She stood there in the kitchen pathetically clutching an apple and listening to the soft laughter echoing in from the drive. The pie was on the counter in all it's half-baked glory, a messy symposium of flour and oatmeal and sliced apples (skin still on.) It was his favorite kind of pie, she thought. Nine years ago that pie had brought him through a blizzard to her dormitory door; as he shook the ice off his sneakers she had known that he was the one that would make her mounds of student loans worth it in the end.
He was The Perfect Man, the man of her dreams. This is what she had told her family as they watched her pack all of her shabby things in the old sedan and driven away with a kiss and a prayer that the car made it over seven states and twice that many hundreds of miles. When she had arrived they had kissed and fallen into the bed and they stayed there until they were both dizzy from exhaustion and lack of food.
For the first few months life was a working class fairy tale. It was enough at the end of the day to come home to a warm hug and warmer words; shared glasses of wine and television shows and playful wrestling matches on the too-small mattress.
She couldn't say what the first thread to unwind was. It was the computer, probably. Every night after work she would pull together food and maybe throw a load of his once white t-shirts into the washer; losing herself in the maintenance of their untidy life before finally falling sleeplessly into bed. He was there too, headphones on staring at the bright screen. People talked into his ears, people that she didn't know who shared some bond with him that she could never understand. Sometimes he would laugh, and when she asked what the joke was he never seemed to hear or that's what he told her later anyway. Soon all their conversations were about this half-life of his, he would tell stories and smile at things she didn't understand. She smiled too, because it seemed the right thing to do.
The sex got shorter and he stayed on that computer longer, and soon the only things they talked about were the Problems that had to be fixed. His mother, her loans, the car, rent, her mother. One day on the way to the store she crashed the car against a guard rail at the bridge between their town and the next. The pleasant police man said wasn't she a lucky one, a few more feet and over she would have gone. Funny place for an accident too, with no sharp turns and the great weather they had been having and all. She nodded and agreed, sufficiently grateful to providence or god or good luck for saving her to cook another day.
After that she tried to talk to him, and when that didn't work she tried other things. She brought a picture from when they first started talking to a salon, a picture that he said he loved. The hairdresser cried as she cut off her long dark tresses, but she sat stony faced and resolute in the seat. When he came home that night he flicked the monitor on and then looked up at her expectant face.
"Oh, yeah I was supposed to mail that letter to your mother today. Sorry about that." She went to bed and curled her fingers around her new bangs, making one small ringlet at a time.
Two weeks later she did the most humiliating thing of all. The local mall only had a few stores in it, the essentials. She had never been in
Vanessa's Vixens before, but she knew the town's elderly ladies liked to sit on the bench across the court and take note of who entered and how long they spent in that pit of sin. There was just one old bird there that Thursday afternoon, but she still walked around the fountain three times before she had the courage to dart inside. A sea of lace, reds, blacks, pinks. A corner seemed devoted entirely to feathers, there was a fantastical fan and duster sitting on a shelf above the register. One side was full of black shiny vinyl; she felt her cheeks redden as her gaze fell on a woman modeling one of the garments on the plastic package. Keenly avoiding the salesgirl's eyes she set towards the least imposing rack where silky gowns in plain colors hung.
"You could really pull off the red you know." The girl had crept up on her while she was distracted by tags.
"Not many people can actually wear red, but you're complexion is just pale enough to do it." She made a noise that was halfway between a cough and a smile, but the girl seem pacified and went away to continue marking down bustiers. Thrust into the middle of the rack was a little black chemise, satin with a sweet bow draped across the back. It would hit her just above her thighs, probably. She brought it to the register without glancing at the price, and signed her name on the slip as quickly as she could. Tucking the bag under her jacket she fled the store, head bent in a vain attempt to keep the old black crow from noticing.
That night she straightened her hair and tried to put some makeup on. It had been years; her mascara was all dried up and she slipped with the eye pencil and so had to start over. Finally she dabbed some lipstick on and returned to the bed, staring dubiously at the gown laid out so unassumingly there. She pinched herself, counted to five, and then slipped it over her head.
She had already finished most of the dinner preparations in the kitchen, the chicken was in the oven and she had been sure to cook the potatoes just the way he liked. Only the pie left. She was standing at the counter cutting apples in her black slip when she heard his treads in the driveway. She peered from behind the curtains, staying out of the line of view to hide her ridiculous getup. He was there, sitting in his car talking to another silhouette. It was a girl or woman, she couldn't tell from the outline, but she was laughing and he was laughing with her. He was leaning towards the figure and they seemed to be caught up in some serious and ridiculous conversation. She let the curtain fall back of it's own accord and stood there, holding her apple.
Of course, he had worked late tonight. Most nights he worked late she went to bed in the spare room so that he wouldn't wake her when he returned. He was usually gone again the next morning before she was up. This was the way the weekends went.
By the time the passenger car door had closed with a quiet thunk the black slip was in the trash with the rest of the meal.
He only stopped to smell the kitchen momentarily, then decided that she had made another one of her chicken microwave dinners tonight. As he rounded the top of the steps he thought he saw the light go off in the second bedroom but when he opened the door silently he could see her sleeping form on the bed. He turned on his heel and thought with slight annoyance that she hadn't even had the decency to put out leftovers for his dinner.
