Loosening the Knots

Cassandra could sense when Calvin was getting ready to leave work. He would be shifting his mask, taking off his “Work” Calvin face and putting on his “Home” Calvin face, tying the knots under his straw-blond hair. Even though his office was downtown, and it took at least 30 minutes to get back to their little bungalow, she had a feeling when he lifted his briefcase, said goodbye to his secretary, Trish, and headed to the parking garage.

She’d speed up then, fixing everything the way “Home” Calvin liked. Glossy magazines that featured his three leisure pleasures (boating, guns, and whiskey) on the coffee table splayed just so. His beer chilled. His snacks poured in his special snack bowl. Everything had to be perfect for “Home” Calvin. She imagined it would be the same for “Work” Calvin, but she didn’t know.

The kitchen floor was swept. The living room rug vacuumed. The toilet paper was hung correctly and the edge neatly folded into a triangle the way he’d shown her the day after they married. She thought of the pre-marriage Calvin as a different man. Oh, how different “Boyfriend” Calvin had been. Wooing her with candies and flowers and special treats. Calling her his sweet baby, his precious darling, his honeybun. Her friends had been awash in jealousy. But they didn’t know what happened that first night in the hotel suite, and they did not know that she had lived in a state of perpetual fear every day since.

She wondered if the mask slipped at all while he drove. If he tied the knots tight enough. She wondered if there was roadwork, and if he had to stop in a line of hot, sweaty traffic, whether the men in orange vests might get a glimpse of the monster she knew lived under that mask.

Dinner was always the same. They ate in silence. He devoured food as if he were a different species. Steak. Bloody raw. Vegetables chopped in uniform squares. A glass of red wine and then another. He never appeared drunk or even flushed.

At night, she would do her best to stay awake and listen to him breathing before she’d allow herself to fall asleep. She would curl into a ball and face the wall and watch the shadows shift as cars drove past. She had tried once to suggest separate beds or separate bedrooms even not saying it was his fault but blaming herself, her insomnia, couching the suggestion as if she were worried for him. But that hadn’t gone well. And she hadn’t left the house for two weeks.

“Home” Calvin was different from “Party” Calvin, the man who would squire her around neighborhood BBQs and birthday parties, gender-reveals and Jack & Jills. Everyone loved “Party” Calvin. “Party” Calvin liked her to wear her cinnamon-colored hair in a French twist. “Party” Calvin chose her sundresses, when she could wear them, or long-sleeved shifts with short hems and tights when she couldn’t. He liked her to use a little makeup, but nothing too heavy. Made sure that she never looked at another man. Her safe place at parties was in the kitchen with the hostess, arranging appetizers, spearing cubes of beets with tiny toothpicks. Wearing an apron over her dress and chatting about the weather. Oh, it had been unusually warm, hadn’t it?

But even while she was engaging in mindless small talk, her eyes would be wary, her ears would be perked, looking for him, listening for him.

On normal days, when “Home” Calvin entered the living room, he would stand in the entry and wait. Before she got him his first drink, before she brought him his pretzels, he expected a kiss, but when she came into his arms and let her fingers reach around to the back of his head, feeling for the knots of the mask, he scoffed at her. No matter how surreptitiously she searched, he knew immediately what she was doing, and he stopped her, and he said, “Did you take your medication tonight, Cassie? Did you take your pills like a good girl?” He said this because he’d convinced the doctor she was crazy. Who wouldn’t think she was crazy, saying out loud that he wore a mask on top of the creature beneath. He hid the alien monster behind that handsome, respectable Calvin mask. The doctor hadn’t believed her, had kept her for observation, and those were the first blissful nights of sleep she’d had in seven years.

The group therapist said she was imagining things, she must be. Her husband was an outstanding member of the community. He wasn’t a creature from outer space, living in a human suit, a skin suit, biding his time, planning to take over the world like in some science fiction movie from the 1950s. He was just a man. Born in Kentucky. Raised on an apple farm. Mother’s name was Peg. Father’s name was Bill. He knew everything there was to know about life on an orchard. He could recite the way an apple traveled from tree to truck to home-baked pie, and you could almost feel the glint in his dimples, the swell of his heart as he spoke of his mama, and pies, and hoedowns.

But Cassie knew he didn’t have a heart.

The doctors said she was wrong, she was overtired, look at the beautiful house he’d made for her. Look at the way he cared, sending flowers with the nicest most supportive notes. Visiting on visitor day. Everyone watched her hands on that day, to see if she felt for the knots behind his ears, for the string. She always was hopeful. If she could find the ties and undo them, his mask would fall and everyone would see what she’d seen. That first night in the honeymoon suite. When he hadn’t firmly shut the bathroom door, and she’d accidentally caught a peek through the crack of his reflection in the mirror.

When she’d realized they didn’t believe her, she had tried to act crazy in a different way, just so they might keep her longer. But the doctors had seen through the guise, and they’d packed her up and sent her home, a slew of bottles of pills with her name stamped on each one.

She didn’t always take the pills. Sometimes she flushed them. Those were the days she’d try to figure out a way to escape. Those were the days she’d think about what it would take to run. Where she might go that he couldn’t find her. How she might disguise herself, hide herself, live off the grid.

But mostly she took the medication because being numb was easier than being aware. The evening pills made her tired. She did all her chores under his watchful eyes, and then she tried to stay awake at his side, curled up there in her light nightgown, watching the headlights spear shadows onto the wall, crying silent tears that fell hot down her face to her pillow.

When Cassie finally fell asleep, “Home” Calvin blinked behind his mask.