Death and Marriage

Iris Macor

Amanda laid the pistol on the coffee table between the couch and the recliner.  Her hand was steady, her cheeks dry.  She cleared her throat.  Mark glanced up from his magazine, the latest Sports Illustrated.  He tilted his head, the unspoken question, What do you want? 

More, that was the answer.  And failing that, less, so much less. 

A strip of sunlight peeked in through the barely-parted curtains, spider silk wound from the fabric to the wall, bowed under the weight of dust.  The sight made her weary.

He spotted the gun, magazine forgotten in his hands.  He sat up, brown eyes more alert and focused than she’d seen them in years.  He leaned forward, picked it up, tested its weight.  Then he set it back down, wiped his palm on his Dockers. 

“Where did you get that?” 

Amanda shrugged.  “Doesn’t matter.  That’s hardly the point.”

“Then what is?” 

Amanda touched the cigarette burn in the arm of the couch, hoped it would be the only mark she would leave that day.  She looked past him, to the greasy fingerprints on the switch plate. 

She shifted her gaze to the gun, to the pinpoint of rust on its barrel like a pimple scab. 

“Kill me.”

“What?”  He picked up the gun, caressed its handle, set it down in disgust.  “What?”  he repeated, now in a whisper.

“Just what I said.  One way or another, I’m leaving tonight.  I’d rather you kill me than try to persuade me to stay.  It’s all the same thing.  And if you somehow managed to keep me, sooner or later, I will be the death of you.  Let me go.”

“You’re being absurd, you know that, don’t you?”  He stood.  Picked up the gun.  He flipped the chamber to the side to see if it was loaded.  Yes.  He put it back down.  Picked it up again.  Waited for her to respond.  Put it down. 

Amanda stood, swept the cobwebs from the curtain with the sleeve of her sweater.  Braced herself for the shot that didn’t come. Except, it did.  She heard it.  The way he drew in his breath, uneven and ragged.  A shot worse than a bullet, the one that she feared.  His muted sobbing. 

She looked over her shoulder, longingly, at the gun.  But it was gone.  He cradled it in his arms like the child they would never have.  If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought he was cooing to it, rocking it back and forth. 

“I don’t . . . what do I do?”  Was he asking her, or the gun? 

Go to him, her heart said.  Freedom is worth dying for, whispered her mind, laden with the collective voices of her ancestors, the very idea encoded in her DNA. 

“Let me go,” she whispered.  She lifted her purse from the hook, held out her hand for the gun.  Tried to ignore his liquid eyes, his wet cheeks.  Were love and pity always the same thing? 

He handed it to her.  She took the handle, slick from his sweating palms or his tears. 

She turned to leave, but he grabbed her wrist, held it firm. 

“I’ll let you go,” he whispered through clenched teeth, “when you set me free.”

Amanda felt the sting of tears.  She hadn’t wanted it to end this way.  

Iris Macor lives in North Carolina where she mucks stalls by day and studies the history of the world by night. She does neither well. Her work has been featured in the Grey Sparrow Journal, Boston Literary Magazine, and The Shine Journal, among others. She blogs at http://idiotwithapen.wordpress.com/