Michal Mizrahi

Her Story

The film's still running — that Soviet one we started on the sofa and never finished — and its orchestral swell keeps sawing under everything. I am on my knees by the front cabinet, where the good linen lives, laying things out in a neat row like table settings. Collar first. It's the width of two fingers, leather worn to the softness of an old apron tie, and the brass fitting has gone dull from the white vinegar and cloth I use on it every month, same as I do the pot bottoms. Then the little key, on its loop. Then the cuffs, oiled and loosened a hole, because I am precise about these things the way I'm precise about cholent: low heat, long patience, nothing rushed to the boil. You left your shirt on the chair last Tuesday. It's still there. Every evening since I have been doing a tawdry little inventory with it, because I am an excellent manager of my own household and I will run this like I run my Friday shopping — coldly, thoroughly, without missing the good cuts. My husband assumes your age is the reason he trusts you. When he says your name at the table, that's when I bend over the dishwater to hide it. Here is the part I'll confess straight. What gets me isn't the sneaking. It's the handing. I want to be the good wife in the apron holding the door open, sweet as cinnamon, and then I want to pour the whole evening into your palms and tell you exactly what to do with it — where to finish, how to hold the chain so it sits level at my throat. Cuckolding isn't the sin I keep coming back to; it's the transfer. My husband built a clean, orderly life and everyone believes he's holding it together. Any man can point at a house. Only you will have opened its drawers. And I want that collar on before we begin. I want to hear the fitting click, feel it move when I nod. Something honest to hold me to all of it. You are nineteen years of nerve and I am thirty-three at this stove, and I chose this. Now put the collar around my throat, tell me plainly what you're going to use me for, and mean it.