Pull up. Pull up.

The truth is he settles into riotous quiet. Just like he always does. Eventually.

Sinks into a leathery old sofa and swipes his beer from the coffee table, and she watches as he pulls on the neck like a pilot steering his plummeting plane.

Pull up. Pull up.

The truth is he wasn’t always like this. When they were first married, of course, she and he, it’d been all the things the poets write about. Ribcages and stars and waves and hipbones and suns and she made their spaghetti hot and steaming and their sofas were soft and new and their windows were all intact.

She didn’t really remember the exact point between his proposal on one knee to his demands of her while she was on two. It was just they were madly in love, she and he. And then, very suddenly, or so gradually it came in a gush, it wasn’t so much their love anymore than it was just hers.

But she never stopped believing he was still a good man. Even after he broke the living room window for the third time, tore a fourth hole in the sofa cushions, left the spaghetti out to shiver to cold for an eighth night in a row.

She knew he still loved her. Deep down. Even when he shook her so hard the ornaments fell off the Christmas tree.

Pull up. Pull up.

The fact was that when they finally made love again, it still was only her love for the making. And she was facedown. And she was moaning in the reddening sun of it, but not out of pleasure. And it was nothing like the first time. And it never would be again.

Pull up. Pull up.

And all her friends smiled, and congratulated her, and threw a shower and gave her gifts. And her mother told her to name the kid something she wanted, because that way it would always be with her. And she felt so much less like a pregnant woman than she did a backpack with a bomb.

The truth was when the baby was born, he was honest as a fact and spoke as soon as his air surged his throat. He spoke in squalls, in the language of storms, because that was what he had been hearing for his entire 9 months of life.

Pull up. Pull up.

The truth was that she was disappointed in the tiniest way, but only because she could not name a baby boy Joy.

The truth is the baby died four days later, and she screamed with pain into her pillow for hours. Just like she had while he was conceived. And she wondered why, if a uterus had strength 300 times greater than the force of gravity, she could not keep her husband from slapping himself into her that day.

Pull up. Pull up.

The truth was that this continued until he retired, she buried her mother, he got dentures, and she got a walking stick. The truth was she bruised like fruit and that was why she grew so shriveled and soft.

The truth was that of course her friends knew. They had always known. But what could they do?

The real question was what would they do? Pat her hand, say leave him, find a better man.

Or say yes, it was her fault. Honestly, they’d always thought she was a little irritating. Clumsy. Silly. And she should try and be a better wife.

The truth was she’d been trying to be a better wife for fifty-eight years. And never really believed that tough love was rough love. But she never did

pull up. Pull up.

The truth was that sometimes it takes fifty-eight years for a plane to crash.

The truth is that it almost always takes far less.