..... Eddie sits back down across from her.
..... "Let's us finish this then," he says. "That damn-that oven mit-"
..... "Mat."
..... "-it costs a buck seventy-nine at the store, plus tax. I've seen them. And I will get you another. I'll get you as many as you want, how's that? I was wrong to use your oven thing as an oven thing. I'm sorry it caught fire. Is that it? Did I forget anyfuckingthing?"
..... Jolene sets the oven mat on the table, between them again, an offering, a wedge, a straw like goes in a vanilla milkshake from ten years before. One of the fairy tale mushrooms is peeling off from the fabric, sticking to her hand. She places it tenderly back with the others, but it turns up at all five corners.
..... Eddie smiles, tries to cover it with his hand.
..... "It'll never be the same," she says, not so much to him. "Never."
..... Eddie shakes his head slow back and forth and gets up again, going back to the sink, his back to the table, his face somewhere else altogether. Jolene arranges the mushrooms all reaching up now like children's' fingers, and she wants so bad to throw it at Eddie's back, to hear that pleasant, necessary splat, she wants so bad to start it all again, to feel the orange and blue heat from when he held her face over the gas burner, curling the ends of her new perm somewhere past conditioner. She wants so bad to stand behind him once more with his precious pearl-handled Colt pistol from his daddy and watch for three hours and thirty-two rotary minutes as he does each and every dish in the cabinet, until she can see her face in the plates just like a commercial. She wants to have again those two or three days that used to follow every fight, those two or three days when they sometimes couldn't wait for the bed or even the couch but wound up grunting together across the faded living room carpet, bathed clean and new in the light from the television, their eyes closed, the static electricity dancing between them, transforming them into the soap opera stars in the background, talking with beautifully deep voices about love and elevators and people that could never die, no matter what.
..... Jolene still carries a scarred place on her lower back from the floorvent once when it was hot and they couldn't stop, didn't care. She can feel it with her fingertips early in the mornings, rising barely above the skin, and now that they're peaceable that's all there is, all she has left.
..... "Eddie," she finally says, "Eddie, something's not right here, is it? This isn't the way it went at the office. This isn't how it's done."
..... Eddie turns back to her. He has the wet lasagna in one hand and his mouth is full with it.
..... "We had the doctor there then," he says around the slick cheese. "It wasn't real. This is. There's your difference."
..... Jolene gives up on the oven mat and remembers one of the things they were taught about their fighting. A tool of sorts. She says it: "What, Eddie, what are you hearing from me right now? Tell me what you're hearing, what you're getting from me. I want to know. I need to know."
..... Eddie stops chewing, swallows it whole. He looks at their low ceiling and follows the brown veins of water down, and down.
..... "What I'm, what I'm hearing," he says, talking slow and deliberate, "what I'm hearing from you is that you don't me to get back to work on time. You want me to get fired. What I'm hearing from you is you're still hanging tight on your momma's tit, and won't let go, not for nothing. That's what I'm hearing, Jolene, Jolene."
..... "That's not how you're supposed to do it!" Jolene says, her voice starting to get away from her, but she doesn't throw her teaglass shattering into the wall, and she doesn't kick his chair out from under the table. She just sits there. Sits there and watches him watch her. He forks another soggy bite into his mouth, a stray bubble escaping the lasagna and floating and floating and Jolene sees in its soapy clean insides mushrooms everywhere, a little fairy tale world, and then it floats to the vent in the water heater door where it gets sucked up but doesn't die, just opens up its insides to the kitchen, leaving a wet spot in the lint, casting purple and yellow seeds in all the places her and Eddie can no longer touch.
..... Jolene almost smiles. Eddie squints at her, at the mystery she is, his left lid mostly scar tissue and without feeling of any kind anymore.
..... "It's called honesty," he says. "That's numero uno, remember? It's the first thing, the first rule."
..... "Don't leave," she says, watching the world take color soft all around him. "Please. I need two minutes. My one hundred and twenty seconds. It's the rule."
..... Eddie shrugs some lasagna at her, dismisses her. He says he understands, just like he was trained for four weeks every Monday and Tuesday to say. A conditioned response, the doctor's words. And then he loses himself in the wet lasagna while Jolene follows her ring down the paneling of the hall to the bedroom, the sounds of her footsteps diminishing on the carpet, forgetting themselves in the darkness under the trailer.
..... In the bedroom she lowers her head into her hands but doesn't cry. She remembers the training, knows not to indulge herself in this. She tells herself to be calm. She says it three times so she won't forget. She holds her hand in front of her and it's marble still and burned down her wedding finger where Eddie made her put her ring back on once after she'd thrown it in the burn barrel.
..... Her hand.
..... She watches it go to the top drawer of the dresser, Eddie's underwear drawer. She feels the cold pearly grip of his Colt underneath the thinned-out cotton and magazines, and she has to close her eyes and whisper herself through the weight of it. Her other hand grabs the nickeled shells, puts back all but two. There's no need for more. One for the heart, one for the head. It's the only reasonable thing to do now, the one thing she never really considered before learning this silent game, before learning how to argue like adults. He'll probably even be using the damned oven mat to wipe his damned lasagna off his damned face when she walks in with the pistol folded into her robe, she thinks.
..... One for the head, one for the heart.
..... Jolene slides the first cartridge in and then the next, and checks the safety. No tears. Fingers like stone.
..... This is how it's done.