He closed his eyes wearily. Nothing had changed. Peggy had only changed her tactics. The rage he’d seen in her eyes a few days ago was still there, simmering just beneath the surface. She’d only banked the fire a little to put him off his guard, and maybe the strain of not having sex for more than a month had gotten to her too. He was so tired. He slept but when he woke, he did not feel rested.
********
He couldn’t let it just lay there in his mind. He wasn’t a man who liked confrontations but he always spoke his mind.
“Are you going shopping at the mall today?” Kyle asked his wife. There was some small sarcasm in his voice. Peggy had been about to open the front door. It was 7:30 and she’d just make it to work on time if the Friday morning traffic wasn’t too heavy.
“Well…no, I hadn’t planned on it,” she replied. “Why? Is there something you need?” She was looking at Kyle quizzically. He took a bite of the toaster pastry and swallowed it before replying.
“No…I was just thinking about something,” Kyle said. “The last time you told me you wouldn’t do something because it would be the wrong thing to do, you had a fender-bender in the Prairie View Mall parking lot.”
Peggy’s brow furrowed for a bit, then her jaw tightened. Her lips thinned to a stiff line. A hot anger blazed from her eyes as she realized what he was referring to. She was quiet for a long moment. She let out a long breath of air. Kyle could see in her eyes an admission all her work over the past few days had been lost.
“Payback is a bitch, Kyle Aaron Whitley,” she said quietly. The calm with which she delivered the pronouncement made her hostility all the more palpable.
“I will get you back for having that slut give you a blowjob. Mark my words, hubby dear, I will have some satisfaction before I get this behind me.”
With that, Peggy opened the door and slid through the doorway in a quick move. She shut the door firmly behind her.
Kyle stood silent, watching the door to see if his wife would come back to deliver more warnings. He was filled with an intense feeling of foreboding. Peggy would not let this go. She wouldn’t forgive; she wouldn’t agree to a separation–she didn’t like the two they’d already had–so they could get a breathing space. She’d already refused counseling and she was intent on getting revenge for what she obviously thought of as his unfaithfulness. He didn’t know what he could do to encourage her to forgive and let this be. He just didn’t know.
Things got better, albeit very slowly. There wasn’t much sex, and there was no love making, but Kyle and Peggy found ways to be more civil to each other. They couldn’t completely disguise the tension between them though. Three-year-old Todd began wetting the bed again and both adults attributed it to the stress Todd could dimly recognize, but certainly couldn’t understand, between his parents.
Kyle and Peggy found ways to cooperate and appear cheerful in front of their children. They kept their arguments quieter and behind closed doors. The number of Todd’s “accidents” dwindled, but did not disappear. Nor did the dispute over the Valentine’s Day mistake that Peggy steadfastly referred to as Kyle’s infidelity.