I Want to Show You More (9780802193742) by Jamie Quatro

said, standing.
    â€œWishing’s a personal thing, Myra,” Neil said, but she was already headed inside.
    At bedtime, Myra sat on the counter next to the kitchen sink, shaving her legs. She’d started this in January, after the funeral.
    â€œWhy don’t you do that in the shower?” Neil asked.
    â€œBecause that stall is tiny,” Myra said, “and I’m a beginner. I need room for error.”
    He looked at Myra from behind. With her free hand she was eating from a bag of Lay’s. She’d pulled her hair up into a clamp. He remembered supporting her neck, the feel of her plush newborn skull arcing backward into his palm.
    Neil sat down on the couch to look at a real estate magazine. He wanted to know the going price per square foot in the area this year.
    â€œJust once,” Myra said, turning around to face him, “I’d like to open a bag, eat one, and throw the rest away.” She held up the bag. “It’s, like, a challenge they give you.”
    Grady came in from the shed holding two wooden tennis rackets and a stack of bright Frisbees. “Only two sports here, folks,” he said. “One: courts around the corner, but rackets are no good. Two: Frisbees are good, but no place to throw them. No place without water.”
    Ben took bread and a jar of grape Smucker’s out of the refrigerator and slid them up onto the counter. “I know how you make jelly,” he said to Myra. “Get a jellyfish and squeeze it into a jar.”
    â€œThat’s right,” Myra said. “That’s just how you do it.” Ben’s head was level with the counter.
    â€œI think it smells good in here,” Effie said. She was on the floor, tapping on a small electronic keyboard. She’d said the same thing last year. The cottage smelled like natural gas and ant spray.
    Me too, Eff, Jocelyn had said last summer. When I get better let’s come here, just the two of us. Let’s come here and lie on the floor and sniff for hours.
    Neil stood up and began opening windows.
    The summer they’d closed on the cottage, Neil and Jocelyn bought things at yard sales. They found an unopened box of silverware for a dollar, a stainless steel microwave for ten, a table and three mismatched chairs for twenty. And for no money at all, someone gave them a frayed wicker headboard, which Jocelyn spray-painted white and propped up behind their queen-sized mattress. The headboard creaked when they made love. Sometimes it bumped against the thin wall between their room and the kitchen. When Myra grew old enough to ask questions, Neil stored the headboard in the shed.
    When he was certain the children were asleep, Neil went outside. A steady breeze was coming in off the lake. From across the bay he heard the churn of a Baja motor; when it faded he could hear muted laughter, the bass line of a song, and, closer, the low calls of a bullfrog. Next door someone was grilling fish.
    He found the headboard in the shed behind the lawn mower, resting on its side. He pulled it out and examined it in the light of the single bulb above the door. Cobwebs breathed against the latticework. He carried it inside and wiped it with a gray kitchen rag. White paint chips flecked the towel like snowflakes on cement. Then he took it into the bedroom and slid it back into place.
    That night, in their bed, Neil dreamed he made love to his wife. He dreamed he made love to her from behind, fast and aggressive. She arched into him, reached between his legs and pressed up, hard, the way she knew he liked.
    When it was over, she rolled to face him, her nipples just grazing his chest. “I thought you were a stranger,” she said. “It was incredibly exciting.”
    It wasn’t the dreams, Neil thought, when he woke to the sound of a night bird in the maple, its notes a major triad sung in reverse. It wasn’t even waking up alone that was so hard. It was waking up alone, for the first