Free All Saints by K.D. Miller Page B

added, “Son.” Emily could tell her mother had coached him.
    The reception was at her parents’ house. All her uncles and aunts and cousins were there, and the neighbours who had watched her grow up and the old high-school friends she had almost forgotten but now greeted with a scream. Each and every guest got introduced to Dave, whose smile looked like it was making his face ache and whose voice, when he got a chance to talk, sounded sticky and dry.
    His parents had sent a card with a cheque in it. The card sat in a little space that had been cleared for it among the gifts—all the appliances and linens and flatware and stemware and stoneware that had been crammed into the sunroom for display. “My God,” Dave had breathed when he had been taken to see it all. He had sounded dismayed, as if he was looking at some huge, impossible task he was expected to do.
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    They do it on Garth Marples’ bed. She is dry, and doesn’t come. He is serious for once, almost humble. The only sounds are the jangling squeak of the bed springs. The empty picture frame stands like a mute witness.
    Afterwards they lie side by side, staring up at the plastered ceiling. She knows it is up to her to speak, to break the silence, to bring things back down to some safe and ordinary place. She takes a breath. He turns his face to her.
    â€œSo much for this room being off limits,” she says.
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    They had just gotten it all together. They had just started to come into their own.
    Their place—their final resting place, as they were calling it as a joke—was exactly the way they wanted it. Lemon-yellow walls with dove-grey accents. Narrow grey shelves at intervals, filled with her books, his records. A painted Scandinavian hutch stacked with her grandmother’s wedding china. A linen closet stuffed with sheets and towels and comforters and shams. A kitchen gleaming with chrome and copper and the latest gadgets. A state-of-the-art sound system. A big colour TV. Two bedroom closets tight with clothes.
    She had just gotten her hair cut almost as short as his, and was helping herself to his tube of gel. He had just shaved clean except for a tiny triangular patch on his chin. She was just starting to reassure him that he wasn’t fat, while secretly keeping an eye on the little bulge above his belt. He had just conceded that maybe she did need to wear a bra. Only with certain outfits.
    In bed, they had found what worked. They would begin with this, continue with that, then finish with the other thing. If it wasn’t as adventurous as it used to be, it was comfortable. It was satisfying. It happened three times a week.
    She had just published her first book, a collection of stories dedicated to him. She was just starting to take another look at one of those stories— Barney —and to wonder if there was a novel in it. He had just been named regional manager, with six stores under him. He was just starting to decide whether to convert his record collection to tape, or wait for the new compact discs to come down in price.
    She had just fallen in love with him all over again. With his face that had softened and started to settle into folds. With his talk, that was rarer and less animated. With his politics, that were more considered, less radical. With the reading glasses he needed now for the paper and the phone book.
    She had just started to caution herself, half-jokingly, not to rely on him quite so much. Not to feel quite so relieved by the chime of his keys in the lock at the end of the day. Take quite so much comfort in the sight of his thinning hair poking up above the back of his chair while their dinner was turning slowly in the microwave.
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    His guilt. Her anger. That’s what they have now. That’s what they carry around. Damned fool things to hang onto. Why don’t they just put them down?
    Emily will ask herself this question one day while she’s sawing a baguette into