10. Harry
— ? —
Harry
I haven’t been home since the fire.
I’ve spent three days in the same ruined clothes and three nights in a plastic chair, and every morning I’ve woken up to fluorescent lights and the smell of antiseptic and the sight of my wife through a window, turned away from me.
But Jules needs things. She needs her comfort objects and her daily necessities, the small pieces of home that might make this hospital room bearable, and I’m the only one who knows where everything is.
So on the third morning after the fire, I finally leave.
The drive home takes twenty minutes, and every mile feels wrong. I should be at the hospital. I should be in my chair, watching her door, ready to go to her the moment she needs me.
But she needs this more. She needs Pickle and her Kindle and the face cream she uses before bed. She needs proof that I know her and pay attention, and that two years of marriage have taught me exactly who she is.
The house is exactly as we left it.
I stand in the foyer and I can feel her everywhere. Her cardigan is draped over the back of the couch, the soft gray one she wears when she’s cold, and the faint smell of her perfume is still in the air.
I walk through the living room and into the kitchen.
I open the fridge, and the smell hits me first.
The containers from our anniversary dinner are still on the middle shelf, right where we left them. Four days ago they were the restaurant’s entire menu, and now there’s green fuzz growing around the edges.
I pull them out one by one and dump them in the trash. There’s the pasta from our first date, and the mushroom appetizer she doesn’t like and I never finished.
The trash bag is heavy when I tie it off. I take it out to the garage and come back to the kitchen.
Her coffee mug is on the drying rack.
It’s the blue one with the chipped handle that she won’t let me replace. I washed it the morning of our anniversary, right after I made her coffee the way she likes it, and the next morning she left without letting me make her one.
I pick it up, and the ceramic is cold in my hands.
The oat milk is still in the fridge door, and when I check the date it has two more days.
I stand there with her mug in one hand and the carton in the other, and I look at the spot on the kitchen floor where we sat and ate that night, when I thought I’d fixed things.
Then I put the mug back on the drying rack and the oat milk back in the fridge, and I go upstairs.
Our bedroom is worse.
Her half read book is face down on the nightstand, holding her place.
Her slippers are tucked under the bed, exactly where she always leaves them.
The sheets are still rumpled from the last morning we woke up here, the morning she got dressed without looking at me and wouldn’t let me make her coffee.
The green dress is draped over the chair by the window.
It’s the one she wore to our anniversary dinner, the one I unzipped up here that night after I’d talked her out of being angry. It’s been sitting there ever since, waiting for her to come home and put it away.
I pick it up. The fabric is soft under my fingers, and it still smells faintly of her perfume.
I put it back on the chair, because I can’t deal with that right now.
The bathroom is next, with her toothbrush in the holder and her hair ties scattered on the counter.
I turn on the shower.
The hot water hits my skin and I realize I haven’t showered in three days. I’ve been living in ash and sweat and the smell of smoke, so focused on being near Jules that I forgot to take care of myself.
I stand under the water for a long time and watch the gray run off me and down the drain, and I let it beat against my shoulders until my muscles start to loosen.
When I get out and open the closet for clean clothes, her side is right there next to mine, every hanger of it, and I put my fist through the closet door.
The wood splinters around my knuckles, and the pain is sharp and clean. I stand there with my hand throbbing, breathing hard, and I give myself exactly ten seconds of it.
Then I get dressed, make the bed because she hates coming home to an unmade one, and get to work.
Her side of the closet is organized the way she likes it, with shirts on the left, pants in the middle and dresses on the right.
I pull out her favorite pajamas, the soft ones with the stars, and a few comfortable outfits for when she’s feeling well enough to sit up, and the ugly fuzzy socks with the cats on them that she refuses to throw away.
Her vanity is next. I pack her face creams in the right order, because I know she has a system, and the lip balm she likes, and her hairbrush and a few hair ties.
I pack her Kindle, fully charged, and her silk pillowcase, because she hates scratchy ones. I pack a photo of us from our wedding, small enough to fit on the bedside table.
Then I go to her side of the bed and pull Pickle out from under the pillow.
Pickle is an otter. She’s had him since college, a gift from her sister during finals week. He’s worn soft from years of being held, with one eye slightly loose and his fur matted in places from being clutched during bad nights.
She would never admit to still sleeping with a stuffed animal. But I know, because I’ve woken up in the middle of the night to find her holding him with her face buried in his fur.
I put Pickle in the bag.
Then I check my pocket.
The plastic bag is still there, the one the paramedic gave me in the ambulance, with her rings inside. I’ve been carrying it for three days and checking it compulsively, terrified of losing it.
I check it again, and then again, three times in all.
The rings are still there, covered in ash and soot but intact, waiting for the day I can put them back on her finger.
I zip up the overnight bag and head back to the hospital.
