trial separation
Greg
“What the hell has gotten into you?”
Greg didn’t recognize her anymore. Kim. His own wife. A completely different person. The things she’d said at the dinner table, in front of Rich and Caroline . . .
Christ. Who says things like that? To their—well, technically his—friends?
Who was this woman?
Greg checked on the kids in bed, fast asleep. Seemed like Kim didn’t care. Ben could snooze his way through an earthquake,
all ten years of him. Francesca was a much lighter sleeper, waking at the simplest creak in the floorboards, so Greg tried
to be as nimble about it as possible, peeking his head in and catching a glimpse of their slumbering bodies.
The two kids still shared a bedroom. Greg wasn’t ready to sacrifice his workout station just yet. One day. Later. When they
were older and couldn’t stand sharing the same space anymore.
Their room was a technicolor blend of warring stylistic ideologies. Pretty rainbow ponies and snarling dinosaurs. Greg sided
with the dinos.
Ben had just gotten this dino-light for his birthday.
Greg had to admit, it was pretty cool. At night, when the lights were out, this apparatus blasted shadowed patterns of T-Rexes and brontosauruses across the ceiling and walls.
There they were now, a silent stampede of prehistoric shadows, charging over the walls, spinning in an eternal circle around the room.
Francesca stirred, sensing Greg’s presence. She had a sixth sense for that sort of thing, always knowing when someone was
watching. He dipped his head out of their room.
Back to Kim. Christ. Here we go.
Where was she? The house felt eerily quiet. Usually by now Kim would be getting ready for bed, taking her face off, but she
wasn’t in their bathroom. Their bed was empty.
“Kim?” he called down the hall. To the house. Did he expect her to answer?
Is she hiding? Where in the hell is she?
Voices drifted out from the living room. Canned laughter. Greg headed back downstairs to see what the commotion was all about.
Is she watching TV? At this hour?
Kim never watched television. She was always on his case about staying up late, watching the news. Come to bed, she’d say, practically begging. Give your brain a break.
There was a second, just a blip in his brain, where Greg couldn’t help but hear the laughter and think the studio audience
was laughing at him, along with Kim. Pointing. Guffawing. He was the butt of some joke that he hadn’t heard the setup for,
utterly lost.
Kim was laughing. Laughing at him.
So Rich is Greg’s friend. They’ve been buds since their early investment days. Caroline has always been a bit of a heavy lift,
sure. Kim and Greg have always joked about his pal’s green card marriage—at home, in private—but never, you know, to them.
At them.
What the hell was Kim thinking?
This dinner had been on the calendar for weeks. Weeks. If Kim hadn’t wanted to go, she should’ve just said something. Not sulked through the fucking meal and then . . .
And . . .
Where did those words even come from? Is that what she thought about? On her own? How could she say those things in front
of his friends? How could she have laughed
and laughed and laughed
like that?
The living room was empty. Leno was on, chortling through his opening monologue for the night. Greg had no idea what he was
poking fun at. The president, maybe.
Greg powered down the TV with the remote. Silence returned to the house. A particular stillness suspended itself over the
room. The halls. Not a creature is stirring . . .
“Kim?”
There was a commotion in the kitchen, so abrupt, Rich couldn’t help but give a start. The rattle of utensils. A drawer opened,
followed by the thinnest rumble of metal.
Was Kim cooking? At this hour? A midnight snack?
Greg couldn’t recall if she’d eaten anything at Rich’s house. Caroline’s cooking was . . . well. It was what it was. Edible, at best. Had Kim even touched her food?
More rattling. A drawer slammed shut. What the hell’s gotten into her? Kim would wake the kids if she wasn’t careful. Francesca, definitely. Christ—Ben, too, if she kept at it.
Let her. Fuck it. She could try to get the kids back to sleep, if she wanted to disrupt their slumber. Greg was beyond giving
a shit. Not after the way she’d been acting all night.
Not her. Not Kim at all. It was like she’s some—
thing
—one else. A totally different person. This had been going on for days now.
Whatever had gotten into Kim, crawling up her toned ass, it had been nonstop all week.
Not cooking dinner. Her utter lack of decorum.
Self-care. She had been drifting through life without a single fucking care in the world—not for herself, the kids, her husband.
