Young Cooper was big-boned, what his mom called husky. On seeing his middle school class photo, in which he stood moon-faced in the front row, his first girlfriend had said, “Awww, Cooper.” In the photo his cheeks and stomach held the baby fat his classmates had already shed. In his teens he learned to lift weights and suck in his gut in photos. Several teammates taught him how to restrict food, and he followed their directives with the diligence of a soldier. Underneath the baby fat a sleeker shell gradually emerged, the magnificent self he imagined he was, waiting to be revealed from under the blanket of childish bulk. Even his mother lifted onto tippy toes to kiss his forehead when he lost his tummy and made weight for wrestling.
In his head were stamped the rules that had tapered his waistline: no food after eight pm, no carbs without protein, absolutely no sugar, eat vegetables first, chug water. His glorious new body sailed through the world like a god who could seize anything within reach. His spirit remained unchanged, however. It was incongruous to be fat inside a thinner frame: He never quite felt at home with himself. He knew he should be grateful for having overcome his chunky beginnings, till the rules rattled inside his head in exquisite mockery of him, especially in his moments of vanity. There was no escape from being the fat kid he might as well have been, his former self stitched to his heels, the unwilling shadow he dragged behind him.
By the time he met his wife at a keg party, he’d stopped counting calories. He’d never shaken the habit of leaving a good third of his food untouched on his plate at each meal. The vestigial instinct to suck in his gut during family photos remained as well. It was one of the things that made being married to Junie so grating. She could eat anything in sight and never gain a pound. Even in pregnancy, when she’d kicked up her feet and demanded strawberry milkshakes and fries and turkey sandwiches with potato chips stuffed inside, Cooper had waited for the inevitable ballooning out of his wife that never came. This fact tunneled him with resentment and some anger, followed by a swift kick of guilt.
At the keg party where his eyes first landed on her, she was brash and drunker than was safe. He told himself he was hovering by her circle of friends to watch over her. She stood in a cluster with girls who shrugged hair over their shoulders. Junie cupped her hand to a friend’s ear, and the friend tipped her chin skyward to laugh. Fraternity brothers sniffed around at the edges of the group. Cooper drank and watched the scenery slide by. He was on his second and last beer of the night. He couldn’t afford to drink calories.
He shook off a vague unease and was considering leaving just as one frat brother grabbed June’s ass, which kicked some engine inside Cooper into gear. Before he could come to her defense, she’d turned and clocked the frat brother cold across the jaw, felling him like dead lumber at Cooper’s feet. June shook her hand to dislodge the pain before turning back to her circle. Partygoers stepped over the felled man for the remainder of the night.
A light poured into Cooper and rose up his spine that night——there was the woman he’d marry, the certainty burning a hole in his chest——precisely because she was everything he was not. Spurred on by that low engine grinding its gears inside him, he elbowed his way into her crowd to strike up a conversation. He can’t even remember now what he’d said, only that it must have been enough to spark her interest. She wrote her number on his hand in blue ink, and he hadn’t washed that hand all week, not wanting to erase his only tie to her.
On their first date——cheeseburgers and fries at the greasy diner near the dorms—she easily outate him. That should have made him run, seeing a person eat with such abandon, and a woman at that. Impossibly, it was her appetite, and her unselfconsciousness towards it, that wooed him. Some further burner ticked on inside him, low in his stomach. He watched her upend the ketchup container and douse her fries, burping the glass bottle. As they waited for the check, he reached across the table and, without thinking, wiped away a smudge of ketchup from her chin with his thumb.
That was the gesture that kickstarted it all. That year, 1995, they graduated from college, turned their tassels, and moved into a one-bedroom apartment whose radiators hissed each time the heat kicked on.
Fifteen years and two kids later, he still watched her eat. His admiration had somewhere along the way turned to a gentle, fatherly chiding, sloshing into irritation at times. His predictability irritated him. He was grumpy and he was ashamed for being so grumpy, but why couldn’t Junie be more responsible? More parental.
