Meredith

How did I ever find a wife like Meredith? Each time I see her she stuns me. Her skin is fair and even, sharply framed by straight, black hair. Her face is ageless, like a silent movie star. She doesn’t even own any makeup. I love everything about her. Her smile, her laugh, her deep, dark eyes. I even love her when she presses her cold feet against my legs in our bed. Our bed. How did I convince this remarkable woman to share my bed?

I have asked her this question, and she confesses that she fell in love with me quite by accident. She never considered herself to be the marrying kind. She never really believed in love. We met at a party. New Year’s Eve. We talked for hours and kissed at midnight and the rest is history. We were married only six months later. A small, private ceremony. My family was there, but most of hers lived overseas, Europe somewhere, and were not able to make it. Our honeymoon took us to New York City, a place where we could be lost in the crowds, ignored by the masses, and exist only to one another.

New York never sleeps. Just as well, since Meredith was a notorious insomniac. The slowest times of the night, we found, were actually almost morning. Four or five in the AM, after parties but before work, there were moments and places where it almost felt like we had the whole city to ourselves. We would run through the empty streets, when we found them, laughing like drunks though both of us were cold sober. We would slip into alleys and kiss like teenagers, pawing at each other with abandon. It was perfect.

I was kissing her in one of these alleys when it was all ruined. Her back was pressed against a brick wall and her hands were in my hair, her lips soft and supple, but earnest, against mine. Then I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned, fully expecting to be told to get a room or asked to spare eighty cents for the bus. The stranger’s fist connected with my jaw, sending me reeling back, hard, into the wall beside Meredith.

“Donnie!” she gasped. I pressed a comforting hand to her arm and looked at my assailant. He was wide eyed and wild haired, dressed in old clothes and so filthy that I couldn’t even say his race with any certainty. When he spoke, his voice was high, alarmed.

“Your wallet,” he said. “Give it to me.”

“Okay,” I said. “Okay, just stay calm, I’m going into my pocket.” The stranger let out a braying laugh.

“Oh, I’m calm prettyboy,” he said. That was when I saw the knife in his hand. It was small, glittering, thin. The only thing on him that was clean. It looked like a switchblade or a stiletto. A glance at Meredith told me that she had seen it too, but there was no fear in her dark eyes. Just intensity. Concentration. Anger? “Don’t look at her, look at me.” I looked back. “Real slow, prettyboy.” I reached down to my pocket…and found nothing. I could feel my own fear simmering below the surface, threatening to boil over into panic, and I could see rage bubbling in the stranger’s eyes. “Come on,” he said.

“I think,” I began. “I…It’s not here. I think I left it at the-“ I remember the sound I made more clearly than I remember the pain. It wasn’t quite a shout, more of a strangled, startled cough. He’d slipped the knife in just to the left of my navel. I wanted to grab for it. Needed to do something. Couldn’t do anything.

“You fuck,” he shrieked. “You lying fuck, I’ll rip your fucking heart out through your belly button, you-“ With a sudden motion, a single, powerful stroke, Meredith leveled him. Without his weight to hold me up I sank under my own and hit the ground mere moments after he did. My hand moved to my stomach, where the knife was still deeply nestled. Meredith took that hand and held it still.

“Donnie, Stay with me,” she said. There was urgency, but no fear. “You’re going to be okay.”

“Meredith, I…” I coughed wetly. She was kneeling in front of me and the instant I met her eyes I knew something was wrong. It took me longer than it should have to see what it was. Her pupils were dilated. It was night, of course, but they had grown well beyond what should have been their limits. Her irises had practically gone invisible. “Meredith?”

“I know it hurts,” she said. Though her hand was mere inches from it, she was doing her utmost not to look at the wound. “I know it hurts, but I need you to leave the knife right there, just until we get to the hospital. Can you do that for me?” I nodded and she carefully lifted my hand away from the handle of the thing. I lifted it between our faces. My palm was slick with blood.

“Meredith,” I said, turning it to face her. She grabbed my wrist sharply, tightly, causing me to gasp. Her stare was penetrating and I almost thought I saw her pupils grow even wider. She bit her lip. Then carefully, deliberately, she moved my hand down to my lap.

“Donnie, I…” her voice was thick. Her words, breaths, movements were vibrating. “I know you can’t understand this right now, but if I don’t do this I won’t be able to take care of you.” I watched her as she got to her feet and walked to our fallen aggressor. One of her sneakered feet met with his shoulder, turning him gently to his back. Then she sank to her knees at his side. His eyes fluttered open just in time to see her reach for him.

She cleaned her hands with a bottle of Poland Spring. She cleaned her face with a napkin from the pizza place where we had had dinner. She lifted me in her arms like a child, like a new bride coming home for the first time, and carried me a quick few blocks from the fresh corpse. Strangely, now, she was able to look at my wound. Now, she was even able to hold my bloodied hand. She held it and let me cry into her shoulder while we waited for the ambulance. She held it as we rode to the nearest emergency room, only letting go when they needed to take me to a sterile room for surgery. When I awoke, it was to the sound of her explaining that I had been stabbed and the man had run away when she had taken a swing at him. I said nothing. There was nothing I could say.

Because I still love everything about her. Her smile, her laugh, her deep, dark eyes. I even love her when she presses her cold feet against my legs in our bed. Except now I’m left to wonder why her feet are so cold. I can no longer make love to her without returning to that night. I can’t feel her fingers against my back without seeing her fingernails as they tore out that stranger’s throat. I can’t kiss her without tasting the gallon of blood I watched her drink. I can’t even hold her hand without seeing the dying man’s hands as they clutched in desperation at her perfect wrist. I can’t look into her eyes without seeing the madness in her victim’s as he clung so desperately to the life she was so determined to suck from him.

My nights have grown long. The scar still hurts me. Sometimes her insomnia takes her out on drives in the dead of night, and I lie in bed waiting for her to return with whatever item she has sworn to me she is retrieving from the store. Sometimes she comes home with the wrong item, or nothing at all. I wonder if she knows. I wonder if she realizes that I know. I wonder how I ever found a wife like Meredith.