He's starting a fire.
I sit on the couch behind him and watch as he piles the wood in a perfect order. He wipes his hands on his jeans and I grimace at the stain. He knows how much that bothers me.
He sits back on his haunches and rests his back against the coffee table. His brow furrows in concentration and I want to ask him what he's thinking but I don't. When he turns around and stares right to where I'm sitting, I plead with him to talk to me, but he doesn't even acknowledge that I'm there. Instead, he just reaches over me and picks up the matches next to my thigh.
He lights one and throws it on top of the wood. His hands shiver as he does it and I almost get up to turn up the dial on the heat. He hates that. He thinks there's no sense in using the fireplace if it's just for show. In the winter, he liked for us to grow completely dependant upon it. He liked us to sit there and huddle together for warmth. Like the pilgrims did, he said.
It always seemed more like depressors all settled in front of an open oven to me. I want to remind him that it's not 1929.
But then he stands and I see the muscles of his back ripple and contort through his T-shirt. That's not very fair.
I told him once that he wasn't horrible to look at, but I lied. He is. His sight is the piercing of nails on a chalk board. It's the cry of a wounded dog.
It's the most unbearable thing in my world.
When he turns, his face is dark and stormy. I want to ask him what's wrong, but I don't think I want to know. Is it a girl? Is it some pretty young thing that's got him so down?
Or is it me?
He used to sit in our bedroom and stare at our wedding picture until I'm sure he was sick of the sight of me. He used to rummage through old photo albums, some he'd probably never looked in throughout our entire marriage, and cry over my face, beaming and happy and next to his.
I hated nights like that. I tried not to watch and to focus on other things. I practiced my sign language. I sang songs. I figured all the multiples I could think of. Nothing worked. In the end, his face, high-boned and perfect, found my line of vision every single time. The most vivid memory I have is of him, his face clear through the darkness of a horrible midnight.
He was looking at a picture of me. If I remember correctly, and I rarely do, it was taken when I was eleven. It was Lucas' birthday and I was in the café with Karen and Keith getting a surprise ready. I don't remember what it was, but I know Lucas was so excited he swore in front of his mother and had it taken away. She gave it to me and he bullied me for days until I gave it back to him. I went crying to Karen the next day, begging her not to punish him, and she bought me a new one. I remember treasuring this gift so much, it's incredible I don't remember what it was.
I just know that when Keith snapped the photo I had just hung a birthday banner on the counter and I was so excited about doing it myself that I gave two thumbs straight up to the camera.
And when Nathan found that picture of me in all my pre-teen glory, at its very worst, and he cried all night in our bed asking out loud if our children might've looked like me, all I remember thinking about was that I wished he'd turned the page over. There was a much better one coming up and my thumbs were no where to be seen.
It wasn't until later after he'd fallen asleep, my wedding band clutched tightly in his fist, that I thought about his question too.
Maybe they would have had my smile and Nathan's eyes. He really has the most beautiful eyes. And they could have had his nose and my hair and coloring, but his height. I always wished to be tall. The girls could have had my figure and the boys would be lucky to get Nathan's build.
I remember dreaming them up all night, naming them and growing them up in my head.
But the next night this blackness overtook me, a savage, angry beast that took my imaginary children away and buried them in the ground next to me.
I watched Nathan visit all of us then. Our make-believe kids and me, all locked beneath the earth without him.
I'll never forget that blackness. It hides beneath my eyelids and crawls out from under my skin.
That was the night he brought home Peyton.
It was the night of Lucas and Brooke's wedding, I think. The date hadn't been set last I'd known, but they were dressed up and she was very drunk. She kept saying talking about a 'them,' but she never said their names.
'Them' looked lovely at their wedding and 'them' would be together forever. 'Them' deserved each other, she said.
I got the sense she didn't mean that last bit in the kindest way because she then called one of 'them' a slut and the other an indecisive prick.
'Them' didn't sound like Brooke and Lucas to me, but more like Peyton by the end of the night.
She kissed Nathan, drunk and full of passion for someone that I doubt was even him. And he kissed her back, hungry for a woman and, I like to think, depressed and remembering our own wedding.
He stopped her though, looking over his shoulder at me. I don't know if he saw me, reflected through a mirror or shining under a light, but he stopped her either way and he sent her home.
He set off to our bedroom then and I followed, listing off ways to castrate him for what he'd almost done with a friend of mine, but then he found that box of albums and I shut up.
I'd never seen someone cry like that.
He woke up the next day and cleared them out. One more part of me was removed from our home and I sat in our dining room, angry and saying spiteful things to him. Out with the old, in the with the ancient? I asked.
He never answered, but I haven't seen Peyton by our house since.
I thought he heard me. I thought maybe, in a wave of intoxication, he saw my face. I thought maybe, in a moment of total despair, mine and his, God let him hear me cry out not to be with her.
But I don't think so. No, I don't think so at all.
He sits down on the couch next to me and watches the fire crackle under our mantle place. Pictures of us used to line that mantle and I had them in a perfect neat row.
He would make fun of it, but even in his angriest moment, never disorganize them.
He was a perfect husband.
He took the trash out. He mowed the lawn. He walked the dogs. He walked fixed the car. He built our cabinets.
He made the fires.
He was the best husband a woman could have. He still is.
Only now to someone else.
I watch as the pretty young thing I thought might've been troubling him enters the room. She's my biggest competition; three feet, four inches and big shining brown eyes. I think he loves her more than he loved me.
"Daddy, it's so cold. Can we turn the heat on?"
He laughs and shakes his head, explaining his madness to her like he would to me.
And I pretend, just for a single minute that it is me.
"Baby, a fireplace is not just for show. It's got an actual use. It's supposed to heat up the house."
Supposed to is the key phrase there, Nathan. I'm freezing my ass off.
She scrunches up her nose and says something to him, but I block her out. He's mine right now. Just this one moment, little girl, I need him. I'm begging you.
"I know, but it'll heat up soon."
What if it doesn't?
"Then we'll make hot chocolate and cuddle up together and I'll read you a story, okay?"
I like that idea. Can we do that anyway?
"How about you ask Mommy if she wants to read too?"
I am the mommy, Nathan. I'm your wife. I'm supposed to be the mommy too. He's ruining it. I take it back. He's not the perfect husband. Not if he won't give me this one thing.
Please, Nate. Meet me halfway here.
The little girl runs away and he closes his eyes. I reach a hand over to him, to his chest, and I scream. I rage and yell and blast at him until his eyes fly open.
"I love you, Haley."
I kiss him then and it's the best kiss we've ever had. Never mind that we can't feel it, either one of us. Never mind that he doesn't even know we've kissed. Never mind that I'm dead and he's alive.
He said he loved me.
The little girl runs back down and says she loves him too, but I block it out. I have to. Just for a minute.
I love you too, Nathan.
The moment ends and she runs back up to find his wife. And I'm here with him alone again. And never more grateful he named his daughter after me.
The End