Sitting across from him now at their scuffed kitchen table, he watched as she scooped sugar into her coffee, tapping her spoon on the mug before licking it. She took a sip and winced, reached again for the sugar jar.
He cleared his throat. “Remember to hold off on the sugar. We both agreed we’d cut back.”
“You agreed. I was coerced. I don’t see what the big deal is.” She squared her shoulders as she sized him up.
He barreled on, having decided to take a stand against her indifference. “Remember we’ve got that parents’ night at the school tonight. I called the sitter to confirm. Don’t think you can back out.”
Junie rolled her eyes high to the heavens, collapsing back in her chair as she did. “I was planning to go to Mary’s tonight.”
“Mother Mary.” His wife’s friend was going through a divorce and needed a friend, the excuse June used to smoke joints at Mary’s after the boys were in bed and while he waited up for her. Sometimes he even wondered if there wasn’t something between them——Junie and Mary, that is. He tried to picture his wife’s face buried between another woman’s legs, the hungry flicking of her pink tongue. The image didn’t click. If anything, her devotion to Mary was another example of his wife’s refusal to act like a grownup.
June gulped her coffee. “Can’t you go without me? Just because I’m the mom doesn’t mean I have to go to these things.”
Cooper wiped the counter down with a fresh rag. It wasn’t so much that he felt cowed by his wife. Truly, she was a hot-blooded woman through and through. When she was laboring in the hospital with their first son, Billy, she’d growled at the nurses before dropping to her haunches. Two nurses insisted she get back in bed; they even tried to hoist her up at the armpits.
Junie flailed them off. “Get the fuck off me!” she yelled.
The nurses retreated backwards under June’s trance. When Billy arrived a few minutes later, June reached down for her son, pulled him up to her shoulder, and staggered upright. “Get me a cold drink,” she said. “I’m parched.”
The first to recover from her stunned shock, one of the older nurses had dog-whistled into the hallway. “Get this woman a Coke,” she yelled. The nurse’s voice struck a tone of respect, maybe even admiration.
No, Junie never cowed him outright; it was more that other people looked at her like she was a marvel and he, Cooper, was her lap dog. Even when the nurse handed him his baby boy crowned with his own dark hair, it’d been a perfunctory gesture, he felt. The nurses knew the real star was Junie. Junie took center stage. Junie, who couldn’t be bothered to remember parents’ night at their sons’ school.
He rinsed and wrung the rag before hanging it on the hook he’d installed on the inside of the kitchen cupboard under the sink. He sighed. “It’s on the whiteboard,” he reminded her, irritated at his irritation.
Junie glanced at the board where Cooper penciled in the flurry of doctors’ appointments, dinner dates, the boys’ baseball schedules. June took in the information with apparent disinterest. She shrugged. “Fine. But we’re leaving early.”
The sitter arrived as the boys sat hunched at the table over their homework. Cooper left money for pizza, and a note with his and June’s cell numbers, even though the sitter already had both numbers plugged into her phone. In the car, June kicked her feet up on the dash and pulled her sunglasses down to block the last of the fading dazzle of twilight. Cooper had long suspected his eldest boy was off in some way, though he couldn’t locate a precise explanation, only that the boy was unnaturally quiet and withdrawn. He and June couldn’t agree on a reason either; more precisely, he sought a reason, while Junie brushed it off as Billy’s way. The last time he brought it up, she’d looked at him so long and hard that his knees buckled. He’d never brought it up again.
At the school, their younger son’s teacher extolled the year’s curriculum. Later they floated past stick-figure artwork tacked on the walls. The chocolate chip cookies and lemonade sweating in its pitcher stirred a strange emotion in Cooper. His mind drifted; he had trouble paying attention to course units and book projects. Maybe Junie was right, and they didn’t need to go to these events.
Just as he nudged her to let her know they could leave, Billy’s teacher sidled up to them. She stopped Cooper with a hand to his elbow. “Cooper.” Her polite smile fell lightly on June. “June, nice to see you. Could I have a word?” She lowered her voice. “It’s about Billy.”
