Free Things Withered by Susie Moloney

children running in and out, and her thinking about making something special for supper because they were celebrating a small occasion in a normal life, a goal scored in hockey (a hockey mom), someone getting their ears pierced, an A in Science. She should cut her hair short. So far she just hadn’t gotten around to it, besides, Ted liked it long. These days she wore it up in a ponytail, or sometimes she curled it so that the sides framed her face and made her look—slightly, and from an angle—like Audrey Hepburn in
Roman Holiday
. On those days she always had a list, and always got the work done, and usually felt exactly as she should by the time night fell and she and Ted were in bed, lying close but not touching and she was going over the day in her mind, giving herself good and bad marks.
    (A in House Science, A in Drama.)
    At night, she let herself be.
    The funny thing was, she had expected the guilt. She had prepared herself long before the ring was on her finger, but the plan was in her pocket, that she would feel bad from time to time, as though she was feeding Ted a line, betraying him. That long ago she had still had a certain opinion of men, and it had been easier to warn him silently, “caveat emptor, caveat emptor,” or to imagine his mother should have brought him up smarter, some mothers do raise fools, etc. He had, after all, been lumped in with the others: as a member of the sex that she had to put up with, work with, be with, but she didn’t have to like it. It was like faking an orgasm, something she was adept at. Could she fake it for the rest of her life? That had been the only concern she’d had then. Not getting caught.
    She had been prepared for the guilt. The guilt was something she had simply learned to live with, now, and she barely felt it. It was like having bunions and faking orgasms. How long could she do it? Forever.
    She had not been prepared for the mind-numbing boredom that seemed to accompany the safety; she had also not been prepared for Ted to become a person to her, to lose his status as man and become lover, friend.
    (victim)
    At night she listened to him sleep, and if she was feeling okay, if she’d had a good day, maybe she’d changed the sheets that morning and she could smell the faintly present fabric softener—the liquid kind, not dryer sheets—and could feel the cool softness, the clean feeling, then she let herself smile while listening. His breath would go in and after a long time, it would come out. Sometimes he was disturbed in his sleep and his breathing became erratic, or he would mumble and rustle, and she would wonder if he was dreaming of her.
    Karen rarely fell asleep before two. She had a lot of thinking to do before she fell asleep, like that poem, “Miles to go before I sleep; miles to go before I sleep.” Except the poem made it sound clean and goodhearted, the way a day of hard work felt after the fact. The problem was, her miles to go were fraught with snakes and awfuls and bads and secrets; before she could sleep she had to convince herself that no one had read those things on her during the day, during an unprotected moment, say when she was dusting a window ledge and the motion reminded her of something bad. Did it show on her face?
    Like this one time she was in the back seat with her friend’s date. They were smoking a joint and it was about ten at night and they were waiting for her friend who had gone into this building to score some beans and she and this guy smoked the dope and she gave him a handjob. The motion was just like dusting a window ledge.
    On Tuesdays Karen helped at the old folks’ home. Jane Meyers, who had a four-year-old, asked her to help out at the co-op daycare in the neighbourhood. Karen had told her she just didn’t feel comfortable around small children just yet. It was one of the many convincing lies she could have told, and had actually thought of:
    “Well, you know Jane, Ted and I are still trying, and sometimes