Domesticity

She’s washing the dishes in the kitchenette. There aren’t that many to clean, but she’s in her “space out” mode that she sometimes gets into, staring at nothing, her hands sudsing the same plate over and over again.

I sit down quietly. I try to make my voice gentle when I say, “Hey,” but she still jumps, dropping the plastic plate in the sink.

“Shit,” she mumbles, turning off the faucet. “You scared me.”

I flinch. “Sorry.” I wait a moment, staring at her rigid back. Her hair is up in a tangled knot. From where I sit, I can see the harsh jut of her shoulder blades through her shirt. “What’s wrong?”

Impossibly, she grows even stiffer. Her hands, still dripping, move to grip the counter. “You know what’s wrong.”

I lean back in my chair. Over the past weeks, her voice has grown sharp enough to draw blood. She’s so different now. The first time I heard her laugh, all the breath had stuttered out of my lungs. She had sounded so beautiful and free and alive.

I rub my eyes, stifling an audible sigh. “Listen, baby—”

“Don’t call me that,” she hisses, curling inward as if I slapped her.

I swallow and look away. I push back at the resentment threatening to make me lash out. Even though I want to make her look at me, to see my own open wounds, it would only make things worse.

“Stephanie,” I say softly. “What do you need? Please, let me help you.”

She whirls around then, lifting her eyes to glare at me. She’s a petite woman. It’s one of the things that fascinated me about her—how she could be so small but so overflowing with life.

“I don’t want your help,” she says through her gritted teeth. Her hands are fisted at her sides. I can see the dampened cuffs of her long sleeves from her distracted cleaning. It almost makes me smile.

My first time in her apartment, I had to let my eyes adjust to the vibrant chaos of her discarded clothes, the dizzying celebration of memories and art across her walls and cluttering every surface. Back then, her sink had been brimming with dirty dishes.

“I want you to leave me alone.” She winces. “I mean, I want to be alone.”

Her throat bobs and I’m again startled by how thin she’s gotten. I just did the grocery shopping a few days ago, got everything she liked to cook and threw in her favorite ice cream: mint chocolate chip. I think back over the past couple of days. She ate at dinner, didn’t she? Shit, now I can’t remember if she had breakfast this morning or just slept in like she usually does. I haven’t been paying enough attention. She’s wasting away right in front of me.

Stephanie’s still standing there, unblinking. I start to say something, just to break us free of this moment, but she turns away. She yanks the handle on the faucet and starts washing the same plate. “I need tampons,” she says, just loud enough for me to hear. “Can you get some from the store, please?”

I nod, then remembering that she can’t see me, I say to her back, “Yeah, sure. Of course.”

I almost leave her right then before I realize what the request means. What hasn’t happened. I sink back into the chair. “Steph...I’m so sorry.”

Those bony shoulders curl in again, the press of her backbone painfully clear through her shirt.

I force myself to continue. “Look, we knew trying for a baby would take a while—”

“Stop it.”

But I can’t. There’s an ugly, thorny grief catching in my lungs and the only way to get it out is to keep talking. “It’s only been a few months, Stephanie. These things take time, you know? You can’t keep blaming yourself.”

“Don’t—”

“Don’t what? Don’t remember how much you want kids? A family? I mean—Christ, Stephanie, you told me our first night together.”

It had been a confession in the dark, whispered against my neck. The words were muffled with tears as if she feared that saying it out loud would make it impossible.

“I said stop it,” she says. The plate is in both her hands. The water trembles over the clean surface and into the sink.

“We’ll keep trying,” I tell her desperately. “We’ve got plenty of time, baby.”

“DON'T CALL ME THAT!” she screams, throwing the plate on the floor. It clatters and bounces across the linoleum.

She plows her fingers into her hair, pulling at the roots, water and tears blurring her face as she whirls on me again. “I don’t want your fucking baby! I told you I wanted a family but I don’t want one with you!”

My blood freezes in my veins. Something dark and full of teeth starts gnawing at my insides.

The silence that stretches between us isn’t really silence. The water is still running. Stephanie’s breathing is harsh and rapid. There is a whine of feedback in my ears, the kind that tells you you’ve lost something and you’ll never get it back.

Slowly, I push my chair back and stand.

“I—” I clear my throat. “I think I’ll give you some space.”

Panic flares in her eyes as she realizes how deeply she cut me. Cut us both. “No, wait. I’m sorry.”

“I’ll come back later tonight.”

She twists her hands in her shirt, leaving damp streaks in the threadbare fabric. “Why are you doing this to me?” she asks and the words have cracks in them.

I shake my head. This is an echo of so many past conversations. I feel the familiarity of these words, the pattern, the tears. I’m tired and hollowed out. But still, I feel that pull to her, that need to stay close and keep her safe. I’m so tangled up in her that when I try to save her from drowning, she pulls me under, too.

And I make the choice to stay anyway.

I tell her, “I’m just trying to take care of you, Stephanie. I know things have—”

“Please—”

“No, let me finish.” I take a deep breath, rub my face with both hands. “I know things have been hard for you lately. I get that. Please believe me when I say I understand. I’m here for you no matter what. Just—don’t forget that, okay?”

She’s crying in earnest now, her face crumpling. I want to hold her but I know she won’t want to be touched when she’s this raw. She needs time. I can give her that, at least.

“You asked me what I needed,” she whispers, and I have to lean in to hear. She closes her eyes for a long moment before opening them again. “I need you to let me go.”

Disappointment curdles in my gut. It’s the same thing she’s been asking for since the day we met. I bring my mouth close to the mic so she can hear me clearly through the speakers. “You know I can’t do that, Stephanie.”

“Please!” she cries, climbing up on the small table so she can get as close as possible to the camera bolted to the ceiling. Her face fills my screen. “Let me out! I can’t—”

“Get some rest, baby. I’ll be back to visit you in a little while.” I turn off the monitor, the lines of her face stark on the screen for a split second before she fades away.