Stages of Grace (3 page)

When I am all cried out, I go into the kitchen to see what Jon has done. The pan of rolls no longer sits on the stovetop. The pan is on the floor, and a sticky mess of rolls is everywhere. Instead of crying again, I start cleaning. I throw away all of the rolls, even the ones that had landed on the countertop and not the floor, telling myself I will never make rolls again. Once the rolls are in the trash, I take a soapy sponge and begin cleaning the icing from the walls, countertops, cabinet doors, and floor. I notice right away he took my keys, meaning he probably took my car too. Where di
d he go? When would he be back?

Given the weather and being without my car, I feel trapped and stir crazy. I gather up our laundry and a roll of quarters,
huffing it downstairs to the laundry room for our building. I lock the door behind me using Jon's keys. The machines are smaller than the machines at the Laundromat down the street and cost more, but I have little choice on foot. Taking up four of the twelve available machines, I separate our clothes into two loads of colored and two loads of lights. I take out my book, Arrows of the Queen. I brought it down with me so I could sit on a stool in the corner of the room and read. It is a book I've read before but enjoy so much I reread when I have nothing else.

Thirty minutes and four dollars in quarters later, I move all of the laundry into dryers. I am lost in my book until I hear stomping and doors slamming upstairs. It’s as the though the air is pulled from my body
, a feeling of dread settles in its place. Jon is home, and given all the door slamming, is angry that I am not there. I stand in the doorway, unsure of what to do. Leave the clothes and tell him where I am or stay with the clothes and let him stew? I hear the door slam again and heavy footsteps on the stairs. He is coming down.

I open the door and
feel a blast of cold air. "Jon?"

He is halfway down the stairs when he hears me. Jon comes down the rest of the stairs and approaches me so quickly I automatically back up in the roo
m until the wall is at my back.

"Don’t you ever leave without writing a not
e again," he hisses in my face.

I look down and nod, wondering why he can leave without telling me where he is going. The dryers’
buzz indicate they are done. Instead of offering to help me carry the loads back upstairs, Jon turns and leaves. I slowly begin unloading the laundry into our baskets and then carefully carry them up the stairs to our apartment. I am surprised to find the door locked and fumble to get Jon's keys out of my pocket. I unlock the door. Jon is sitting in the leather armchair. I almost ask him why he locked the door when he knew I was coming up with my hands full. I raise my eyes to his, and he lifts an eyebrow at me, almost willing me to ask that question.

I don’t. Instead I look back down and pull the laundry behind me to our bedroom to fold and put away. It is barely mid-afternoon on Saturday. How am I going to get through another night and day of this? As I fold laundry, I think about the first time we did laundry together. We were still living separately, and Jon had brought his laundry to my place for us to make a date of
it. We went to a Laundromat near my old apartment. Jon kept me laughing by telling me jokes the whole time and stealing sweet kisses when no one else was looking. When our laundry was done we used the long tables there to fold our clothes.

I could still remember how embarrassed I was when Jon picked up a pair of my underwear with one hand and fanned himself with the other. It was still early on in our relationship, and we had not gone all the way yet. Jon wanted to
. I did too, but I was nervous.

I snap back to reality, stiffening when I hear Jon clear his throat behind me. I am not sure what he wants and slowly
turn to face him, eyes down.

"Grace, are you keeping something from me?" Jon s
lowly makes his way over to me.

"What? No," I say, confused.

"You haven’t baked in ages and now you're doing laundry. I say someone has a guilt
y
conscienc
e
."

"I just—"

"You just what?" he screams.

"
Wa-wanted to make you happy."

"That’s just it. You haven’t thought about anything else but yourself and now suddenly you're thinking about me. You are up to
something. You cheating on me?"

"N
o, no. I swear. I would never."

"You were with another guy when I met you. How
can I trust anything you say?"

My mouth drops open, and w
ith wide eyes I look up at him.

Jon pulls me up to him and grinds his hips against mine. "You used to always be so hot for it. Now you're just a frigid bitch to me. Is that why? Are you getting it somewhere else? One of those fancy doctors you working with bending you over in the
back room?" he spits in my ear.

I'm crying now, putting my hands on his shoulders in an attempt to push
myself away from him. "No, no."

Shaking his head at me, he mumbles, "You better not be
." before turning and leaving me there, reeling.

I start shaking so bad
ly my legs collapse, and I fall to the floor beside the bed. Where did that come from, I wonder, trying to understand. It had been months since Jon had touched me, and he had never touched me like that. Did he just accuse me of cheating on him? With one of the doctors I worked with? He had taken my gesture of making something for him as an admission of guilt. I have no idea how he could even think that of me. Jon knows where I am at practically every moment of the day. It was him, not me, that would take off with no word as to where he was going or when he would be back. Sometimes, I wish he wouldn’t come back.

I disregard that thought as soon as it passes through my mind. I would always want Jo
n with me, the old Jon, the Jon I fell in love with. I just have to figure out what to do to get him back. I know he is hurting and angry because he is out of work. Maybe if I helped him find a job. I am just scared the help would offend him, but things were so much better when he had a job. When Jon was still working we had our own little morning routine. When our alarm went off, I would jump in the shower while Jon went to the kitchen to start a half pot of coffee and then climbed back into bed and sleep until I was done in the shower. After my shower I would walk, still in a towel, over to his side of the bed and kiss his cheek, my wet hair falling all around his face.

