Sometimes I wish I could climb inside my husband and disappear. I think that if I could shrink myself small enough I could crawl in between his ribs and make myself at home beside his beating heart. I don’t tell him this; he wouldn’t understand. Instead I resign myself to memorising him, learning him by eye and by hand until I know him better than my own body.
My husband is a man of action and activity; like a shark he has to keep moving, swimming through life with the easy, streamlined grace of the purposeful. It is only late at night, under the warm light of our bedroom lamps, that he is still, once the physical exertions of sex have exhausted him and his ceaseless mind.
After sex, I like to look at him. I trace my fingers along the planes of his face, running them across the bridge of his nose and the angles of his cheekbones and down the soft, trembling column of his panting throat. I thread my fingers through the soft downy hair scattered across his chest and the convex curve of his belly. No part of him escapes my attention, and all the while he smiles and sinks into the mattress, into the siren call of sleep.
This morning, as always, he brews the coffee while I fry the eggs. A thin silence lays over us like snow, disturbed only by the hissing of the coffee machine and the oil spitting in the pan. I ask him how he slept, already knowing he slept all the way through, like the proverbial baby. I couldn’t sleep; I was tossing and turning all night, tangled in the sheets like a straight-jacket. He doesn’t ask.
There’s a sudden stink, an acrid, charcoal smell from behind me, and we realise at the same time that the eggs are burning. We stumble into a frantic rush of movement, the pan snatched away, the flame extinguished, but it’s too late. The eggs are a black, charred mess, slick with oil, clumped in the centre of the pan. Inedible.
I offer to try again, but he shakes his head. He eats toast instead, dry and plain, crumbs spilling from his mouth as he chews. I watch the rolling motion of his jaw, the easy way his teeth grind together. The lump of his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows. I search for something to say, groping mentally through the dictionary of our shared language, hoping to stumble upon some forgotten word that blossoms into a sentence, a conversation, a revitalized relationship.
Instead I wash the pan, foregoing gloves so I can feel the greasy lumps slipping between my fingers, dissolving in the scalding water. I tilt my hands this way and that, hypnotized by the iridescent soap bubbles netted between my fingers, so engrossed that by the time I look up, my husband is gone and the water is cold.
The wastepaper basket is littered with crumpled paper: invitations to house warmings, weddings, baby showers. Some of them are weeks old, all of them unanswered. I don’t bother reading them before discarding them; we haven’t been anywhere in weeks. I shovel the paper into the open mouth of the fire, eyes watering and narrowed against the livid heat, and settle back into my side of the sofa. Beside me my husband sweats, a slick sheen across his forehead and the back of his neck.
My tongue darts out of my mouth, lizard-like. I’m imagining running my mouth along his throat and the damp fur of his beard, tasting the salt. I read once that some dogs can scent our mood changes in the air. I wish I possessed that skill: I want to widen my nostrils and sniff deeply, to inhale my husband’s silent, secret thoughts and digest them.
He scrolls on his phone, images flitting across the screen so fast he surely can’t be reading them. He never posts online, instead using social media as a window into other people’s lives; he used to love guessing what might be going on behind the camera, desperate to see behind the scenes. When we first met, on a blind date arranged by a mutual friend, he confessed to staying up all night looking through my feeds, trying to gain some insight about what I’d be like. I was charmed.
At first I shared photos of us almost incessantly, picking moments to share like grapes off a vine: look at how happy I am, how loved I am. Look how I belong to someone. But as time passed, as I sank into the relationship, and into him, like standing in wet earth, I became reluctant to share. Now I spend hours crouched over my phone examining the photos, rejoicing in and reliving the memories, the feel of his mouth on mine, wet and soft, or the curl of his body against mine, the bright spark of laughter at the joke the camera couldn’t capture. I gorge myself on the memories, growing fat and drunk and happy. I want to keep them for myself, to keep him to myself. I want him to belong to me the way I belong to him: wholly, nakedly, obsessively.
