October 2024
The Tub
“I don’t want to be disturbed,” she yelled through the locked door. “That means you are a single father for the next forty-five minutes.”
Her husband may have answered; she didn’t care. She turned the water on to a roar and as soon as it rose, she sunk her ears beneath it.
Salt, copious salt. Poured out the same way she did when boiling pasta. She imagined herself straight and starchy as a noodle, finally coiling and relaxing, slinking to the bottom of the pot.
The tub was deep, the tub was wide. She could be totally in it, knees bent and beneath the surface, arms in, only her nose above the blue horizon and even then, she could hold her breath. There, her only moments of peace. There, the only silence she would ever get in this house of where-did-I-leave-my-Switch and how-are-we-out-of-ketchup and who-took-my-brush.
She breathed in and went all the way below. Not pasta, but a potato. Softening, but round. Never a noodle. Fuck it; a potato needs oil. Emerging, she reached for the pump bottle of green seaweed oil made to float in a fat layer on the surface and then glove against her skin, coating her all over, sealing in the heat and the salt and making her delicious to herself.
Maybe I can get straight into bed still warm. Soft. Fragrant. It was a dream, but why not dream? The bath smelled expensive; the room was quiet.
Quiet is no bulwark against the coming of the noise; this she knew. She reached for her Bluetooth speaker and turned it on. It connected to her phone and she played a cello album that she loved. Looping and lulling. She laid her head back and exhaustion took her conscious mind like a subway pickpocket takes a wallet.
How many gallons in the big oval tub? Fifty, maybe sixty. How many degrees when it was fresh from the tap and turning her red? A hundred and three, maybe four. How many hours for it all to have gone cold? The house was silent. How many hours and the kids were in bed? The house was too silent. How many hours could her husband have gone without asking her where to find something he could absolutely find on his own? Surely not so many. The tub was cold and the house was silent as the grave.
It was panic, no more than that. She was graceful, she was careful. She could catch puke in her bare hands before it touched the floor mats in the car. But panic told her to get up fast, and panic forgot that the surface of the water was dotted with floating slicks of green oil. Her right hand pushed against the wall, and that was steady. Her left hand balanced on the edge of the tub and just at the crucial leverage point, it slipped out from under her.
The wrist was the first to go, crushed like an aluminum can. The elbow was a bonus, bashed too hard to resist. So much calcium had gone into those kids. So much skeleton given away. The hip took all her weight on impact, and that pain was so bright and blackening she thought I’m going to pass out and drown drown drown drown so that when she slipped two discs in the final fall, she didn’t even know it.
She did pass out.
Who knows how much time passes in the deep reaches between lonely neurons? They fire in the dark and never see one another: ships lost at sea. By accident two may find each other, but that doesn’t mean they are saved.
The sirens were far away, but they woke her. Her face wedged between her shoulder and the tile wall. The neck ache was a mouthy soprano wail, noticeable above all the singing of her broken bones. Unwinding herself, she began to cry.
No longer caring what time it was. Wake them. Wake everyone. Wretched wreckage where once was the body that made you. “Babe? Baby? Baby, please come here. I’m hurt.”
But anybody can tell the difference between the quiet of everyone-is-asleep and everyone-is-gone.
What could have happened that he’d leave with all the kids? Leave me. Left me. Left me here. Oh god.
No efforts could raise her. The reach for the plug was agony, left her screaming between clenched teeth.
A pickle, floating in brine. Bloating, changing. Soaking it all up.
Too salty to drink, despite her trying. Maybe it was curing her insides. The softest parts suddenly softer. Did her hips always touch the edges? She thought not. She knew her thighs never had, but there they were, pressed to the walls.
Water evaporated. Or was she simply pulling it all inside her? Tongue swollen thick and the rest of her, too. Her broken elbow she pulled up on top of her chest just in time. The next spate of hours split open like a spud boiled for potato salad and found her shoulders crammed edge to edge.
Was she always an oval? She thought so. Snugly fit to the whole tub, as if it were the mould into which she’d been poured. Comfy now. Supported, even. Cold water made warm again with the pumping of her heart. Sounds outside, terrible sounds coming and going at an irregular interval. The Bluetooth’s batteries died and the silence set in further. No more sirens. No more neighbors. Sunrise and sunset and nothing at all to disturb her peace.
“But won’t I split open? Won’t I bust?”
The swelling in her tongue made her impossible to understand, but it didn’t matter. No other ear to hear.
So much collagen given to those kids. Stretch marks like lightning in the summer sky. She could give and give, until she was stretched so thin. She could contain it all: baby and bathwater alike.
* * *
Ⓒ Meg Elison
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