E.Q. Adair

The garage door ratcheted open, folding onto itself to lurk for a moment in the low ceiling of the garage amid dust webs too high to reach without a ladder. The rising clang of the door moved in opposition to Chloe’s plummeting stomach but made the same sound. She pulled into the garage and saw his car. Her hand balled into a fist. He’d beaten her home. She just needed a minute to… to what? 

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Their marriage counselor said the body doesn’t register the difference between anxiety and excitement. I control the narrative. Inhale, hold for a three count. Exhale. I’m not bracing for another argument. I’m happy to see him, to have this opportunity to… to what? 

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Air hissed from her deflating lungs. She gathered her tote and handbag, and her winter coat from the backseat. Her shoulders crept up to her ears. I’m excited to see him. It’s not dread, it’s anticipation of an evening with my husband. She stretched her lips into a horizontal line, revealing gnashed teeth at the closed door to the house, knowing he was on the other side. I can do this. I can do this. She punched the red neon garage door button. Clang, unfold, clang, unfold, trapping her in its noise and darkness and dust.

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Garlic, butter, and a mineral aroma of the ocean confronted her when she pushed open the door with her shoulder. Her grandmother’s favorite dog, Bourbon, the one Chloe played with as a young girl, danced through her, welcoming her home. 

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“It smells delicious,” she called, trying and failing to fake cheerful. She dropped her bags and willed herself to walk into the kitchen.

Robert handed her a glass of Chardonnay. “I escaped early.”

“Hmpf,” escaped from her grandmother’s ghost, sitting in her usual worn chair by the window in the breakfast nook. Her embroidery needle stabbed through taut linen stretched on a battered wooden frame. Bourbon assumed his usual post at her grandmother’s feet. Their ephemeral forms melded, along with a green parakeet named Absinthe because it had been her grandmother’s least favorite liquor but was the same color.

Hmpf, it repeated, flitting about its birdcage with the unlatched door on the stand behind her grandmother’s chair so it could look out the window. Having spent its life in captivity, Absinthe didn’t know how to be free in death.

Chloe sipped the wine. “Mmm. This is nice. Dinner is a surprise.” 

Surprise, surprise, the parakeet squawked. 

Robert sneered at the bird and wiped his hand on the folded apron tied around his waist. “I hoped it would give us a chance to talk.”

“Hmpf.” Her grandmother swished bourbon around her tongue like disinfecting mouthwash before swallowing with bitter eyes. 

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Chance to talk. Chance to talk, Absinthe chanted. 

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Robert could see and hear the green parakeet. He couldn’t hear her grandmother, could only see her, and didn’t know the dog was there at all, because he was too logical to accept reality. 

Chloe ignored the lead weight pressing against her sternum. More talking. The therapist always wanted them to talk. Chloe preferred companionable silence, but Robert could prattle on sucking all the oxygen from a room.

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She sipped her wine. “What do you want to talk about?”

“Us.” Robert grabbed a wooden spoon from the utensil crock and pushed unpeeled garlic cloves around a cast iron pan.

Chloe’s heart squeezed through a space in her ribs, its tethered, pulsing veins reaching up, surrounding her throat and strangling her. She tugged at them, telling herself that her husband was trying.

“Put your heart back in its cage, Chloe.” Her grandmother didn’t look up and plunged the needle for another stitch.

He’s trying. Let him try. Chloe picked up a spoon and tasted the sauce. “Delicious.”

Robert flashed that smile, the one that used to make her melt and forgive him anything. “We have to get past this. We have to move forward like the therapist says. We have to walk into the meadow together. It’s not doing us any good to dwell in the past.”

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“I’m trying.” Even as she said it, she knew it wasn’t true. She would go through the motions of forgiving him, smiling at his apologies and excuses, again, because it was easier than making a decision. She couldn’t imagine the meadow the marriage counselor described, even as Robert could in neon technicolor detail.

