The Dial

I built it because I loved him. I need you to understand that first. Everything that came after the three days, the kitchen, what he did with the hammer. None of it changes what I was trying to do when I started. I was trying to help. I was up all night trying to help.

He'd been bad for two weeks. The kind of bad that lives inside a person and radiates outward the way heat comes off asphalt. He was eating standing up. He'd go quiet in the middle of sentences like the words ran out and he couldn't be bothered to find more. I watched him and I thought: I have to do something. I have always thought this. It has never once been the right thought.

*

The device was simple. A headset, a dial, a remote I could hold in my pocket. The idea was simple too, the way all bad ideas are simple: if I could just get him to feel something different, even for a little while, maybe the different feeling would stick. Maybe he'd remember what it was like on the other side of it and want to go back.

I put it on him while he was still half asleep. He didn't fight it at first. He just looked at me with his eyes not quite focused and said my name like a question. I turned the dial up and watched his face change.

It worked. That's the part I can't get past even now. It worked exactly the way I designed it. He smiled. He got up and made coffee and hummed something under his breath. He did the dishes without being asked. He was happy. I sat at the kitchen table and watched him be happy. I felt the worst I have ever felt in my life.

*

By the second day I could see what was underneath it. You learn to read a face when you've been reading the same one for years. It was happiness laid over something that was still there, still moving, pressing up against the underside of his expression like a hand pressed against glass. Every time he smiled the pressure got worse. I could see it. I don't think he could.

I kept turning the dial up. Every time his eyes went flat or his jaw tightened I'd reach into my pocket and give him more. He'd smooth out again, and I told myself I was helping. I told myself this all day. I told myself this while he ironed my shirts and cleaned things that didn't need cleaning. I told myself this while he thanked me for things I hadn't done. He thanked me. He never thanks me for anything.

That night I lay next to him in the dark and listened to him breathe and thought: I have made him into something. I have made him into what I needed him to be. I didn't take the helmet off.

*

The third morning I heard him in the kitchen before I was fully awake. A drawer opening. Something heavy lifted out of it. Then a sound I felt before I understood it. Rhythmic, deliberate, and getting faster.

When I got to the doorway, he was on his knees on the kitchen floor. The helmet was in pieces around him and he was still holding the hammer. His hands were shaking from pressure that had been building for three days with nowhere to go.

He looked up at me.

I have been looked at a lot of ways in this relationship. I have a whole catalog. But I didn't have a name for this one. I know anger. Anger is almost comfortable by now. This had been under the anger the whole time. Something the helmet had pushed down so hard it came back up changed.

He stood up. He was still shaking. He crossed the kitchen and I didn't move. He stopped in front of me and for a long time neither of us said anything.

Then he put the hammer down on the counter very carefully, like he was making a decision about it. He walked past me, got his coat, and left.

*

He came back that night. He always comes back. I've stopped trying to figure out if that's the good news or the bad news.

I swept up the pieces of the helmet and put them in the trash. He watched me do it from the doorway and didn't say anything. I made dinner. We ate. The television was on.

I keep thinking about the dial. How easy it was to use. How natural it felt to reach into my pocket every time he seemed like too much of himself. I built it because I loved him and I used it because I was afraid of him. I don't know yet which one of those is worse.

The pieces are in the trash. I know that. I'm the one who put them there.

But I remember how it worked.