She drew them from the room and down the corridor to an empty office, motioning them to take a seat. Cooper sat. June remained standing. Apprehension settled in Cooper’s throat. He worried Billy had become involved in some schoolyard nastiness. He worried that some part of his own softness——the part that made him chubby——had festered in his son. His youngest boy, Sam, was cut from a different, hardier cloth.
“It’s not a big deal,” the teacher began as Cooper’s stomach rose into his mouth. “I’ve noticed that Billy’s a bit emotional recently. And his last test score wasn’t his usual performance.” She cleared her throat. “Well, I hate to have to tell you this. Some of the other boys are teasing him, calling him names. Sometimes he cries on the playground.”
“Who?” June asked.
The teacher sighed. “June, they’re just kids. Billy’s a bit…” She trailed off, waved her hand in the air vaguely.
“He’s a bit what?” June hunched forward, like she meant to pounce on the teacher. “Say it,” June insisted. “He’s what?”
The teacher glanced at Cooper. Her look reminded him of his childhood Basset Hound, Walter. “He’s too sensitive. He cries too easily. Some of the other boys push him and he doesn’t fight back. He could do with a little toughening up.”
Junie snorted. “You callin’ my boy weak?”
The teacher raised her hand. “Now, June, that’s not at all what I said. Boys can be——”
“I heard what you said. You think my boy is weak. Let me tell you something,” and here Cooper braced, knowing his wife’s anger was a fuse; once lit, it was best to let her burn herself out. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. You’re gonna protect my boy from those little shits, and if you don’t, I’ll report you to the school board. The PTA. The licensing board. I will fucking haunt you.”
Cooper wished to intervene and found he couldn’t speak. His mouth had turned to stone.
“Is that a threat, June?” the teacher asked. Blotches of red bloomed on her neck.
“Let’s fuck around and find out.” June spread her hands in the air.
His wife’s swearing animated Cooper’s deadened limbs, which now sprung back to action along with his voice. “June!” He tugged her toward the hallway by the sleeve. He glanced over his shoulder at the teacher. “We’ll handle this as a family, Mrs. Parker. I’ll take it from here.”
In the hallway June wrestled out of his grasp. “Don’t you lay a hand on me! That old bitch insulted your son, and you take her side? Fuck you, Coop.”
“Keep your voice down!” he whispered. Parents from Sam’s class filtered past, eyes resting on them with bemused curiosity. They’d be gossiping about this scene later. “Come on, let’s go.” He led June from the brick building as the heat rose off her.
Outside, she swung toward him. “He’s your son! He is sensitive, she’s right——who cares. You of all people should stand up for him.”
Cooper’s knee did that buckling thing. “What does that mean? Me of all people.”
“Forget it,” she said. “Let’s go home.”
Once in the car, though, they both realized they had the sitter for another hour at least. Cooper had already left cash, and it seemed a waste to go home early. He suggested they walk on the beach nearby. With the night sky punched through with stars, they’d have plenty of light for a walk, maybe even a swim. She’d make up with him then.
“I have a better idea,” she said. “Follow my directions. You drive.”
Cooper steered the family car, a reliable Honda minivan, along the darkened streets. Whatever trepidation he felt at first was overcome by curiosity, another grinding gear in his gut. What exactly was Junie’s idea here? When she pointed out a small blue house, a modest two-story bungalow in a neighborhood that butted up to a deserted playground, Cooper slowed.
“Park down the street,” June instructed. “In that parking lot over there.”
He did as he was told, and they both sat inside the minivan for several minutes, bathed in silence. “What are we doing here?” he asked. He craned his neck to locate a landmark that would explain his wife’s reasoning. The air in the car was staticky.
June was already up and rummaging in the back seat. She leaned into the trunk, practically crawling in. She lifted an arm and whistled softly. “Here you go.” She tossed him a hat in a fabric and color he didn’t remember owning. “Put that on.”
He looked at the hat in his hands and saw it wasn’t a hat at all; it was a mask. “June! June!” he called out as softly as he could.
She opened the passenger side door and leaned into the car. “Put that ski mask on, Cooper. You want to protect your son? That’s what we’re doing. He’s our baby, Coop.”
