This Night Has Opened My Eyes
by Peter Wild
“What cha thinking?”
Zoe is lying on her side, beside. She shuffles, moves her hips, pushes her bare legs and feet down into the cool and uncharted areas of the bed before retracting, curling in on herself like a snail. Her hands are clasped, fingertips resting beneath her cheek, head upon the pillow.
He is on his back, staring at the ceiling with an expression that Zoe can’t quite decipher.
“Nothing,” he says quietly with dry lips.
“You must be thinking something,” she says.
He looks at her for the smallest fraction of an instant and then returns his gaze to the darkness above him.
“No,” he says. “I’m not thinking anything. Not. One. Thing.”
Zoe continues looking at him. She looks at his nose. Before she even knew his name she liked his nose. It’s a good, strong nose. Zoe looks at his nose and then she tries to figure out what he’s thinking from the expression on his face but he is giving nothing away. His eyes are glassy and obscure. He licks his bottom lip.
“Stop it,” he says.
“Stop what?” she replies, approximating playful.
“Looking at me.”
“Why? Can’t I look at you now?”
“I’m just – tired,” he says. “I’m really tired. Work was really hard today and. I’m just really tired.”
Zoe pouts somewhat. She slips her hand onto his sweetly plump belly.
“Talk to me,” she says. “Tell me what’s up.”
“Nothing is up.”
“What’s on your mind, then?”
“Don’t, Zo’. Please. Just leave it. I’m – not in the mood. I don’t feel like talking. I don’t want this to be anything. I’m just tired. I’m being a bit crabby. I know. And I’m sorry. But. Just. Leave me be, and. You know?”
Zoe hunphs. She makes a sound – hunph – and then rolls over in the bed, abruptly, making as much of a deal of rolling over as she possibly could.
Awkward angry seconds pass like bruised dog years. Civilisations rise and fall. Despots are deposed. Revolutions are fought and won. Principles are posted on church doors, and then abandoned. Babies are thrust unquietly into the world, only to age, marry and die, without so much as a by your leave. Tension is an old fashioned kettle left on the hob to boil.
Zoe mutters something, as if to herself. When the muttering elicits nothing in return, she speaks up:
“I said. This is so typical of you.”
Her husband makes a noise that is perfectly pitched, a flag posted equidistant from acceptance, resignation and acquiescence.
“And what,” said Zoe, “is that supposed to mean?”
“Please, Zoe. Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Don’t talk to you? Don’t be concerned with how you are? Don’t enquire as to what is on your mind? Don’t care about whether or not I can help?”
He closes his eyes.
“Look. Zoe. Just leave it. We can’t share everything. Okay?”
She doesn’t even leave time to breathe.
“What do you mean,” she says, turning again, “we can’t share everything? Of course we can share everything. What are you talking about? What can’t you share?”
Her husband expels a ragged breath and sits up in bed. She is puzzled by the shape of his body in the dark and touches his spine.
“What?” she says, gently and quietly.
He sighs again and brings his hands up to his face.
“You are always doing this,” he says. “Always – picking. Picking picking picking picking picking picking picking.”
“I’m not picking, baby. I’m” -
Her husband lowers his hands to the duvet and he turns to look at her.
“You can’t share everything,” he says. “Everybody needs some privacy, even if that privacy is only – in your head. You know?”
Zoe lifts herself up, resting her weight on her elbow.
“I don’t understand what you mean. I don’t have any secrets from you.”
“There you go again. I say privacy and you say secrets. They are not the same thing. It’s not” –
Her husband changes position, moves his left leg so it points directly out in front of him parallel with the end of the bed whilst folding his right leg underneath, in order to face her more directly.
“It’s not healthy.”
“What are you talking about? Where is all of this coming from? I don’t have a clue what –“
“I said we can’t share everything. What I mean is this. Sometimes I think I’m not sure I like being married. Sometimes I feel decades older than I am. Sometimes I feel like life is passing me by. Sometimes I think the grass is greener everywhere but where I am. Sometimes I feel trapped. Sometimes I feel tricked. Sometimes I hate you. Sometimes I think you are ugly. Sometimes I think we are ugly, you and I. Sometimes I think we each of us settled for the easiest option. Sometimes I masturbate thinking about other people. Sometimes I masturbate in bed while you sleep next to me. Sometimes I feel awful and sometimes I feel ashamed and sometimes I don’t – and that makes me feel awful and ashamed.
“There are times when I want something – simple again. We go to bed each night and you’ll kiss me goodnight or I’ll kiss you goodnight and then you’ll turn or I’ll turn and we’ll go to sleep. Most nights are like that. Night. Night. It’s like a – century-old call and response. But I’m not a century old. I’m still young. I’m too young for this. I want to feel alive again. I want to – go out. I want to go to a bar and pick up a woman. She doesn’t have to be beautiful as long as she listens, as long as she is interested in Who I Am. I want to kiss someone new. Sometimes. I want to kiss someone who wants to kiss me. I want to discover someone’s mouth while someone is – discovering me. I want to feel hungry and I want to feel hunger. I want to fuck a million strangers. I want a million strangers to want to fuck me.
“I’m telling you all of this and – I think that most people probably feel like this sometimes. Everybody wants to scream or run away or disappear into the night and create a new identity somewhere new sometimes. But I know that you don’t. I know you don’t ever feel this way. I know that you are single-minded and loyal and dedicated and moral and I know that you don’t and won’t understand any of the things going through my mind so it’s better sometimes if I don’t speak, if I just ride out whatever I’m feeling until I don’t feel like that anymore, but you won’t let me. You have to pick and pick and pick until all of this – until you hear all of this, and – I’m not saying any of this to hurt you but – you will ask.”
An image flashes into her mind of her husband, naked in a woodland clearing, backing away from her with his hands up, palm out, as if he was attempting to calm her down. She is holding a large knife as if it was a torch, the tip of the blade quivering. There is a sound, the shrill Psycho shreeee-shreee-shree, and then she is sticking him like a pig, her hand jutting back and forth back and forth with the rhythm of heavy machinery. Her husband screams like a girl, his arms flapping as the scowling mouths appear across his belly and chest, scowling mouths that quickly fill with blood the colour of mud. She is aware of both the general (the shadow tones of orange and brown leaves underfoot, the bareness of trees, the coolness of the air, the damp splash of water nearby) and the particular (the ache in her elbow and wrist, the awful and obscure pok of skin as it is cut, the appalling friendly warmth of the blood on her hand, the sight of hot air emerging from each wound to meet the cold of the night), and she is detached at the same time as she is present. She stabs and stabs and stabs until he falls and then she stabs and stabs and stabs until he ceases to move and then she stabs at his eyes and stabs at his hands and stabs at his testicles until he resembles nothing so much as a badly hacked side of beef.
“Happy now?” her husband says into the still quiet.