“Hmpf.” Her grandmother yanked tangled maroon thread. “You can’t see the meadow, Chloe, because it doesn’t exist.”

Chloe sipped her wine and glared.

 “When I married, I didn’t have a choice. Women married whomever their fathers ordered them to marry. Women have choices now, Chloe, but over and over you run to placate Robert’s ego in exchange for his temper and abuse. You’re as bad as Absinthe, refusing to leave your open cage.”

“Chloe, look at me, not her.” Robert moved closer, inviting Chloe to dance around the kitchen, as they had so many times over the past twenty years. 

Temper and abuse. Temper and abuse, Absinthe squawked. 

“If that bird weren’t already dead, I’d kill it,” Robert spat.

Chloe pulled away.

“Now what’s your problem?” He jerked back, knocking his glass of wine into the gas flames under the pan. Blue fire erupted, circling the cooktop. Speakers blasted the requiem that played at her grandmother’s funeral years before. Flames flickered with the beat. 

“Damn it, Chloe!” The fire parted for Robert’s arm slicing through to slam a cover on the pan. “Why do you have to let your dead grandmother ruin everything? I was trying to make us a romantic dinner!” He shoved the skillet against the backsplash, cracking the tiles they had brought back from Portugal on their honeymoon for when they built their dream house one day. And they had. It was beautiful and perfect and everything she ever wanted. She had a great job, and so did he. They should be happy and she should move past it. Again. Except she wasn’t happy and couldn’t remember the last time she had been. And it wasn’t that she couldn’t move past it, but more that she didn’t want to this time. 

“Tell her to put out the fire!” Robert’s hands shook at his sides.

Ordinarily Chloe would apologize, accepting blame and recriminations even when she couldn’t explain why he was angry, or knew why but couldn’t figure out how she had caused it.

Today she stood, watching fire roll through kitchen cabinets and engulf baseboards. The granite countertop cracked with a thundering bang. The music blared louder and Bourbon-the-dog chased his tail in the mayhem while Absinthe-the-parakeet cowered in its open cage, surrounded by noxious smoke. 

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“Chloe! Make her put out the fire!”

Her grandmother continued sewing, embroidering red dahlias and yellow roses. “I won’t be here forever, Chloe. I should let the house burn and you could be free of him.”

Did she want to be free of Robert? She suffocated in the avalanche of insidious, emotionally abusive current running through their relationship like the phantom electrical power of a printer never turned off but rarely used.

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Not making a decision is making a decision, Chloe. The therapist’s words nagged in her head. Flames flickered, weakening. Her grandmother’s strength had waned since her death. 

But Chloe’s had not. 

Blazes climbed the walls into the rafters, exposing bleached bones in the timber framing. Fire spurred spiritual germination—her ancestors’ skeletons waltzed through the burning, and her grandmother smiled. Absinthe fled its cage, darting through the chaos of Chloe’s life.

Robert’s eyes transfixed on the fire. He shook his head. “Chloe, how could you? How could you destroy everything?”

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She watched her grandmother and Bourbon-the-dog and Absinthe-the-bird fade in silence, leaving Chloe alone in a field of ashes of her own creation. She watched her husband of twenty years trudge away with a parting glare over his shoulder. A meadow bloomed from his footfalls and wildflowers spread like wildfire, replacing the acrid burn of their home with the perfume of citrus, mint, and rose. 

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Robert stopped, absorbing the gentrifying destruction. “I’m not coming back, Chloe. You’ve gone too far this time.” 

Chloe hoped it was true, but the veins from her heart wrapped around her throat untangled and followed Robert. Breadcrumbs formed a long tail, marking the wake as he sloughed through the meadow. A murder of crows descended, pecking and squawking and gobbling, but a new chunk of bread appeared instantly, glowing, leading to Robert like exit-path lighting on an airplane guiding panicked passengers to salvation, but in reverse. She would never escape him. The purple neon trailing behind Robert led to Chloe’s inevitable demise.