Viva Wittman

I was nodding on the phone, eyes trained on a tennis ball gathering dust underneath the dresser. I hummed so the doctor knew I was listening. My husband angled my chin up at him. “Alice, is he saying they found something?” His other hand tapped his leg restlessly, and I shook my head in answer to make it stop. His hand was in my hair then. He was tucking it behind my ear, then changing his mind and untucking. He was patting the back of my neck. “Good,” he was saying. “Good girl.” Now he was leaving the room. Moments later, I could smell meat hitting the pan.

It was July, which meant dinners felt upside down. The evening sun was bright enough to burn, and I was out of breath when I got to the iron lace table. We were in my husband’s garden he’d had planted. “Alice, come,” my husband said. “Sit.” The grass at the edge of the yard was as blond as I was. My husband held my hand and petted it with his thumb. We were having turkey meatballs with cranberry sauce, which was meant to be good for me. I’d been saying I wasn’t feeling well. Now my husband was telling me about hiring a gardener. No, firing. I wasn’t listening. A squirrel was digging a hole in Allie’s grave.

It still wasn’t dark by the time my husband was fucking me. “You want my cum, you little bitch?” He held my head back by my hair. I nodded but he wanted to hear me say it, and his words rang from my mouth. Afterward, I stayed on my stomach and my husband stroked my back. I closed my eyes against the window glaring needles of light in my direction. “You’re okay,” my husband whispered, pulling a sweat-beaded leg up to hook over my hips. I woke up drooling.

I wasn’t okay. The sun was rising greenly against the pale sheets where my husband had slept. I walked naked to the bathroom. The scent was familiar now: like grass, mucus, damp fur. It brought to mind Allie’s wet nose and sea salt body, her blond ears twitching in her sleep. At a glance, what I saw was smaller than it should have been. There was a slick casing over its yellow-brown form. I flushed.

The day’s heat was already sticking to me. Still naked, I crouched in front of the fridge. The bottom drawer that had housed my stool samples was empty and Lysol’d. I took a chocolate cupcake from its plastic clam shell container, fitting the whole thing into my mouth. In seconds, my stomach gurgled ominously. I looked at the time without registering what I saw. I could hardly fathom when my husband would be home.

I was buttoned into a gingham romper and tearing dandelion greens from the flower beds when my husband’s Chevrolet Suburban crunched into the driveway. I looked up into the white-blue sky. Now my husband was whistling behind me. “There’s my girl.” A hand on my head. I stood up into his palm and turned beneath it. “Whoa, whoa,” he said. “Let’s get you cleaned up—” and I looked down then at my dirt-caked fingernails.

It was July, which meant dinners felt upside down. I was pushing the lettuce around on my blue-flowered china plate, and my husband was worrying a hole in his linen napkin. Allie would tear the napkins to shreds. I could just see her, teeth clamped on the flaccid cloth, blond head death-shaking its limp form. My husband was grimacing. “I keep getting this whiff.” He looked at me; I looked at him. “Like vomit—are you getting that?” My husband was setting his napkin down beside his salad, peering around at the ground near him. He moved toward the flower beds, looked in, and reared his head back.

I knew what he’d seen: choked-up chocolate cake speckled with dandelion greens. I slouched into my chair. “Alice, did you throw up?” I couldn’t answer. My husband’s forehead was beginning to burn beneath a gloss of sweat. A droplet seeped into his crow’s feet, into the corner of his eye. “Alice, did you do this?” He pointed behind him with one hand, wiping his eye with the other. I still couldn’t answer. I couldn’t find the words. I couldn’t form them, I mean. When he stepped toward me, I knocked my chair over to stand. “Alice.” He’s not yelling, his tone said. I was finding my way backward down the garden path. “Alice.” You’re making a mistake, his tone said. “Alice, come on.” His plate could have been a giant coin. It flipped round and round in the air, and the sound of it shattering on the concrete looked like sunlight. I took off running barefoot down the sunbaked lane.

My husband had found me treading water in the boating-only section of the lake, and he’d bared his teeth with the effort of helping me on board. After the teeth, it was a high dimple I’d noticed. Not a dimple, though, he’d told me, but a scar. It winked beneath his left eye when he smiled. For him it had been my heavy blond hair, my penchant for silence. I didn’t have to fill every moment with empty words. His tongue had a grooved line down its middle. I didn’t see until after we’d kissed, until he was moving it against my freed nipple. He’d wanted me to see his house, his dog.

My husband couldn’t find me. I could hear his Chevrolet Suburban whispering along the road. I could hear it from the inside of a hydrangea bush. The petals had a green-to-purple gradient. The leaves were wide and smooth. It was cool here in the shade.