Psycho-therapy, Part One
When the engine died outside there was always a long pause. Sometimes I would peek out the window and watch him take long drags off his cigarette and long pulls off a beer bottle. Maybe I would hear glass smash, the car door slam. Stomping and mumbling and then the door would swing open. Dinner was on the counter and mostly I would just hide while he ate it.
I set the alarm for 30 minutes before he had to be up for work. I would creep out and turn on the lights in the little yellow kitchen with no counter space. I would sweep cockroaches up into a soapy wet towel. I would fry potatoes and bacon and make two sandwiches for his lunch. I wrapped everything in waxed paper, in a mindless and utilitarian fashion. I would open the door to the bedroom and say, �breakfast� in my quiet voice. He would sit up, grumble, light a cigarette. I would sniff the air and feel sick with the thick smoke and grease in it. Sitting a fair distance away, I watched him eat his breakfast and I rarely said a word. I lived a supremely quiet existence. Sometimes I might chatter mechanically, but usually I just sat and stared at the wall.
When he left the house I would get back into bed to lay very still and wait for the whiney engine to start and listen for the whir of the reverse gear. Then I would take a deep breath and fall into a bottomless, soundless, underwater sleep. I would stretch out across the bed and smile.
When I woke up I would step around the apartment like a queen. Free and unfettered. I stayed in my robe until 3 pm, reading and tending to my window gardens and premaking a casserole for dinner. Sometimes I took long baths and read erotic novels. Sometimes I made a pot of coffee just for the lovely, comforting smell. We didn�t have a TV in the early days. I listened to records and NPR all day long. I read everything I could get my hands on. Novels, magazines, text books, newspapers. I could sit in one place with a cat on my lap reading for hours at a time. I would often look at a clock and realize that it was nearly 5 o�clock in the evening and I had not spoken a single word out loud all day.
Two hours before he came home I would shower and dress. Maybe I would eat something. One hour before he came home I would clean the apartment. It was so small that it only took an hour to scrub it top to bottom. The place was always clean when he came home. I could count on one hand the number of times it was ever messy when he got home from work. I was the woman who was really a child. I was seen and not heard. Maybe I wasn�t even seen�still and impalpable.
