Put It All To Rest

by Katherine

Summary:

"It's dry," her husband said, as he stepped through the bedroom doorway in the dark.

Notes:

• For OzQueen.

"It's dry," her husband said, as he stepped through the bedroom doorway in the dark. Was she aware of or was she imagining the scents clinging to his clothes? She was thinking of them, in either case, road dust and the indefinable difference to the air that was out of the valley.

Mary nearly snapped at him: of course it is, it's high summer. Yet she kept silent, and wondered how she had known with no other words from him that he meant the river. That had been their river, once.

She no longer thought of the river as theirs. The last time it had felt like that to her was on the night they'd been married. A wedding night, if one could call that what happened after standing together in the courthouse. They had been joined in marriage, but it was hardly a wedding. There had been no crowds to congratulate them.

He'd worn a brand-new wedding coat, but Mary had no wedding dress to mark the day and store away for the future. No rings, even.

He had given her a ring, as soon as he could. (Sooner than he should have spent the money, probably, with how they scraped by on the money from his unlearned work at the newest construction site.) The ring was thin and plain, but silver, and a symbol.

In the time since the clouds had swallowed her up, hid that small gleam of silver from her.

If they'd had what most consider a proper wedding day, would things have started off better? If they'd not had to start together so soon, perhaps. Mary might have come to care more for him. Or she might never have come to feel more than she had, those nights in the river. Mary had feelings for him, then, but not deep ones. Pride in being with an older boy. A sensual joy that she took almost as much in the swimming in the cool river-water as in the sex.

Mary was not the one who had dreamed of them together. She tried not to care about the past. To be resigned to the life she had.

*

It was morning already, and she was in the shower when he joined her. He touched her wet back, tracing patterns, and she let him. The thin bar of soap scratched a little as he rubbed from one of her shoulders to the other.

She should reciprocate, wash his back. Write words in soap-lather on his skin and connect with him. A year ago, in the patch of time when she had wanted to laugh, she had done that in the mornings.

Now Mary stood still in the never-warm-enough water from the shower and in the nose-prickling scent of soap. There were days when she was convinced that her husband smelled of factory-smoke. A larger part of her knew that was imaginary. Sweat and dust, wood and metal.

She remembered lying naked together, both still beaded with river water, and how that had felt. So very different from today, or from most days of their first two years.

She always tried her best not to remember the first months of their marriage, the sick heaviness of that time. Nor did she dwell on the first year, those chains of wakeful nights full of crying.

*

One thing about construction was that he was rarely kept late, not at this time of year. The days were short and no-one in the Johnstown Company, apparently, wanted to take the time and trouble to set up light for the work.

She looked at the time, checking that through the scratched glass of the clock hanging in the cramped hallway. His shift had ended nearly an hour since; he'd gone drinking, perhaps, gone somewhere certainly, and might not be home until later. So, alone, she went out on to the porch and sat there in the dusk.

The sound alerted her. The stray cat was fully grown, more or less, but not much more than kitten-sized. Thin, of course. There couldn't be much to scavenge around here, an area where no-one was doing well, though most of them well enough for a small house. For a small life.

Could she tame the little cat, lure it inside to be a pet? The cat could keep her company. It probably wouldn't, because (Mary knew perfectly well) cats had their own priorities, but it might. And it would be a living thing that she didn't mind sitting with her. One that she didn't mind touching.

There were too many nights when she didn't want her husband to touch her.

Mary had liked him touching her, back when they'd gone to the river together. When the future was a question, not this far too familiar story she was living. She was flattened between the pages of a repeated story she had never wanted to live inside of.

She sat without trying to get the cat's attention, and it wandered away, leaving Mary entirely by herself outside as the dusk turned into night.

*

There were more than a few nights when he stayed out. Once he stumbled in, looking so weary, and his eyes were wet for all that he had never cried in front of her. In front of anyone, so far as Mary knew.

"Sat with a guy," he said uncertainly, as she found herself helping his uncoordinated attempts to get his heavy coat off him and onto the hook by the door.

"I was telling him," he said, then stopped. Not about work, she suspected. About what this valley was like; about their lives that are too like their parents' lives. Maybe even telling this stranger about the river.

Later, lying awake while he slept, back turned, she asked herself if she minded. Her life was none of a stranger's business, nor her past. But her past was not precious. It had been nice enough to be with him—a night drive, a cooling swim, a lot of admiring staring—but not the stuff of her dreams. Then, she had slept on the grass close to him, under his arm.

They didn't sleep close to each other, most nights now. Yet they will keep going. Perhaps the grey cloudy places will turn back to silver, someday.