Maggie gazes at the round spot on the back of Ben’s head. The few dark, coarse hairs are sharp against his pale skin. He can’t see the spot, although he surely knows it’s there. She sees him running his fingers over it, gently pushing the thicker hair at the sides to cover it. As if he could.
He never asks whether the bald spot makes him look old, or foolish, and she never mentions it. She knows that words can wound. If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all, her mother warned when she was a child. Those ricochet in her head, tugging at the roots of her long, blonde hair.
Such beautiful hair. Even at thirty-five, she knows she’s ‘hot’, as they say. Ben is lucky to have her. As she is lucky to have him. Ten years is a long time to keep a marriage going strong. It’s possible to keep a marriage going, but to keep it close-knit, companionable, free from permanent damage is much more difficult. There were the rough years when they tried to conceive a child. She thought they wouldn’t survive that humiliation and grief, but finally they eased past it. Maggie dove hands first into her pottery. Ben climbed the corporate ladder. They adopted a dog – a silky golden retriever. They acquired a cat. She’s Siamese, with creamy fur and shockingly black-tipped ears, tail and feet, like she tiptoed through a bucket of tar. The pets are his, really. He does all the nurturing. She keeps her distance and molds those instincts into bowls and vases.
It was harder for Ben than it was for her. She can see that when the cat settles into his lap and he strokes her fur, whispering baby talk into the pointed ears that twitch as his breath presses too close. She sees it when he takes the dog into the yard, teaching him to leap for the red spinning disk hurled through the air.
Especially today, she sees it. Ben’s younger brother holds his newborn daughter. Ben turns away, suddenly busy easing the cork out of a bottle of dark red wine.
It wasn’t easy for her either. There are no words to describe the yawning ache in her womb, the thousands of bits and pieces of life she would share with a child. She accepts reality, she accepts her fate. She’s grateful to have love, not everyone does.
Over the years, she’s learned her mother’s words are true. That phrase became a cliché for a reason. If you tell a man he’s less attractive than he was, those words can’t be erased. If you tell a woman she’s cold, the hurtful word forms the cartilage of a scar. She wrestles to find the balance of perfect intimacy. It requires sharing everything, but watching each word. She manages to find that equilibrium, sharing most, if not all of her thoughts, while not destroying their marriage with a lash of the tongue that would leave bloody tissue like a whip with burrs tears flesh into ribbons.
A relationship is a delicate creation, finer than an empty eggshell, the yolk and albumen blown free, nearly transparent. A single word can shatter a marriage. Maggie knows this, and just as she never mentions the bald spot, she’ll never tell Ben what she knows. He was the cause of their infertility. She knows, because now, after all these years, she’s pregnant. She loves Ben. She can’t imagine loving any other man. She never speaks the words that would cut to the center of his heart — It’s your fault we couldn’t have a child. That guy, the father of the life growing inside, was a mistake. Touching him was as unimportant as buying the wrong shade of lip gloss. He’s far too young, he’s uninteresting. He means nothing. He was just a guy in one of her pottery classes.
Ben hands her a glass of wine and she sips, watching the newborn screw her face into a grimace. The same pained expression spreads across Ben’s face. Maggie and Ben turn and walk outside to the patio, alone. She puts her hand on his arm, I love you.
It was for the best, he says. You don’t have what it takes to be a good mother.
The words slice deep and her knees buckle as if he’s stabbed her with a boning knife.
Cathryn Grant lives in California. Her short fiction has appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen’s Mystery magazine. She received an honorable mention in the 2007 Zoetrope All-Story short fiction contest.
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26 Responses to “THE FESTERING WOUND • by Cathryn Grant”
Comments
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June 3rd, 2010 at 12:32 am
This is a pretty clear case of women not “getting” men (it works the other way around too, of course). Maggie has been sparing Ben things that probably wouldn’t have bothered him very much (at any rate, they aren’t important to most men), and when Ben finally and inadvertently hurts Maggie she doesn’t realise that she has already hurt him far more, excusing herself to herself with “He means nothing” – which is not the material point, to a cuckolded husband such as Ben. There are sometimes even unfaithful wives who secretly have other men’s babies and rationalise that they are actually doing their husbands a favour, never realising that the husbands would rather it had never happened, and if it did would rather know and be able to decide for themselves whether to walk away!
June 3rd, 2010 at 2:25 am
WOW! That was mind blowing. She was trying her best to spare his feelings and in the process goes on to inflict the ultimate hurt that he won’t realize for years to come if not ever and then his one careless toss of a off handed comment brings her to her knees. Is it possible she is so affected by his off handed comment because in truth it was what she had been wrestling with (among other things). This is an outstanding piece that really shows the differences in the battle of the sexes as well as show how we will downplay the a HUGE selfish act in order to justify it. Great job!
June 3rd, 2010 at 2:33 am
Excellent piece about the misunderstandings in a marriage.
I wondered whether their marriage was really that great, but I had not realised how much they would end up hurting each other.
The tongue is mightier than the sword!
June 3rd, 2010 at 2:36 am
Really well-written. My girlfriend once told me that men can’t truly understand women.
It had a haunting effect on me.
June 3rd, 2010 at 2:45 am
Sensitively written story and a subject that would involve everybody reading this.
