1. Eliza
— ? —
Eliza
One in the morning, and I’m standing in my kitchen holding a plate of food that went cold two hours ago.
The table is set. I used the good plates, the ones we got as a wedding gift from Gordon’s aunt, the ones we never use because Gordon says they’re too nice for everyday.
I put out cloth napkins. I lit candles. I made his favorite: chicken parmesan, homemade, the recipe I learned from his aunt before she got sick, the one he used to request every year on his birthday back when birthdays still meant something to us.
The candles have burned down to nubs. There’s wax pooling on the tablecloth, which I bought specifically for nights like this, nights that never actually happen.
I bought it three years ago, when I still believed Gordon’s promises about cutting back, about being home more, about making time for us. I’ve used it maybe four times.
I should clean up. I should blow out what’s left of the candles and scrape the food into the trash and wash the dishes and go to bed. That’s what I should do. That’s what I’ve done a hundred times before, cleared the table, packed away the good plates, pretended tomorrow would be different.
Instead, I stand here holding this plate, watching the wax drip onto the tablecloth, and I think about the woman who used to live in this house.
The one who made Gordon’s favorite meal because she wanted to, not because she was desperate for his attention.
The one who believed him when he said she mattered.
I don’t know where she went.
The table seats twelve, because Gordon insisted on a table that could host dinner parties, even though we’ve never hosted a dinner party.
The chairs are upholstered in cream fabric that shows every stain, which is why we never actually sit in them.
The chandelier overhead cost more than my first car.
The kitchen itself is bigger than our entire studio apartment used to be, back when we shared four hundred square feet and a mattress on the floor and couldn’t keep our hands off each other.
I used to think I’d feel lucky, living in a house like this. I used to think this was the dream, the big kitchen, the nice things, the husband who could give me everything I never had growing up.
Nobody told me that everything could feel like nothing when you’re always alone in it.
The alarm system beeps at 1:15 a.m. The front door opens. Footsteps in the hallway, heavy and slow, the particular exhausted shuffle I’ve memorized over eleven years of marriage.
Gordon walks into the kitchen.
He looks terrible. His tie is loose, his jacket is slung over one arm, and there are dark circles under his eyes that tell me he’s been running on coffee and adrenaline for at least two days straight.
He’s tired-beautiful, worn down at the edges, the way he always looks during crunch time.
But it’s been crunch time for three years now.
I’m not sure he remembers what rested looks like.
He sees the table, the candles, the napkins, me.
“Oh,” he says. “You didn’t have to do all this.”
I don’t say anything. I just stand there, holding the plate I kept warm for him, the plate that stopped being warm around 10:30 when I finally gave up and turned off the oven.
“Liz, seriously.” He crosses to the sink, sets down his jacket on the counter, starts rolling up his sleeves. “I told you not to wait up.”
“You said you’d be home by eight.”
“I know, but the meeting ran long, and then there was this thing with the Hong Kong team, and I couldn’t just-” He stops, sighs, rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands. “I’m sorry. I should have texted.”
“You should have.”
He takes the plate from my hands. He doesn’t sit down at the table I spent an hour setting, the table with the cloth napkins and the good china and the candles that have burned down to nothing.
He just leans against the counter and starts eating, standing up, scrolling through his phone with his free hand.
I watch him for a moment. The way his jaw moves when he chews. The way his eyes stay fixed on the screen, not on me. The way he shovels food into his mouth like it’s fuel, not a meal, not something I made for him because I thought maybe tonight would be different.
“How was your day?” I ask.
“Hmm?” He doesn’t look up. “Oh, fine. Busy. Everything’s insane right now.
The company goes public next Friday. You wouldn’t believe the shit we’re dealing with.
Sloane says if we can lock down the Asian markets by next week, we’ll hit the ground running, but there’s a thousand things that can still go wrong, and every one of them is somehow my problem, and-” He waves his fork vaguely. “You don’t want to hear about this.”
“I asked.”
“Yeah, but it’s boring. Work stuff.” He takes another bite, still looking at his phone. “What about you? What’d you do today?”
I think about my day. I woke up alone in a bed that’s too big.
I ate breakfast alone at a kitchen island that seats six.
I went to a yoga class where I didn’t talk to anyone.
I came home to an empty house and spent three hours cooking a meal for a man who showed up five hours late and is currently eating it over the sink like a college student between classes.
“Not much,” I say.
“That’s nice.” He’s not listening. I can tell by the way he says it, the automatic response, the same tone he uses when he’s on a call and I try to get his attention.
“Gordon.”
“Hmm?”
“I’ve been thinking about going back to school.”
He glances up. For a second, I have his full attention, and I feel something flutter in my chest: hope, or just the pathetic relief of being seen.
“For what, though?” he asks.