I twist and turn, serpentine, to scrutinize my body in the mirror, running my fingers across the landscape of folds and dips like a cartographer examining unfamiliar terrain. Somewhere in the background is the humming of the boiler, a constant droning, insect-like: my husband, showering. He thinks the sound of running water disguises the whimpering dog noises he makes when he cries. He thinks he’s the only one crying.
Movement, in the corner of my eye: he’s standing there, still wet from the shower, towel precariously low on his hips. His eyes are red-rimmed, his mouth thinned to a flat line – the topography of his face is unfamiliar to me now that he no longer smiles. I can’t help it: I go to him. I lean against him, my hands anchoring against his shoulder blades, my face tucked into the curve of his breastbone. I offer him comfort, the solace of my warm and willing body. With shaking hands he drops his towel.
He draws me closer, pressing my body to him, skin against flushing skin. I imagine myself as putty under his hands, his fingerprints sinking into my buttocks, his palms warming my skin like wax, softening me, reshaping me, moulding me in his reverse image. His perfect pair. I’m so close to him, enshrined in his warmth, that I can’t help my mouth falling open, fish-like, gasping. He hardens against my thigh. Desire blooms in me like a hunger and I lean up to catch him in a kiss, yoking myself onto the fish-hook of his mouth. I revel in the familiar tastes of his mouth, the peppermint of his toothpaste and the faintly chlorophyllic green tea he drinks before bed.
It is simultaneously too much and not enough. It is a mess of thrusting and gasping and his closed, clenched eyes as though he can’t bear to see my face even as he pushes inside me. Even as I beg him to look at me. It is over too soon; I am left wishing there was a way for his body to make space for me, to invite me in and pin me in place.
A huff of breath escapes his pursed mouth as he rolls onto his side, one hand stretching out to switch off the light, submersing us in blinding darkness. I hesitate to touch him. Instead I lie on my back and match my breathing to his, timing my exhales with his inhales. If I try hard enough I can almost believe that some crucial element of me is escaping with every breath, that he is breathing me deep into his lungs and absorbing me, that I am swimming in his bloodstream. That he can’t live without me.
Things are worse the next morning – the space between us is fragile, translucent like thinly blown glass, one careless gesture away from fracturing. We circle each other like the hands of a clock, round and round, unable to connect for more than a glancing moment. But even a broken clock is right twice a day, or so I try to convince myself.
When he thinks I’m not looking, he scrubs his fingers at the hickey I sucked onto his shoulder, rubbing as though he can get the stain out.
I haven’t been hungry in several days but I bend myself to the task of making his breakfast anyway. Hawk-eyed, squinting against the spit of the oil, I watch the eggs solidify, fat and fleshy with the sunny yolk in the centre like an eye. For a moment I have the distinct, uneasy feeling of staring in a mirror, as though my own moon-like face is blinking up at me from the bottom of the pan. I contort my face, blowing out my cheeks and sticking out my tongue, and watch the eggs bubble.
His fork pierces the egg yolk, the liquid seeping out in a sunburst of colour. I imagine the metal prongs piercing my eyeball with that same pop, the gelatinous vitreous humour oozing onto his fork, lifted carefully to his mouth, swallowed down the tunnel of his throat. I imagine myself blinded and helpless at his feet, his benevolent hand soft against the crown of my head. I imagine his oily lips pressed against my forehead, leaving a lipstick smear of grease, a communion of sorts. A forgiveness for the trespasses of my body.
He glances up, catches my eye, and almost smiles. I stretch my face into a waxy smile, drinking in his attention like a seedling first seeing sunlight. I offer him another egg.
My skin pales, shedding the summer tan I spent months painstakingly cultivating, fading to a ghostly white. It softens, too, becoming fleshy and wobbling with my every movement. At first I delight in the spongy, gelatin feel of my skin, closing my eyes and tricking myself into believing this is what my post-partum body would have felt like: soft, stretched, still clinging to the shape of the child that had sheltered inside me.
Late one night, long after he’s asleep, I fascinate myself by pressing my thumbs into my thighs and belly, digging deeply yet somehow painlessly, watching my skin hesitate to bounce back. I wake the next morning pockmarked with fingerprints like cellulite.
