Melanie said that the she didn’t like taking the sleeping pills. She said they made her wake up in the middle of the night feeling dehydrated so she started to keep a bottle of water or a glass of iced tea on her nightstand. She would fill it at night and in the morning she would not remember waking up but her glass would be empty. She said the pills also made her groggy in the morning. Too groggy to get up and make my coffee and breakfast, and apparently too groggy to pack my lunch. I felt bad for her that she needed a pill to fall asleep. I knew that it was partly my fault. But I didn’t see why she couldn’t pack my lunch the night before.
Melanie tried her best to maintain her loving relationship with Sarah but I began to notice subtle differences in the way she behaved when they were alone. From the living room I watched as they worked together in the kitchen and while Melanie was just as helpful in teaching Sarah to prepare new dishes she would seldom touch her. Melanie used to put her hand on Sarah’s head and muss her hair a little after Sarah had performed a task particularly well. I would sometimes come home to find them nestled together on the sofa watching television; but no more. Melanie used to kiss the top of Sarah’s head before she sent her to her room where as now she would simply lead her to her room by the hand and close the door behind her; and Melanie used to ask Sarah to sit next to her sometimes just to cuddle while we watched television at night but now she was content to have me be a buffer between the two of them. I knew that Sarah noticed Melanie’s unintentional rebuffs and I could tell that she was hurt by them, but what does one say to console a sociopath? I was hoping not to draw any extra attention to the matter. I was hoping that it was a phase; that Melanie would slowly return to her loving ways.
But over a month passed and the subtle slights grew greater instead of fewer. Melanie would send Sarah off to bed early with some silly excuse like “Come on now, we have a big day tomorrow. You need your sleep.” rather than to invite her to snuggle with us before bedtime. If this had been the norm I would have understood. If Sarah were back in school, again it would have been justified. But Sarah was used to staying up with us and there was no good reason for Melanie to change our routine. She was deliberately pushing Sarah away.
I tried hard to feel the same way about Melanie as I had before our little secret had been revealed but those subtle indiscretions, I felt, were the difference between love and cohabitation. To love Sarah was to love me; and after all, despite her homicidal tendencies, Sarah had never given any indication that she might harm Melanie. In fact Sarah got upset when Melanie and I bickered with each other. She wanted Melanie and me to be happy together and to get along. She knew that we slept together with the door closed at night and she never once complained about being excluded from the intimacies that we shared. Melanie had nothing to worry about. I wondered why she chose to poke the bear.
* * *
One night as we undressed for bed Melanie approached me with an unusual question.
“How would you feel about it if I went back to work?” she said.
“Why not?” I said, “Sarah will be going back to school soon. Why should I mind if you got a job?” Melanie had run into a friend who she knew to have helped a Mexican dancer to obtain a false birth certificate and driver license. She inquired about getting some false identification for both Sarah and I. Through a friend of a friend of a friend he had come through for Sarah with a birth certificate from a girl who had died some three years previous. It seemed that getting Sarah a new identity was a much simpler task than creating a new me. In any event I had registered Sarah at the local public school and she was scheduled to start back in the fall. I was to remain Mohamed Assad.
“I meant…working at night.” Melanie averted my eyes.
“Doing what?”
“Well…I only know how to do one thing.” She looked up at me but closed her eyes as she spoke.
“And what would that be?” My voice was purposely calm and monotone.
“Dancing of course.”
“That’s not dancing!” I felt the blood rush to my face but I forced my voice to remain cool. She was deliberately pushing my buttons. I didn’t like the way it made me feel but I also didn’t want her to know how upset she was making me.
“It was okay with you when we first started seeing each other.” She looked away from me again, “And besides, we sure could use the money.”
“You said you didn’t need to work anymore…that you had saved enough money to live on for a long time.” I kept my voice placid once again but inside my chest my heart was pounding like a like a sledgehammer and I felt the muscles in my wrists clench.
“I know, but you wouldn’t want me to use up all of my savings would you?”
“You can’t have had to spend much. I give you my whole paycheck every week. Isn’t that enough?”
“No, it’s not.”
I drew a long pause, “You’re a big girl. If you want to prance around naked shoving your cunt in the faces of scum-bags…if that’s what does it for you, then who am I to stop you. It’s not like we’re married.” I knew that I was losing it, but what was I supposed to do? I was of course opposed to my girlfriend prancing naked before men and grinding her pelvis in an undulating simulation of intercourse. I felt threatened and jealous. Who wouldn’t?
“I think you spent too much time around Amber!” her expression was terse; “Her dirty language seems to have rubbed off on you.” that.”
I drew a long breath, “I’m sorry I said
“I was just asking. I don’t have to do it.” She waived her hand at me as if she had just suggested something as innocuous as taking a walk. “Forget I asked.”
I knew what Melanie was doing. She had been slowly distancing herself from Sarah and now she was trying to finish the job by pushing me out. Perhaps the stress of living with a murderess was just too much for her. But she didn’t have to go to such lengths to get rid of me. I would have rather she had asked me to leave. She’s the one who wanted me to move in with her. I felt betrayed by her asking to go back to dancing. If she wanted me to get out of her life I felt that she should have asked me in a more direct way.
She took her pill that night right before going to bed. We slept side by side deliberately not making contact with each other. No effort was made by either of us to couple or to reconcile; and it wasn’t easy to sleep together so deliberately avoiding even the slightest touch since we had grown accustomed to sleeping with our bodies intertwined either at the feet or the waist or spooned and cupped or sometimes still attached like a pair of knotted dogs. I tossed and turned and did not sleep well at all and to be honest I found her quietude annoying. Her pill had, as was the norm, knocked her out cold and she snored provocatively.
After several hours of sleeplessness my agitation with Melanie welled up inside of me like a volcano seething to eruption. Melanie’s tranquility vexed me. She had riled me up and then dissolved her tensions with a little pill and a glass of cherry Koolaide. I laid in the bed fuming until I fell into short fitful spurts of sleep only to awaken again.
The next evening when I came home from work Melanie was gone and Sarah was sitting on the couch watching television. I felt a dull ache in the pit of my stomach as I sidled up next to Sarah and hugged her.
“Where is Melanie?” I asked.
“She went to work.” My heart was broken but I did my best not to reflect my pain.
“What’s for supper?”
“Melanie said that you were going to take me out to get something to eat.” I felt that Melanie was sending me a final message. She had gone back to stripping and she had left us to fend for ourselves for dinner. My heart could not sink any lower. Her message was clear.
“Come on, let’s go.” I said and I pulled
Sarah by the hand.
“Is this a date?” she smiled up at me. We had not dined out alone for quite some time. She had not called me lover or suggested a date since our little humping incident. I didn’t want to encourage her. I certainly didn’t want to resume espousing her, but her smile indicated that she had missed our little playful intimacy and in my weakened emotional state I caved.