The Pilot's Wife_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [37]
— Fuck you, he says quietly, and he stands.
Kathryn flinches. She is immediately aware, as she was not before (not when it was her own righteous anger), that Mattie is just down the hall.
— Keep your voice down, Kathryn says.
Jack puts his hands on his hips. His face grows red, as it sometimes does when he is angry, which isn’t often. They don’t have a history of fighting.
— Fuck you, he says again. This time in a louder, though still controlled voice. — I work five days in a row without a letup. I come home to get a good night’s sleep. I come up here to fool around a little on the computer to relax. And before I can even blink, you’re up here complaining.
— You came home to get a good night’s sleep? she asks incredulously.
— You know what I mean.
— This didn’t just happen tonight, she says. — It’s been happening for months now.
— Months?
—Yes.
— What exactly has been happening for months?
— You’re not here. You’re more interested in the computer than you are in me.
— Fuck you, he says, brushing past her toward the stairs. She hears him descend the steps as though running. She hears the refrigerator door being opened, followed by the sound of a beer can being popped.
When she gets to the kitchen, he is drinking the beer in one swallow. He sets the can down on the counter with a hard clink and stares out the kitchen window.
She examines his profile, his face, which she loves, the aggressive thrust of his neck, which alarms her. She wants to give in, to go to him and say she is sorry, to put her arms around him and tell him she loves him. But before she can move, she thinks again about the sensation of being abandoned, for that is what she means to describe, and so repentance quickly gives way to grievance. Why should she back off ?
— You never talk to me anymore, she says. — I feel like I don’t know you anymore.
His jaw moves slightly more forward, and he clenches his teeth. He tosses the beer can into the sink, where it clatters against all the dirty dishes.
— You want me to go? he asks, looking at her.
— Go?
— Yeah, you want to end it or what?
— No, I don’t want to end it, she says, taken aback. — What are you talking about? You’re crazy.
— I’m crazy?
— Yes, you’re crazy. All I said was that you’re getting too wrapped up in the computer, and you...
— I’m crazy? he repeats, this time in a louder voice.
When he brushes past her to go up the stairs, she tries to grab his arm, but he shakes her off. In the kitchen, she stands as still as a stone as she hears his angry tread on the steps, hears his office door slam, hears the muffled thudding of objects being roughly moved around on his desk, hears the snap of wires.
He’s leaving her and taking the computer with him?
And then, horrified, she watches as the computer monitor comes crashing down the stairs.
The monitor gouges the plaster wall at the foot of the steps. Bits of gray plastic and smoked glass from the shattered screen fly into the air and litter the stairs and the kitchen floor. It is a spectacular smash, loud and theatrical.
Kathryn utters a low moan, knowing that it has all gone too far and that she has caused it, has goaded him.
And then she thinks of Mattie.
By the time Kathryn has made her way over the smashed monitor and gotten to the top of the stairs, Mattie is coming down the hallway in her pajamas.
— What happened? Mattie asks, although Kathryn can see that she knows. Has heard everything.
Jack looks stricken with the instant remorse that follows an insanely childish act in front of one’s children.
— Mattie, Kathryn says. — Daddy dropped his computer down the stairs. It’s a mess. But everything is OK.
Mattie gives them both the look, the one that, even though she is eleven years old, is always dead on and never misses. But Kathryn can see on her daughter’s face that superior surveil-lance is competing ferociously with sheer horror.
Jack turns to Mattie and enfolds his daughter in his arms. That alone says everything, Kathryn thinks. There is no pretending now that this didn’t happen. It is just