The lock clicks in the dead of night as I hear the doorknob twist slowly. Suddenly I hear his footsteps as he tries to silently close the door. My husband’s intentional quietness folds in with the hour he’s chosen to keep. I’ve been up for at least two hours; waiting, padding back and forth, looking at our children sleeping, desperately staring out the window in hopes of seeing the flash of headlights making their way down the road and into my driveway. My heart beats rapidly knowing he’s home. It’s either ready for a fight or it’s thrilled he’s finally come home. I lie still trying to figure out which one it is tonight.
He doesn’t come home upstairs to me, but heads to the kitchen. I can hear him open the refrigerator in the scramble for his welcome meal. The crinkle of cellophane breaks the space of silence and then the microwave door opens and beeps with the time. Silverware clinks on the plate as he eats the dinner I prepared earlier. I remember the fragile moments of this evening as I prepared that dinner with hope in mind. I quickly begin role playing in my weary and distraught head as to how the night actually occurred. Softly I remember my children asking their questions in our quiet and safe home of pretend security.
“When is Daddy coming home? Will he be here for dinner?”
“Will Daddy be here before I go to bed? He promised we’d have fight night tonight!”
I quickly answer with a nervous voice. “Daddy had a meeting. He’d rather be with us but he needs to make money. Let’s eat, the food is getting cold.”
Another half hour goes by. “Daddy’s meeting had to run over. He’s dealing with some very difficult customers right now. I’m sure he’ll have fight night tomorrow.”
The children listen to my words while they stare at me with knowing eyes. We all smile delicately, and shake our heads together in false agreement.
I finish off our dishes as I fire off the answers to my children’s questions. I carefully tear off the plastic wrap and put it over his plate, making the plastic tight, suffocating.
I give the children their baths, read them a story and give kisses and hugs. They struggle going to sleep, always wanting glasses of water, an extra story. It makes my nerves brittle, this hour of bedtime. After they’re asleep and my chores are done, I’m afraid. I’m alone, I’m afraid, and I sit and listen to the silence of my house. There’s no footsteps, there’s no heart. There’s only the slight hum of the furnace and the occasional car passing by, never pulling in but passing by. The silence is deafening as I walk from room to room, thinking up things to do. Finally I give in and escape to my bedroom, to the ritual of falling asleep for a few draining hours only to wake up to the inevitable. An empty bed. An empty house. An empty marriage.
In the early dawn light I see the shadow of what was once my husband. I watch his lips pull in and out with the stale booze and cigarette breath. It encompasses the room and I want to fling open the windows despite the 30-degree weather to banish the staleness of his body. I quietly get dressed to walk. To walk away from my house. To use a small space and time to call my own. To cleanse myself from my drunken husband inside and the innocent children lying in their beds. To fill my lungs with something clean and full of life, not the staleness of life itself. To somehow try to figure out through the silence of woods the answers to save him, to save myself, to save my children from us all.
