Inklings Fall 2019

And then I had heard him rustling in our room, and my image of the
morning was altered. Now there would be both of us in front of the fan,
and his hot arm would be touching my hot arm, and he would be eating
the apple slices with me, and his jaw would be moving next to my ear.
“I was standing up, David. I couldn’t be dead.”
He turned the car onto the main road. “Still,” he said, “You looked like
a ghost.”
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Every way I pictured it was unbearable. Every morning we ate breakfast
together, and every morning I had to confront his jaw, and some
mornings I had to rub my own pinkie finger to remind myself that I
loved him. I lived with him and his gentle eyes, and just because our
relationship existed in an enclosed space now, it did not mean that it
was worse. I reminded myself to count to ten as I pressed the knife into
the apple’s skin and cut another slice. I heard David hum to himself in
our bedroom, and I counted one two three four five…
The night air was cooler than it had been in the morning, and when
I looked up above me in the McDonald’s parking lot, the moon was
a beetle, suspended in the blackness that stretched all around. A soft
wind rustled through my hair and caressed my ears, and I breathed
in the freshness as I opened the car door. The boiling stovetop in my
throat had become the surface of a cool, flat lake.
Seeing David in the driver’s seat, I noticed for the first time that only
half of his face was shaved. A thin layer of brown bristles covered one
side of his jaw, and when I pointed it out he gave me a tight smile.
“I was shaving when I heard the knife fall,” he admitted as he put the car
in reverse. “For a moment I thought it didn’t matter, that you just dropped
something. But then, I don’t know, I guess I wanted to check, just make
sure you were okay, and then when I saw you… I mean,” he tried to
make his voice light, “I thought about finishing before I called 911, but
then I decided your life mattered a little more than an even shave.”
“I don’t think I would’ve died from losing the tip of my finger,” I laughed.
“Honestly, when I saw you standing there,” he pressed the brakes and
looked at me, and his gaze was so raw that I wanted to look away.
“Your hand just looked like blood, Carrie. And you were so white and
so quiet that I thought for a moment that you were already dead.” His
voice cracked a bit on the last word, and I stared down at the cloud on
my hand, feeling the dull pump of the vessels underneath it.
“You could’ve gone back and finished shaving when I was at the hospital,”
I heard myself saying, “You didn’t have to stay the whole time.”
“I would never leave you alone in the hospital,” he said, and his voice
was so earnest that maybe I really was a ghost. My words were passing
right through him. He didn’t know that I wanted to be alone in that
hospital, just for a moment, so it could just be me and my cloud and I
could breathe.
For the rest of the ride home, I counted the street lamps. I looked at
their dead, yellow glow, and I wondered if I would have come running
into the kitchen if I heard a knife clatter.
That night, I dreamed that my hand was stroking David’s unshaved
face. A thousand brown needles were prickling my fingers, and blood
began to blossom from each of the holes. One by one, a million little
red beads, covering my hands and eventually my body; I was drowning
in a sea of myself.
I woke up sweating; the cloud was throbbing and red. When I let out
a sob, David woke up and helped me replace the gauze like the doctor
had shown us. He rifled through my purse and opened the bottle of
painkillers and counted out two of the small white tablets and got me a
glass of water from the sink. It was lukewarm, and when it touched my
tongue it felt like steam.
David rubbed my pinkie as I tried to find sleep. He told me he loved
me and his voice was like a hot syrup coating my body and covering
me in my shame.
I thought: I’m a beetle.
I thought: I can’t stand this.
I thought: One two three four five…
Fall 2019
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