His arms lifted as if hinged to invisible strings, and he pulled the black ski mask over his face and followed his wife to the blue house up the block. June had her mask drawn low beneath her chin. “Where did you get these?” he whispered.
She held a finger to her lips.
At the corner of the blue house June took his hand. His fingertips buzzed at the contact. June looked around herself and crouched, duck-walking up the driveway. Cooper’s heart lurched as he watched. The sudden realization of his wife’s plan seized him. He had an arresting vision of the frat brother she’d felled without a care or sideways glance. He followed, if anything to protect her from herself.
She crouched next to the car in the driveway.
“Junie?” he asked, knowing she wouldn’t answer. He scanned the curtained windows, saw light but no silhouettes. A flash of silver caught his attention, and there was his wife he’d watched birth two boys, wielding a knife. She fingered the blade, sucked in breath, and hunkered forward to plunge the knife into the tire. She moved to the rear tire next, plunged the knife in again with a determined, practiced flick. It wasn’t till she brushed past him that he grabbed her wrist and pulled her close. “What are you doing?”
She cocked her head and extended her palm. She was asking him to slice a tire. She wanted him to join in her reckless fun. He shook his head and drew himself back. It was no use, though. He was wearing a ski mask, crouched in a stranger’s driveway. He was already implicated. As he pushed the blade into the tire, June leaned over and placed her hands over his, pulling them back to slice the rubber. She was guiding him, and this time he wasn’t jolted by her touch.
June pocketed the knife and hurried down the sidewalk and around the corner, the opposite way this time. He followed in her wake. In the minivan, they ripped off their masks, their hair spiked in disarray, their hearts drumming wildly. His was at least, and he assumed, no, hoped, hers was as well.
“Drive,” June said. She nodded for him to go straight. He drove for several blocks before nosing gently into a sandy lot that bordered a neighborhood beach. He looked around himself, afraid of the silence between them.
“What was tha——”
Already Junie had thrown herself on him, pawing at his shirt and the waistband of his jeans. Cooper lifted his arms in the air, the way Sam did whenever he wanted help undressing before his bath. June drew Cooper’s shirt over his head. She was grinning, her teeth flashing white in the star-bright night. The evening had been so confusing, so disorienting, that he found humor in his helplessness. And she was so beautiful, backlit and crouching on her haunches next to him. He kicked off his jeans.
She descended, her back hunched as it had been earlier over the tire, only this time she was working his body, him in her mouth. She swallowed him whole——the entire length of him down her throat. He worried she’d choke. She kept going even as her eyes teared up, even as she gagged, working one fist and then the other, till spit dribbled down his thighs and pooled around his balls, and just when he thought he’d better stop, someone would see them, he exploded in a starburst of pleasure in his wife’s mouth.
He approached her the following morning after breakfast, after the boys had been bundled off to school. She worked night shifts at the hospital and wasn’t due in till later that afternoon. Rocked by the events of the previous evening, Cooper had called in sick. He didn’t think his mind could focus on his tasks. It was pointless to force concentration where he had none. A lightness swam through him and lifted him in his seat as he’d driven home from school drop-off.
Now, standing inside his quiet house, looking at the boys’ clutter and the breakfast dishes in the sink and the words on the whiteboard written in his hand, a fear squeezed his lungs. He went to the bedroom. June dozed on her side. He shook her by the shoulder. She groaned and rolled over.
“Whose house was that, Junie? Whose car?” She groaned again. “For godsakes, get up! We need to talk.”
He brewed fresh coffee in the kitchen, and some ten minutes later June ambled in. Her hair was matted at the back, her eyes puffy. He poured her coffee in her favorite mug, the one with tiny bluebonnets dancing across the rim.
She collapsed into a chair at the table, watching the stream rise.
“Honey?”
She yawned.
“Would you care to tell me why you have ski masks in the minivan? And whose car did we vandalize last night?”
June eyed him, her gaze drifting from his face down to his toes before traveling back up again. She seemed to be orienting herself to some internal compass. “It’s just a thing I do with Mary sometimes after work,” she said. “A stress reliever.”
