My Husband

by Maud Ventura

It was not a reminiscence, but a premonition: “I’ve never done anything but wait outside the closed door.”

During this time, my husband continues to revel in his egotistical sleep. In this moment, I detest him. There is no other solution: I scream as though I’m having a nightmare. He wakes up with a jump. I stammer in a falsely sleepy voice that I’m sorry, just a bad dream, and turn back to my side of the bed. I hope my husband can’t fall back asleep and that his insomnia will leave him the time necessary to reflect on his betrayal.

“If we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable that we will never be so.”

Tonight, I decide that if I could have one magical power, I would want to control dreams. I would inflict horrible nightmares on anyone who posed a threat to me, and meddle in my husband’s sleep to make him dream of me each night. I would imbue the fear of losing me into his subconscious, constructing a world in which I leave him for another man and he dies of sadness. I would show him my body in its most magnificent form so that he would never stop desiring me, and our house looking its best so that he would always want to stay. I would weave beautiful images of us into each of his nights so that he would continue loving me.

Was he trying to do the same thing I did on Tuesday morning? Shower with the water the way I like it to immerse himself in my aquatic universe? That he might have had the same idea delights me. I forget just how thoughtful my husband can be when he feels like it.

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It’s as though he’s always struggling against his true nature.

When I go back to the garden, Lucie asks me if everything is okay. She says I have a funny look on my face. It’s true: I’m deep in my mental calculations (the root of 261 is not a whole number), and on top of that I just orgasmed (which makes my cheeks flush) and I can feel her husband’s semen running down my legs. I wonder if anyone can see it.

(I don’t believe he can really hear me think, but I know that a contemplative brain consumes energy; can my husband feel the heat of it?).

My daughter sits at the piano. My son takes out his clarinet. They’re practicing for the year-end concert at the conservatory. It’s in three weeks and I already know the piece by heart. Imagine a long sorrowful moan, or a four-year-old child whining for seven minutes straight.

A driver stares at me as we stop at a red light. I’m singing at the top of my lungs, clearly devastated. He must be wondering whether I’m going to drive my car into a wall at the next bend in the road.

I go through the motions for the rest of the day. We drive to the grocery store, we eat lunch at my husband’s parents’ house, the children bike around the lake, we drink coffee on our way back from our walk, I bite into a piece of chocolate filled with raspberry, I fasten a button on my husband’s shirt, we eat dinner, we all play a board game together. But I’m not really present. I choose fruits and vegetables at random. I take the wrong exit at the roundabout on my way to my in-laws’. I’m almost hit by a car because I’m looking the wrong way on the road to the lake. I forget to drink my coffee, which ends up going cold on the kitchen counter. I bite my tongue so hard as I’m eating my chocolate that its taste mixes with that of the blood in my mouth. I prick myself several times with a needle to see if I’m still capable of feeling something. I burn myself on purpose as I cook the meal. I never know when it’s my turn to play.