“When He Comes Home” by Clarie Gor

Agatha finally snaps and breaks a bottle over her husband’s head. As she watches him react to the impact—surprise at first, his mouth rounded into an O; then pain, his forehead tightening, his mouth slacking, she is disappointed at how anticlimactic it feels. Every day, for the twenty years, six months and three days that they’ve been married, he comes home, gives her a sloppy kiss on the cheek and wanders off into the sitting room expecting that she’ll be at his heels with a drink. He sits on the couch, sipping his whiskey, talking on the phone, at first to his male friends and as he gets more drunk, to a mistress or two. He talks about the same things: the big-paying clients, whichever one of his many adult sons has impregnated a girl he doesn’t approve of, and eventually—when he thinks Agatha is engrossed in making dinner—a weekend rendezvous with one of his mistresses. The last time she caught him in the middle of a conversation with a mistress, he put her on hold, grabbed Agatha’s waist, pulled her to him and kissed her abdomen. After the fourth kiss, Agatha pulled away and went back to the kitchen. Truth be told, his affairs barely hurt her anymore though every once in a while she runs into one of those women, in church or at the grocery store, and gets this sudden urge to stab something. Instead, she hugs them and makes small talk, asking about their husbands and kids, wishing them a great week ahead. Today, Agatha finds his drink untouched when she walks into the sitting room to bring him dinner. He is talking on the phone as usual but she can tell it is with someone he wants to impress. His eyes are closed and he keeps nodding vigorously, an animated smile on his lips. Agatha feels that urge to stab something pool inside her intestines, then slowly rise to her throat and in that moment she knows she could either kill him and jeopardise everything she’s worked to secure in this marriage or she could startle him, make him rethink the balance of things. So she breaks the bottle over his head and stands for a minute, watching the whiskey drench his shirt. She then goes back to the kitchen and makes a plate for herself.