1. Gracie
— ? —
Gracie
Sir Reginald the hedgehog has wedged himself into a toilet-paper tube and is making it everyone’s problem.
“Come on, buddy.” I’ve got two fingers hooked under his belly and I’m applying the gentlest pressure I can manage, but he’s curled into a ball of spines and spite, and every time I think I’ve got him, he hunkers down tighter. “I’m trying to help you. This is literally my job.”
The tube shifts. Sir Reginald hisses. Behind me, Carla leans against the doorframe of the exam room and watches me work with the kind of detached amusement that suggests she’s not planning to help.
“Have you tried bribery?” she asks. “Works on men.”
“He’s a hedgehog.”
“Same thing, smaller package.”
I shoot her a look over my shoulder, but she’s already grinning, and I can’t help the snort that escapes me. Carla’s been my vet tech for three years, and she’s never once taken anything seriously except the animals themselves. It’s one of the things I like about her.
“Okay, Sir Reginald.” I shift my grip and try a different angle. “Here’s the deal. I’m going to count to three, and then I’m going to pull, and it’s going to be uncomfortable for both of us, but you’re going to be free and I’m going to finally eat my lunch. Ready?”
Sir Reginald doesn’t respond, because he’s a hedgehog. I pull anyway.
There’s a horrible squeaking sound, the tube, not the animal, and then he’s out, spines bristling, tiny eyes furious, the picture of wounded dignity. I set him gently in his carrier and close the latch before he can make another break for it.
“There we go.” I strip off my gloves and toss them in the trash. “One liberated hedgehog. Mrs. Feldman can pick him up whenever she’s ready.”
“I’ll let her know.” Carla doesn’t move from the doorway. She’s got that look on her face, the one that means a question is coming that I won’t want. “So. What are you doing tonight?”
I wash my hands in the exam room sink, taking my time with the soap. “Why?”
“Because it’s September twelfth.”
“I’m aware of the date.”
“And September twelfth is your anniversary,” she says, drawing it out.
“I’m aware of that too.”
Carla raises an eyebrow. “So? Big plans, fancy dinner, weekend getaway, wild passionate sex on every surface of your house?”
“Carla.”
“What? You’ve been married five years. You’re allowed to have sex on surfaces.”
I dry my hands on a paper towel and turn to face her, leaning against the counter.
The exam room is small and bright, all white walls and stainless steel, and it smells like antiseptic and hedgehog musk.
I love my job, most days, the puzzles of it, the satisfaction of fixing what was broken, the look on people’s faces when I hand them back their healthy pet.
But it’s not the job I trained for, and it’s not the job I want, and some days, days like today, I feel the distance between who I am and who I meant to be like a bruise I keep pressing.
“I’m cooking dinner,” I say. “His favorite. That beef thing with the red wine sauce. I’ve got candles. I’ve got the good wine. I’ve got-” I gesture vaguely at my own body. “A dress. The green one he likes.”
“The one that makes your boobs look incredible?”
“That’s the one.”
Carla’s smile softens, loses some of its edge. “That sounds really nice, Gracie.”
It does. It sounds like what a wife would do, a good wife, a wife who hasn’t spent the last two years watching her marriage drift like a boat with no anchor.
I’ve been planning this dinner for a week.
I bought the ingredients three days ago.
I texted Mal about it on Monday, and again on Tuesday, and his last response was a thumbs-up emoji followed by silence.
“He’s been working a lot,” I say, because the silence needs filling. “Big project. A gallery piece. He’s been - you know how he gets.”
“I know how you get when he gets like that.”
There’s nothing to say that wouldn’t sound like a complaint, and I’m not complaining, so I don’t answer.
I’m not. Mal is brilliant, and his work is important, and sometimes important work takes time.
I know that. I’ve always known that. I married him knowing that his art would always be the thing he loved most, and I made peace with being second a long time ago.
I just didn’t think second would feel so much like last.
My father died four years into this marriage.
Cancer, the kind that takes its time. I held his hand at the end in a hospice outside Cedar Hollow while Mal was at an opening in New York he swore he’d leave and didn’t.
I’ve never once said out loud that I sat with my father’s body alone.
I just folded it up small and put it somewhere I don’t look, the way I’ve learned to fold up everything this marriage costs me.
“I should get back to work,” I say. “Mr. Hendricks is bringing in his beagle at two, and that dog has definitely eaten another sock.”
Carla gives me a long look, like she wants to say more, but she doesn’t push. She never pushes. That’s the other thing I like about her.
“Happy anniversary, Gracie,” she says, and heads down the hall.
I leave work at five and stop at the store for parsley because I forgot it earlier.
Then I drive home through traffic that crawls and stalls and makes me want to scream.
Our house is in a nice neighborhood. Mal’s success bought us that, with big trees and manicured lawns and neighbors who wave but don’t talk.
I park in the driveway and sit in the car for a minute, gathering myself.
The house is dark when I walk in. It’s always dark these days. Mal’s first studio was the converted garage out back, skylight and all, but he outgrew it years ago for the warehouse downtown, and now the whole house stays dim and empty, waiting for someone to live in it.
