ALERT:I am thinking of updating my other stories, In the Streets of San Francisco and Secrets of Savannah, should I? Check them out and see what you think.
Sorry for a late update! I'm in New York, and I'm adjusting to the time difference, but here is a chapter! Don't forget to review! I want to try for 100 reviews by this chapter!
She comes home, nearly at midnight, exhausted from the day she had to endure. Not only did she have to run after a guy who kicked Elliot where it hurt, she had to jump from a set of stairs and tackle the guy. Elliot had grilled the guy for three hours, getting him to eventually came in through the door and immediately looked in the closet, seeing her safe, she put her gun in it and closed it, locking it.
"I'm home." Olivia said, coming around the corner of the kitchen
She stares at the counter, at the greasy pots and glasses and the caked roasting pan, at the sickening pile of rotting vegetables at the sink, at the dishwasher, which is full of clean dishes and will have to be unloaded before she can even begin to clear the counter.
James didn't answer, and she assumed he was in his office. Julia was in bed, sound asleep. Olivia was left in the kitchen.
She climbs the stairs to James' office and stands silently with her glass of wine, leaning against the door way. She has no articulate dialogue, just jumbled thoughts, unfinished sentences. Phrases of frustration. Perhaps she had too much to drink.
James looks up at her with a vaguely puzzled expression on his face. He has on a flannel shirt and jeans. He's put on weight recently, ten pounds. He has a tendency to gain weight when he isn't careful.
"What's happening?" she asks
"What?"
"I mean, you come home from a five day trip. I've hardly seen you. You don't say a word to me when I come in. And then after all that, you're stuck up here, leaving me with all the dishes."
He seems surprised by these accusations, as, in truth, is she. He blinks. He turns his head to something that has caught his attention on the screen.
"Even now you can't pay attention to what I'm saying. What is so goddamn interesting on the computer anyway?"
He takes his hands off the computer and rests his elbows on the arms of his chair.
"What is all this about?" He asks
"You." she says "And me."
"And?"
"We're not..." she says "We're just not-"
She takes a sip of wine.
"You're not there" Olivia says "You used to be so...I don't know...romantic. You used to compliment me all the time. I can't remember the last time you told me I was beautiful."
Her lip quivers, and she looks away. She hears mother's voice then, her mother's drunk voice pleading with her boyfriend or whatever one night stand it was, to tell her she was beautiful. Has this bit of awful dialogue been lying in wait for her? A kind of grotesque legacy?
She shudders. But she can't leave it alone. For months now, James has been distant, as though not altogether there, as though constantly preoccupied. Preoccupation can be tolerated, Olivia thought.
"My God" she says, her voice rising in a notch "We haven't been out to dinner in months. All yo ever do is come up here and work on the computer. Or play on the computer. Whatever you do."
He leans back in the chair.
"What possible accusation that he hasn't recently told his wife that she is beautiful?" Olivia thinks to herself "That he has simply forgotten? That in fact he thinks it all the time, but just doesn't say it? That he thinks she is desperately beautiful right that very minute?
Thats the problem with a fight, Olivia decides. Even when you know the words you are saying are the worst possible utterances, there is always a point of no return. Of no backing off, no retreating. She is already there, and in a flash James reaches it.
"Fuck you." he says quietly, and he stands
Olivia flinches. She is immediately aware, as she was not before, not when it was her own righteous anger, that Julia is just down the hall.
"Keep your voice down" Olivia says
James puts his hands on his hips. His face grows red, as it sometimes does when he's angry, which isn't often. They don't have a history of fighting.
"Fuck you" he says again
This time in a louder, though still controlled voice.
"I work five days in a row without a letup. I come home to get a good night's sleep. I come up here to fool around on the computer and relax. And before I can even blink, you're up here complaining."
"You came home to get a good night's sleep?" She asks
"You know what I mean."
"This just didn't happen tonight." She says "It's been happening for months now"
"Months?"
"Yes."
"What exactly has been happening for months?"
"You're not here, you're more interested in the computer than you are in me."
"Fuck you." he says, brushing past her towards the stairs
She hears him descend the steps, as though he is running. She hears the refrigerator door opened, followed by the sound of a beer can being popped.
When she gets to the kitchen, he is drinking beer in one swallow. He sets the can down on the counter with a hard clink and stares out the kitchen window. She examines his profile, his face, which she loves, the aggressive thrust of his neck, which alarms her. She wants to give in, to go to him and say she is sorry, to put her arms around him and tell him she loves him. But before she can move, she thinks again about the sensation of being abandoned, for that is what she means to describe, and so repentance quickly gives way to grievance. Why should she back off?
"You never talk to me anymore" she says "I feel like you don't know me anymore"
His jaw moves slightly forward, and he clenches his teeth. He tosses the beer can into the sink, where it clatters against the dirty dishes.
"You want me to go?" he asks, looking at her
"Go?"
"Yeah, you want to end it or what?"
"No, I don't want to end it" she says, taken aback "What are you talking about, you're crazy."
"I'm crazy?" he repeats, this time in a louder voice
When he brushes past her to go up the stairs, she tries to grab his arm, but he shakes her off. In the kitchen, she stands as still as stone as she hears his angry tread on the steps, hears his office door slam, hears the muffled thudding of objects being roughly moved around on his desk, hears the snaps of wires. He's leaving her and taking the computer with him?
And then, horrified, she watches as the computer monitor crashes down the stairs. The monitor gouges the plaster wall at the foot of the steps. Bits of gray plastic and smoked glass from the shattered screen fly into the air and litter the stairs and the kitchen floor. It is a spectacular smash, loud and theatrical.
Olivia utters a low moan, knowing that it has all gone too far and that she has caused it, had goaded him. And then, she thinks of Julia. By the time Olivia has made her way over the smashed monitor and gotten to the top of the stairs, Julia is coming down the hallway in her pajamas.
"What's wrong?" Julia asks, although Olivia can see that she knows, has heard everything.
James looks stricken with the instant remorse that follows an insanely childish act in front of one's children.
"Julia" Olivia says "Daddy dropped his computer down the stairs. It's a mess, but everything is okay."
Julia gives them both the look, she is only four years old, is always dead on and never misses. But Olivia can see on her daughters face that is is ferociously shocked with sheer horror. James turns to Julia and enfolds his daughter in his arms. That alone says everything. There is no pretending now that this didn't happen. It is just perhaps better not to say it aloud.
And then James reaches out his arm and draws Olivia into the fold, so that the three of them stand in the hallway, swaying and crying and saying I'm sorry and kissing each other and hugging again and then standing back and laughing silently through the tears and runny noses, with Julia offering, helpfully to get tissue.
That night, Olivia and James make love as they have not done in months, with a ragged edge, as though playing out the rest of the scene with open mouths and small bites, locked thighs and pinned wrists. And the voracious momentum of that night changes, for a time, their marriage, so that they look more often into each other's eyes as they pass in the hallway, trying mutely to say something meaningful, and kiss each other with more enthusiasm whenever they meet, in the house, or outside by the cars even, several times, in public, which pleases Olivia. But after a while, that too passes, and she and James go back to normal, as they have been before, which is to say that they, like all the other couples Olivia has ever known, live in a state of gentle decline, but not agonizingly, less than they were the day before.
Which means, on the whole, she thinks that it is a good marriage.
ALERT:I am thinking of updating my other stories, In the Streets of San Francisco and Secrets of Savannah, should I? Check them out and see what you think.
Alright! Tell me what you think, get me to 100 reviews! Any questions? Hope you enjoyed!