Gasoline

She would have talked to her mom about it. The entire last year, all those times, she would have just picked up the phone and called her, and she would have tried really hard to hold back, to keep her mouth shut. Marriages should have their secrets, and her mom’s voice should have been enough to soothe her, without actually getting into the gritty details, the things that hurt.

The zzzpp of the match on the book is the only sound. Even the cicadas are quiet, waiting, watching maybe, to see what she will do. Above her, the sky is the color of ink, with only a scattering of stars and a sliver of moon.

He doesn’t know she started smoking.

Unless he smells it on her at night when they lie in bed.

Except, sometimes, she feels like she could stand in front of him, aflame from head to toe, and he wouldn’t be bothered to lift his eyes from his laptop. League standings. Business emails. Trip Advisor. Somehow, all of it more important than his wife.

She would have told her. Everything.

Marriages should have their secrets, but she still would have told her mom. Not even because she was her best friend, but because of a perverted need to be petty and to turn her further against him.

The same perverted need that brought her here. Tonight.

She’s had enough.

Maybe being here has everything and nothing to do with her mom, but she’s had enough. She can’t call her mom anymore, but there are other friends. Close friends who would listen. Except she can’t go turning half a couple against him, not when they’re all together. She just needs to step off the merry-go-round, that constant spin through the same damned cycles again and again.

He’s everything to her, and sometimes, her to him. There are times when their eyes meet over their glasses when they’re sipping a dry red or when they share a look charged with a thousand words and no one around them is even aware of the things they’re thinking—those are good times. There are times when he’s inside her, buried deep in her body, and she knows there’s no one else in the world she would ever want so close.

There’s no wind tonight. That’s why she’s here, why tonight is right. But the air is cloying, and her T-shirt sticks to her back, and she wishes she hadn’t worn these boots. Just bought them—two sizes too big on purpose—but she’ll never wear them again. Not after tonight’s over.

The intimacy doesn’t matter, though, because it never seems to be enough. Competing with his job, his coworkers, his obsessions—it’s too much work, and she’s so fucking tired of trying. She supposes they’ve just grown apart, but it pisses her off that she’s the only one who sees it. Like she’s the only one in the marriage to even notice that they don’t want the same things anymore. They both said I do, so why is it fair that she’s alone with his indifference?

The Maxwells are in Florida—she double-checked yesterday. And the house to the west has been vacant for six months. The Brysons divorced a year ago in March; Ellen finally sold the house and moved in with her sister.

Her name is on all of their accounts, but honestly, she doesn’t have any idea about their finances. They could be millionaires for all she knows. Or the collection agency could knock on their door tomorrow morning, demanding cash for bills she knows nothing about. He deals with that. With the money. The insurance. The business stuff.

He does the majority of the entertaining, too. The inviting. Always with the impromptu get-togethers. Fun at first, but you know, too much of anything is too much. Dusting the furniture until it shines like diamonds. Running the vacuum. Scrubbing the wine bottles down one by one, because friends give a damn if the ’96 bottle of Cab in the top of the rack has a spot of dust on it.

She wrote in it once. The dust. She was cleaning. Like an asshole kid walking by a dirty car, she used her finger and wrote fuck you in the dust. Left it there the better part of the day, too. Wiped it away and polished the dresser to a military shine before he got home. The rebellion was tiny, but she rode it for days.

Divorce is messy, and she wonders how he’ll handle it.

Wonders how he’ll handle all the ash, too. The charred pieces of his obsessions. If he’ll stumble through the ruins first and then wonder where she is.

She smells the gasoline in the air as she moseys closer to the back of the house. It’s her yard. No need to sneak around. One last pull on the cigarette fills her lungs with nicotine, and she pictures them black and burned like the house, their marriage.

Another strike of the match.

He’s somewhere right now talking about something that has nothing to do with them or with her. Forgivable, understandable. Until he comes home and still finds everything to talk about, to do, but her.

She can’t even find him in her heart anymore, and his dreams—so big to him—are nothing to her but regrets. She can’t do it anymore.

The match strikes the gasoline, and a giant WHOOSH fills the silent night around her. She backs away from the house, kicking off the boots—Walmart, paid cash—and watches his house, his life, go up in flames.

#maritalproblems #growingpains #givingup #gasoline #arson