Scratched

I’m done. A guilty thrill ran through me as I thought those words, but I knew them to be true. I simply had nothing left to give. We’d been pushing this relationship uphill for seven years - three years too long - and I truly had nothing left in the tank. Emma had let herself go of late, her alabaster skin had now turned pallid, her body softened and soured.

Resigning myself to this knowledge gave me a bittersweet mixture of guilt, relief, and dread for the conversation I was going to have to have with my wife, but I felt that I could finally reclaim my life and start finding me again.

I began by writing down a list of reasons I could give her; an inventory of the problems we’d had (all the nagging, the complaining, constantly picking fights); a tabulation of last-resort salvage attempts we’d made (Lord knows our couples therapist had benefited from those).

I poured myself a glass of whiskey on the rocks, pausing to imagine how masuline I must have looked, all loosened tie and hard liquor, and waited for her to arrive home.

An hour - and five whiskeys - later she burst through the door, cheeks flushed, eyes sparkling. For a moment I questioned myself - she looked radiant, more alive than I’d seen her in years.

“Honey, I have to tell you something-” I began.

“John, we won!” She blurted out. I paused.

“We won” she continued, “I bought a scratchie and we won!”

“What do you mean ‘we won’?”

“On the way home from work today, I grabbed a scratchie for your mum with her groceries and I thought ‘Hell, why not grab one for us for once?’ and-”

I grabbed her by the shoulders. “Calm down Emma. How much?”

“Twenty thousand.”

My chest felt hollow. “Dollars?”

“Dollars.” She looked into my eyes expectantly. Every word I’d rehearsed had been completely erased. She beamed. “Honey, just think what we can do with-”

I let go of Emma and let out a whoop. I’d never in my life punched the air with joy, but suddenly I felt an overwhelming desire to - an overwhelming desire to do something with my body.

Emma had her phone in her hand. “We should call your mum, we should tell our friends-” Suddenly my mind was in overdrive.

“Wait, wait, wait, let’s just, hold on a minute alright? Let’s just… sit on this until we know what we want to do with it. We don’t want anyone to look at us differently do we? Don’t want anyone judging us on our fiscal decisions? Don’t want anyone asking us for favours?” I wasn’t ready for her to tell anyone just yet, I needed a minute to think.

“Okay,” she conceded. “I guess we can just stay in our little bubble for now. I’m going to take a shower, I practically sprinted home to tell you the news!”

I heard the water start upstairs and my mind got to work. A lump repayment on the mortgage? No, too practical. A holiday? No, too frivolous, A new car? Yes, yes! I could picture myself in a convertible, one arm resting on the window, one arm on the warm, tanned thigh of a faceless woman to whom I’d offered a ride home. This was perfect. I became so lost in this daydream I barely registered that the water was off, and had been for a while.

A distant voice broke through my reverie. “John?”

I went into the upstairs bedroom and there it was - the little black notebook outlining every piece of evidence I had needed to leave. Her eyes were wide with disbelief as she looked from my list to me, and back again.

“What is all this? Complaining? Nagging? You think I nag you? I do everything for you, and you think me asking you to rinse your own dishes after I make dinner is me nagging you?” The anger started to rise in Emma’s voice.

“What are you doing snooping, huh? I don’t go through your belongings, do I?” My head was thick, slow, but I knew I could win this; she was in the wrong.

“And what’s THIS about-”

“You don’t get to look at someone else’s private property then get mad about it,” I slurred, gesturing to the room. “This one’s on YOU.”

“You’re absolutely pathetic John. Look at yourself, sloppy - it’s a Monday.” For a split second I saw myself as she might have seen me - bitter, performative. Then I felt bile rise in my throat - pure repulsion - and I knew in that moment that I hated her.

“Look, I didn’t want to get into this now, but you know what? Fine. I work hard Emma, I work really fucking hard, and I don’t exactly love that the second I walk in the door you’re immediately down my throat. ‘Take out the trash’, ‘fold the laundry’, ‘clear the table’.” As I raised my pitch Emma’s eyes hardened, but it was too late for me to care, I was on a roll, emboldened by booze. There was anger in me, fury I’d been pushing down for far too long, and now, for once in my life, I felt it was time to let it out, the way a man ought to. “I PITCH IN DAMMIT! I pitch in around here and you damn well know it. You’re LUCKY I do half the things I do around here!”

