So Jacky does what he wants, he always does, he always will, and she knows nothing. It’s easier that way, to let things ride, and Gloria realizes that this same rule may’ve been part of her parents’ marriage, that she not only inherited her mother’s long fingers and blue eyes but also her ability to keep her mouth shut too. To not ask questions.
It’s not that she doesn’t love Jacky—because she does. It’s a faded love now, gone soft and worn from going through the wash so many times, but it’s there. And what does it matter if that love isn’t what she imagined when she was a girl? The love they have is the familiar sound of Jacky clipping his fingernails over the toilet, the rumbling of his snores when he’s especially tired. The smell of the lotion he always works into his knuckles, especially during the winter. It’s the way he leaves his boxer shorts crumpled outside the shower, even though it irritates her, even though she’s asked him a million times to take the three extra steps and throw them in the hamper, because it means she has a husband, she has a man taking care of her. And besides that one time, Jacky’s never been cruel to her, he’s been nothing but loving, and she’s sure he depends on her, he loves her back. He needs her. He wouldn’t know what to do without her, that he never wants to be apart. And she feels the same.
But.
There is sometimes blood on his boxer shorts. Not a lot, but enough to notice when she’s throwing the clothes in the wash and checking for stains. It’s not around the rear end—if it were, she’d insist that Jacky go see a doctor, he could have something terribly wrong if he were bleeding from back there—but around the front, the part where the fabric splits for that ridiculous hole that always makes her laugh, because she can’t imagine a man trying to poke out through that to go to the bathroom when they could just pull down. She asked him about it once, but Jacky shrugged, he said it must be dye from the fabric, running. Cheap shit, he’d said. Buy American next time. Then we won’t have that problem.
And then, the month before, she was sitting by the open window in their bedroom, reading, and the night wind was tugging at the curtains, and the hem of her skirt was slipping against the back of her calf like watered silk. She heard Jacky coming up the stairs, his feet heavy, but she only looked up from the words when he was standing in front of her, his hands reaching out for her like a child. There was blood grimed into his knuckles, dried blood, but some of it was fresh, and she shrieked, concerned that he’d hurt himself, but when she took him into their bathroom and made him sit on the closed toilet lid and wiped him down with a damp washcloth she saw that he wasn’t hurt, not at all, that the blood couldn’t be his. Almost got away, Jacky whispered, nearly hysterical, and there was something in his eyes that frightened her, that made her want to take her car keys and drive as far as she could, away from this man. But instead she washed him, carefully, then made him lie down in their bed. And even though he said he wasn’t at all tired he immediately fell asleep, and she took his bloody clothes—and the washcloth, don’t forget that!—down to the laundry room and ran them through a cold cycle, dumping in an overflowing capful of bleach during the rinse. She didn’t sleep with Jacky that night but went to the guest room, slept on top of the blankets fully dressed, facing the door, her hands tucked carefully under her cheek. She thought that when Jacky woke up she’d ask him about the blood and what he’d said and all the traveling he did, even though he didn’t need to, and she’d make him be honest, finally get the truth out of him. But when she woke up Jacky was in the shower, singing jubilantly, and before he left for work he put his hand on the back of her neck and kissed her, the way he used to, and she saw that the blood had come right out of the clothes, like it had never been there, no problemo, so what was the point in bringing it up at all?
*
But there is also the garage, the one he’s converted to his party room. The boom-boom room. He’s said he doesn’t want anyone in there when he’s not home, that it’s his space, his privacy, that she should respect it. I don’t go rifling through your drawers, he says, and this makes sense, although she doesn’t have a padlock on her dresser like he has on the door going from the house into the garage. There’s only one key to that lock, and she doesn’t know where he keeps it. There are times during the day, when she’s vacuuming or dusting or doing nothing at all, and she’ll go to that door, lift the heavy lock, hold it in her hands, and test the cold weight of it against her palm. She tugs on it to see if it’ll pop open, but it never does. Why would it? Jacky is always careful, he always locks it up tight, never leaves the house or goes to bed without checking it.
But even the most thorough person can have a slip-up.