Jon would always pull me down into his arms and kiss or tickle me until I was gasping for air before getting up with a grin to take his shower. I would get dressed and pour each of us a cup of coffee. I took mine with milk and sugar, and Jon took his with just milk. Jon would shave after his shower, and I would bring him his cup of coffee and chat with him while he shaved. After our coffee, we would brush our teeth, I would throw on some make up, and we would walk out to our cars together, kissing once more before going in our opposite directions. I used to keep a box of breakfast bars in my car and would eat one on the way to work each morning. The office building Jon worked in had a cafeteria that he would get a muf
fin or bagel from each morning.

When Jon was first laid off, still actively seeking a new job and going on interviews, he kept the same morning schedule, even when he started collecting unemployment. It wasn’t until much later that he started sleeping in. Jon had not said anything to me about it and one morning,
when I asked him if he had made coffee, he snapped, telling me to make my own. I made a pot the next day. After my shower, I came over to kiss him on the cheek, and he cussed at me. Told me to “fucking leave him alone.” I wasn’t opposed to cussing. I did it myself. Guy cuts me off in traffic: asshole. I drop something on my foot: shit. There was a difference between being okay with cussing and being okay with being cussed at.

When it happened, I said nothing, letting myself stew on it all day. When I came home that evening, I told Jon how much it bothered me and to not do it again. His reaction at the time surprised me. Suddenly, I was the one actually at fault in the scenario because, if I had thought about it, by w
aking him up when he had no job. What I was truly doing was rubbing it in his face that he had nowhere to go that day while I did. I could see his point and said as much but went on to try and explain that he still should not have cursed at me. It was disrespectful. Jon would not budge his argument that what I had done was worse and that it somehow justified him. The argument was going nowhere so I dropped the subject.

I never went to wake him up again. Over the days that had passed since that argument, I also stopped drinking coffee in the morning because the smell woke him up. I stopped getting dressed in our bedroom because the noise woke him up. Doing anything I could to not accidentally wake him up, like waiting in my car while it warmed up. If the weekends were a judge, Jon didn’t wake up i
n the morning until after ten. I was fine with this if he was still trying to get another job. In the beginning when I got home from work, Jon would excitedly tell me about all of the places he had applied. When that stopped, I made the mistake of asking him one day.

Jon railed at me, ask
ing me if I thought he just laid around on his ass all day and did nothing. Did I comprehend how tight and difficult the job market currently was? I must have thought so very little of him to assume all of these horrible things of him. I had tried to explain I thought none of those things, and of course I knew the job market was tight and was only asking a question. It seemed anything I said after that was being twisted around as though I was making a cruel attack on him. I began to doubt myself, wondering if I was so awful and if he would leave me.

That thought horrified me. I loved Jon so much, and we had been through so much together. What I wanted more than anything else was to just go back to how we were when we were happy. I knew that if Jon had a job again things would be better. I just didn’t know how to convince him to look for one witho
ut seeming pushy or judgmental.

Suddenly, I have a wonderful idea. What if I begin applying to places for him? That way he'd be happy when he got an interview
and never even know to be upset if he didn’t get called back. At my office we get the daily paper. I could check the wanted ads on my lunch breaks.

Having a plan makes me feel
better, I just don’t know what to do about the rest of this weekend. I know I should put away the clothes but what after that? Should I stay in the bedroom, away from him? I end up not having to find out. As I am hanging up the last of his shirts I hear the front door shut. Peering through the cracked bedroom door down the hall to the front room, I can see my keys are gone. Jon has gone somewhere. It’s starting to annoy me that he keeps taking my car without even asking, and I am curious about where he is going or what he is doing. His comments about me cheating on him seemed so outlandish at the time. Could Jon have just been feeling guilt over something he was doing himself?

I spend the rest of the day nervously waiting for Jon to come home. I go back and forth between being concerned over him to wondering where he is. I also tidy up the best I can. If Jon came home
, he would be able to see that I had been cleaning and not just lying about. I hope that shows him how hard I am willing to work to make our home a nice place, comfortable for the two of us. I believe more than anything else that this is only temporary. I have such a perfect picture of what was once in my head that I would do anything to make it reality again. Before I go to bed I pray. I have never been overly religious. I was raised Catholic but don’t attend mass anymore. I do believe that there is something out there, some being that possibly had the power to make things better.

I never pray in front of Jon. He would want to know what I’m praying about and would most likely be angry if I told him. My prayers this evening revolve around finding Jon a new job and the hope that he will not be angry when he finds out about it. He is so touchy these days, I am nervous he would consider it a slight. At this point, anything is better th
an how we are currently living.

I go to sleep. A
t some point during the night, Jon comes home. It does not wake me this time. I am almost surprised when I see him asleep in our bed the next morning. Saturday had been a stressful day. That could account for why I had slept so soundly.

I ease out of bed and quietly walk into the front room and make myself a piece of toast and eat a yogurt. I am cleaning my plate when Jon walks out of our room. He comes behind me, pushing
himself up against me, his hands on my hips. I go still, hands still in the sink. He leans down to kiss my neck. I am too nervous to react. I don’t want him to stop. Jon turns me to face him. I stand with my arms out in front of me, dripping water onto the floor. Jon's hands are on my neck as he kisses me. I kiss him back, happy to be in his arms once again.

He makes love to me that morning, playfully pulling me back to our bedroom. It has been at least a month since he had shown any interest. That last time I had initiated it, Jon seemed almost distracted the whole time, avoiding my kisses and leaving the bed once he was finished. This time is like old times.
Jon kissing me and murmuring silly, sexy things to me. I feel as though my prayers are being answered, as though it is a sign that whatever was broken with us can be fixed. I spend most of Sunday in his arms, blissfully happy. He isn’t cold or distant. He is charming and loving.