Never Again

What Elena Seemed to Think I Already Knew.

The first time I noticed a bruise on Elena, she had already begun explaining it.

She pushed up her sleeve, saw me looking, and laughed.

“I walked into something.”

I smiled too. It seemed rude not to, as though refusing to smile would mean I didn’t believe her.

Later there was another injury, another explanation. Each made sense while she was giving it. It was afterward, when I remembered them together, that I became uneasy.

I couldn’t have said how many there had been. I hadn’t known I should be counting.

At home, my husband wanted an account of where I had been. At school, I tried to remember what I had read. I woke in the night with the feeling that I had forgotten something someone would ask me about. Sometimes I opened a book and recognized my own underlining without remembering the passage.

I wondered whether I had begun looking for trouble everywhere.

Once, in the seminar, Elena reached for something and winced.

The professor was arranging papers at the front of the room. I looked at him.

He went on arranging them.