“I’m sorry, are you telling me that was not the first time you did that?”
Her whole face was split in half by her ragged amusement. “Coop, honey, no, that’s not the first time I slashed someone’s tires.” She giggled into her mug. “Whose house was that?”
She reached for the sugar jar. “Billy told me there’re some boys picking on him at baseball. It’s the same boys from school. That teacher’s an old bitch. Don’t you get it?” She met his gaze. “Those boys call him a pussy. I won’t have any boy of mine treated that way.”
Cooper rubbed his temples where a thundering pain had gathered. “So that was the teacher’s house?” But then how did she get to the school if her car was parked in her driveway? Unless she was married, and they’d slashed her spouse’s vehicle.
June’s laughter startled him out of his thoughts. “No, that was the boy’s house. The bully that’s been messing with Billy. Mary and I’ve been tracking him home, scoping the joint.”
He rubbed furiously at his temples. Blood rushed in his ears. “You mean to tell me you’ve been following some kid?”
“Some kid?” June snorted. “He’s a bully. The dad’s a drunk. Sure, it’s not the kid’s fault he’s a bad apple, but he’s still a bad apple.” She stared him down in a question.
Cooper understood now: His wife thought him weak. As he turned to dump his mug, June came to him, held him from behind.
Her breath on his back was hot. “Oh, Coop, Coop. You were the fat kid.”
“Husky, not fat!”
“Honey,” June said. “Boys like you, like Billy, they get pulverized.” She turned him around to face her. “If I’d known you when we were kids, I’d have beaten the daylights out of any bully that called you names.” She brushed a finger along his jawline, dipping to trace his collarbone. “Can’t even finish the food on your plate.” She dropped her hand. “I won’t have Billy end up like that, afraid of his own appetites.”
Cooper stared down his reflection in his wife’s eyes. So that’s what she saw—a man weakened by unfulfilled hunger?
She turned and chugged her coffee. “My Billy’s just fine how he is,” she said. “All my boys are just fine.”
She led him to the bedroom, where she drew the curtains and pulled back the covers. He sank onto the mattress, still warm from his wife’s indentation. She crawled on top of him. “You liked it rough the other night, Cooper.” She sucked his earlobe and ran her tongue inside the rim of his ear. A watery warmth rocketed up his spine and splashed the crown of his head.
He had liked it the other night. Very much. It wasn’t only June’s animated intensity, but the complicity of what they’d done that turned him on. They’d operated in unison. He rose up and flipped her over onto all fours. He pushed her pajamas down to her ankles. She cried out when he thrust into her. She was overcome with a ragged emotion, urging him not to stop. He tugged a handful of her hair as he plowed away. Afterwards they stripped the sheets, ran the wash, and hung the linens on the line to dry.
June seemed to know which neighborhoods and streets to hit, and when. Only a handful of houses had cameras at the door. They skipped over those. Cooper had disliked the rundown town when they first moved here for June’s nursing job; now he was glad for it. Residents here possessed the small-town trust that had them leave front doors unlocked. Very few had motion-sensor lights on their front porches.
They targeted the bully’s parents first. They sliced car tires, threw bags of dog poop on the porch, toilet papered a tree. Once they tired of this, they moved on to their son’s lesser bullies. They scoped the houses, stalked the parents. They slashed one vehicle’s tires per residence, the nicest one in the driveway. No one confronted them about their escapades, so maybe no one knew it was them?
Billy came home from baseball practice that week with his bird chest puffed out, a flush in his cheeks. Cooper wondered if it was possible for the vandalism to have some effect on his son. There was no denying Billy appeared more composed and solid. He’d shed some of his skittishness.
Rain woke them one evening in the middle of the night. June asked about Cooper’s boss, a gruff man who overlooked Cooper for a promotion the year before. He balked a little at her suggestion. It was one thing to torment a schoolboy, quite another to vandalize his boss’ car. He held her as rain drummed the roof. He relented for the sweet carnal love that he and June shared after their romps. Her need for him was potent; he’d only to slice a tire, stalk a car she pointed out, and afterwards she was on him, feasting on him with a hunger he didn’t recognize, and which he welcomed exactly for that reason.
