By Demand from my Covenant Friends...SIP part 1

Friendly Fire

“We’re out of milk, Ben I’m going to need you to go down to Ingles and pick some up.” As she stepped out of the shower, Beth Olson shivered as her foot touched cold tile.

“Honey, did you hear me?” she called as she vigorously toweled off. There was no reply. She opened the door to her bedroom, and was momentarily jarred by the swirling, red wallpaper. For a few minutes every morning, the sun would creep into the window and ignite the harsh decor into a vibrant display of gold and red. Beth looked out into the center of the golden inferno; she looked at her husband Ben. The sunlight played off his frame, unable to penetrate the mass of muscle, bone, and beginnings of middle-age girth. The sunlight searched for a way through, not content to merely silhouette, and burned through the thin flesh of his ears. Beth had always liked his ears.

When they first started dating she thought Ben an imposing figure. Looking more akin to Heimdall than an all-American Joe, Beth didn’t like him. She hated unbridled machismo in all its forms, and Ben certainly fit the description. He had the brute strength you would expect in a football player, but none of the grace. She had a sneaking suspicion Ben had suffered some brain damage when his elephantine head got caught in the birth canal. She couldn’t prove it, of course, but she had her suspicions. She sat behind him in class and noticed how small his ears were, pitiably small. He got under her skin, as only a latent attraction can.

She was shocked when he first attempted to ask her, with all the verbal grace of a raven, on a date. She said yes, out of boredom - of course. That was twenty years ago, they had been married for fifteen, and she now found his ears endearing. Ben remained sitting on the bed looking out the window. She traced the outline of his shoulder-blades till they faded into the prominent scar on his back. Ben slowly turned around and saw his wife standing there looking at him, half exposed, half hidden behind the bathroom door. He mustered a weak smile and turned back towards the window.

“Ben, honey, I really need you to pick up some milk,” she tried again.

“Of course, dear,” Ben responded placidly.

“You don’t have to go straight there to get it,” Beth busied herself with primping, “I’m taking Jordan to school this morning; he’s going to miss the bus; again. Why don’t you go see a movie or something first. I talked to Gloria and she went to go see that new space movie with Mike, and they said they thought you of you when they saw it; Planet Battle…or something like that.”

Her only response was the whir of the blow drier.

“You haven’t been out of the house in a while; it’ll do you some good,” she tried again in an affectedly chipper manner.

“Of course, dear.”

“Well, it’s just that you have to start getting up and doing things again; you can’t spend all day sitting staring at the sun…it’s…uh, bad for your eyes.” Beth flitted around the bathroom, but her mind remained focused on that scar. She hated that scar. The white lines that snaked along his back looked like some sickly claw had grabbed hold of his body and refused to let go. Looking at it made her feel sick, and she hated herself for thinking it.

What was wrong with Ben? Maybe it was her? She looked at herself in the mirror. True, she didn’t look as good as she did when they first met. Her hips had widened and her belly was rounder than it used to be, but altogether she didn’t look bad. She sucked in her stomach and felt for the muscle which had been there in years past. It was still there, just a little more hidden. She didn’t look bad at all. That couldn’t be it, yet he hadn’t touched her in seven months. She had tried everything a woman growing up in the sexual revolution could think of, but he was never interested. His silence would overwhelm her, and she felt stifled by it.

“Ben. What happened?”

Ben’s silence shrunk, and she felt free to breathe again.

“Honey, I love you, but I can’t help you when I don’t know where you are. I hardly recognize you anymore. It’s not that we don’t talk anymore; it’s that you never talk. Not about the war, not about dinner, Hell, you never talk about anything! You used to talk passionately about how the Cubs need a new third base coach, or how the Bears will never make it into the post season because of such and such. I hate sports, Ben, but I’d give up Heaven itself to hear you talk about anything like that again.” Beth knew she couldn’t stop herself; she saw herself lurching inevitably forward. Tears began to flow from her eyes, not out of sadness, but from the sheer exertion of silencing the voices inside telling her to stop.

“Jordan wants his father back; I want you back,” she said as she moved her hand across her face to wipe the tears that were beginning to fall from her dark eyes. “Jordan asked me why you never kiss him goodnight anymore.” Her breath was coming in short staccato bursts. “He thinks he did something wrong. I told him that it wasn’t his fault, you still loved us, but you were just very sad right now. Ben did I lie to him…?”

Beth stood alone in the bedroom, Ben, who remained staring out the window, might as well have been a ghost.

Beth no longer saw her husband; she saw a procession of nights, increasing in frequency. Nights where he would placate her by lying in bed with his eyes closed for a few hours, then wandering downstairs when he thought she was asleep; nights where she would gently sob as the warmth of the empty bed cooled; the night when she found the pistol, dog tags, and kerosene lying on the coffee table.

“You’ll leave me,” said Ben. As he stood up and put on a white t-shirt, she watched the scar slither and flow over his pale skin.

Beth stopped short. That was the closest thing she had received to an answer in months, but her curiosity would not be so easily quenched.

“Honey, what happened to your back?” She was shocked to hear herself actually ask the question. She had avoided it ever since her loving fingers caressed it. As soon as her fingers touched the scar, Ben violently sat up and left the room. As he left, Beth could still see the scar as it hovered in the darkness like some kind of spectre.

“Answer me Damnit!” she wailed, shocked at her own violent insistence, “what happened to your back?!” Her voice was getting shrill, and the tears began to flow freely. She felt terrified that she might push away what little intimacy they had left.

“Ben, don’t you dare walk away from me!” she cried through her tears. “Please,” she whispered under her breath.

Ben stopped, and with a ferocity she had not seen since his football days, he plunged his fist into the door frame. The very air seemed to reverberate with the violence of the contact. He turned and looked at her; his eyes seemed like smoldering coals begging to be re-lit. Tears fell from his stubbly cheek like ash. Suddenly, Ben’s glance eased and lost its focus. His eyes rolled up into the back of his head as he collapsed on the floor.