***
At the hospital, I find the day nurse at the station, the younger one, not Odette.
“I need to see my wife,” I say. “Five minutes. I have her things.”
The nurse looks at me with a mixture of sympathy and wariness. “Mrs. Winslow said she’s not accepting visitors.”
“I know. I’m not trying to visit. I just need to give her this.” I hold up the overnight bag. “Five minutes. I won’t sit down, and I won’t try to have a conversation. I’ll just give her the bag and leave.”
She hesitates. “Let me ask her.”
She disappears into Jules’ room, and a minute later she comes back. “She says you can come in. Five minutes.”
I push open the door.
Jules is sitting up in bed, propped against a pile of pillows. She looks better than she did two days ago, with some color back in her cheeks and her eyes more alert. But she’s watching me with an expression that’s completely closed off.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hi.”
I set the bag on the chair beside her bed. “I brought you some things from home. Your Kindle, your pillowcase, some clothes. I’ll unpack it for you.”
She doesn’t argue. She can’t, not with her hands wrapped in gauze, when she can’t grip anything heavier than the call button.
I pull out the silk pillowcase first. She looks at my split knuckles when I hold it up, and she doesn’t ask.
“Lean forward.”
She does, stiffly, with her jaw tight. I slip the hospital pillowcase off and replace it with hers, working quickly so she doesn’t have to hold herself up for long.
“Okay.”
She leans back, and I see her shoulders relax, just slightly, against the familiar fabric.
I pull out the fuzzy socks next, the ones with the cats on them, the ones she’s had since before we met, with holes in the toes.
“I can’t,” she starts.
“I know.”
I lift the blanket at the foot of her bed and slide the socks onto her feet, one at a time. Her toes are cold. She watches me with an expression I can’t read.
“The creams are in the wrong order,” she says when I set them on her bedside table.
I look at the bottles. They go cleanser, toner, serum, moisturizer, left to right, exactly the way she arranges them at home.
“No, they’re not.”
“The serum goes before the toner.”
“It doesn’t.”
“It does.”
“Jules, I’ve watched you do your skincare routine approximately seven hundred times. The serum goes after the toner.”
She glares at me, and I wait.
“Fine,” she says finally. “They’re in the right order.”
“I know.”
“I hate this.”
“I know.”
“I hate that I can’t do anything for myself.”
“I know.”
“Stop saying ‘I know.’”
I don’t say anything at all. I reach into the bag one more time and pull out Pickle.
For a second her composure cracks, and I see the woman underneath, scared and hurting and trying so hard not to show it.
Then she catches herself. Her expression closes again and her jaw tightens. I set Pickle on the pillow beside her head.
“Thank you,” she says. “You can go now.”
“Jules.”
“You said five minutes. It’s been two. You can leave early.”
I don’t leave. I stand there looking at her, trying to find the words.
“I know you want a divorce,” I say finally. “I know you think this marriage is over.”
“I don’t think it’s over. I know it’s over.”
“Then you’re wrong.”
She stares at me. “Excuse me?”
“You can have the house.” I take a step closer. “You can have the company. You can have my name off every building in this city. Anything you want, anything you ask for, it’s yours. But you cannot have a divorce.”
“You don’t get to decide that.”
“Maybe not. But I’m telling you anyway.”
“That’s not how this works, Harry. I don’t need your permission to end this marriage.”
“No, you don’t. But you’re going to have to fight me for it, because I’m not signing any papers. I’m not moving out of our house. I’m not pretending that the last three years didn’t happen.”
“You’re being arrogant.”
“I’m arrogant about exactly one thing.” I move closer, close enough to see the pulse jumping in her throat. “Nobody will ever love you the way I do. Nobody. And I’m going to spend every day proving it, whether you open the door or not.”
“That’s not romantic, Harry. That’s harassment.”
“Then have me arrested. I’ll post bail and come right back.”
She stares at me with her jaw tight. She doesn’t smile and she doesn’t soften, but she doesn’t tell me to leave, either.
“You’re impossible,” she says.
“So I’ve been told.”
I reach out and fix her pillow, adjusting it behind her head the way she likes. My fingers brush her neck with the lightest touch.
The heart monitor beside her bed spikes.
We both hear it. Jules’ face flushes with mortification, and she looks away from me and stares hard at the wall.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” she says quickly.
“I didn’t say it did.”
“It’s just the medication. Or whatever.”
“Of course.”
She still won’t look at me. Her cheeks are red and her breathing is slightly uneven, and the monitor is still beeping faster than it was a minute ago. I have never been so grateful for a machine in my life.
“Bring divorce papers tomorrow,” she says. “Or don’t come at all.”
I pause at the door and look back at her.
“Then I’ll see you tomorrow,” I say. “And I won’t be bringing any papers.”