Ten questions after the skillet

I put the folder on the table while he was finishing the skillet. Thin, blue, one elastic band — he knows it by colour and by the sound the band makes snapping against the cardboard. His back at the sink went straighter. He didn’t turn off the tap, scrubbed to the end, set the skillet on the rack, and only then dried his hands.

“Come here.”

He stood at the table, arms at his sides, eyes just below my face, as he’s supposed to. I sat, stretched my legs out and opened the folder. A hundred and twenty questions in two columns, small print, numbered. We wrote them six months ago, three evenings in a row. I came up with the questions; he wrote the answers — by hand, in his own words, on scrap paper, and then I typed them up. I insisted the wording be his. Someone else’s rule is forgotten in a month. Your own lasts longer.

“Ten questions. Saturday stands if you get all ten. Exactly as written.”

Saturday is the day I open the lock. He had been waiting nineteen days for it. I saw him swallow.

The first six

I closed my eyes and put the pen down on the page. Fourteen.

“Underwear on Fridays.”

“Black. The pair you laid out on Wednesday. No swapping.”

Straight away, no pause. I ticked it. Thirty-seven.

“If I’m out past nine.”

“I text before nine: where I am and when I’ll be back. Dinner stays on the stove under a lid. I don’t call. I don’t ask where you are. If you haven’t answered, that doesn’t mean I can ask again. I go to bed when you say, and if you don’t say, then…”

“Enough. Correct.”

He had it right, but longer than written — and I noted that. When a man stretches an answer, he isn’t sure of the ending. Fifty-two.

“At the table.”

“I stay quiet until you ask. I don’t start a topic. If there are guests, then… well, if there are guests I answer when spoken to, but I don’t…”

“That’ll do.”

He stopped mid-word. Guests are in that rule, but as one line, and he had started chewing on it. I ticked it with a question mark beside. The fourth and fifth — the key at night and my shoes — he gave word for word. On the sixth, the amount he doesn’t spend without me, he said the old figure, stopped, and said the new one. I accepted it: he caught the mistake himself.

Six ticks. He was standing straight, but his left hand was already rubbing the seam of his trousers.

Seven and eight

Sixty-one.

“Morning order.”

“Coffee on your nightstand at six-forty. Then… then your shoes for the day. Then the bed. Then the countertop.”

In the folder: coffee, bed, countertop, shoes. Shoes last, because by then I’m up and might change my mind. He put them second. That is what he has been doing for the last two weeks; I noticed on Monday and said nothing. I was waiting to see whether he’d get it right when asked. He didn’t.

“Wrong.”

His eyes came up and went straight back down. He wanted to ask where the mistake was. He didn’t, and rightly: I explain nothing while he’s answering. Eighty-eight.

“If the cage has to come off and I’m not there.”

“If it’s a doctor… or if it hurts, I take it off with the spare and text you at once.”

He has no spare key. There is a numbered seal in an envelope in my desk, and the rule says: a doctor I know about in advance is the only case, and I do the opening, not him. “If it hurts” is nowhere in the folder. He made that up on the spot, because he is afraid, and fear handed him the answer he would have liked.

“Wrong.”

Nine, how he addresses me in front of other people, and ten, what he says when he wants to ask for the key, he gave as written. I closed the folder. Two mistakes. Twenty percent.

The pen

“Saturday is off. A week for each mistake. Next unlocking in two.”

He nodded at the floor. I thought he would ask about Saturday; he had waited a long time for it. He didn’t.

“Every morning, before the coffee, you copy both rules out by hand. The sheet goes on my desk. Tonight you don’t go to bed until you know them. You recite them to me before you sleep.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

I put the kettle on, took my book and sat in the armchair in the living room. He sat at the table, opened the folder at sixty-one and eighty-eight and began to write. The pen scratched for twenty minutes. He copied each rule three times, I looked afterwards: the handwriting on the third is steadier than on the first. He brought the sheet, laid it in front of me and stayed standing. I read it, dated the corner, put the sheet in the folder and the folder on the shelf.

“From memory.”

He said both. The shoes came out smooth. On “a doctor you know about in advance” his voice gave, and he said it again, on his own, without being told. I nodded.

“Shower and bed.”

I hadn’t wanted to take the folder out that evening. It had been a long day, my back hurt, and I had nearly decided to leave it a week. I took it out because in a week he would have guessed: I had been looking at him too long over dinner. A check has to come when it isn’t expected, otherwise he learns the rules for two days before and forgets them two days after.

Morning

The coffee was on the nightstand at six-forty. Bed, countertop. He brought the shoes when I was on my second cup and set them by the door, toes toward me. The sheet with the two rules lay on the desk, dated today. On my way out I stopped in the hall.

“Sixty-one.”

He said it. Unhurried, looking at my chin.

“Eighty-eight.”

He said it. I nodded and picked up my bag.

“Again tonight.”

Twenty percent didn’t turn into an event. No scenes, no raised voice. Two ticks in red pen and two weeks he is now counting from the start. What I have in exchange: I know which rules are drifting on him, and I know he hasn’t opened the folder since spring. Once a month, unannounced, the folder will land on the table. He knows that now too, and I think he is waiting for it.

• Have him write the answers himself, in his own words. Borrowed wording doesn’t stick.
• Ten questions at random, pen on the page. No hints and no explanations while he answers.
• A long answer is a signal. Stop him with “that’ll do” and make a mark.
• For each mistake, a set term and copying by hand every morning. The dated sheet goes in the folder.
• Check unannounced, on an ordinary evening. If he expects the exam, you are testing cramming, not memory.