Shred of Evidence

He sleeps loud enough to wake the dead. That’s what she thought. Space being short, she wrote: Snores. Crossing one denim-clad knee over the other, she considered going back to bed, all the same. Maybe she could dream something so wonderful it would banish the nightmare that had chased her out here to the kitchen too early on an autumn Saturday.

The best dreams were of houses—the interiors—with many intricate rooms which she explored with delight, and rarely the same house twice. She especially liked the bathrooms, so different from her real, utilitarian one. Her dream bathrooms were big enough for tubs on platforms in the center of the carpeted floor, with brick or tapestried walls, soaring skylights, stockade-fenced courtyards, flowers in Oriental vases, mirrors reflecting mirrors into infinity, and candelabras, all in glowing color.

But this morning— She shuddered and turned a page in her four-by-six wirebound notebook. The bathroom had been chrome and white. She ran a finger down the handwritten list, not really reading. It had a gray stone floor.

Shifting in the ladder-back chair, she admired her real floor, a paisley vinyl in blues and greens, gleaming like ice. The sun, just up, reflected off the row of appliances along the counter, breadmaker through toaster.

She heard Martin stirring in the bedroom, the closing bathroom door, thunk. An involuntary vision of that other, unreal bathroom arced across her mind—the stark white and glinting metal and then the uneasy recognition that a residue of red spoiled the over-all. Someone hadn’t cleaned completely. It wasn’t as pristine as it first appeared.

She fast-tapped the pen against the table’s edge, not sure why she should be upset by a little imaginary blood. It certainly wasn’t hers, she laughed to and at herself.

The toilet flushed and immediately the bathroom door opened. Doesn’t wash his hands, she wrote at the top of the next blank page.

He shuffled into the kitchen in his black terry robe, squinting against the sunlight and the smoke leaking from his first cigarette of the day. That was one of the first things she’d written into her notebook: Smokes. And, in a related entry—Coughs.

“You’re up bright and early,” he said, holding away the cigarette and leaning down to kiss the top of her springy hair. “Ahhh, couldn’t sleep?”

“Bad dream,” she answered, casually covering the notebook with flexed fingers. “So I got up and washed and waxed the floor out here.”

He patted her shoulder as he turned aside. “Want to talk about it?”

“No.”

She watched him unwrap the bread and insert two slices in the toaster. He coughed his ugly, wet cough. His hands shook some. He needed a shave and a trim around the ears. One thing, though—he’d never deteriorated into flabby. He still had the broad shoulders and skinny hips she’d lusted after forty years ago.

She flipped several pages to a different list, one she’d headed Pros, and jotted that down: Still sexy.

“If that’s your grocery list, ahhh, we need tea bags,” Martin said, making himself a cup, and she smiled and nodded.

He brought in the newspaper from the driveway and browsed the comics while he ate his dry toast. Fine crumbs sprayed the oak table as he bit and chewed. She narrowed her eyes, but she didn’t write anything down.

Yesterday, she’d found the little blank notebook in a desk drawer. This morning, after making the list in her head while she mopped and waxed, she’d filled two pages with her grievances against her husband, and a half page with her reasons not to leave him.

He laughed out loud and swayed his head. “Marmaduke,” he said.

She laid down her pen. Incompatibility in comics preferences was probably not grounds for divorce.

“What are you going to do today?” she asked, chin on hand, elbow propped on the table. She toyed with the stack of unopened bills from yesterday’s mail.

“Heard it’s supposed to frost tonight, so, ahhh, I’ll put the garden to bed.” He sipped tea, folding his lips inside as he swallowed. “Put away the hoses. Rake the last of the leaves. How about you?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” She sighed, disappointed that her written list hadn’t freed her yet, hadn’t brought epiphany.

“You’d better go back to bed.” He winked at her, his gray eyes intelligent and absolutely innocent of his wrongdoings. He scooted back his chair and sauntered off to dress.

She’d been raised in the thirties, when a man was a man and a woman was a sidekick. Back then, whatever chores her father chose to do, her mother would have helped him and done her own woman’s work later, alone.

At least Martin didn’t expect that of her. Though set in his ways, he was a reasonable man. If, instead of keeping it all bottled in, she told him what was bothering her, he’d listen.

But that’s all he would do. He wouldn’t change. He wouldn’t remember to pick up his clothes strewn all over the bedroom or his toiletries littering the bathroom or any of the other messes she usually cleaned up. He’d never fight his addiction to cigarettes. He couldn’t possibly break himself of constantly saying, “Ahhh.”

Or give up dirt.

