I settled for hovering at the doorway, straddling both rooms, watching for a sign of what Nick wanted. He went to the closet and pushed through the clothing with quick, vicious movements, hunting for a shirt. Deciding to retreat, I went back into the bathroom.

My cheeks looked white and stiff. I brushed on some pink blush in light strokes, but the tinted powder seemed to sit on top of my skin, not blending. The brush caught at the mist of nervous sweat and made ruddy streaks. I reached for a washcloth, about to clean it all off, and that was when the world seemed to explode.

Nick had come back, cornering me, clutching something in one fist. Screaming. I'd never had someone scream into my face like that before, certainly not a man, and it was a kind of death. I was reduced to the level of an animal under attack, unable to slip beyond the whiteness of fear, frozen in mute incomprehension.

The thing in his hand was a striped shirt . . . I had ruined it somehow . . . a mistake . . . but Nick said it was sabotage. I had done it on purpose, he said. He needed it for an important meeting this morning, and I said no, I didn't mean to I'm so sorry but every word brought murderous heat to his face and his arm drew back and the world caught fire.

My head snapped to the side, my cheek blazing, and droplets of sweat and tears went flying. A burning stillness settled. The veins in my face felt huge and pumping.

I was slow to comprehend that Nick had hit me. I stood swaying, blank, using my fingertips to explore where the heat had turned to numbness.

I couldn't see through the blur in my eyes, but I heard Nick's voice, thick with disgust. "Look what you made me do." He went back into the bedroom.

No retreat. I couldn't run from the apartment. We had only one car. And I didn't know where I would go. I held the washcloth under cold water, sat on the closed toilet seat and held the dripping mass against my cheek.

There was no one I could tell. This was something Todd or my other friends couldn't comfort me about, couldn't say it was part of a normal relationship. Shame spread through me, leaking from the marrow of my bones . . . the feeling that I must have deserved it, or it wouldn't have happened. I knew that wasn't right. But something in me, in the way I had been formed, made it impossible to escape that spreading shame. It had lurked inside me forever, waiting to surface. Waiting for Nick, or someone like him. I was stained with it, like invisible ink . . . in the right light, it would show.

I waited without moving while Nick finished getting ready for work. I didn't stir even when I heard him call the Darlington and tell them I wouldn't be in that day. His wife was sick, he said regretfully. The flu or something, he didn't know what. He sounded compassionate and concerned. He chuckled a little at something the other person on the line said. "Yes," he said, "I'll take good care of her."

I waited until I heard the jangle of die keys, and the front door closing.

Moving like an old woman, I reached into the trash and pulled out my pills. I took one, and scooped water into my mouth with my hand, and downed it with a painful swallow.

I found the striped shirt on the floor of the bedroom, and I laid it out on the mattress. I couldn't see anything wrong with it. I couldn't find the flaw that had driven Nick berserk. "What did I do?" I asked aloud, my fingers trailing down the stripes as if clawing through iron bars. What had I done wrong?

The urge to please was a sickness in me. I knew that, and I did it anyway. I washed and starched and ironed the striped shirt all over again. Every thread in the cotton weave was pressed perfectly flat, every button gleaming and pristine. I hung it in the closet and I checked all the other shirts, and aligned his shoes and hung all his ties so the bottoms were all at the same level.

When Nick got home, the condo was clean and the table was set, and I had put a King Ranch casserole in the oven. His favorite dinner. I had a hard time looking at him.

But Nick came in contrite and smiling, bringing a bouquet of mixed flowers. He handed me the fragrant offering, petals rustling in layers of tissue and cellophane. "Here, sweetheart." He leaned down to kiss my cheek, the one he had struck earlier. The side of my face was pink and swollen. I held still while his mouth touched my skin. I wanted to jerk away from him. I wanted to hit him back. Mostly I wanted to cry.

Instead I took the flowers to the sink and began to unwrap them mechanically.

"I shouldn't have done that this morning," Nick said behind me. "I thought about you all day."

"I thought about you too." I put the bouquet into a vase and filled it with water, unable to face the prospect of cutting and arranging the flowers.

"It was just the last straw, seeing what you'd done to my shirt."

I wiped the counter slowly, moving a paper towel in tight circles. "I don't understand what was wrong with it."

"It had about ten times too much starch. I mean, I could have cut a slice of bread with one of those sleeves." A long pause, and then he sighed. "I overreacted. I know that. But like I said, it was the last Straw. So much other stuff has been driving me crazy, and seeing what you'd done to my shirt was too much."

I turned to face him, gripping the edges of my long sleeves over my fingers until they were shrouded like cat paws. "What other stuff?"

"Everything. The way we live. This place is never clean and organized. We never have home-cooked meals. There's always piles of crap everywhere." He raised his hands as if in self-defense as he saw me start to speak. "Oh, I know, it looks great right now. And I can see you've put dinner in the oven. I appreciate that. But it should be like this all the time. And it can't be, with both of us working."