We Come in Pieces

She’s smiling. It’s the first thing I notice; she hasn’t smiled in months.

“Did you sleep well?” she asks at breakfast, humming softly to herself. I scratch the sleep out of my eyes, so I can see better.

“Kathy, is that… you?”

“Of course, sweetie. Why wouldn’t it be?”

Sweetie? The word sounds alien on her lips, and that humming, and smiling. “You… seem—”

“Different? I had a good sleep, that’s all. You should try out my new pillow. I woke feeling so… me!” She giggles like a television presenter for a children’s show. “Anyway, I’ve got to go. See you tonight. I’ll cook.” She leans in to give me a kiss. It’s something else I haven’t felt for months. Her skin on mine. She whispers into my ear, “I’ve talked to our therapist, and I want to try again… and… you don’t have to sleep in the spare room tonight.”

She pulls away. The whites of her eyes have never been so clear. Sparkling almost. She even smells different, like candy kept too long in the sun. “Love you.” Another smile, then she leaves for work.

I stand in our kitchen for five minutes, my whole body shaking, wondering what the hell happened to my wife.

“So she kissed you?”

“Yes.”

“And that’s a problem?”

“No… it’s just... not her.”

I’ve been with our therapist for the last half hour trying to make sense of the insensible, but the more I try to explain it, the more I sound like an idiot.

“Isn’t this what you wanted, John? To reconnect with your wife? Isn’t this a positive step forward?”

“I… I suppose so.”

“It sounds like Kathy’s offering an olive branch. That’s a brave move after what you’ve both been through. Are you going to accept it?”

“I… I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”

“And thinking about it now?”

“I… I don’t know.”

The therapist looks up from her notepad. “You’ve both lost a child, John. It doesn’t mean you need to lose your marriage.”

I leave before the session’s even over.

We’re so fragile, children even more so. Kathy and I shattered when Brayden died, and the pieces of us are still scattered everywhere. There might never be an us again.

“So, I thought I’d make lasagne. Remember how we always loved lasagne?”

I’m home, Kathy’s cooking, and smiling, and acting like nothing has happened. Like we didn’t just lose our son four months ago.

“Brayden loved it.” I chuck his name into the mix, to see what’ll happen. I expect her to stop cooking, stop smiling, stop humming. Maybe she might throw something, burst into tears, or call me out for the asshole I am. But she does none of those things.

“Yes, he did,” she answers.

Her humming increases.

That’s not my wife.

“Come to bed with me, John. My new pillow will help you sleep.” Her eyes twinkle. We’ve eaten the lasagne, watched TV, and it’s bedtime. She leans in, and that smell, her smell, is all over me. “I miss you.” It’s an invitation, one I’ve been waiting for, but I shake my head.

“I… I can’t. Not tonight.”

Her smile doesn’t slip. “Another time then?”

She wanders down the hall to her bedroom, our bedroom, glimpses back at me, and closes the door. Not even a slam. From the hall I hear her humming.

Back in my own bed I can’t sleep. I haven’t slept properly since Brayden died, but tonight’s worse. I toss and turn, and the hard bed creaks with me in agony. I’m too hot, too cold. I lie on my front, my side, my back. I even take one of the many sleeping pills I’ve been prescribed to take the edge off, but nothing works.

I picture Kathy. The before Kathy. The soft skin, the smile at the corners. Her gentle curves. She wanted me tonight, and like a damn fool I rejected her. What’s wrong with me?! The red glow from my alarm clock casts across the room reminding me of all the precious time ticked away.

Is there still an us?

The question rolls inside my head till I feel it’s carved inside me.

I could walk down the hall, see if the invitation’s still open. What did the therapist say? An olive branch.

Before I can help myself I’m there at her door. Our door. Opening the handle, gently, gently.

“Kath,” I whisper, so low I can barely hear myself.

The room’s bathed in her new sugary smell.

“Kath.” My voice is filled with longing. I tip-toe to her bed, listen to her soft breathing and tentatively touch her face.

Something squirms under my fingertips.

“What the?!”

I reach for the bedside light. One touch, and it softly illuminates the room.

A swarm of white things are wriggling over my wife’s face.

“Jesus! Kathy! Wake up!” Her eyes jolt open and they’re pupil-less, filled with writhing whiteness. “Holy shit! There’s something on you. In you. You… you’ve got to…”

“You came,” she says, and she smiles. “I wanted you to be asleep though. It’s easier when they’re asleep.”

I pull her arm. “We’ve got to… get you to a hospital.”

“It’s time to sleep, John.”

“You’re not making any sense. You—”

She pushes me onto the bed and straddles me. “Try my new pillow.”

A pillow’s rammed into my face. Things worm within and out of it.

I never even had time to scream.

In the morning I wake from the best sleep I’ve ever had.

“Morning darling.” I smile at my wife.

“Morning sweetheart.”

“I believe our boy was killed in a car accident.”

“Yes, he was.”

We hum together to drown out the voices of the humans screaming inside.

“We’ll add more pieces tonight, and in time we won’t hear them at all,” my wife says, as if she’s reading my mind. She probably is.

She smiles, I smile, we all smile, and our humming resumes.