She fingered the notebook. Maybe she should leave the list where he could find it. Maybe if she mentioned some of the smaller annoyances to him—one a week for the next few weeks—it might make a difference.

“And I’m not perfect,” she admitted.

“What?” He emerged from the hallway, buttoning his red flannel shirt.

“I’m not perfect. I know I must do things that set your teeth on edge.” Her voice came out shrill and breathy. “Tell me something that annoys you.” She sat sideways in the chair, clutching the back as if it were about to buck her.

He laughed, though his eyes didn’t. “Ahhh, you get up too early in the morning?”

“I’m serious, Martin. I want to tell you something I don’t like about you, but it’s only fair that you do the same to me.”

He widened his eyes, narrowed them, frowned. “Ahhh, well, you—” He took a deep breath. “You first.”

“You never bring me flowers,” she said promptly, instinctively selecting the easiest item on her list.

“I never bring you….”

She shook her head and blinked hard. “Never.”

“I….” He coughed briefly. “What kind do you want?”

“Doesn’t matter. Any kind.”

“I, ahhh, okay.”

“Now you.”

He rolled his eyes like a panicky horse. “Sometimes you, ahhh, smell.”

“I what?”

“Like your deodorant quit, or maybe you, ahhh, forgot.”

The rush of hot blood rolled up her neck, across her cheeks, into her hairline, and stung her scalp. She stumbled up to carry his cup and soggy tea bag to the sink. “Thank you for sharing this with me.”

“If you want me, I’m out back,” he said, escaping into the garage.

She dipped her face furiously toward each armpit and didn’t smell a thing.

Next she emptied the dishwasher, slamming cupboard doors and drawers, muttering that he could eat filth but she couldn’t sweat.

When her embarrassment had abated, she sat down at the table again and began gouging open the bills with her letter knife. The very first grievance on her list, the transgression she most wanted Martin to renounce, the one he was probably engaging in at this very moment, was his penchant for eating dirt.

He’d been doing it since he was a child, but secretly, until the last ten years. She clearly recalled the first time she saw him rub something dark between his fingers and onto the nice seafood salad she’d prepared for their lunch.

“What’s that—pepper?” she’d asked, smiling, expecting him to offer her some.

He’d sat back and squared his shoulders. “I’ve found out I’m not the only one, so now I’m going to come clean with you.” He’d laughed a little then. “Not clean, exactly. It’s, ahhh, dirt.”

“Dirt? What do you mean, dirt?”

“Soil. Humus. Loam. A bit of real estate. I’ve always enjoyed the taste of it—earthy and rich. But I didn’t think other people would understand or, ahhh, approve. Last week I read an article in the newspaper. Lots of people do it. Nothing wrong with it at all.”

“Dirt? Like what you’d dig out of the ground? Did you wash it?”

“Well, ahhh, no. That would be mud, wouldn’t it?”

And after that, several times a week, she’d see him sprinkle something brown and—dirty looking—on his salad or his sandwich or his slice of pizza. She’d frown, and he’d pretend not to see. Sometimes, on their walks for exercise, he’d stoop to take a pinch of someone’s flower bed and stick it in his cheek like tobacco. She’d growl about possible herbicides, and he’d pretend not to hear.

She imagined him out there in his own organic garden right now, pulling up the last of the bean plants, munching on a handful of loose dirt. At her funeral, he would stand by the open grave, bend to heft a clod of turned topsoil, and before dropping it on the casket, give it one good lick.

Her face felt screwed as tight as a wound-up swing. Deliberately, she relaxed it, hearing his shoe scrape on the other side of the back door.

He came in, a looming shape silhouetted by the low sun, and she didn’t look closer, absorbing herself in the sorting out of bills.

“Ahhh,” he said. “I brought you flowers.”

She raised her head. His face, above the profusion of cosmos blooms, mirrored their golden glow. His eyes sparkled, as young as the first time he’d come to take her to a movie. His windblown white hair might have been the old sun-bleached blond.

For a moment she stared at him across the years.

A whisper of sound drew her gaze to the floor. The flowers he held had been pulled up by the roots, and crumbs of soil rained on the polished floor. Seeing her expression, he looked down and hastily cupped a hand under the bouquet. For a moment, he studied the dirt that accumulated on his palm, and then he began to raise that arm.

She flew across the room as if blown from a cannon, the letter knife in her hand. She hit her husband with all the accumulated weight of his petty provocations. A fountain—an explosion—of cosmos, dirt, and man pelted the room.

She staggered back empty-handed, -minded, -hearted.

Somewhere in the debris, Martin said, “Ahhh,” coughed, and generated one final, spectacular mess.