I set the parsley on the counter and get to work.
The beef takes three hours. I brown it in batches, letting each piece get a good sear before moving to the next.
I sauté onions until they’re soft and sweet.
I deglaze with the wine, scraping up the fond, letting the alcohol burn off in a hiss of steam.
The kitchen fills with heat, with smell, with a warmth that almost feels like hope.
I shower while the beef braises. I do my hair, my makeup, all the little rituals of a woman preparing to be seen.
The green dress fits the same way it always has, hugging in the right places, and I stand in front of the mirror and try to remember the last time Mal looked at me the way he did when he first saw me in it.
A year ago. Maybe two. Time blurs when you’re not paying attention.
I set the table with the good dishes, the ones we got for our wedding. Candles in the center, the nice wine breathing, napkins folded just so. I plate the beef and arrange the vegetables and step back to look at what I’ve made.
It looks like love and effort, like a woman who still believes her marriage is worth fighting for.
I sit down to wait.
***
The candles burn halfway down.
I don’t eat, because I don’t want to start without him. I pour myself a glass of wine and sip it slowly, watching the flames flicker and dance, checking my phone every few minutes for a text that doesn’t come.
Eight o’clock comes and goes, then nine, then ten.
The candles gutter and go out. I light them again. They burn down a second time. I let them die.
Eleven, then eleven-thirty, then midnight.
I should eat. The food is cold now, congealed and sad, but I made it and I should eat it and there’s no point in waiting anymore.
But I don’t move. I sit at the table like a woman carved from stone, and I stare at the empty chair across from me, and I think about all the other empty chairs, all the other cold dinners, all the other nights I’ve spent waiting for a man who doesn’t come home.
This isn’t the first time. I can’t stop circling that.
This isn’t the first time, and it wasn’t the first time last time, and I’ve lost count of all the times he’s forgotten, all the times he’s gotten lost in the work, all the times I’ve gone to bed alone with I’m sorry, I lost track of time ringing in my ears like a bell that’s lost its tone.
I used to fight about it, cry and yell and demand answers. Now I just wait, because the fighting never changed anything, and at least the waiting is quiet.
One o’clock.
The front door opens.
I don’t move or turn around. I hear his footsteps in the entryway, hear him set down his keys, hear him pause when he sees the dining room light still on.
He comes around the corner, and I finally look at him.
He’s covered in paint. Blue on his forearms, gold on his cheek, white streaked through his hair like he’s been running his hands through it for hours.
His shirt is ruined, his jeans are worse, and there’s a red-brown smear across his wrist that I hope is paint and not blood.
He looks exhausted and wild and beautiful, and his eyes meet mine across the room with all the light and hope of a man who has just remembered where he was supposed to be.
Three full seconds, and I can watch it land.
The table, the candles burned down to nothing, the food gone cold and untouched, and me, still sitting there, still waiting, still wearing the dress he used to love.
“Gracie.” His voice cracks. “Oh, God. Gracie.”
I don’t say anything. I’ve run out of things to say.
“The painting - I was - it’s done.” He moves toward me, stops, like he’s not sure if he’s allowed. “It’s done, and I lost track of time, and I didn’t check my phone, and-”
“It’s one in the morning, Mal.”
“I know. I know, I’m so-”
“It’s our anniversary.”
He flinches. I watch it happen, watch the guilt twist his features, watch him try to find the words that will make this okay. But there aren’t any words. There haven’t been any words for a long time.
“The painting,” he says again, like it explains anything, like it excuses anything. “It’s my best work. The gallery unveils it in three days. There’s going to be press, and collectors, and - Gracie, please. Please come. It matters.”
I look at him across the ruin of our anniversary dinner, this man I married, this man I love, this man who has somehow become a stranger while still sleeping in my bed.
He looks back at me, paint-stained and desperate, and I can see the boy he was when he first kissed me, the boy who couldn’t find the words, the boy who promised me his hands and everything they made.
“Where were you, Mal?”
“The studio. I told you-”
“Where’s the studio?”
He hesitates. It’s barely a beat, barely a breath, but I’ve spent eight years learning to read this man, and I know what hesitation looks like.
“The gallery,” he says. “Odette’s gallery. She has space in the back, better light than my studio here, and-”
“Odette.”
The name lands between us like a stone in still water.
I know that name. I’ve heard it before, years ago, back when Mal first came home from abroad.
The ex-girlfriend. The gallerist who dumped him when he was nobody and disappeared when he left Europe.
I didn’t think about her, because I had no reason to.
“She owns the gallery that’s showing my work,” Mal says carefully. “She reached out a few months ago. It’s a professional relationship.”
“A few months ago.”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t mention it.” My voice comes out flatter than I mean it to.
“I didn’t think it mattered.”
I stare at him. He stares back. And somewhere in the space between us, the quietest, most important part of us cracks, just a little, just enough to feel.
“The couch is made up,” I say.
He doesn’t argue or apologize again, just nods, once, and turns, and walks out of the dining room, and I sit at the table with the cold food and the dead candles and the empty chair across from me.
It’s been made up for a while.