Beneath the Bonfire by Nickolas Butler

leftovers away,” Renée says. “I mean, this is disgusting.”
    His mother cooked rich food. Mason loved her cooking. Even after leaving home and traveling the world. After marrying Ren é e, after losing twenty pounds and never regaining it. Still. Cold winter nights he thinks about her lasagna. Her cassoulet. Her chili. Her p â t é . Her Bolognese. Her fresh bread. The butter dish. Ice cream and pie and cobbler. The nights he and Ren é e came to visit his mother, how ravenously he’d shovel food into his mouth, taking seconds, wiping grease and olive oil off the plate with sliced bread. His mother heaping food onto his plate, smiling, feeding him, nourishing him in this way. Ren é e across the table, politely nibbling, pushing parcels of food around her plate as if her dish had been poisoned. Smiling grimly.
    Standing over the sink, wrapping coffee mugs emblazoned with the names of places his mother visited in her retirement— Branson, Gatlinburg, Galena, Wisconsin Dells —he thinks about nights there, Sunday nights when he might leave Ren é e at home and come visit his mother. A bouquet of sunflowers in his hand.
    There’s a lightbulb out in that hallway, his mother would say, I’m scared of ladders these days.
    Or,
    The toilet is always running. Keeps me up nights. Would you mind looking at it?
    His mother boiling noodles, steam collecting into droplets on her eyelashes. His mother wrapping leftovers in aluminum foil, handing the food to him like a package, saying, Here, bring some home for Ren é e. Tell her I missed seeing her.
    Ren é e, who loathes leftovers. Who leaves doggy bags and cardboard boxes on restaurant tables for waiters to rush after them screaming, You forgot your food! Renée, reaching for those leftovers as if the container were a bomb she had left there, its timer counting down to 0:00 .
    *   *   *
    He can’t remember the last time they made love. It has become a memory game, recalling that occasion. Sometimes, even when they are together, perhaps at the grocery store or riding in an airplane, he will close his eyes feigning sleep and think, Has it been a year? Two ? Three?
    They don’t talk to each other anymore. At least not substantively. Financially they are comfortable, and money is no longer even an entr é e into conflict. She plays bridge three nights a week. He is on a bowling league, plays softball with a lineup of other older guys. The only thing they have left are movies. They drive to a multiplex beside the highway. Sometimes they don’t even see the same film. When they do, they rarely speak before the show or after. He works a sudoku puzzle, she peers down at her cell. She falls asleep on the drive home. Sometimes he carries her into their bedroom, removes her shoes, pulls the quilts over her. He has heard her mumble, I love you, but can’t remember when. Sometimes she asks that he leave her in the car to sleep.
    One evening they disagreed so vehemently about a film that she would not talk to him for three days afterward. She banged around their house, slamming doors, rattling pots and pans.
    How does a distance so wide open between two people who live together so intimately? Who have loved each other? He can’t explain it. Can’t explain where the magic went, the love, the friendship, the decency, the partnership. He doesn’t miss their sex. But he longs for her as a companion. A person to walk with, to hold hands with, to watch television with. To be happily silent with. He wonders if she feels the same, or if this rift is just something that has opened inside him.
    A bad quiet envelops their marriage. Mason imagines a small-town telephone booth from which he calls her and waits for her voice. She answers, her voice like a very cold wind traveling through thousands of miles of telephone wire. Then she puts him on hold and he imagines her walking away forever, leaving him there,