Cheap Day Return

Her husband was cross-eyed, and she was angry with him. Not because he was cross-eyed — she was long over that — but for other reasons. They were along together in a fire-apple red Plymouth hatchback. They spoke through dead air and radio static, by streetlamp and silent stare.

She fidgeted with radio and temperature knobs on the dash, because she knew it crept beneath his skin like a fresh paper cut, knew also that he would say nothing in protest.

How she became angry is a long story; in the interest of brevity, and and because time is shorter than patience, we’ll begin at the end, just a few moments before the swelling wound became too much for any scab to remedy.

Tonight began at Fallen Pins, a little bowling alley-slash-dive on Kenmore. They rented two lanes — side by side — because it was a rare occasion that saw his ball down the proper track.

“Try shifting partway to the left,” she suggested. There was no malice behind her words, yet it was quite enough to provoke his defense.

“Shift your fucking attitude,” he said.

It is not in her character to instigate, but silence has a way of picking open the crust around injuries, and the tendency is to push an explanation.

“I only want to help,” she said.

A low scowl accompanied what followed out from his mouth. “I don’t love you anymore.”

It was not such a strange thing to say, and she understood. His words were like a bookend to this and every fragmented exchange per capita, the dividend of whispered protests and half-muted mutterings during their tenure together. It was a stamp on the back of an envelope they’d never send.

They crept along in silence, unsure where to go from here, down the rain-soaked thoroughfare. Bloodied pines hugged the shoulder, wilted and sagging over the way home. She wanted to take back anything she might have said or done to bring amusement into his face. She wanted to break him over her knee.

And so she did not alert him as he crunched haphazardly over the curb and into a telephone pole. Instead she folded her arms across her chest and smiled.