“I work fucking hard too, but I still come home and take care of this place.”

A mirthless laugh escaped me. “Ha! I DIDN’T EVEN WANT THIS PLACE! Buying this house was YOUR idea. I hate this house! I was happier renting in the city!” I knew I had her, this particular wound was always easy to crack open. The tinges of triumph tampered my rage.

“Well you know what? You can go back to the city. I want you out. NOW!” She moved to push past me, hair still dripping wet, skin still damp.

I grabbed her arm, my mind racing. She’d never held the chips like this before; the imminent threat of leaving had always been my card to play. “What did you just say to me?” My voice went low of its own volition. I didn’t recognise it but I liked the way it sounded, raw and husky.

She glanced down at where I gripped her bicep, my fingertips leaving small, purple half moons in her skin, and for the first time I registered fear in her expression. I reeled in disgust at the very implication that I would hurt her. She took this opportunity and fled back into the bathroom. I heard a small click as the lock slid home.

Coming to my senses I pounded on the door. “Emma, open this door right now! We both just need to calm down before someone gets hurt.”

“John just please go away, I’m sorry I said that, okay? You can stay here and I’ll go, just let me grab a few things and I’ll be gone.” I could hear panic rising in her voice.

“Emma you’re not going anywhere, let’s just talk this out like we always do. Just come out of the bathroom, we’ll sit down, you can calm right the fuck down and we’ll talk.”

I could hear her scrambling, items being knocked off counters and onto the tiles.

“Emma? Listen to me, get the fuck out of the bathroom RIGHT NOW, we need to talk about this.”

“John please, just give me five minutes and I’ll leave. Two! Give me two minutes.”

“Emma, no-one is leaving this house ‘til we’ve sorted this out. Now if you’d stop acting insane and kindly come out of the bathroom we can try to be adults about this.”

I heard the wood of the window frame and realised what she was attempting to do. I threw my entire body at the door, shoulder first, and tumbled into the bathroom in time to see her mounting the window sill. Apoplectic, I grabbed her by the nearest body part (was it her wrists?) and tried to pull her back inside but she resisted, grunting, spittle flying. What a scene she was causing!

“John let go, let go of me, you’re hurting me! JOHN!” Then abruptly she wasn’t in my grasp anymore. I watched her fall, shrieking, arms flailing, skirt billowing, limbs contorting as she crashed into the sparse garden bed below.

Time stopped. My thudding heart sounded impossibly loud. A scream from our neighbour, Mr Kowalski, startled me back into the present. He looked from Emma up to me, macabre and frozen in the window sill, and my entire body went cold.

I hurried down the stairs, two frantic steps at a time, hurtling towards my beautiful, pale wife. Even from the verandah I could see the jagged bones sticking out of her thigh, and blood - far too much blood. She was growing more wan by the second. As I reached her and cradled her lolling head I felt something rough in her pocket - the scratchie! Making a split second decision, I bolted to Stan and pressed it into his clammy palm. He flinched at my touch, and I knew I’d made the right call.

“Mr Kowalski, this is $20,000. Take it. We both know what you witnessed - a tragedy, that I wish I could have prevented.” I made intense eye-contact for too long. He looked from the scratchie, then back to me, hollow realisation dawning, and scampered into the night.

I held Emma until her papery eyelids fluttered to a half-close.

At the wake they muttered to each other about how she had always had her “sad days” but were all as shocked as I was that she would go to such an extreme.

I sold the house. It pained me; I’d loved that old house, but I could no longer bear to be in the home we’d shared. I bought a small apartment in the city. I had thought that with the downsize I might have had enough cash left over for a car, but once the emails from Mr Kowalski started showing up in my inbox I never could quite scrape enough together. As I hunched over my umpteenth greasy bowl of tinned grey stew I brooded that I couldn’t really scrape anything together anymore.

There was a gnawing, niggling pit at the base of my stomach that never seemed to go away; I suppose grief reveals itself in interesting ways.

I knew it would take me some time, but at least now I could finally reclaim my life; start finding me again.