June 3rd, 2010 at 5:39 am
This story figuratively dropped me to my emotional knees. It took my breath. This is outstanding beyond words.
June 3rd, 2010 at 5:50 am
OUCH! That touched a nerve.
Infertility has never been my problem – quite the opposite – but the secrets, the hurt … all very real indeed.
A powerful piece.
June 3rd, 2010 at 6:01 am
By the story, it’s not about doing a favour by having someone else’s baby. “He means nothing” is not Ben, it’s the guy she slept with (which she said was a mistake).
The theme is not saying things out loud, not talking to each other, due to maggie keeps on remembering mom’s old stories on how a woman shld be.
for me, it’s about stopping to tell your spouse what you feel because it might hurt. if you can’t share things with your spouse, what’s the point of being together?
June 3rd, 2010 at 6:55 am
This is excellent. Love how I’m reading along thinking one thing, then another, then whammo. Very well done.
June 3rd, 2010 at 7:59 am
So believable.
June 3rd, 2010 at 8:01 am
Nice story. Nice observations on relationships and perspective. Personally, I found Ben’s final line a little false. It made me reevaluate Ben (and her perception of him) rather than the issue I had focused on – the hidden wounds of unshared knowledge and unrealized dreams. For me, that issue was larger than the characters so that when that final line turned the story into a character story, I felt a little let down. Still, it’s four stars for me. I admire the piece’s ambition and it’s well executed.
June 3rd, 2010 at 8:53 am
That was *painful* but very well written. It’s all too true about the words that hurt.
June 3rd, 2010 at 9:40 am
Very moving. I especially loved the baby talk to the cat and the frisbee in the yard. Spoke volumes through image alone.
June 3rd, 2010 at 10:32 am
I agree with commenter #9. The revelation that she was pregnant by another man came as a punch, and the husband’s last comment as a knife slash across the throat.
Excellent word choices and imagery.
June 3rd, 2010 at 10:34 am
Award winning. I hope EDF puts it in their next anthology.
June 3rd, 2010 at 11:08 am
Wow. A powerful piece in a short span of words – especially the last line.
June 3rd, 2010 at 12:06 pm
Five stars. I think that final line was the festering wound that has eaten at her husband all along. He wanted so much to be a father that he blames her for probably not having been a good mother. We never know the people we love and live with.
June 3rd, 2010 at 12:16 pm
Brilliant writing and expertly crafted to carry the reader through the emotion. The skill of unfolding the final blow rivals some of the best I have seen.
I loved these lines…
Those ricochet in her head, tugging at the roots of her long, blonde hair.
He does all the nurturing. She keeps her distance and molds those instincts into bowls and vases.
-Bravo!-
June 3rd, 2010 at 1:21 pm
I wasn’t quite sure about this one. I thought it was well-written, but, to me, it read more like a scene from a longer story. The ending jarred a little too, because I couldn’t see any evidence that Ben would say something so tactless.
Then again, what do I know?
June 3rd, 2010 at 5:26 pm
Must agree with JonGibbs.
I also found myself skipping over the cats and dogs back story that I’ve read a thousand times before in this kind of story.
Although the story has merit, it really needs to be part of something longer, where each nuance can be explored more fully.
June 3rd, 2010 at 6:33 pm
Ouch; that ending bites. This is very layered.
June 3rd, 2010 at 6:55 pm
This is a finely written piece of flash fiction. Ben’s remark was jarring. Not only was it jarring to Maggie it was jarring to the reader. Maybe that’s the point. Do we ever really know another person no matter how intimate a relationship is? If I may just point out one thing which doesn’t seem to bother anyone else. The story is all exposition. It’s a summation. It’s really more of an essay than a short story. But that’s okay. It’s an award winning essay. I just like a lot more “show don’t tell” in my fiction. Now I’m being rude. It’s an excellent story.
June 4th, 2010 at 1:22 am
5 *****
Very nice delicate hook for an ending !!!!
June 4th, 2010 at 3:49 am
Great story and terrific writing. Would have liked a bit more dialogue but the prose does carry you along. The ending is very good – although like some others I did wonder whether Ben would say something so cruel? But in the context of the story, the miscommunication in a relationship, it does work. Very well done.
June 4th, 2010 at 4:36 am
Thanks everyone for your comments … it’s always illuminating to see the variety of reactions!
June 5th, 2010 at 2:07 am
Evariel, I got it that ‘“He means nothing” is not Ben, it’s the guy she slept with (which she said was a mistake)’, I couldn’t put a name in as none was given. I was trying to bring out the way that Maggie was reacting was as though what counted was whether she had been emotionally involved with someone else, when what counts for Ben is whether she bloody did it at all. To Maggie, her not having been involved emotionally makes it a non-issue, something that doesn’t count – but it isn’t, it’s the most serious possible thing for him. The way you’re reading my comment is that I misunderstood Maggie as not connecting to Ben, that I mistakenly thought she was being cruel to him by not connecting to him emotionally. No, she was being cruel by betraying him and lumbering him with the consequences of that betrayal.
In evolutionary terms, men’s emotional commitment matters to women because it’s what makes men support their families, but women’s physical commitment – faithfulness – matters to men as it’s what makes the families theirs. The situation isn’t symmetrical; as Doctor Johnson once remarked, no man ever gave a woman a child that wasn’t hers.