(On the bedside table there had been a bowl of pears, perfectly ripe. Their skins were smooth and soft, ready to give way. They were yellow, speckled and wet with red.)
I reached the end of the hall and opened wide the front door. The sky was a deep, intense blue that caught in the doorway, cold and distant. I wrapped my arms around myself, standing in the shadows. Gray had seeped into my bones; I felt dull, blank. I yearned for light and color. I yearned to walk out that door and find something better. But I was caught in the doorway too�
(The pears were perfectly ripe and sweet. I had placed them there that morning with my own two hands: clean hands with small, neat fingernails. He was eating one of the pears that I had placed by our bed...)
A sound, low and mournful, got tangled in the gray shadows surrounding the staircase. I cocked my head to one side and listened intently; a woman was sobbing in her sleep upstairs, crying for things she wouldn�t remember when she awoke--I hoped. I rocked lightly on my heels as I listened to her. Back and forth, back and forth. Waiting. Tears trickled down my face, but they were only water�
(He had been eating a pear, the sweet juice trickling down his chin. And he had been laughing, that same laugh he used for me. Tainted now�)
Rain began to beat down outside my doorway, but the sky remained a brilliant blue. �The devil is beating his wife,� I said, tasting salt on my lips as I spoke. I stuck out my tongue and caught a raindrop to wash down the tears. Rain always tastes of dust, I thought; it always tastes like earth. I wondered what the earth would feel like under my bare feet, clenched in my bare hands. I wondered what life outside of this house would feel like. It was hard to imagine�there had always been, would always be, a house of some kind. And I could not remember the last time I had even taken a walk in the park by myself�
(The woman�s long, tapered fingers had held pieces of the pear up to his laughing mouth. Sweet juice dripped down her fingers and onto his chin. She licked it off him greedily. Hungrily, as if she were starving for the taste of him...)
I could see a figure moving towards me through the rain. It was a man, a man in a gray coat and hat, a man who looked both familiar and strange. He stood on the front stoop and took off his hat, looking at me nervously. �Where is he?� he asked tensely. �Are the police here yet? Where�s the ambulance? Is she still upstairs?�
I raised a red-stained finger to my lips. �Sssssshhhh!� I said, my face stiff with tear tracks. �They�re both sleeping.� And then I fainted.
(She was feeding him the pears with her long fingers when I found them. She was lying on my side of the bed when I came in the door�)
On the bedside table there was a bowl of pears I had set out that morning with my own two hands. Beside that bowl was the gun my husband always kept near him in case of an intruder. He was not fast enough to grab it away from me.
(She told me she loved me one afternoon while we sat on her front porch. Our mothers were inside, gossiping about the neighbors, and she kissed me on the lips in the afternoon sunlight. For once, I didn�t feel as if the world was collapsing in on me. For once, it felt like I had a choice�)
His face wasn�t ruined by the bullet; there was only a small hole on his forehead. But the back of his skull was blown apart. Blood sprayed all over the woman on the bed, speckling the pears with a wet red color. It didn�t touch me, not until I touched him. I don�t know why I did it�it just seemed like the right thing to do. He was my husband, after all