Instructions for the Drowning by Steven Heighton

Author:Steven Heighton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Biblioasis
Published: 2023-03-05T00:00:00+00:00

Terri

When he’s awake beside me I can always tell, though he lies there on his back the same as always, not moving much, not breathing as deeply as you would think, especially for such a big man, and not snoring. The guy I was married to briefly in my twenties was a twitcher and a thrasher, a cougher, a snorer, a sleep-talker. With Duncan sometimes it’s spooky. Lying there with his hands folded neatly over his stomach, he seems embalmed. The only thing different when he’s awake like that is he is so much hotter — so hot I can feel it coming off him, like a radiator or space heater. We don’t sleep pressed together, but still I can feel it. I really pretend to be asleep then. I know he is angry and thinking through some thing or other. At least these days I don’t worry it’s me. I got over that quickly. He loves me — I’m sure of it — in a way I never thought I’d know; he cherishes me. I have a pretty face, so I hear, but I’m too bony, twisted from this condition, and short, three inches shorter now than when I was sixteen. I’m also, so I hear, “eccentric,” which I blame on the years I spent with older women friends, like Meg, who had reached the stage where they couldn’t be bothered trying to hide or justify their quirks. Everyone is eccentric when you come down to it, some just hide it better from themselves and their neighbours. I learned not to bother hiding it and not to care sooner than most. Also, at some point I figured out that men my age had no more interest in me than I had in them. I found them unformed, unfinished, and I know they found my interests weirdly out of date.

By the time Meg passed, it was almost as if, through our years together, I’d been apprenticing to be her husband’s next wife.

Sometimes lately I wake up a long while before dawn and his side of the bed is empty. I know he is outside then, flooding the rink, trying to get it just right. Just something to keep a retired old guy out of trouble, he’ll say. If he is here asleep, and my back is keeping me awake, I slip downstairs, to the living room, and sit on the pine floor in the dark with the two dogs, grooming them with Meg’s old slicker brush. It doesn’t help my back any, but it calms me down. Everyone needs a way. Samson and Nadya sprawl on either side of me, breathing, sleeping the shallow, fidgety sleep of old dogs, and around us the combings collect in tufts and plumes, glowing white on the dark floor.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.