Slightly Wrong

The day began with the dog refusing breakfast.

This should not have frightened Mara as much as it did. Sophie had refused breakfast because of rain, fireworks, a garbage truck, and once because Daniel had moved her bowl approximately eighteen inches to the left.

Still, Mara stood over the untouched chicken and rice at seven-thirty in the morning and felt something tighten behind her ribs.

“She didn’t eat.”

Daniel looked up from his phone. “She’ll eat.”

“She always scarfs it down right away.”

“You said last week she didn’t eat all morning because it was raining.”

“That was strictly a weather-related protest.”

Daniel looked toward Sophie. “Against rain?” He considered this. “She’s very politically active.”

Normally, that would have gotten her. This morning it didn’t.

Sophie stood between them, fourteen pounds of white-and-gray fur, looking from Mara to Daniel as if waiting for one of them to fix whatever was wrong. Then she walked into the living room and threw up on the rug.

“Okay,” Daniel said, standing. “Vet.”

The cholent had been cooking all night, filling the house with the smell of slow-cooked meat, potatoes, beans and barley.

Mara had started it the afternoon before, sautéing the onions and garlic and braising the meat even though the recipe didn’t require it. Everything took longer than usual because her legs were still sore. Each time she stood after sitting, she had to wait for the pulling pain to ease before moving again.

At two in the morning she’d gotten up to use the bathroom and stopped in the kitchen to lift the lid.

Daniel had appeared behind her in his underwear. “What are you doing?”

“Checking it.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know. Making sure it’s not burning.”

Daniel leaned over and looked into the slow cooker. “Looks like it’s still there.”

She’d laughed then.

Now, five hours later, the cholent was exactly what she’d hoped it would be, and nobody was hungry.

Sophie had curled into a tight ball at the end of the sofa. Mara crouched beside her and ran a hand over her back.

“We’re taking you to the doctor.”

Sophie lifted her head at the word.

Daniel looked over. “She doesn’t know what doctor means.”

“She absolutely knows what doctor means.”

“She knows vet.”

“Thank you. That’s much less terrifying.”

Mara pushed herself upright using the arm of the sofa. Pain pulled through both legs, and she stood still until it eased.

Daniel was watching her.

“I’m fine.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were about to.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“You were. I know your face.”

“What was my face doing?”

“Being extremely specific.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“It means I’ve known your face for six years.”

She reached for Sophie, but Daniel picked her up first.

“I can take her.”

“No, you can’t.”

“I can hold a fourteen-pound dog.”

“You’re not supposed to lift anything.”

Mara hated when he was right in complete sentences.

Daniel carried Sophie outside while Mara followed more slowly. A small sound escaped her on the walkway.

He turned. “You okay?”

“Yep.”

“That didn’t sound like yep.”

“It’s the sound I make when I’m doing great.”

He waited until she caught up before continuing.

Mara drove so Daniel could hold Sophie. At every red light she glanced over. Sophie pressed herself against his chest, trembling slightly, while Daniel kept one large hand across her back.

Inside the veterinarian’s office, Mara walked carefully enough that she hoped no one would notice she was walking carefully.

Daniel noticed. He didn’t say anything. He simply shortened his stride.

That was one of the things about him she appreciated.

The exam room had a narrow vinyl bench apparently designed for people who had never experienced discomfort below the waist. Mara lowered herself onto it.

“Oh, Jesus.”

Daniel looked at her. “What?”

“This bench was designed by someone who hates people.”

Daniel pressed his palm against the vinyl. “It’s just hard.”

“Thank you for the technical assessment.”

Sophie pressed herself against Daniel’s side.

When the veterinarian came in, he was tall and silver-haired, with dark-framed glasses and such a strong resemblance to Steve Martin that Mara looked at him twice.

He examined Sophie, then recommended a steroid injection, an antibiotic injection, an allergy shot, prescription drops for her eyes and ears, and bloodwork.

Steroid. Antibiotic. Allergy shot. Eye drops. Ear drops. Bloodwork.

Mara glanced at Daniel. He was listening with the solemn concentration of someone being briefed before surgery.

What had begun with Sophie refusing breakfast suddenly felt much larger.

The vet tech carried Sophie through the door at the back of the room.

Mara hated that door. Every veterinary office seemed to have one. Your dog disappeared through it in someone else’s arms, and you were expected to sit politely beside a laminated diagram of canine parasites and wait.

Daniel’s knee touched hers. She didn’t move it away.

When Sophie returned, offended but alive, the vet tech turned a small screen toward Mara.

$1,074.42 glowed in yellow.

Mara began gnawing the inside of her cheek. “For that amount, I’d like her to come home speaking French.”

“She doesn’t know French,” Daniel said.

Mara looked at him. “I know, Daniel.”

The vet tech smiled.

At reception, Mara slid her card into the machine.

Outside, Daniel carried Sophie while Mara made her way gingerly across the parking lot. Halfway into the driver’s seat, pain caught sharply in one leg.

“Ah—shit.”

Daniel stopped beside the passenger door. “You okay?”

“Give me a second.”

He did.

“You want me to drive?”

