to run. She applied light makeup, struggled with her curly hair, brushing it till it was smooth enough to twine into a neat bun. She was dressed five minutes later, at which point she turned off the water. Her ear pressed to the door, she listened for some sound in the apartment. Her watch said she’d been in the bathroom for ninety minutes. Ian wouldn’t dillydally that long. Usually he gulped a cup of coffee and ran.
Coffee cup in hand, Emily wandered around the small apartment. First she checked the laundry basket. Ian hadn’t taken his shirts with him. She counted them, looked in the closet. Two clean ones. He’d probably go out and buy more. His suit was thrown over the back of a chair, ready to go to the cleaners. Ian probably didn’t even know where the cleaners was. She set her coffee cup down and made her side of the bed.
Petty, childish behavior. She didn’t care.
“Enough, Ian, I’ve had enough.” Two and a half more days until her “vacation” was over and she had to go back to the clinic every morning. Maybe she wouldn’t go back. Ever.
It was a full three days before Emily found out Ian’s reaction to her behavior to be no reaction at all. She sighed heavily; it was business as usual. He didn’t even comment on the money she’d left on the kitchen table with the list he’d ordered her to prepare. On Monday morning the list was crumpled and in the trash, the money gone. But things weren’t right between them even though they were both trying to act as though nothing had happened. Ian spoke in quiet tones, left early, and was asleep when she got home. At the clinics when he met her in the hallway or stopped by her desk, he smiled at her, but that was because there were patients milling about. It was clear to Emily that Ian was avoiding her and she did her best to avoid him, staying at Heckling Pete’s as long as possible.
On the fifth day of what Emily considered their armed truce, Ian approached her and said, “Enough of this crap, Emily. We’re like two tired warriors and I for one have had enough.”
“I’ve had enough too,” Emily said as she packed up her oversize pocketbook. It was one o’clock, time to get ready to head home to change her clothes and go on to Heckling Pete’s.
“Then give me a big kiss and let’s get back on track here.” Emily dutifully held up her face and Ian kissed her on the cheek. “What is it you want, Ian?”
“Well, now that you ask, I think the fridge needs to be replenished. I couldn’t find a grain of sugar or anything sweet in the whole apartment. I really hate to mention this, but the laundry is piling up.”
“I know,” Emily said.
“What does that mean, I know? Does it mean you know and are going to correct the situation or does it mean who gives a good rat’s ass? Or are you unaware? I prefer to think you’re unaware because we’ve both been uptight.”
“All of the above,” Emily said, walking toward the door.
Ian followed her to the door and walked outside with her. “Well?” he said, a smile on his face for the benefit of a patient who walked around both of them to enter the clinic.
“Well what, Ian?”
“You really have a pissy attitude lately, Emily. I don’t like it. At all.”
“I know,” Emily said, marching toward the parking lot. What was it her mother always said, don’t cut off your nose to spite your face? Something like that. And that’s exactly what she was doing. It was time she asserted herself where Ian was concerned. Right now the laundry was the biggest bone of contention. Grocery shopping the second. Their attitude toward one another. Slave-master relationships, Pete said, went out with the dark ages.
Maybe she had things out of order. She didn’t know anything anymore. She was a robot doing things automatically. She didn’t think anymore, didn’t exercise her brain at all. All she did was work, eat, sleep, and cry.
Things were going to change, Emily thought as she jammed the key in the lock of her apartment door. And they were going to have to change soon.
Someday I’m going to live in a real house and this rinky-dink apartment and all my problems will be over. If you believe that, Emily Thorn, you’re a fool. She sat down on the hard, wooden chair and stared into space. Someday…
Chapter 5
Emily stared at the laundry basket. in her eyes it represented an insurmountable mountain. Each day it got higher and higher. She stuck her foot into the basket and crunched down Ian’s white shirts. She didn’t feel any kind of satisfaction. Suddenly she wanted to count the shirts, needed desperately to know the numbers so she could calculate the days she and Ian had been at war. She upended the basket, kicking each shirt into the basket as she counted. When she was done, she jumped into the plastic basket and stomped with both feet. Forty shirts at three shirts a day meant thirteen and a half days. But then that wasn’t right either because Ian hadn’t come home for a few days during the snowstorm. She was stomping on two weeks’ worth of white shirts, maybe more.
The refrigerator was still empty, and there were no goodies or munchies in the cupboards. She still made only her side of the bed.
The Thorns were at war.
Emily’s nerves were in such a fragile state she no longer knew if what she was doing was right or not. If Ian would just say something, do something, make some kind gesture, she would react accordingly. Positively. She couldn’t go on like this much longer. Emily looked at the clock. Five minutes to midnight. She was home early tonight because Pete had decided to close early.
Emily raced for the bathroom and turned on the shower. When Ian wasn’t home, she could make all the noise she wanted. She could stand under the shower for hours or until the water ran cold. Tonight she’d be able to wash her hair twice with the new coconut shampoo and hopefully get the stench of Pete’s deep fryer out of her hair. The cigarette smoke she reeked of would disappear if she carried her clothes out to the kitchen and dumped them in her laundry basket.
“You are one screwed-up, mixed-up puppy, Emily Thorn,” she muttered as she lathered up her hair. In some cockamamie way she justified the feeling by telling herself if she recognized that she was half nuts she wouldn’t cross over the invisible line into insanity.
An hour later, Emily’s hair was dry, she was powdered and dressed in a high-necked, flannel nightgown and in between the covers. She was almost asleep when she heard Ian come in. She felt a tremor in her body and then another. God, how she wanted him. More than she’d ever wanted him. But more than anything, she wanted to rear up in bed and scream at the top of her lungs, I’m sorry! Love me, Ian, please love me. I’ll do whatever you want. Say you love me, say this is just something married couples go through. Say it, say it even if it’s a lie and you don’t mean it. She fought with herself, refused to give in. Instead she clutched the pillow and clenched her teeth.
Tomorrow was another day. Tomorrow there would be forty-three shirts in the basket.
“Emily.” It was a whisper.
It was the dearest, the sweetest sound. A sound she’d hungered for so long. Her name. Ian was ready to make peace. Thank you, God, thank you.
“Yes, Ian.”
“I don’t want to live like this anymore, Emily. I feel like I’m living in a war zone.”
“I don’t want to live like this either.” She didn’t move, waited for his arm
