Page 8 of The Sound Of Us

“You’ll be fine,” I tell her cheerfully and then try to bribe her with a snack. She turns her nose up and tick-tick-ticks to the bedroom. I need to get her nails cut. That tick-tick-tick of Pepper’s overgrown nails tapping against the floor drives Frank mad.

“And not on Frank’s side of the bed, don’t forget,” I call after her. She stops at the doorway and gives me a short bark. She’s talking to me again.

“Good girl.”

After washing up, I begin preparations for NO LUBE FRIDAYS:

Beef stew, still warm, half a teaspoon of sugar to cut the acidity.

Wood in the fireplace.

The blue duvet over the red one (“Fuck, but you weren’t this stupid when we got married, Axel. It’s blue over the fucking red”).

Three pairs of sweatpants.

Three sweatshirts.

Four pairs of socks because the heel of Frank’s boot over my toes is nothing to joke about, even when I'm wearing shoes.

Then, with my heart bouncing off the walls, I move to Frank’s side of the bed and quietly open the drawer on his nightstand. It’s stupid. I’m alone here. I could yank the drawer open and nothing would happen.

Except, maybe I pull too hard and the loaded gun in there goes off suddenly. I don’t actually know if it’s loaded. Frank always tells me it’s loaded and, well, if ever there was a something I chose to believe Frank about, it would be this.

The small weapon lies inside, like a sleeping viper. Sometimes, I imagine picking it up and burying it in the backyard. I’d never have the guts. Frank would make me bring this house down brick by brick and then build it back up again if that gun went missing, and he decided that I was responsible.

I don’t know why I do this every Friday, opening that drawer and looking at that gun. It’s not like seeing the gun makes me any less terrified about the possibility that today will be the day Frank makes good on his promise and actually kills me with it.

I curse the gun softly and close the drawer again.

Lastly, and this is one of my many secrets, I slip into the bathroom to lube myself. But not too much because the last time Frank noticed… well, he also has very big hands. Hard and calloused from his twenty-five years of service to the lumber store.

Unfortunately, my face doesn’t carry the same toughness. One swing equals a split lip immediately. Two equals a bust-up eye. And then I have to miss church for three weeks because of Frank’s obsession with his image.

The bathroom is my favorite place in the house.

If mirrors and showers and linoleum floors could speak, they would tell tales of unstoppable tears and unspeakable anguish.

Only the cascading waters from the showerhead truly understood the brokenness of my heart in those minutes, taking us from Friday night into the dawn of Saturday.

There’s something else I keep in the bathroom, in the bottom drawer, where Frank usually won’t look. I keep old razors and medication in there.

About six months ago, I found a pack of four condoms stuffed into the corner of the couch. When I confronted Frank, he’d just rolled his eyes and said it must have slipped out of Peter’s pocket or something.

I hadn’t known whether to believe him because it hadn’t been the first time I’d found condoms in the house. But it was always the same story with Frank—it must belong to one of his friends. It was a plausible explanation because it really could have belonged to any of the three friends Frank had, especially Peter, who was an insufferable creep.

This last time I found condoms, I hadn’t thrown them away like all the previous times.

I don’t know why I kept them. Maybe I was some lowest form of a masochist, keeping the evidence of my husband’s possible infidelity so I could always have a reminder of how pathetic I am.

They now lie in that bottom drawer with the old razors and medication and I get tested regularly because Frank never uses a condom with me. So far, I'm clean.

I head back to the bedroom where Pepper is lying on my side of the bed. “Good girl.” I give her a scratch behind her ears.

Then I check the drawer at the bottom of my nightstand, making sure anything of sentimental value is hidden from drunken, raging hands.

Once I left a Christmas ornament with my and my mom’s name on it out in the open, Frank had crushed it under his boot. Where the fuck is my name? He’d growled the whole evening. And then he held me all night telling me how much I mean to him and how he sometimes gets a little jealous. I’d felt so special. How stupid of me.

The bathroom worked overtime for a lot of weeks after that episode.

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