“No. You hold her.”

On the way home, Sophie finally stopped trembling. She curled against Daniel, exhausted, her chin resting over his forearm.

Mara glanced at them at a red light. Daniel was looking out the passenger window, one hand moving absently over Sophie’s back.

At home, he changed into an old blue T-shirt and work pants.

“The shed doors are getting worse.”

Mara had noticed. One corner had softened so badly she’d put her finger through it the previous week.

“Go. Before we accidentally acquire an open-concept shed.”

Daniel looked toward the backyard. “That’s not really what open concept means.”

“I know.”

He kissed the top of her head on his way out.

Around noon, Daniel’s daughter Natalie called.

Mara could see him through the kitchen window, his phone balanced against a toolbox while he worked.

Mara liked Natalie. She liked all of Daniel’s children.

That wasn’t the problem.

She rinsed a coffee mug.

Outside, Daniel laughed.

A few minutes later, he stopped working entirely and leaned against the shed.

He listened.

Asked something.

Listened again.

Mara dried the same mug twice.

She opened the slow cooker. The cholent had thickened beautifully, the potatoes soft at the edges and the barley swollen with broth.

She opened the back door.

“Daniel?”

He turned, Natalie still speaking through the phone.

“Do you want some cholent?”

He pointed toward the half-hung door. “Not yet. I want to get this side on.”

“Okay.”

Forty-five minutes later, his phone was still going.

Mara folded laundry on the sofa while pieces of his voice drifted through the open window.

“No, I don’t think that’s what she meant.”

A pause.

“Well, did you ask her?”

Another pause.

“You can’t know if you don’t ask.”

Mara stopped folding one of his T-shirts.

Interesting.

Apparently Daniel had become a communications specialist.

An hour later, she offered him food again.

“I’ll eat later.”

The third time, she didn’t make it outside.

She stood behind the screen door with one hand on the handle and watched him. Natalie was still talking.

Daniel was listening.

Not impatiently. Not pretending.

Listening.

Three hours.

Mara let go of the handle.

Upstairs, she changed her shirt. The first one was perfectly fine. She changed it anyway, put on sneakers and picked up her purse.

“I’m going out for a little while.”

Daniel was measuring something. “Okay.”

She waited.

He looked up. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“All right.”

She hated herself a little for that.

Then she left.

⸻

Mara drove without deciding where she was going.

The sky had turned the flat gray-blue that sometimes came before rain. She passed the pharmacy, the bagel shop, a gas station advertising regular for a price she considered personally insulting.

At a red light she noticed a man in the car beside her.

Large build. Strong jaw.

For half a second something about him reminded her of Tim.

That was all it took.

Tim had been a big man too. It occurred to Mara sometimes that Tim and Daniel had looked more alike than anyone would expect: broad shoulders, strong jaws, piercing blue eyes that became startling in sunlight.

Neither had been particularly good at eye contact.

Mara had spent years trying to catch the eyes of both men for completely different reasons.

Women noticed Tim. Waitresses became slightly more attentive. Women at parties touched his arm when they laughed.

Once, in the produce aisle, Mara watched a woman smile at him while he inspected avocados.

Tim smiled back.

Mara waited until they turned the corner. “You’re aware that woman wanted to climb you like playground equipment.”

Tim looked genuinely confused. “Who?”

“The woman practically offering to help you select an avocado with her breasts.”

“She worked here?”

Mara laughed so loudly an elderly man examining tomatoes looked over.

That was Tim. Not especially complicated. Not especially bright. But funny without trying.

There had been a lot of laughter then. And people. Tim’s family seemed incapable of gathering in groups smaller than twelve. Sunday dinners meant folding chairs, overlapping conversations and someone shouting from the kitchen that there wasn’t enough ice.

Mara used to complain that everyone talked at once.

Now she remembered the noise.

His sister handing her a plate before she asked. His brother yelling from the living room. Someone’s child crawling beneath the table.

Tim across from her, catching her eye for half a second before looking away.

She hadn’t known she would miss having somewhere to go on Sundays.

But memory was dishonest when you were lonely.

Tim had grown up with alcoholism and carried more chaos than Mara initially understood. Drugs had been part of his life. Money disappeared. Plans changed. There were moments when she felt less like his partner than the person assigned to keep the train on the tracks.

After three years, she recognized something in herself.

She was taking care of him.

Again.

She wanted to grow.

Tim wanted to get married.

She couldn’t.

So she ended it.

A month later, he met someone else. Six months later, he married her.

At the next red light, Mara wondered whether they were happy.

Then she immediately felt disloyal to Daniel.

The car behind her honked.

The light had turned green.

“All right,” she said, raising one hand. “Some of us are having a complicated inner life.”

She drove toward the bay.

⸻

Her old therapist had once told her there was no unicorn.

At the time Mara had been describing Daniel badly.

He doesn’t talk much. He isn’t social. Sex is complicated. Sometimes I feel lonely.

Presented separately, each complaint sounded almost petty.

“There is no unicorn, Mara,” her therapist had said. “Sometimes you have to look at what someone can give you.”

