Free American Masculine by Shann Ray

witnessed the two coffins, rectangular, like the old wood cases of fine violins. He leaves work each day to be with her. Closed caskets. A mistake. He had been unable to compose himself. If he’d seen their faces he would’ve been strong, for her and everyone. He would have held her hand, and stood tall, looked straight ahead. Instead he found himself bent over, his hand cupped to her shoulder, his forehead on her neck, his weakness a thing he did not foresee, and another shame to him. He had wanted to be stoic, but not seeing the children shook him, his imaginings were unbearable, and when he glanced at her, himself close to falling, she’d taken his head in her hands and he’d wept aloud. She’d held his face and kissed him on the cheek, kissed
his
tears.
    With two fingers he touches his temple, drapes his coat over the metal chair at her vanity, sets his gloves on the chair. Removes his suit coat. Folds and places it over his gloves. She has hardly spoken.
    Would you like me to stay with you?
    Eyes closed, she nods her head.
    He lies down on the bed and puts his arm around her, awkward in business tie and wingtip shoes, uncomfortable in her small apartment. He is reminded of how he did not hold her as a child.
    WHEN HE FALLS asleep she wonders at his presence here. She leaves him and goes to the kitchen and opens the drawer next to the sink where she keeps the straight-knife for cutting vegetables. Holding it she considers how small the reflection of her face looks, the black slits of her eyes peering from the side of the blade. She owns this knife, it is something she owns, so she takes it, her own heavy profound object, back to her bedroom. She places his suit coat and gloves on the floor, sits down at the vanity, another something, another heaviness, this furniture, tangible, visible, another thing she has not lost. In the mirror she finds her face, without makeup, like an oil painting of earth and darkness, pale hues underlined in black and gray, off-white, dark brown, like soil, like sky when there is no sky, thick clouds of fog so full even breathing feels foreign, her fingers like mallets hard against her face so the bones ache and weariness takes her and she is allowed to fall to where everything one day must fall. I’m crazy, she thinks, and she walks to the bathroom, runs a hot bath and slides beneath the surface, slides farther down and comes to rest, resting, then rising slowly back to the surface, she reaches, takes the knife and cuts both wrists to the bone.
    WHEN HE WAKES all he sees is water, and he doesn’t hear her. He runs to the bathroom, gasps. Her limp form. Vacant eyes. He trembles, frozen. Please, he whispers. Sees the wounds on her wrists. Fumbling, he removes his own socks and ties them over the openings, over gashes that look otherworldly and warlike, ravaged, like diseased eyes or mouths, and he is talking out loud now. Stay here, honey! Please stay. But she is unconscious as he throws the bedspread over her, and wraps her like an infant and lifts her as he forces his feet into his shoes. He runs to his car, the interstate, the hospital, to a steel table where medical servants pump blood to her veins and stitch her skin so that her bones subdue and she is asleep, finally, in a bed, him seated in the chair beside her. He holds her hand, his head like an anvil, face down. His tears have run dry. His body empty. Broken. Still.
    His prayers are lost like sheep in the wilderness of his dreams.
    Sleep comes, unwanted, all-consuming.
    WHEN SHE WAKES she sees him and thinks now everyone has died, and this again is where they meet, in white rooms made with pillows and wires, and light so bright there is no darkness. Her junior year at Bozeman High she tried to overdose on Tylenol, a feeble attempt. He was barely audible then. Gone to Vienna. Prague. It was a month before he saw her face-to-face. She touches his hair and sees her arms bandaged and bound, and when she touches his face, she feels