He sliced two tires on his boss’ Audi before driving them to a remote lookout, a spot known to be used by high school sweethearts. He took her in the backseat, her palms pressed against the windows. When he smacked her ass and grabbed her neck, she’d said, “Yes please, Daddy!”
He was buckling his pants when she clambered into the front seat to root in the glovebox. “Aha!” She waved a bag of licorice in the air.
Cooper leaned forward and squinted. “Is that licorice?”
She tilted the open bag toward him. He hesitated, then took a piece. He sniffed its chemical cherry scent. He licked its shiny surface. June’s sugar habit was a thorn. Sugar led to belly fat. He longed for the candy of his boyhood———suckers from the bank, chocolate nuggets with molten caramel cores, the sour candy ropes that burned the tip of his tongue.
“You keep a stash of candy in the minivan?” he asked.
She nodded, chewing. “It’s my car stash. You’re on my case about sugar and healthy eating, and I get it, I do.” She rested her head against the seat. “I get cravings, you know. I can’t be good all the time like you.”
They ate their licorice in silence. He drove them home, where they checked that the boys were safe in their beds. They’d outgrown the days of nightmares or walking in their sleep, but there was an off-chance one or the other might run a fever and wake, stumbling to his parents’ room to find them gone. That possibility only made the night vandalisms more forbidden. Sexy.
The call came late on a Thursday night. Friday morning, to be precise. June’s father was dead of a heart attack. Cooper long suspected it’d be his mother-in-law to go first: She had worked at Bethlehem Steel before they closed shop and laid everyone off. Her hands contained tiny metal shavings; her knuckles puffed in the heat and ached in the cold. They flew up to Baltimore right away to be with June’s mom and brothers. They received bundles of daffodils and baby’s breath and garden zinnias, a stream of neighbors stopping by with casseroles and bread. More bread. The funeral was rowdy and long. He was unaccustomed to the face June made when crying. Cooper’s head hurt the whole time.
When they returned home, the ordeal of death dispatched, Cooper assumed his wife would return to her normal contours. Instead, she sank into herself. She refused home-cooked food and barely drank water. She collapsed into bed early each night and didn’t emerge from the bedroom till the boys came home the following afternoon. She spent hours on the sofa in her bathrobe, her eyes vacant and lost.
By the third week Cooper’s resolve massed inside him like storm clouds. He hired the sitter girl for that evening. He called in sick from work; a stomach bug was going around, so no one asked any questions. He found June slumped in bed, a sour smell tenting the air. He shouldered open the windows.
He perched on the bed next to her. “Junebug,” he said. “Now, I know you’re sad. I know you’re grieving. But we’ve got to get on with our lives.”
She burrowed her face in her pillow. He put a hand on her shoulder and felt her sobs. “He was my only Dad,” she wailed. “I won’t get another.”
She’d always been the pigheaded one, the hot-blooded one, and now it was Cooper’s turn to flex his strength. He had everything ready. “Come on, honey, you gotta get up.”
“No.” She curled inward, tucking her knees to her chest.
“June, you get out of that bed right now.”
“No.”
“Junie.”
“No!”
“I said get up and I meant it!”
Still sniffling, she draped her legs over the side of the bed and rolled over onto the floor. She sat there in a heap. Her eyes were red and swollen. Her hair was tangled at her neck. “You’re being bossy,” she said. Her breath was strong.
He cupped his hands under her arms and tugged her upright, half dragging her to the bathroom. He held her chin and brushed her teeth. He combed her hair and tied it back at her neck. In the garage, he handed her a hoodie.
“Put that on. We’re going for a drive,” he said. As he drove east through town toward the trailer parks, June pulled her hood up. Encouraged, he started talking. “This asshole at work got my promotion. We’re gonna teach this motherfucker a lesson.” He was certain of it now: She was grinning under her hood like a wolf.
“It’s broad daylight, Coop. Someone’ll see.”
