Chapter 23
By dinnertime, Mary is too tired to do any more. Her knees are aching, a low-grade hum she’s used to ignoring. But the sciatica pain spurts white hot. She needs to swallow a pill, to lie down with a heating pad, a book, a cup of tea. But first, she needs to eat.
She has no appetite this evening, and perhaps, if it was just herself to worry about, she wouldn’t bother with dinner.
A carton of yogurt or a bowl of cereal before bed would be fine.
But it’s not just her. So she must go through the motions, the effort.
She must prepare a real meal for them both, even when they’ll each eat it alone.
Mary descends the stairs, one step at a time, feet meeting before she attempts the next step. She’s too young to be so stiff isn’t she? Sometimes she feels like she’s ninety. Too many years spent on her feet. Too much weight on her shoulders—the loss she carries is heavy and unrelenting.
She thawed two chicken breasts that morning, so she doesn’t have to think too much. She minces garlic, slices a lemon. She tries, as the knife tugs through the garlic, through the flesh of the fruit, not to be reminded of the way the knife had tugged so easily through flesh all those years ago.
Of course, that was a different knife, from a different set.
Once the crime scene tape came down and Mary was permitted to return to the house, she got rid of the rest of those knives.
She took the entire block and put it in a trash bag, which she dropped into the can and left at the curb.
It probably wasn’t the proper way to dispose of them, but she didn’t care.
She couldn’t look at them. She ordered a new set and still has it, the blades dulled now from years of use and hundreds of cycles through the dishwasher when she should have been washing them by hand.
Mary makes a salad, microwaves a packet of rice while the skillet sizzles and oil pops.
Still, the house is too quiet, too still.
Mary spins the dial of her radio, volume up.
It’s her favorite public station, which plays jazz in the evenings.
Occasionally, she’ll dance to it for a few minutes, the way she used to with Ed, when they were young and she didn’t know him all that well. But not tonight.
When the food is ready, she prepares a plate. She carries it to the kitchen table and pours herself a glass of wine from the screw-top bottle in the door of the fridge.
But she doesn’t sit down to eat. Not quite yet.
She prepares a second plate, first—the other piece of chicken, the rest of the salad and rice.
She puts it on a wooden serving tray, then adds a paper napkin, a fork and knife, a bottle of water.
She carries the meal to the door that leads to the basement, which she opens.
She leans carefully down—knees still smarting, that nerve in her back pinching persistently—and places the tray on the top stair.
Then she backs away, listening, waiting.
Mary considers leaving the door open a crack, a silent invitation; he’ll see it when he retrieves the food. But she’s tried that before, and it’s never made a difference.
Soon, everything will change—the house going up for sale. She’ll be leaving, so he will have to leave, too. But for now, he’s got his head in the sand. It’s been there for years. He’s hiding, still not ready to see her. He’s still not ready to speak.
He can’t hide forever.
She shuts the door with a click. She doesn’t know what else to do.