By the following afternoon, I had begun to recognize how much effort it took to appear ordinary.
I answered messages.
I put a load of laundry into the washing machine.
I wiped a small spill from the kitchen counter and returned a bottle to the cupboard.
Each task was simple on its own.
Together, they became a way to keep my mind occupied.
Whenever I stopped moving, I thought about Dererick.
Not about the man I had married in every detail, but about the man I had watched in the dark.
I kept trying to fit those two versions of him together.
The problem was that I did not know whether they belonged together or whether I was forcing them to.
When Dererick came home, he set his keys in their usual place.
He asked how my day had gone.
“Quiet,” I said.
“Sometimes quiet is good.”
“Sometimes.”
He gave me a brief look, then began telling me about something that had happened while he was out.
I listened.
I even asked a question at the right moment.
He did not seem to notice how carefully I was doing it.
Perhaps he noticed and chose not to mention it.
I could not know.
Later, while he was in another room, I opened the cupboard for a glass.
The chipped mug stood near the back.
Its handle faced outward.
I reached toward it, then stopped before touching it.
I had spent days thinking about that mug as though it held the beginning of an explanation.
It was only a mug.
I had poured the tea away because I had become frightened by a thought I could not prove.
The faint line left by the tea had not told me anything.
The mug had not told me anything.
And yet, whenever I saw it, I remembered the night I had decided to trust my fear more than my own routine.
I closed the cupboard.
I did not take the mug down.
That evening, Dererick made dinner while I sat at the kitchen table.
He asked me to pass him the salt.
I did.
He asked whether I wanted more vegetables.
I said no.
When he set my plate in front of me, he placed it carefully beside my fork.
It was such a small gesture that I almost felt ashamed of noticing it.
I had loved those gestures.
I had once taken them as proof that he paid attention to me.
Now I was afraid of the meaning I might assign to them.
I ate slowly.
Dererick looked up from his plate.
“You're quiet tonight.”
“I'm tired.”
“You've been tired a lot lately.”
“I haven't been sleeping well.”
He put down his fork.
“Is something bothering you?”
There it was.
The question I had imagined asking him had come from his mouth instead.
I felt my throat tighten.
For a moment, I thought I might tell him everything.
I could have said that I had watched him put on gloves.
I could have said that I had seen the bag.
I could have asked why he had carried it out of the bedroom in the middle of the night.
The words were there, ready enough to form.
Then I pictured his face changing.
I pictured him asking why I had been pretending to sleep.
I pictured him saying that I had misunderstood something simple.
I pictured him saying nothing at all.
Every possibility frightened me for a different reason.
“Nothing specific,” I said.
He studied me briefly.
“Are you sure?”
“No. I'm just tired.”
He picked up his fork again.
“All right. If you want to talk, I'm here.”
I nodded.
The conversation moved on, but the words stayed with me.
I'm here.
He had said them gently.
I wanted to believe they meant what they sounded like.
I also knew that a gentle voice could not answer a question I had never asked.
After dinner, we cleaned the kitchen together.
I washed the plates while Dererick dried them.
We passed each other in the narrow space between the sink and the counter.
At one point, he reached around me for a dish towel.
I stepped aside too quickly.
He paused.
“Sorry,” I said.
“You don't have to move like I'm going to run you over.”
He smiled as if it were a harmless joke.
I managed a small laugh.
The words stung anyway.
I knew he had not necessarily meant anything by them.
That was what made them difficult.
I was frightened of him in a way I could not explain, and he was still the person who knew how to make me laugh when I was tense.
Both things were true.
Neither one erased the other.
When we finished, I went upstairs to fold the laundry.
I sat on the bed with a stack of shirts beside me and matched each item to the person who wore it.
Dererick's shirts were easy to recognize.
I knew the small difference between the ones he wore to work and the ones he wore around the house.
I knew which collar he preferred and which sleeve he sometimes rolled without noticing.
I knew these things because we had lived together long enough for ordinary details to become familiar.
I did not know what he did with the bag.
The contrast felt cruel.
I could recognize a shirt by touch and still fail to understand the person who owned it.
I folded the last shirt and placed it on the dresser.
Then I sat with my hands in my lap.
I thought about how I might begin a conversation without turning it into an accusation.
I could say, “I woke up the other night and saw you wearing gloves.”
That would be true.
I could say, “You had a black bag with you.”
That would also be true.
I did not have to say what I feared.
I did not have to mention the tea.
I could simply ask what I had seen.
The thought made the room feel a little less crowded.
I repeated the words silently until they no longer sounded like a sentence belonging to someone else.
Then I heard Dererick coming up the stairs.
I put the folded laundry away and stood.
He appeared in the doorway.
“What are you doing?”
“Putting things away.”
He glanced at the empty laundry basket.
“You want help?”
“No, I'm done.”
He came over and kissed my cheek.
I let him.
For a moment, I wanted to lean against him and let the comfort of his presence quiet everything.
Instead, I stood still until he stepped back.
He did not seem to notice.
Or if he did, he did not say anything.
We got ready for bed.
The bathroom light went on.
The tap ran.
Dererick brushed his teeth, rinsed his mouth, and switched off the light.
I watched him from the bedroom doorway.
I was trying to decide whether to speak before we got into bed.
He looked at me in the mirror.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.”
I heard myself say it and felt a wave of frustration.
I had become skilled at hiding the very thing I wanted to understand.
He turned from the sink.
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
He accepted the answer.
That should have made me feel better.
Instead, I wondered how many times I could say nothing was wrong before I stopped believing I had the right to say something was.
I climbed into bed.
Dererick settled beside me, and the room darkened.
I closed my eyes.
This time, I did not tell myself I had to wait until I was certain.
I could not become certain by lying still in the dark.
If I wanted an answer, eventually I would have to ask a question.
I did not ask it that night.
But for the first time, I stopped pretending that silence was the same as patience.
Click here to continue reading: PART 11: I Practiced Asking Him What I Had Seen Until the Words Felt Possible, Then Learned How Hard It Was to Say Them Aloud
At Two Seventeen, I Watched My Husband Cross Our Bedroom in Gloves, Carrying Something I Had Never Seen Before
Part 10 of 20