His fingers tapped the wheel. “Already thought of that. He takes a commuter car to work. Doesn’t want to put the miles on his precious truck. You see,” he said, cutting the wheel and pulling onto a narrow gravel road. “I know his schedule. I’ve been watching him. While you’ve been grieving your old man, I’ve been finding you some distraction.” He parked down the block and killed the engine. “What do you say, Junebug? How about a little pick-me-up?”
They separated and circled the block. The house sat on a corner, and the house next door was empty, a for-sale sign sunk at an odd angle in the front lawn. He crouched by the side of the man’s Ford and handed the knife to June. Just as she sank the blade into the front tire, a nearby sound startled them both. They flinched and turned, scanning the street.
A bearded man, no shirt and no shoes, sat on the stoop of his trailer across the way. “I see you, fuckers!” he called, stumbling forward off his steps. An old drunk. Cooper had never seen him before.
June clawed at the knife, lodged in the tire and refusing to budge. Cursing, she yanked at it, and Cooper saw that two figures in hoodies in broad daylight was a stupid idea, a terrible and rotten idea. June must have known that all along. She yanked one last time, and the knife came loose and gashed her palm. They ran as the old drunk hollered behind them, hollering he’d call the cops, he was the cops, and the jangling crash of their hearts didn’t stop even when they were back in the minivan, Cooper fumbling with the keys.
As June inspected her cut, Cooper steeled himself for the tongue lashing he was about to get for having bungled the whole thing. Impossibly, it was laughter he heard——June hooting as she clutched her side, her hand gushing a river of red down her arm. She wheezed until her eyes welled up and blood dripped on the seat. He raced to the nearest urgent care, his limbs jittered with fright. He was certain they’d be caught or pulled over by the police for speeding. No one stopped them, though. They sat on hard plastic chairs to wait for a doctor. June wrapped her hand in his hoodie. She assured him no one would listen to a crazy old drunk. Even if they did, no one would suspect an insurance claims adjuster and his wife.
“That’s the thing about you, Coop.” She leaned her head back against the wall. “When I first set eyes on you, I knew I had myself a sweet teddy bear.” Pain gathered at his temples. He rose and paced the hall. When he caught sight of the vending machine at the far side of the corridor, he was drawn to its rectangular glow. All that sugar he couldn’t eat. His mouth watered. He pressed his palms to the glass. He dropped coins into the slot and reached onto the shelf to retrieve the peanut butter cups. Back in the waiting area with the uncomfortable chairs, he dropped the candy into June’s lap. She ripped the package open with her teeth.
It took two hours to see a doctor and stitch up June’s hand. They laughed with the receptionist about June’s clumsiness in the kitchen——cutting herself opening a can of chickpeas! By the time they’d filled out the paperwork and shown their insurance card, they still had some time to kill before they had to get the boys from school.
June suggested a walk. “We could go down to the pier and watch the waves.”
Cooper shook his head. “We need to eat lunch.” He buckled her into her seat, her bandaged hand aloft in the air, useless. He drove them to a diner at the edge of town. The tables were chrome with red booths. The waitresses wore checkered aprons and white knee socks; it was meant to look old-fashioned. It wasn’t the seedy diner where they’d had their first date, but it wasn’t hard to imagine it was the same one. June drank a Coke, leaning forward to gulp from her straw. They both ordered burgers and fries.
As they waited for the food, she clutched two of his fingers, absently fiddling with his wedding band. The injured paw she held against her chest. “I need you, Coop,” she said. “You think because you’re sweet and I’m not that I don’t need you. I’m always here, needing you.”
He supposed she’d said it before, something to this effect, or maybe those exact words. This time he believed it. He thumbed open the flip top and reached across the table to drown her fries in ketchup, just the way she’d always liked.
Keti Shea is a lawyer and writer. Her writing appears in Reverie Mag, Swim Press, Wildroof Journal, and elsewhere. She is a two-time Best of the Net nominee and a Pushcart nominee. She lives with her family in a former nunnery in Northern Colorado. Her favorite revenge story is the 1944 Ingrid Bergman film Gaslight.
