Good Boy

He threw a plate at the wall and then looked at me like I’d done it. I cleaned it up. That’s not a metaphor. I got the broom, I swept the pieces into the dustpan, I threw them away and when I came back, he was on the couch watching television like the plate had never existed. Maybe it hadn’t. Maybe I’m the only one keeping count.

I’ve been keeping count for three years. The number doesn’t mean anything anymore. You’d think it would start to mean something, but it just sits there. A number. Like a birthday no one remembers.

*

His name was the first thing I loved about him. Then his laugh. Then the way he’d get an idea and chase it through a room, talking fast, arms going, his whole body convinced. He was something to watch. I watched him constantly. I thought that was devotion. I didn’t know yet that watching and waiting are the same motion.

The anger came later or maybe it was always there and I was just standing in the right light not to see it. He never hit me with his hands. He hit me with the air before his hands, the held breath, the way a room changes when he walks into it already decided.

I learned to read the room before he got there. I moved things. I adjusted. I became very good at this.

*

There’s a version of me that left two years ago. I think about that person sometimes. A place with a window that faces east, coffee drunk while it’s still hot. No checking the door twice before sleep. No sleeping with one ear open like a dog.

I don’t hate that version of me. That surprised me, finding that out. I just can’t figure out how they got out and I didn’t, and some nights that question is the only thing in the room.

*

Tonight he fell asleep on the couch with his head tipped back and his mouth open and he looked so ordinary I wanted to cry. The kind of crying that’s just pressure looking for a way out.

I turned the television off. I put a blanket over him. He didn’t wake up.

I stood there in the dark and I thought about the door. I thought about the window. I thought about the version of me drinking coffee somewhere east-facing and warm, and then I went to bed.

In the morning I’ll make breakfast. He’ll eat it or he won’t. Either way I’ll wash the pan.

I’m so tired of being a good boy.