There’s more. A curtain hangs by a single hook, the counters are piled high with bottles and beer cans, and Rodney’s crystal decanter has been reduced to chips and splinters, and only the stopper remains intact.

​

The quarry-tiled floor tends to dip down by the back door, and that’s where I see a puddle. A straw-colored puddle, which is definitely pee, its odor sharp and sour.

​

Someone peed in my kitchen.

​

Velcro weaving between and around my ankles. Everything feeling so dreamlike, so offbeat, so bloody surreal.

​

My mates and maybe a few girls. That’s what Charlie said. Nothing wild, Ma, honest, and yeah, bedrooms definitely out of bounds.

​

Charlie’s assurance came with that crooked smile I love so much. On tiptoe, I’d flicked strands of brown hair from his forehead. When had he grown so tall?

​

Well! To hell with the walls I’d sponge-painted, the cabinets I’d sanded, and the curtains I’d thumbed together. To hell with the quarry tiles I’d laid, and grouted, and polished to a shine until my knees throbbed and my fingers burned red-raw.

​

My heart pounds. And to hell with me, too, I suppose.

​

For eighteen years running, I’d filled this house with handmade quilts, cushions, and wicker baskets. I’d planted herbs, vegetables, flowers, and fruit trees in every corner of the garden. And in between all that, cooked every meal from scratch, and made pickles, chutneys, jams, and jellies. Plus all manner of cakes, breads, and sweet and savory pies—pushing myself to the point of exhaustion at times, to prove what a great homemaker I was. What a nurturing mother. What a dedicated wife.

​

I reach for the cat food, only to scatter the kibble around Velcro’s bowl, not inside it.

​

My hands still shaking, I march up the stairs to hammer at Charlie’s bedroom door. My fists thudding before I rattle the doorknob.

 

Charlie so proud he’d fitted the lock himself.

​

Making an appearance, he yawns. His breath stale, his eyes halfway shut. “Didn’t think you’d be back so soon,” he says.

​

“Follow me” being my answer to that.

​

Sauntering along, Charlie obliges. Flopping his feet down the stairs, his shirt crumpled, his hair a cockscomb, his jeans newly scissored and ripped.

​

I make a performance of fishing out the condom with a pair of tongs.

​

“Nothing to do with me!” cries Charlie, showing me the palms of his hands.

​

Now full of water, that condom fat and sluglike as I drop it into the trashcan.

​

Leaning against the counter, I blot my tears with a tea towel, feeling angry, disappointed, bewildered as Charlie surveys the mayhem.

​

“The neighbors called the fucking police,” he tells me.

 

The police, who gave orders to keep the noise down, okay? There’s a good lad.

​

Charlie shrugs his shoulders before adding he thought everyone’d leave after he crashed.

​

When I sense his cool indifference, my how-could-yous soon degenerate into “You’re such an unthinking little bastard, aren’t you?”

Insensitive. No respect. Do I matter to him at all?

​

Charlie’s eyes widen. I’ve never reacted like this before, but that’s how stunned I am. How shocked. How injured and upset.

​

In a spin of fury and confusion, I reach for one of my willow pattern plates, which I smash to the floor to watch it explode into little pieces—because why not? Then four, five, six more clanging, clattering, shattering plates because why shouldn’t I have a bit of fun, too? Why shouldn’t I be so downright bloody destructive?

​

“What the shit, Ma?” Charlie’s voice deeper these days. Strong and booming.

​

I automatically grab a broom to sweep up the debris. A task, a penance for my sins, because I can’t believe what I just did.

​

When I’m done, Charlie is finally saying he’s sorry, sorry, sorry while squeezing hold of me tight.

​

In a daze, “I’ll deal with this mess,” I tell him. The martyr that I am, have always been.

​

“I’ve a hell of a hangover,” says Charlie. Savage. His first, he adds with a laugh, as if he were proud.

​

“Go back to bed, Charlie.”

​

He walks away with a straight back and long strides. I suppose he’s outgrown Greycroft House. This nest I built for him, twig by twig. 

​

Oh, Charlie! My reason for staying in this marriage for so long.

​

As I scrub, mop, and disinfect, I drink three measures of Rodney’s Oban 14, and still manage to pull a meal together afterwards.

​

Which Charlie eats before he leaves to go God only knows where.

​

Sleep, eat, leave. That’s been Charlie’s routine for a good while now.

​

 

The alcohol has worked nicely. The knot in my head beginning to unravel when I hear Rodney dropping his clubs, bags, and whatever else with many a thud in the hallway.

​

Here he comes. There he is.

​

“You’re home, then,” he says.

​

He doesn’t ask what the bloody hell I was playing at, pulling the old disappearing act.​ Suddenly leaving Crickmouth without explanation or excuse.​ Instead, he tells me he played a relatively enjoyable nine holes. This, before he makes for the microwave to heat up whatever I’ve left for him.

​

Fodder. Fuel. He doesn’t care what it is. Down the hatch it goes.

​

As soon as I join him at the table, he reaches for the TV remote. His attention fixed on the Embassy World Snooker Championship as he slurps spaghetti and gobbles the meatballs. His golf cap has left an indented path in his forehead and a track in his dun-colored hair. His mustache, the texture of coconut husk, is coated in my made-from-scratch marinara.

​

Talking to the side of Rodney’s head, I describe the devastation that welcomed me home, and when I finish off with, “Thank God the party didn’t spread to the rest of the house…” I realize he hasn’t heard a single word. Rodney’s pale eyes, magnified behind his black-rimmed glasses, remain focused on the screen.

​

In the living room, I make up a bed on the sofa with cushions and two afghan throws. Tomorrow, I’ll move to the attic.

​

Exhausted, I close my eyes only to swiftly fall headlong into the dirt hole of a dream.​ A dream where I find myself climbing a spiral stairway to the surface, towards the light. But when I’m about to scramble out, the soil crumbles, and down, down, down I go, like a bouncing ball.

​

Back to where I started.