It wasn’t a lipstick smudge or any lingering feminine aroma
that alerted Marcy to her husband’s infidelity. It wasn’t a folded napkin
bearing a phone number, but rather a folded hand towel. When she got home that
day, she went through the usual ballet of dropping her keys and bag onto the
ancient and unused radiator, shedding and draping the many layers of the day’s
fabrics, opening and closing doors, and finally, shuffling into the bathroom to
retrieve the worn and dowdy but comfortable post-work ensemble. And there,
staring and unblinking like a rodent caught in the beam of a flashlight, sat the
familiar lilac coloured towel in an all too unfamiliar and pristine position on
the edge of the tub.
Dan had never used, much less folded, a dainty hand towel in
the entire ten years Marcy had known him, preferring to dry his freshly shaven
face with the bottom section of his ratty green robe. How the towel moved from
hanging undignified and crooked on a hook above the rubbish bin to its now more
regal and prominent perch on the tub could only have been done by a delicate
hand.
Marcy sat on the toilet and pondered the towel and it, in
turn, seemed to stare back more brazenly. What bothered Marcy the most wasn’t
that a woman, whom she pictured as bird like with tiny bones in her hands, had
lain, screeching or cooing under both her linen and husband. No, what made her suddenly
grab the towel, rip it half, and hurl the uneven pieces onto the floor was
that the guest was clearly making a statement about Marcy’s housekeeping.
Marcy picked up the now inanimate pieces of cloth and put
them in the bin. Then in a frenzy she scarcely remembered later, she organized
every object on every surface of the flat. The decorative bottles of soap from
London were spaced evenly apart with labels facing outward and in order by
colour: pink, yellow, green, blue, and violet. She painstakingly
folded the stubborn bed sheets, and the spices in the kitchen were arranged
alphabetically. Books were stood up on shelves by size and each picture was
dusted and straightened. She stood for a moment admiring her work and thinking
to herself that the flat shimmered like a photo.
She then went to the fruit bowls in the kitchen. She put an
apple in the banana bowl and an orange in the garlic dish. The lone small plate
was stuck in the middle of the set of dinner plates. Paprika was moved next to
the allspice and the box of tea was switched with flour. The print of Matisse’s Still Life with Geraniums was tilted so
that the geraniums seemed to be whispering a secret to their potted cousin on
the floor. In the bathroom, the lavender and jasmine soaps were made to look as
though they had turned their backs on visitors and the bath towels had new partners.
Dan came home at 6:00 as usual that evening. Not only did he
not notice the calculated disarray of the flat, but he didn’t seem to notice any
tension resulting from Marcy’s busy afternoon. It was Meatless Monday, so Marcy
had prepared a vegetarian chili and cornbread, which was one of the
rotations and one she knew wasn’t a favourite. As they sipped lemon water—alcohol
was banned alongside meat on this day—and watched the news, they murmured about
their days in that distracted way only couples can.
Marcy said casually, “I dropped a
bottle of foundation in the sink this morning and it shattered everywhere. I
ruined the hand towel cleaning it up. What a disaster for a Monday morning!”
“Bad luck. Good thing it wasn’t the floor, eh?” Dan
replied and went back to watching the weekend sports results.
The next day when Marcy came home, she didn’t stop to take off
her coat or shoes but went straight to inspect the kitchen. Everything was in
the same place in all the rooms. She sat heavily on the sofa, took a brief, but
deep breath and considered the possibility that she had finally lost her mind.
Dan came home at his usual time and they celebrated the passing of Meatless
Monday with tacos and beer. As Marcy wandered the flat while brushing her
teeth, as was her habit, she noticed the detritus of Dan’s day sitting cosily next
to her own on the radiator: keys, wallet, phone, coins. She paused and debated
the ramifications of a quick rummage and decided in the end that Tweety would show herself, if she
did in fact exist.
Marcy didn’t have to wait long. On Thursday, her longest day
of the week, she didn’t bother with a thorough search of the flat and just
dropped her bags and clothes on the bed and went to the bathroom. The first
thing she saw were the prim and pretty bottles lined up, touching one another
and all the labels facing outward. She ran out of the room into the kitchen.
The paprika was back snug next to peppercorns and the rogue orange was reunited
with its pithy brothers.
Marcy sat again on the sofa, coat and shoes still on, her
bags in a heap beside her. She first considered that Dan had tidied, maybe in a
fit of boredom as he waited for his lunchtime cheese toasties to cook. But she knew that
if alone, cleaning or tidying would be the last thing that would come to his
mind. She then wondered what Dan was doing while his avian mistress flitted
about. She also wondered why she felt suddenly elated.
When she finally did confront him, calmly over bowls of steaming curry, he showed relief more
than anything. They marvelled together that it was the direction they were going all along. During the rather sterile conversation about what was to be done,
he paused to ask, “How did you know?”
She smiled. “Oh, a little birdie told me.”
