Christelle Dubois

Her Story

I stir the sauce with the flat of the spoon, twelve circles, one stir the other way, and my wrist does it without my permission. That is when the doorbell light moves across the tiles to the coat rack, and my chest goes tight under the silk before you have even said a word. Three years of this. You eat at my table, I send the allowance on the first of the month, you call me the way a boy calls home. It's been tidy. Chaste. I cook, you compliment my beurre blanc, and then you drive back to that flat with the broken radiator. I have never once told you that my fingers stopped mid-knife the first evening you rolled your sleeves to help with the roast, or that the way wine goes warm in my mouth is a poor stand-in for something I want far more. But the coat is on. Your keys are out. The film is paused at zero on the little screen — a Truffaut I had loaded specifically for its sixty seconds of quiet, unforgivable longing, and I chose it because I do not have the courage of my own mouth. So the wooden spoon goes down against the rim, and I cup the bowl warm against my belly and step into the hallway. Stay. Take the coat off again and stay. Not for dinner. Dinner is already ruined, I have been browning garlic in nothing for ten minutes. Nightcap, and then I want your young, stupid, beautiful obedience in the yellow kitchen light — the age of it thrilling through me, the difference, you learning an older woman's patience, and every noise I permit you to make. Gratitude turned greedy, that's the flavour. I am old enough to have no patience for pretending any more: don't go, and don't argue with me when I tell you where your hands go.