"Why must the cupboards always be open?"
He sat, mouth slack with a furrowed brow and a questioning eye.
"What do you mean?"
My frustration was as obvious as I thought the question had been. "Why are the bathroom cupboards always open? Every day. Why?" He sighed slowly and lowered his gaze to the floor in a small form of surrender. I had been asking him similar questions for the last three months. He was sick of defending against these questions and I was sick of asking them.
"My medicine is in the bathroom cabinet; I take it in the mornings before work."
I looked down on him as if my silence would beckon a more obvious, complete answer as to why he would never close the door or apologize for his constant forgetfulness. In an effort to end things peacefully, he said flatly, "...sorry, I'll remember to close it." Instead of triumph, I felt a desperate sadness. I knew that I was breaking him but my actions suggested that I just didn't care. That's the thing about depression; you, yourself are screaming inside your head to stop being a hateful stranger. I was yelling at this horrid woman berating her husband like a timid toddler who had broken a dish.
"I'm sorry,” I said in earnest. “It's stupid. It doesn't matter. I shouldn't have said anything.”
He didn't say anything back; instead he just walked to the bedroom and pushed the door closed behind him.
Things had been tense since I had lost my job. We lived in a small town near an even smaller college. Without a degree to speak of, my choices were limited. There were professors and students and all of the non-academic jobs went to the students. I had been working as a home health aide for a couple years but found my way to a back injury from working too many doubles. I liked to be busy and the silence and dull drum of my day to day did not suit me. It had been a very, very tense three months.
I was going out of my mind; cleaning every crevice of the small one-bedroom apartment we shared with nothing but spotless surfaces to call accomplishments. There were only so many books I could read and crafts I could attempt to master before eventually finding my way to yet another nap or one more afternoon in front of bad daytime TV. I was becoming cold, distant, and bitter; uninterested and unforgiving.
The following morning, after washing the previous evening's dishes and placing them to dry, I walked into the bathroom to find the cupboard door completely shut. What should have brought me satisfaction instead filled me with guilt, looking at the dark wooden door in it's proper place. Upset at the previous night and the previous three months, I resolved in that moment to be better; to ardently try to move closer to the wife I knew I was.
Turning the light switch off, I turned into the hallway leading to the front of the apartment. I noticed it then. A bit of light. A bright line stretching the length of the hall; reaching into the bedroom. I followed the light to a crack in a door; a crack in the open, front door.
The front door to my home was open about an inch; just enough to be either someone just leaving in a hurry or making their first steps inside. I froze, unable to step forward as the quiet of the apartment became hyper realistic. The low hum of the refrigerator; the click of the air conditioning ceasing into silence.
The creak of the bathroom cupboard opening...
Submitted July 01, 2015 at 07:22AM by MoosMoosMom http://ift.tt/1FPDXND shortscarystories
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