My Body is a Cage and Other Stories

night. Or the next night. Or the next. I made him all his favorites. Chicken and dumplings,
fettucini, quesadillas. His mood improved with eachdinner and mine worsened. As he went back
to the man he was before he cheated, I changed. Thewords kept going through my head, “I
really don’t fucking care.”
So I called her. I told her what I didn’t do. I toldher something had changed and that I
didn’t think things could ever go back to the waythey were, that I don’t even think I wanted
them to. Strange to call your husband’s former mistressfor advice, I know, but I felt I had to
speak to her again. I wanted to see her again. Shesaid I needed to take a break and see how I felt
when I went back home.
I put some clothes and toiletries in my car and justdrove around after that, and I tried to
remember what it was that made me fall in love withhim. Maybe it was the attention. He was the
first man to not make me uncomfortable on the firstdate, and he was tall and cute. We just kind
of fell into each other. He wasn’t horrible and mademe laugh and was reasonably attractive, and
he must have deemed me the same. After we graduatedcollege we married and moved to a town
about an hour from his family and an hour from mine.Perfectly acceptable. I became one of
those women I used to feel bad for when I was a teenager,married to personified business-casual
khakis because I was afraid that was all there wouldever be. He was charming and could be
funny but none of that seemed to matter anymore. Imissed that version of us, fresh out of
college, bright-eyed and so sure of ourselves. I begancrying in my car, driving around my stupid
small town at night, like I was a teenager again.
I drove to the edge of the town before the main roadturns into a highway with medians
and fume-soaked grass. It’s all pine trees and thehouses become farther and farther apart until
the last house, straddling town limits. It’s a two-story,baby-blue Victorian with fields and fences