The mantel clock in the hallway struck 11:42 with that dull, heavy chime that always seemed to mock how quiet the house was. I was down on my knees again, scrubbing a tiny smudge of dried gravy off the baseboard near the dining room table, wondering how my knees had gotten so bruised without me ever noticing when they happened. Simon had told me he had to close the regional supply office late because the holiday inventory was a complete mess, and like a fool, I had believed him.
I had spent the afternoon ironing his good blue work shirt, the one with the French cuffs he only wore when he was traveling to the Peoria branch, and I had baked a ham that sat untouched in its glaze on the back burner. For seven years of marriage, my life had narrowed down to the sound of his key in the front door and the list of small complaints he brought in with him about how the floors weren’t swept right or how the coffee was too weak. I didn’t even buy myself Christmas presents anymore because the last time I tried, he looked at the sweater I got on sale and asked if I thought money grew on sycamore trees in our backyard. So I just didn’t. I cleaned, I cooked, I waited, and I pretended that the hollow feeling in my chest was just normal marriage fatigue.
By midnight, the ham had gone cold, and the kitchen had that greasy smell that lingers when grease sits too long in a hot pan. My fingers were pruned from the dishwater, and my lower back had that sharp, burning ache that usually meant I had been standing on tile for four hours straight. I sat down at the kitchen island for a minute, just to rest my eyes, and my phone was sitting right there beside the fruit bowl with the screen dark and silent. I had checked it eleven times in the last hour, telling myself he was just stuck behind a salt truck or dealing with some idiot delivery driver who couldn’t read a manifest. But then the quiet in the house got so loud it felt like it was ringing in my ears, and I picked the phone up before my brain could stop me. I dialed his cell, and it rang four times before going to his voicemail, so I hung up and dialed again right away because a strange, cold panic had started crawling up the back of my neck.
On the second ring, he picked up, but he didn’t say hello like a husband coming home to his wife on Christmas Eve. He sounded breathless and sharp, like I had interrupted something heavy, and his voice cut right through the receiver with a vicious snap. I’m busy! Can’t you just leave me alone already? And then the line just went dead with that hard electronic click that sounds like someone dropping a heavy door. I sat there on the kitchen stool for a long time with the phone still pressed against my ear, listening to the dial tone turn into that hollow buzzing sound until the screen finally went black in my hand. I didn’t cry right away because I was too stunned for tears, but then my breathing got shallow and fast, and I slid right off the stool onto the linoleum floor, pulling my knees up to my chest and crying so hard my ribs started to hurt.
It was the kind of crying where you feel completely small, like a bug stuck under a glass, realizing that you had given every single year of your youth to a man who didn’t even consider you worth an answer on a holiday night.
After a few minutes, the cold draft from the front picture window started hitting my ankles, and I knew I had forgotten to latch the brass lock before dark. I pushed myself up off the floor, wiping my face with the sleeve of my cardigan, and walked into the darkened living room where the Christmas tree lights were blinking in slow, green and red circles against the walls. The tree looked pretty, I suppose, with the glass ornaments my mother had given me before she passed away, but I had wrapped every single present sitting underneath it three days ago while Simon sat on the sofa watching sports and telling me I used too much tape. I was halfway to the window when my foot brushed against something solid sitting right on the tree skirt, right near the lower pine boughs where no package had been when I went to bed. It was a square box wrapped in heavy silver paper, tied with a dark blue velvet ribbon that looked expensive, the kind of paper they used at the high-end boutique downtown where the dresses cost more than my monthly grocery budget. I stopped dead in my tracks because I knew for a fact I hadn’t bought it, and Simon certainly hadn’t gone shopping anywhere except the hardware store in three years.
I stood there in the flickering light of the tree for a second, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird, and I reached down with trembling fingers to touch the corner of the box. The tag attached to the ribbon had my name on it, handwritten in a looping, unfamiliar script that wasn’t mine and wasn’t Simon’s scrawl either, and my stomach dropped straight down to my shoes. I slipped my fingernail under the crisp edge of the silver paper and ripped it away, lifting the cardboard lid off the box with a dry, rustling sound that seemed way too loud in the silent house. Inside, sitting on a bed of dark tissue paper, was a small leather makeup case I had never seen before, and resting right on top of it was a gold-plated key ring with a motel room key and a folded receipt from a jewelry store two towns over.
My hand shook so hard I almost dropped the lid as I unfolded the receipt, my eyes scanning the printed lines in the dim green light of the tree until I saw the date and the items listed. Two diamond-accented tennis bracelets, charged to our joint checking account three days ago while I was home scrubbing his laundry, along with a pair of pearl earrings and a card that said For my favorite girl, almost home, Marcus. Marcus was the name on the receipt, but the credit card number at the bottom was Simon’s card, the one he used for gas and groceries.
The room started spinning just a little bit, and that cold panic turned into a white-hot fury that dried the tears right off my cheeks. Simon didn’t go to the Peoria branch for inventory, and he certainly wasn’t stuck at the supply office on Christmas Eve, because Simon wasn’t even Simon when he was away from this house. He had been running a whole separate life with someone else, using our savings to buy jewelry for a woman who probably didn’t spend her holidays scrubbing gravy off baseboards for a man who yelled at her over the phone. I didn’t think about what I was doing next; my body just took over like it was running on pure adrenaline and old-fashioned spite. I dropped the box back onto the rug, didn’t even bother putting the lid back on, and walked straight to the front hall closet where my heavy wool coat was hanging beside Simon’s expensive leather jacket. I pulled my coat on over my pajamas, shoved my feet into my winter boots without bothering to tie the laces, and grabbed my car keys off the little brass tray by the door.
Three minutes later, my old sedan was backing out of the driveway, the tires crunching loud on the thin layer of ice that had formed over the gravel while I was inside crying on the kitchen floor. I didn’t look back at the house, and I didn’t care that the ham was still sitting on the stove getting cold or that the front window was still unlatched. As I drove down the empty suburban street toward the highway with the heater blowing cold air at my shins, I reached into my coat pocket and felt the cold metal of my spare apartment key that I had kept from my mother’s estate sale last spring. It was the only thing I owned that Simon hadn’t touched, or bought, or ruined with his quiet, endless neglect. The dashboard clock glowed 1:15 in the morning as I hit the county road, and for the first time in seven years, I didn’t care what Simon was going to say when he finally came home to an empty house.