Mara had carried that sentence around for years.

She pulled into a small parking area beside the water and turned off the engine.

A gull stood near a garbage can watching her with the confidence of someone who had never paid a veterinary bill.

Daniel gave her things.

Real things.

Only a few nights earlier, he had stayed beside her through an entire night in the emergency room. When she was cold, he found a blanket. He sat through bloodwork, the ultrasound, chest imaging, hours under fluorescent lights.

When the steroid sent her heart racing and panic tore through her, Daniel stood beside the bed.

“I’m right here,” he’d told her.

She had believed him.

She still did.

He fixed what broke. He carried Sophie because Mara wasn’t supposed to. He shortened his stride when her legs hurt. He was loyal in a way she never questioned.

He didn’t flirt with other women. He didn’t manufacture jealousy. He didn’t disappear for three days and return with an explanation that somehow became Mara’s fault.

She knew what cruelty felt like.

Daniel wasn’t a cruel man.

But that didn’t mean he couldn’t hurt her.

After their last couples session, Mara had told him what she needed.

More time together. Conversation. Affection. Fun. To feel wanted.

She’d worked hard not to accuse him.

On the drive home, Daniel had become angry. He said he felt beaten up.

Mara had gone into the room feeling lonely and somehow come out responsible for having made Daniel feel bad about her loneliness.

The gull hopped onto the garbage can.

“Don’t,” Mara told it.

The gull stared at her.

“I have nothing. Emotionally or food-wise.”

Eventually it flew away.

“Good talk.”

Mara rested her head against the seat.

Her mother had taught her early that needs complicated things.

Her father had reinforced the lesson.

Marriage had perfected it.

So Mara became useful. She could read a room before entering it. She remembered birthdays, medications, favorite foods, who didn’t like onions. She knew how to make herself easier to love.

For a long time, Daniel had felt like the reward for all of it.

A man who didn’t frighten her.

A man who stayed.

Maybe she hadn’t understood then that eventually she would want more than someone who didn’t hurt her.

Her phone buzzed.

Lisa.

Everything okay?

Mara stared at the screen.

She typed:

Just having a rough day.

Deleted it.

Daniel stuff.

Deleted that too.

Finally:

Do you ever feel lonely when you’re not alone?

She sent it, then wished she hadn’t.

Mara looked at the water and thought about the cholent.

She’d offered Daniel a bowl three times.

That suddenly embarrassed her.

Not because she’d offered food. Because she knew now she hadn’t really been asking whether he was hungry.

Look at me. Come inside. Sit with me. Choose me for twenty minutes.

Her phone buzzed.

For one ridiculous second, her heart jumped.

Daniel.

You coming home?

Mara read it twice.

Three words.

She thought about another three words.

I’m right here.

He had said them in the hospital.

Both sentences were Daniel.

That was the problem.

She typed:

Yes. Soon.

⸻

By the time Mara pulled into the driveway, the shed had two new doors.

Daniel stood in front of them with his hands on his hips, his T-shirt dark with sweat between his shoulder blades and sawdust in his hair.

He looked pleased.

“What do you think?”

Mara got out of the car. “They’re beautiful.”

“They’re shed doors.”

“Fine. They’re emotionally unavailable but structurally excellent.”

Daniel frowned.

Then he got it.

He laughed. Not the polite breath through the nose he sometimes substituted for laughter. A real laugh.

Mara laughed too.

And there it was.

For a few seconds, there they were.

She had missed them.

Daniel stopped laughing first. His eyes moved over her face but didn’t quite settle on hers.

“You were crying.”

Mara touched beneath one eye. “A little.”

“What happened?”

She looked at him.

Behind Daniel, the new doors hung perfectly level. She could smell the cholent from outside.

There were a hundred answers.

The dog. The money. Natalie. Tim. Her mother. Her father. The hospital. Their bed. The therapist. Three bowls of cholent she’d never actually served.

Mara opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

Daniel waited.

That, at least, was something.

“I don’t know how to explain it yet.”

“Okay.” He looked toward the house. “Did you eat?”

Mara almost laughed. “No.”

“Me neither.”

Of course he hadn’t.

She walked inside. Daniel followed.

In the kitchen, Mara lifted the lid from the slow cooker. The cholent had gone darker around the edges. A few potatoes had nearly dissolved.

She reached for a bowl, then stopped.

Daniel opened the cabinet beside her and took down two.

Mara watched him.

He set one in front of her.

The other in front of himself.

Then he sat at the table.

No television. No phone.

He didn’t say anything.

Mara filled the bowls and carried them over.

Daniel took a bite. “This is really good.”

“I know.”

He looked up.

Mara smiled despite herself.

Outside, the new shed doors stood perfectly straight.

Inside, Sophie finally wandered over to her breakfast bowl and began to eat. Mara heard the small metallic scrape of the dish moving across the floor.

Daniel ate another spoonful of cholent.

For the first time all day, nobody asked anything of her.

She sat across from him and looked at his blue eyes.

He looked away first.

Things still felt slightly wrong.

But not everything.

And Mara wasn’t sure anymore whether that made things easier or harder.