There's Something I Want You to Do

She led him upstairs and sat him down on the edge of the bathtub. With a washcloth, she dabbed off the blood from his hands and face. There was something about his story she didn’t believe, and then for a moment she didn’t believe a word of it, but she continued to wash him tenderly as if he were the hero he said he was. He groaned quietly when she touched some newly bruised part of him. He would look terrible for a while. How happy that would make him! She could easily get some steak, or hamburger, or whatever you were supposed to apply to black eyes to make the swelling go away, but no, he wouldn’t want that. He would want his badge. They all wanted that.

“Should we go to bed, Doctor?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“I love you,” she said. They would postpone the argument about feedings until tomorrow, or next week.

“I love you, too.”

She undressed him, just as if he were a child, before lowering him onto the sheets. He sighed loudly. She could hear Raphael’s breaths coming from the nursery. She was about to go into her son’s room to check on him and then thought better of it. Standing in the hallway, she heard a voice asking, “What will you do with another day?” Who had asked that? Eli was asleep. Anyway, it was a nonsensical question. The air had asked it, or she was hearing voices. She went into the bathroom to brush her teeth. She didn’t quite recognize her own face in the mirror, but the reflected swollen tender breasts were still hers, and the smile, when she thought of sweet Elijah bravely fighting someone, somewhere — that was hers, too.

Loyalty

As much as I love her, I blame Astrid. Astrid told my wife, Corinne, that she could achieve happiness if only she’d leave me. It sounded simple. “Leave that guy, walk out that door, you’ll achieve happiness, you’ll be free.” Achieve happiness. Now there’s a phrase. Into the Ford with the busted shocks and out onto the American road, then — that was the prescription.

I stood in the driveway. It was sleeting the day she left. I had agreed not to follow her. She was so eager to go, she forgot to use the windshield wipers until she was halfway down the block. She turned the corner, the tires splashed slush, the front end dipped from the bad shocks, and she was gone.

Holding on to my son, I walked into the garage, taking an inventory. Jeremy, in my arms. My rusting pickup truck. The broken rake, the bent saw, the corroded timing light still on the ledge beneath the back window with the curtains. Yes, the garage window had curtains. Don’t ask me why I put them there. More inventory: the house itself. My life. My health. My job. A case of beer. My mother, Dolores, upstairs in her room. Let them arrive here, whatever they are, is my first motto, and my second is Let them stay.

Astrid thought that happiness was within poor Corinne’s grasp, and she said so, day after day. Happiness for you, she would say, is a day without Wes. You are right to say that Wes crowds you and confuses you. Any morning you wake up without that guy’s stale beer breath on you will be pure profit. Astrid was relentless on the subject of me. She and Corinne worked at the same nurses’ station, 3-F. In the quiet of the hospital night, plans were hatched. A nurse can always get a job, anyplace. Those were Astrid’s words, I have no doubt.

Corinne had been bitching about me, to me, and the topics were, I don’t know, the usual. I drank too much on weekends, my dog, Scooter, slobbered on the bedroom floor, my hands were always dirty from the shop — and the killer accusation: I was inattentive to her needs, whatever they were. Mostly Corinne complained about herself, her rickety soiled unrecognizable life, her confusion, her panic over our baby, her fear of being an inadequate mother, her sadness, that stuff.

But I loved her, and she left me. Then I loved Astrid, and I married her. I’m married to her now, and I still love her. She has — and I’ve got to use this word — guile. Corinne, my first wife, had none. You’d think a nurse of all people could take care of her own baby and not be bewildered. But she was. Mousy brown hair, mystified by most conversations, unable to fix a dinner you could serve to guests, she was about the most lovable thing you ever saw. I lost my heart to her helplessness time and again. I’m not saying this is admirable.