air.

When he was gone she found he left a note on their bed, a scribbled, loveyou, with no space, it was the no space that does it.

She messages Martin:

Honestly, Martin, I circle the kitchen all day, I go through Henry’s socks and purposefully un-match them cause I know he hates that then I feel awful and go back and fix it. What have you been doing, how’s your sister? Did she go out again with that guy? I forget his name. Henry wants me to have a baby did I tell you that? I think I might, honest Martin if you don't answer me I just might.

She walks in and out of rooms shutting off fans and looking at piles of clothes. She watches the dog urinate on the carpet, then sits by the stain and thinks about cleaning it up.

She checks Facebook, Martin has read her message. She puts on her yellow gloves and begins to scrub the carpet. The dog is barking at her and she’s screaming shut up, shut up. Then she’s chucking a shoe, and then she’s sobbing, and scrubbing and the dog is still barking. When they both quiet down, she crawls to her bed and waits for Henry and his cold hands to come home.

She thinks about the day they got married, the day after Hurricane Wilma tore up the coast. How his mother had whispered in his ear at the end of the aisle.

There is no air in this house. Henry is watching the news, he likes the news, he likes to fall asleep to the news and breathe that choking snore. He likes to feel her next to him when he does this, he wants her there now, where is she?

She is upstairs, she is in the baby’s room, except there is no baby so it’s just a room. And she’s upstairs laying on the carpet, wondering what it’s like to be a balloon, to be completely hollow, nothing on the inside.

Rachel Pacitti is the short person walking around campus with buckets of paint.