“Design. Fashion design. I never finished my degree, and there’s this program at-”
“Babe.” He says it gently, like he’s letting me down easy, like I’m a child asking for something unreasonable. “You already did all that. That’s the whole point. It’s my turn now. You worked so hard for so long so I could build this, and now you get to relax. Enjoy it.”
“I don’t want to relax.”
“Sure you do. Anyone would kill to be in your position. No job, no stress, just-” He gestures at the kitchen, the house, the life he’s built around me without ever asking if I wanted it. “This. All of this. I built this for you.”
He means it nicely. I can hear it in his voice, the genuine belief that he’s given me everything I could ever want. He thinks he’s being generous. He thinks he’s being kind.
He doesn’t see me flinch. He doesn’t see the way my jaw tightens or the way my hands curl into fists at my sides. He doesn’t see anything, because he’s already looking back at his phone.
His phone buzzes. He checks it, and his whole face shifts, more alert, more present than he’s been since he walked in the door. More alive than he’s been with me in months.
“Shit, I gotta take this.” He’s already moving toward the hallway. “It’s Sloane.”
He disappears through the doorway before I can respond. I hear his voice from the other room, warm and engaged and focused in a way he hasn’t been with me all night.
“Hey, yeah, I just got in. What’s going on? Okay, okay, walk me through it-”
I look at the table, at the candles that burned down to nothing while I waited, at the napkins I folded by hand because I thought it would make tonight feel special, at the meal that’s now sitting half-eaten on a plate by the sink, next to his jacket, next to the phone charger he always forgets, next to all the other evidence of a man who lives here but doesn’t really live here at all.
I start clearing the dishes.
The plates go into the sink. The napkins go into the laundry basket.
The leftover food goes into containers that will sit in the fridge until I throw them away next week, because Gordon never eats leftovers.
He says he doesn’t like reheated food. What he means is that he’s never home long enough to eat it.
I’m elbow-deep in soapy water, scrubbing a pot that doesn’t need scrubbing, when he wanders back into the kitchen twenty minutes later.
“Sorry about that.” He yawns, stretching his arms over his head. “Crisis with the venue for the big party. Sloane had to rework the whole seating chart because apparently two very important men hate each other, and if they’re at the same table, the whole thing goes sideways. You know how it is.”
I wouldn’t know how it is. I haven’t been to one of his events since the very beginning, back before there were seating charts to fight over.
I see them afterward sometimes, in the photos that end up online.
Gordon in a tux, Gordon shaking hands, Gordon laughing with people whose names I’ll never learn, Sloane half a step behind him in every frame.
I used to look for myself in those pictures, out of some stupid habit. I stopped doing that a while ago.
“Anyway, it’s handled.” He comes up behind me, puts his hands on my shoulders. I can feel the warmth of him through my shirt, the familiar weight of his touch. “You okay? You seem quiet.”
“I’m fine.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
He kisses the top of my head. “Okay. I’m gonna shower and crash. Don’t stay up too late, yeah?”
He’s gone before I can answer. I hear his footsteps on the stairs, then the sound of the bathroom door closing, then water running through the pipes.
I finish the dishes and wipe down the counters.
I blow out the last of the candles and peel the cooled wax off the tablecloth with my thumbnail, one drop at a time, because soaking it never gets all of it out and I have nothing but time.
I fold the tablecloth and put away the good plates that we never use, back into the cabinet with the wedding card from his aunt still taped inside the door, her handwriting gone soft with age.
For your table, when you finally have one.
Then I turn off the kitchen light and stand in the darkness, listening to the sound of the shower running upstairs, and I think about the last time Gordon and I had a conversation that lasted more than five minutes.
I can’t remember.
I think about the last time he looked at me the way he looked at his phone when Sloane’s name popped up.
I can’t remember that either.
I go upstairs and change into pajamas and lie down in our bed, in the dark, and I wait for my husband to finish his shower.
When he finally slides in next to me, smelling like soap and toothpaste and exhaustion, I don’t say anything. I just lie there, staring at the ceiling, listening to him breathe.
“Love you,” he mumbles into his pillow. He’s asleep within seconds.
I stay awake for a long time.
The clock on the nightstand ticks past two, past two-thirty, past three.
I think about Gordon’s face when he said I should relax.
I think about his voice when he answered Sloane’s call.
I think about eleven years of marriage and a kitchen full of nice things and a bed that’s too big and a husband who hasn’t really looked at me in months.
I think about the woman who married him in borrowed shoes, who believed him when he said she’d never be invisible.
I wonder if she’s ever coming back.
His phone buzzes on the nightstand at 2:38 a.m. I know without looking that it’s Sloane.
I know without looking that he won’t see it until morning, because he sleeps like the dead, and I know that when he does see it, he’ll answer immediately, because Sloane is important. Sloane is work. Sloane matters.
His phone buzzes again.
I roll over and face the wall and close my eyes and tell myself that tomorrow will be different.
I’ve been telling myself that for three years.
I’m starting to think I’m a liar.