All He Ever Wanted(97)

I walk directly to her, and before she can pull away, I press her face into my formidable stomach. She tries to twist her head but cannot.

“I am not a monster,” I say.

I press her back upon the bed.

“I am your husband,” I say.

“I am not your wife,” Etna says.

I cover her mouth with my hand, and her eyes widen, as they must.

“Don’t speak,” I say.

In this dream, or vision, of mine (which may or may not, as I say, be true), I release the hand that is pressed upon her lips and kiss her there instead. Etna becomes quiet, even docile, as though afraid to rouse the children, who might come into the room wondering why their mother is calling out. With gentleness and delicacy, I roll one stocking over her kneecap, feeling the downy hair of her shin. I draw up her skirt and find the opening in the corset covering. She has not, on this hot day, worn the corset itself, which is a boon to my prying fingers. I unfasten the buttons of the overblouse. I touch my wife in every place to which a husband has a natural and God-given right. After a time, I roll Etna in such a way that she is on top of me, both of us looking at the ceiling. Lying in this way, she feels like an extension of myself, as if we are the same person. Lying in this way, I cannot see her face, which, in any case, might break my heart. Etna makes a sound and tries to stand up, but I cover her mouth once again and clasp her to me. I play her like an instrument, a cello, perhaps, until the violation is complete.

When I am done, I fall into a deep pit, tumbling as in a dream within a dream. I fall until I think I can plummet no more, and then I keep falling.


Just before dawn, I heard a sound that briefly woke me. Had I not drunk so much the night before, I might have roused myself. There was the shutting of a door. Footsteps. Another door shutting. Or do I only imagine this in retrospect? I dozed, half drugged, sensing that I must try to regain consciousness, that I must try to come awake. When finally I did so, I sat up with a jerk. The sun was already announcing itself in a filigree pattern on the wood floor. I rubbed my eyes and then my temples, for I had the dull, relentless headache of a physical and moral degenerate.

Objects in the room gradually took shape. Where was I? In my own bed, of course, but where was Etna? She was sleeping in the guest room. I remembered then, with sudden and brutal clarity, the events of the night before. I remembered the sounds that had woken me earlier in the morning. I stood and went to the window and looked out over to the carriage house. The door was open, and the Landaulet was gone.

I went out of the house without jacket or hat, still wearing the clothes I had slept in. A sense of urgency propelled me forward. I started the Ford, the sound of the motor shocking me in the silence of the morning. Unable to turn my head without considerable pain, I trusted to luck as I backed down the driveway. I made the turn and steered the motorcar in the direction of town.

I drove too fast up Wheelock Street, past the house of the widow Bliss. I sped by the Hotel Thrupp, which bore no trace of cataclysm, infernal or not. I turned the corner at the college quadrangle, the leaves of its sycamores browning and curling in the August heat. It seemed an early-morning steam rose from the overcooked grass and that one could almost see, in faint depressions, the ancient paths of students. I urged the Ford past the motley architecture of that undistinguished college, past Moxon’s Victorian house, past the driveway to Ferald’s limestone manse. I took the turn to Drury. It seemed I traveled in dream time, unable to move forward fast enough. As I drove, I imagined in great detail what I would find.

The body would be lying partially on the Persian carpet and partially on the linoleum, as if, in her last moments, she had been reaching for something near the kitchen sink. There would be an ugly rose, a diseased rose, on her throat, quite the boldest splotch of color in that room of white iron and dried hydrangeas. I would give a cry and then turn away, but not before I had seen the unnatural posture of the body, and then the bit of glass from the broken bulb of the chandelier flung against a chair.

I would stagger to the sink and turn on the tap and wet my face in the stream of water. I would stand and shake my head, as a dog will toss the water from its body. Light-headed, I would search for something to support my weight, all the while trying to fend off a distinct sense of nausea.

I would once again look at my wife.

Her face would be grotesque in its contortions, covered with blood that had spilled from her nose and mouth. (I believe medically one would say that she had drowned.) I would bend my head to her linen overblouse. I would trail my fingers along her thin white arm. I would touch her cheekbone and her acorn-colored hair….