Shelter(59)

This is what being with a woman is supposed to feel like. Dangerous and unfamiliar, on the edge of something because it’s both. By now, he knows every pale curve and freckled hollow of his wife’s body. He knows exactly how Gillian will respond if he touches her in one place versus another, if she wants him to be gentle or rough. The sex is never bad so much as predictable—rushed, usually—as if both of them would rather be doing something else. With Molly, it’s different. He’s not accustomed to her reactions, to the sounds she makes as he lowers a strap of her dress to kiss her bare breast. Her back arches as if it might break; her hips press tightly against his. He wants to take his time, to enjoy her while he can, but nothing about this feels patient. Kyung lifts her onto the countertop, centering himself between her legs. He yanks her underwear to her knees and slips his fingers inside her, higher and higher until she almost loses breath.

“Wait,” she says.

Kyung reaches for his belt, but the metal buckle won’t release. He fumbles with it, trying not to let his clumsiness become a distraction. He closes his eyes and kisses her again, imagining Molly on all fours while he takes her from behind. She wouldn’t mind this position, he thinks. But by the time he undoes his belt, something has started to change. Her body goes limp. Her right hand leaves his neck, and then the other soon follows. Kyung opens his eyes, startled to see that Molly’s are open too, but not open as they should be. Up close, they’re wide open, unblinking, the whites latticed with red. Her pupils are dilated; the blacks are all he can see. He backs away slowly, still joined by a long string of saliva connecting her mouth to his. It stretches and stretches, thinning to a hairlike strand that finally breaks.

Molly slides off the counter, hugging the cabinets as she slowly moves to the other side of the room. She looks disoriented, or maybe even sick.

“Are you all right?”

She stares at him, her lower lip in full tremor.

“Molly? What’s going on?”

“Why did we do that?” she asks. “Why?”

He doesn’t know what she expects him to say. He can’t answer for her; he can hardly answer for himself. “Because we wanted to, I guess.”

She continues staring at him, clutching the ends of the sweater still tied around her neck. Whatever confusion she may have felt is gone now, replaced by something that begins to resemble fear.

“Maybe you should sit.”

When he takes a step toward her, she jumps away, nearly tripping on the underwear around her ankles. He reaches out to break her fall, but this only seems to frighten her more. She picks up the frying pan in the sink, raising it at him like a weapon.

“Why are you acting like this?”

“Don’t touch me,” she says. She takes a small step to her left, then another, and another, still holding the pan as she nears the door.

“What do you mean, ‘Don’t touch me’? What were we just doing?”

The trembling in her lower lip returns, and suddenly, she’s sliding down the wall, knees splayed as she falls to the floor, all limbs and noise and tears. The thick, perfect lashes he admired only minutes ago streak down her face in watery black stripes. A bubble of mucus expands and contracts from her nostril with each breath. Kyung stands perfectly still, too stunned by her reaction to respond, but the sound of her voice—that awful, hiccupped wail—he can’t listen to it much longer.

“Molly,” he says quietly. “What happened? What just changed?”

She shakes her head.

“Did I hurt you somehow?” He reaches for her again, but she leans away to avoid being touched. “Look, I don’t understand what’s going on right now, but I’m not sorry we did that.”

The statement doesn’t quiet her, but it reassures him to hear the words out loud. He has nothing to apologize for. He didn’t do anything that Molly didn’t want, that she didn’t respond to eagerly. Regret is the only reason she’s sitting on the floor.

“Could you please—please stop crying?”

This only makes her cry louder, so much so that he begins to worry the neighbors will overhear. He shuts an open window and fills a glass with water from the sink. When he offers it to her, she knocks it away, sending the plastic cup spinning like a top. It skitters across the tile, spraying water on the cabinets and floor. When the cup stops moving, he sits down beside it, folding his hands in his lap where she can see them. He tells himself to be patient; eventually, she’ll wear herself out. But minutes pass, and she continues to wail.

“Do you remember when you lived in that house on Larkin Street?” he asks.

She stops crying just long enough to gasp for air.

“That big one with the white fence?”

“Why—why are you asking me that now?”

Kyung still sees the house clearly, with its brick face and orange shutters and matching orange mailbox. In junior high, he walked past it every day after school, slowing down as he neared the fence to listen and wait. Sometimes he heard nothing. Sometimes he heard Molly’s parents fighting inside. He knew what a punch and a slap sounded like. He was all too familiar with the sound of a woman crying. He listened as long as he could, stopping to tie his shoe or search his book bag for something he didn’t need. The next day, he’d watch Molly in the cafeteria or in the halls, acting out as if the world owed her something. Secretly, he admired her for this. She’d earned the chip on her shoulder and she wasn’t afraid to show people it was there. She did what she wanted, got in trouble, and made her parents as miserable as they made her, which was exactly what they deserved. He looked up to her for this until she decided not to be that person anymore, which always felt like a betrayal.