Ned entered the house after midnight and walked cautiously into the bedroom. The light was off and, to his surprise, Edith had returned from her mother’s and was in bed. She was covered head to toe with a cotton sheet and looked like a body in a morgue. He slowly cowered at the head of the bed and could hear her softly breathing. He could see the shape of her head in the moonlight.
‘Eddie,’ he whispered. ‘Hey, Edith?’ He spoke matter-of-factly, like siblings do to each other in the dead of night.
She began panting. She was terrified. He could see her breaths gently lifting the sheet.
‘I don’t… want…’ she said, panting, ‘to talk...’
‘Come on, I ain’t gonna hurt ya,’ he said. ‘It was an accident.’ He rested a knee on the floor and leaned in. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘give me a look.’ He slowly peeled the bed sheet away from her face. Her wound was weeping and the sheet was wet and sticky like a bandage. ‘Chr—t,’ he said. Her cheek was swollen and an eye had closed. ‘Did you go to the hospital?’
She slowly shook her head, no. She clasped the sheet and pulled it in under her chin.
‘Je—s,’ he said. ‘It just happened. Why did you wind me up like that? You know what I’m like.’
There was a long pause. Her panting slowed and her working eye looked at him. She stared a long time.
‘You weren’t like this before,’ she said.
He waited. She was right, and the comment seemed to stick in his head.
‘Come on,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll tell you a story. Remember when we started dating? Remember we took the boat out and went fishing? We beached on that island and laid on the sand in the sun. Remember the grains so white and dry they felt good between your toes?’
Edith sniffed. She waited then slowly nodded. ‘Just keep away from me for now, OK? Things will be all right in the end.’
A pretty strong sense of guilt began to overwhelm him. ‘Chr—t, I know I’m bad…’ he said. He fell silent as he heard himself tell the truth. ‘I’m a little bit f—ked up, you know? You gotta forgive me, Eddie.’
She looked away.
‘Come on,’ he said, ‘say you forgive me and I’ll try to shake it. You know when I was young I had it rough. I’ll come good and find work. We’ll claw our way out. I’ll buy you something – flowers maybe.’
She refused to look at him.
‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to speak. Just nod.’
Ned waited, watching carefully for her response. She held her breath a long time then started to pant. He sat on the floor and looked at the wall. Her panting grew louder and he turned around. She was almost hyperventilating, opening and closing her mouth like a goldfish. He waited for an answer, but she just kept on panting. He couldn’t tell if she was nodding ‘I forgive you’ or if her jaw was simply moving up and down with her gasps.