“We are, Art. It’s both of us. We’re doing this together.” Art looked at the floor, so I lifted his chin and gave him a soft, entreating smile. “I am being careful. I’m looking after us, don’t worry.”
Art took a deep breath and ran his hands over his scalp. I cast my lure. “Why don’t you give it to her, if you’re worried about me getting too close?”
A half-truth. A pacifier and a spotlight, all at once. If he did this, he’d see her happy face. His own happy face. I wanted him to see her as I did. He picked up the box and Nut immediately pushed her face into it, her nose twitching as she inspected it from all angles. She batted at it gently with a child-like hand, and turned her face up questioningly at Art.
“OK. I’ll do it.”
He lay his hand on her back and with cruel force, pushed her down into a seated position. He chuckled.
“I suppose it’s only fair that I give her it really. She gave me a present too.”
Art grimaced widely, his lips rolling back to reveal something shining like a new pearl. Past his canines, quite eye-catching – a new, slightly too small, porcelain white tooth.
I waited for Art to fall asleep on the sofa before suggesting that we head upstairs. Groggily, he succumbed, and dragged himself off to bed on heavy feet. As he headed up the stairs I called up to him that I’d turn all the downstairs lights off, and then follow him up. He might not have even heard me.
I turned off the TV, lamps, and fairy lights, and headed into the kitchen. Nut was standing by the dining table, pressing her face into the table top, licking up fake turkey slivers, the bloody smears of cranberry sauce. I stroked her temples, already frightened. My breath came out in fragments.
Wrapping my arms around her middle I tried to heave her frame on top of the table, but she was too long and too heavy, her skin too slippery. Every time I pulled she stretched out further like an accordion.
So instead, I cut a slice from the grey lump meant to look like a turkey leg, and wafted it in front of her face. She immediately went cross-eyed as she focused on it flapping in front of her. I pulled it from her slowly, coaxing her into the centre of the table. Using one of the dining chairs for leverage, she heaved her body onto the table, the old legs creaking beneath her. She settled down onto her haunches and I fed her the leg, which she chewed slowly before swallowing with a loud gulp.
I took a deep breath and stroked her cheeks with the heels of my hands. After a few moments, I pulled back the skin of her fleshy muzzle to expose her gums, moving slowly and gently so I didn’t frighten her.
It only took me a second to find it, vast and black and horribly obvious. A gaping hole between her back molars. The gum stitched together neatly, and not quite yet healed.
17
I must have scrubbed every surface that could be scrubbed. The vacuum lay exhausted and steaming in the corner, its inner brush wrapped entirely in Nut’s cast-off fur. Flip the vacuum over and you’d be excused for thinking that a mangy rat had died inside.
It was almost a year to the day since we’d last had people around to visit, and, again, it was entirely Art’s idea. It had been in the back of my mind as something I didn’t really need to worry about, almost like it’d been a dream I’d had. I was sure he’d forget or change his mind, but he’d actually perked up a little over the Christmas break. He had colour in his cheeks again, and even sometimes touched me like he used to. A finger on the neck, a hand on my waist. But these gestures were still intermittent. After Christmas Day, Art retreated to his study again, leaving me to down the leftover mulled wine and bin the increasingly stale pastries. Evenings were spent watching the TV with one hand holding my heart in, and the other spinning the eternity ring with my thumb.
I hadn’t mentioned the tooth. I spent a little time massaging Nut’s cheeks to ease any pain, and crushed paracetamol into her bowl each night. I coaxed her onto the sofa and held her body in my arms, holding it together in one vital piece. She would fall asleep with her head on my breast, cooing softly, and when she awoke she’d peer up at me with such vulnerability that it’d make my ribs open like wings, my heart exposed to the air in its most raw form.
That face.
I looked, but didn’t look. I scooped as much of her up in my arms as I could to know her “wholeness”, but she just reminded me of my weakness. When I stroked the soft swelling of her jaw, my stomach pitched, and my tongue rolled back to taste my own back tooth – sharp with bitterness, the cold tang of iron.
Though I needed to hold her, retell myself that I hadn’t failed her, that she was still complete, I couldn’t look at her without curling into the most fortified part of myself. She had the power to wind me with a single look, and when my turning away made her upset, she’d push against my thighs and clasp my ankles for love.
Failure.
Art emerged the evening before New Year’s Eve to tell me that Adam and Margo would be here at 7pm the following night. At first I didn’t know what he was talking about, and I let him ramble on about what they might like to eat without really listening. When I realised that he was serious, I pretended that I’d forgotten and
