The
husband arrives home from work, gets changed, and
then leaves for his girlfriend's place again, all
without a word to his wife. She's almost accustomed
to it now, accepts the fact that he spends all his
evenings with Connie, that he returns home not to
their bed but to a rickety cot he's set up in the
unfinished basement. She works hard to take her mind
off it, plays with grandchildren and has guests over
in the evenings. She doesn't say a word.
She
was torn apart (but hardly flinched) when their
youngest daughter told her about the father's attempt
to rape her. "Tried to get around me", the
daughter said with extreme euphemism. The wife had
also come across a small cache of pornographic movies
in a cardboard box nearly flattened by the metal
slats of the sagging cot. A projector. She dared not
watch them, remembered only some titles beneath the
triple X's: Throat
II, Erotic
Misadventures.
Tonight
he comes home and tells her he has to go in for an
operation on his groin. She nods silently. Later, she
tells her sister she will not visit him in the
hospital. She becomes venomous. Tells her she hopes
they cut him open and find him full of cancer.
He
comes to her room to ask her what size underwear he
takes: in their twenty-five years she has always
bought most of his clothes, silently replacing what
was worn out. She gives him two pair she has recently
ordered from Sears. "Can't get those in the
stores", she says.
He
has simply given up on it all. Tells her he doesn't
care whether he lives or dies. Cries when she gives
him the underwear.