He Thinks/She Thinks

He thinks— He sometimes lies awake at night staring vacantly at the pattern on the wallpaper across from the bed, frolicking lambs and butterflies made visible by light creeping from under the blinds, a thief in the night. Inevitably his thoughts turn to her, over thirty years his wife, mother to their son and daughter. The two of them had shared long careers teaching at the city’s small private college, and both remained respected figures in town, at least among those old enough to remember. Fond memories of a life well lived, but why did he always return to the same tattered recollection of the incident at the tubing expedition? Thirty years ago and still vital the two of them had accompanied neighbors and fellow professors on a tubing cruise down the river that languidly snaked from the hills, through the town and to the flatlands beyond. In the party was another teacher, not yet a full professor, who across a crowded room a few months before he had identified as a rival, unmarried, of solid build, intelligent, glib, handsome in what he thought a rather swarthy way. Like all women his wife seemed to hang on this person’s every word and undergo a change in her physical presence as a hard glint that could be arousal appeared in her eye when he was near. And then there he was, close to her as they floated in the river and she somehow slid out of her tube. A strong swimmer, she was in no danger, but much thrashing accompanied her return to the tube, and as she secured the tube one of her breasts popped over the top of her bathing suit. It happened too fast to be photographed, but to him the scene was a series of telling stills—her shocked look, the other man’s face as he looked at her, raised his eyebrows, and pursed his lips into the exclamation, Oooh! To the aggrieved husband it appeared that the other man was no stranger to the escaped breast, and ever since he had wallowed in a feeling of inadequacy which he kept pent up in the daylight hours but let loose to prowl in the dead of night to remind him of how he must have been cuckolded. She thinks— She loves her husband, always has, sits and remembers his shy manner so long ago, how being with her seemed to empower him. And, yes, she remembers the tubing incident, but not so much as it directly affected her, for her breast was out, it was back in, end of story. She tried to make light of it on the river bank, but her husband changed the subject and seemed gruff. The would-be Lothario? Frankly she didn’t like the dark, brooding features that attracted so many others, she saw him react to her accident and she shot him a glare, and that was all. There was no backstory between them. But it was a critical moment in her marriage, as she quickly noticed changes in her man. At first his approach to making love became more tentative, as if he was the supplicant, but then he became rough, something she had never known. She chose not to speak about it, and the damage was done. The years since have seen good times and bad, but she wonders whether today would be more like she might desire with life running out had she spoken to him so long ago. And the other man thinks— He doesn’t think about her rogue breast, as his thoughts are of the men and boys who over the years have paraded before him, so close but so far away in this conservative small college town, where making and clinging to tenure means toeing the prevailing moral line. And so here in his rueful presence is the twist in the story of a man, a wife and a marriage.

Bluejay

Veteran of old My Poetry Forum before its hiatus. Happy to be back.

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