Greg had just about had enough of it. This wasn’t like her. This wasn’t like her at all.
Who the fuck is this? I want my wife back now, please, thank you very fucking much.
“Kim?”
The rattling in the kitchen halted. Just stopped on a dime. No answer, though.
She was listening. Waiting.
Greg tried talking to her about it. Just the other day. Asking her if she was okay. If she was sick. If she was unhappy. Was
there something wrong that she wanted to tell him?
Was there something else? Someone else?
He wanted to be helpful. He wants to be an understanding husband. If there’s something that’s wrong, he wants to be there
for her. Explore it. Does she want to go back to counseling? Fine, let’s do it. Greg’s all for it. She put in the hours for
him, he could do the same for her. That’s the promise, the bond, they made. He just wanted his wife back. Not . . .
This. Who—or what—ever she was now.
Would sucking his cock shut him up?
He could still hear her saying it, laughing. The words rattling up from her throat, all guttural and husky. Like rusted nails.
Her voice. It hadn’t sounded like Kim at all. The words came out of her mouth, sure, but they just didn’t sound like his wife.
Not Kim, for Christ’s sake.
Rich had been telling another one of his stories. His fucking god-awful boring stories. Even Greg was rolling his eyes—on
the inside. Standard dinner party banter. The rest of the table just kind of side-eyed one another and grinned, letting Rich
spin his blitzed yarn.
Not Kim. She downed her third glass of wine and turned to Caroline and just opened her mouth—Would sucking his cock shut him up? Caroline blanched. Rich hiccupped, his dull anecdote dying on the vine of his tongue. The atmosphere withered in an instant.
Greg froze. He couldn’t believe it. Kim turned to him, the look in her eyes sending an electrical chill through his veins—this
Freon stare—and said, I’m bored. Can we leave now?
Fucking unbelievable.
Couples counseling. They’d gone through that rough patch a while back, after Greg had that—that frivolous little thing—that
dalliance—not an affair, no, absolutely not—just a . . . what would he call it? A fling. Barely a blip. A hiccup in their
marriage. Done now. Over.
They signed up for therapy and it worked. It worked. Rich got on his hands and knees and begged for forgiveness. Outright begged. And Kim did! She forgave him, the ol’ lug.
Counseling worked. For a while. They could do it again, he figured. Believed. Whatever the hell was happening with Kim, they could figure it out. Together. As a couple.
That’s what Greg wanted, right? To help her? Fix Kim?
By the time Greg reached the kitchen, the drawers were all pulled open. All of them. Every last one. Nearly every single cooking
utensil in their kitchen was scattered across the marble countertop. Greg had paid top dollar for that marble. Imported from
Italy—or so the contractor said. For what he paid for it, it damn well better have been pilfered from the fucking Parthenon,
fondled by fucking Leonardo Da Vinci himself. Greg simply stared at the motley assortment of cutlery spread out everywhere.
Tools he’d never seen before. He didn’t know what purpose they served. Are these for cooking or performing a friggin’ appendectomy? He pictured his kitchen as an operating room. Here were these surgical tools, haphazardly sprawled out, just waiting for
the doctors to arrive and start slicing and dicing. Whatever procedure they were prepping to perform, it sure must’ve been
a doozy.
There’s Kim. Greg hadn’t noticed—hadn’t seen her—at first. She was so still.
Frozen.
She leaned against the counter. Her back was turned to Greg. All he could see were her shoulders. Her brunette hair cascaded down her back. When was the last time she’d gone to the hair salon? What in the hell did she do with herself all day while he was at work?
“Kim?”
She only turned her head. Barely that, even. He could see the tip of her chin, an inch of skin, the rest of her face still
sheathed behind her hair.
Even so, somehow, Greg sensed that she was smiling.
“What’s going on here?”
Kim didn’t say a word.
“You want to tell me what’s wrong?” he asked for, what? The fiftieth time?
Hundredth by now?
Her chin disappeared again, turning back to the counter.
So it’s the silent treatment again.
Splendid.
Both Ben and Francesca had been asking if Mom was okay. Even they sensed something was wrong with Mom. Greg had been making
excuses for her all week.
