INSTEAD OF WHAT WE COULD HAVE SAID | VINCENT REUSCH We lay on our backs, the sheet knotted at our feet, you too proud to roll away from me, and I too humiliated to speak. From below, the high shouts of children at play drifted through our fourth-floor window like wisps of smoke. “I think I’ll stop by the office today,” I finally said. “Just for a few hours.” And you asked, do you remember, “What about the park?” “Let’s not,” I told you. I needed you to ask, though. I hoped, even, that you would insist. Instead, you said, “Yes. Maybe we shouldn’t.” My pulse banged in the side of my neck, and I thought, what kind of mother are you? Monster, I wanted to say. You inhuman monster. Instead I said, “Maybe I’ll spend the whole day at the office.” You said okay, and you stood up and put on a bra and underwear. I hated you for that. But what choice did you have? You could have said son of a bitch, but I would only have said what are you talking about. You could have said it’s over. You could have said we’re dead inside. You could have told me you see our child every time you look at me. You could have asked how long I left her alone. Instead, you said, “I’ll make you some coffee.” Monster. I’m sure you heard the cleaners dragging the hose up the back steps before I did. You’ve always been the more perceptive. Even when I said I was going to the office, I knew you read me laid out as plainly as I was laid out naked on the bed beside you, shrinking and defensive. I followed you into the kitchen, still naked as if my nakedness might prove that you were the quitter. I was still game. You put too much coffee into the press, and you turned the gas on so high that the flame licked up the handle of the little kettle. The old press had been bigger. The stove had been electric. Outside the kitchen door, we both heard the thump of the workman’s boots and the drag and slap of the empty hose. Even now, can you believe we didn’t say a word? Only a month had passed since the first time they’d hosed down the back steps. That time we lay on the bed and held each other as if the building were coming down around us. That time you said, “Let’s go to the park and look at the children,” and we grabbed our keys and ran out the front door. We said it was the only apartment we could find, but we must have thought we deserved it. The day we moved in, it was the super who saw you looking at the darkened window in the kitchen. “The soot only collects on the backside,” he told us as he walked around the four tight rooms flicking light switches. “It’s the ash from the cement plant. We hose it down once a month.” I don’t know if you heard him. I don’t know if reason mattered. You were watching the window as you would so often in the days to come. I put my hand around yours then. I said it would be all right. This morning, to my shame I said nothing as the man in his coveralls plodded by the kitchen door and up the final flight of steps. To your shame you didn’t give in to your tears. Do you think about this moment as often as I? We had less than a minute to say or do something, anything. One minute to prove to each other that we were not monsters. The pump on the water truck started slowly, a countdown—ri ki ta ri ki ta—and I thought I really would grab you. I thought there was enough time, and I was a big enough man. I would grab you and squeeze you again as if the building were coming down around us. But it got fast so quickly—ri ki ta ri ki ta rikita. I couldn’t think. Even the most awkward embrace would have been enough to keep a thread between us, to give us something to work with later, when we were ready to mend. We still could have bolted out the front door. We could have watched the children in the park. We could have talked about it, and I could have called it the lamp by the crib instead of your lamp. Instead, we stood ridiculously in the hot small kitchen. Do you remember? You were as frozen as I. You had a carton of milk in your hand. The refrigerator door was open, and I could feel the cold air swirling around my feet. I don’t know if you heard me moan when the hose started. It took the biggest part of me to make even that small sound. The water pounded the steps and walls outside. You closed the refrigerator, while I stood naked and dull, and you reached for the kettle just as the water battered the back door. I saw the gas flame wrapped around the kettle’s handle, but I didn’t think to warn you. I couldn’t think at all. When I look back, I can’t believe how long you held on. Your elbow knocked over the milk. I remember that. But I don’t remember if you screamed when you felt the searing hot handle, or if I shouted when the boiling water splashed across my ankles. I don’t remember hearing anything until you yanked open the back door. Water sprayed from the high-pressure hose into the kitchen, and I heard a hollow rumble as it whipped along the wall by my head. I didn’t hear your voice until the workman pulled the lever on the hose and the water stopped. “—away from here,” you yelled. “Where was your water two months ago? Where were you then, you bastard?” You were soaking wet. You were beating him on his chest. Your underwear clung translucently to your body, and I remember thinking, my god, she’s so beautiful. Do you remember on our honeymoon, there had been a storm, and we had walked along the beach the next morning. You were already showing then, your stomach another curve I had quickly grown to love. The beach was littered with debris from the storm—seaweed, chunks of coral, old planks of wood. And then we saw a balloon, red, still inflated, with a bit of streamer trailing off the end. We wondered how it had gotten there. Was it from a birthday party? Was it on a ship that had gone down in the storm? Did people drown while it stayed afloat? I don’t remember how long the workman stared at me before I moved, naked, to grab your wrists. I don’t remember us hitting the floor. I don’t remember him walking away. I just remember the water and milk pooling around us as we sat shivering on the checkered linoleum. Vincent Reusch received his PhD in creative writing from Western Michigan University. He recently published fiction in Alaska Quarterly Review and in Roanoke Review, where his story, "The Yellow Scooter," won the 2006 fiction contest. Contributors.htmlshapeimage_3_link_0
COMMENTARY | POETRY | FICTION | SUMMER 2008  
THE BOBOLINIS S.L. WISENBERG HARD JOHN M. ANDERSON SEICHE JOSEPH DROGOS PARABLE OF SENSITIVE SKIN MEG FRANKLIN ALONE IN PARIS SUSAN ANDERSON BEGINNINGS EDWARD MC WHINNEY SEAMUS, THEN J.M. PATRICK WILL DEIRDRE BEAT THE ODDS? A.S. KING INSTEAD OF WHAT WE COULD HAVE SAID VINCENT REUSCH FROM THE EDITOR REVIEWS SUSAN MILLAR DUMARS FRANK CONROY ALEKSANDAR HEMON JEAN VALENTINE BETH HELMS ROBERT MACFARLANE ED REGIS DONALD RAY POLLOCK ABOUT US SUBMISSIONS ARCHIVES | SEARCH RECENT AWARD WINNERS:Bobolinis.htmlBobolinis.htmlHard.htmlHard.htmlSeiche.htmlSeiche.htmlParable.htmlParable.htmlParis.htmlParis.htmlBeginnings.htmlBeginnings.htmlSeamus.htmlSeamus.htmlDeirdre.htmlDeirdre.htmlContradiction-4.htmlReviews.htmlDuMars.htmlConroy.htmlHemon.htmlChalupa.htmlHelms.htmlMacfarlane.htmlRegis.htmlPollock.htmlContrary.htmlSubmissions.htmlArchives.htmlshapeimage_5_link_0shapeimage_5_link_1shapeimage_5_link_2shapeimage_5_link_3shapeimage_5_link_4shapeimage_5_link_5shapeimage_5_link_6shapeimage_5_link_7shapeimage_5_link_8shapeimage_5_link_9shapeimage_5_link_10shapeimage_5_link_11shapeimage_5_link_12shapeimage_5_link_13shapeimage_5_link_14shapeimage_5_link_15shapeimage_5_link_16shapeimage_5_link_17shapeimage_5_link_18shapeimage_5_link_19shapeimage_5_link_20shapeimage_5_link_21shapeimage_5_link_22shapeimage_5_link_23shapeimage_5_link_24shapeimage_5_link_25shapeimage_5_link_26shapeimage_5_link_27shapeimage_5_link_28shapeimage_5_link_29shapeimage_5_link_30