But even I cannot play make-believe for days on end. Eventually I begin to worry as my flesh loosens and wrinkles on my frame, a thin, waxy membrane forming across my skin no matter how much I scrub myself under hot water. I weigh myself obsessively, compulsively, watching the numbers dropping like flies, feeling the kilograms slough off me like water.
My husband’s attention continues to wane, drifting elsewhere like a car skidding over ice, and as I shrink, I can’t help but correlate the two, as though without his love I am shrinking to nothing. I feed on the scraps of his attention like a carrion bird circling the wreck of our marriage, starving, salivating.
I am reduced to what I can do for him, the little tasks I offer until he, however unwillingly, accepts. Most importantly, I cook for him. I’ve heard of cooking with love before, but this is something else, something more desperate, primal – I want to make him something he needs. Something he’ll be grateful for. If not a child, then a meal. I obsess over the details, scouring the internet to find recipes with lemons, ginger, jalapenos and wasabi, anything to get a reaction from him. He eats it all without complaining. Perhaps without even noticing.
Stooped over the hob, my chest heaving with shallow, unsatisfactory breaths, I brush another damp string of hair out of my face. I have a fever, I say to my husband, I must be getting ill. He hums distractedly in response, focused on picking up breadcrumbs with a wetted finger. Once upon a time, he would have ordered me to bed, devotedly bringing me cups of water and cold flannels for my forehead while I rested, but now he doesn’t even look up when I speak.
Sweat is drooling between my breasts and down my arms, trickling down my spine, snail-trails that shimmer in the light as I move. I am coated in grease like a second skin; I can taste the slick salt of it on my upper lip.
We’re out of eggs, I say, and he shrugs. It doesn’t matter. A ripple of frustration squirms through my belly and I have to bite my lip to stay quiet. I plate up the bacon and hash browns loudly, with an angry clatter of cutlery against ceramic, and think again that the meal would be better with eggs. That he would prefer it with eggs, even if he won’t admit it. Just once, I’d like to not feel like a fucking failure.
Something red drips onto the back of my hand. I stare at it dumbly, wondering where it came from, and then there’s another drip, and then a third. I lift my hand to my face, to sniff, and discover that my nose is oozing. It’s not blood: it’s too thick, almost sticky, mucus-like between my fingers. And it’s not red, really, but a dark orange.
My face is wet with it, my mouth and chin and throat; it’s coming faster now, like a faucet, like a milk carton pierced and leaking. Something inside me is giving way, cracking, letting some vital part of me flow out, turning me into a sink-hole, an open grave. The muscles in my legs quiver and begin to weaken, falling apart like wet paper.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I say his name, forcing it through the fluid choking my throat, and then my voice gives up. But I have to keep going; who will I be if I don’t?
Despite my slimy fingers I grab the plate of food and, although I’m unsteady on my feet, I manage to stumble to the table. I hold it out to him, a paltry offering. He looks at it and then at me, inscrutable. My arms are failing, muscles softening even as I hold my arm out, and I drop the plate to the table with a thud. I collapse into the chair beside it.
Please, I mouth. Please what? It doesn’t matter. His face is growing, taking up all my vision, and then I realise that it’s not him, it’s me, I’m shrinking, wasting away. The room spins, the floor dropping away beneath me, the ceiling suddenly so far away it could be the sky.
A spasm rips through me and then I can’t move. He bows his head towards me, eyes wide, finally seeing me; I am paralyzed under the spotlight of his gaze.
Now he is gentle, carefully scooping me into his palm, bringing me close to his giant eye.
You made an egg after all! He’s delighted.
He opens his mouth wide and tips me in, oyster-like, snapping his teeth shut behind me. His mouth is warm and dark and wet; I’ve always been claustrophobic, but in this cavern I am perfectly at home. And then his tongue is stroking the length of me, tasting me, enjoying me. He doesn’t need to chew me up, I’m already soft and pliable and willing. He tilts his head back, sliding me easily to the back of his mouth and beyond.
As I fall down the dark tunnel of his throat I hear his sigh of contentment and know that he is happy at last.