Mom’s just tired, guys. Let’s let her rest a little bit longer. We’ll order takeout tonight. Don’t you worry about her. She’ll
be better before you know it . . .
But he was done. Fucking done.
If she wasn’t going to talk to him, open up to him about what was going on—what the hell is wrong with you, what has gotten into you all of a sudden—then so fucking be it.
“I can’t keep doing this,” Greg said to her back. Her shoulders. Was she listening to him? Were the words sinking in? He wanted
to grab her. Shake her. Listen to me, damn it!
So Greg closed in. “Do you hear what I’m saying? I’m trying, Kim. I’m trying to—”
Kim turned. Spun around so fast, Greg couldn’t help but halt. For a second, barely long enough to let out a gasp, Greg expected
to see her brandishing a kitchen knife.
Jesus, did he actually imagine she was going to stab him? Really? Is that how bad things have gotten between them? That he would imagine her doing that? To him?
Neither of them said a word.
The placid look in Kim’s eyes was disconcerting. She was smiling without smiling, the ripple in her lips turning, but there
was no mirth to it. No happiness.
No Kim.
“We’re going out,” she finally said.
Well, that wasn’t what Greg expected to hear. “Excuse me? You’re what?”
“We’re fatigued by all this. We find you suffocating. We’re going out.”
“What the fuck has gotten into you?”
Kim laughed. A husky, guttural laugh. Greg had never heard her laugh like this.
“Gotten into you,” she repeated. Really relished it, too.
Greg didn’t get the joke. “Kim. I’m serious as a goddamn heart attack. What has—”
“Not Kim,” Kim said. “Not anymore.”
“The hell you are—”
That’s when the mallet came down.
It happened so fast.
Barely a blink.
Greg focused on Kim’s arm rising from her side, a glint of dull silver catching the kitchen lights, her hand lifting over
her head for one brief peek—striking a Statue of Liberty pose—before plummeting back down. It was difficult for Greg to understand—comprehend—what
happened to his face, his skull, until he felt it. Seeing is believing, they say, but in this case, it only made matters more confusing. Why was Kim doing this? To him? Her husband? Why was she
repeating herself? Over and over again? What was this?
It was far easier, simpler, you might say, for Greg to understand the feeling.
Feeling is believing.
It hurt. Really hurt. Impact between the meat tenderizer and his forehead—that dull crunch, that blunt bite of gridded teeth into his temple,
the fresh rupture of blood, skin splitting in a dozen different pecks, his eyes blinking back the sudden rush of wetness.
By the fifth strike, Greg knew exactly what was happening to his head. What Kim was doing to him. His skull. “She hates you,”
Kim said in between bludgeons. “Despises you.”
Greg’s legs finally gave out. He collapsed to the floor. More marble. So expensive. How many months of his paycheck had gone
into this floor? Does marble stain? How will the house cleaners get that blood out?
“She’s wanted to do this for so long now . . . So long.”
Kim stepped over him, so that she now hovered above Greg’s body. Both legs straddled him. She stared down at him, tilting
her head to one shoulder, as if to study him.
The heap that is her husband.
“She called upon us,” Kim continued, taking him in, as Greg suddenly slipped into these—what do you call them, spasms—a frantic
break dance across the kitchen floor.
“Begging us to take her away.” Kim’s arm lifted over her head, holding it there for a moment. Now Greg could see the meat
tenderizer. Its broadside was purple. Dripping wet.
“Away from your children.”
Down it came.
“Away from this prison of a house.”
Up it went.
“Away from you.”
Down it came.
“Can you see it?” Kim asked between strikes. “There’s a lighthouse on the horizon, burning bright . . . Drawing us in. What
a brilliant beacon it is. Aren’t you curious, darling?”
Kim kept talking, but truth told, the words all blurred together by the tenth hit, no matter how hard he tried to listen.
Let the words sink in. Greg felt the crater in his face deepen, expand, that meteorite of a mallet crashing down on the surface of his nose, killing off Ben’s dinosaurs, bye-bye, brontos, so sorry, T-Rex, been nice knowing you, the epoch of their marriage come and gone.
Extinct once and for all.
The last thought to slip through Greg’s pulverized mind was simple: Kim’s going to wake up the kids if she keeps at this . . .
She did, regrettably, so she dealt with them next.