The left stocking slipped while I was out

I handed him the stockings at half past six: mine, black, with a wide top band. He took them in both hands, the way you take something you are afraid to tear, and sat on the edge of the bed to put them on. I was zipping my dress meanwhile. He didn’t help — that evening I dressed myself, and he knew why.

On Tuesday my mother had dinner with us. I was telling her about the trip and he cut in: “That was Thursday, not Wednesday.” In the tone you use to correct a child. My mother didn’t notice. I did. I said nothing then, only looked at him, and he lowered his eyes, and we finished dinner as if nothing had happened. I put the conversation off till Thursday. Not a punishment — a conversation. But he was going to come to it prepared.

On the living-room table lay two months of post: bills, letters from the bank, notices he had been promising to sort for half a year. Beside it a notebook and a pen. On the first page I had written: “What you wanted to show my mother on Tuesday. One page.”

He came out of the bedroom in the stockings. Nothing else but the cage. Stockings sit differently on a man’s legs than on a woman’s — the band pulls, the seam wanders — and he stood with his feet slightly apart so they wouldn’t slide. He has worn the cage for three weeks now, and above the nylon its edge looks sterner: steel, a black seam, and not one thing on him he chose himself. He was pleasant to look at. Not because it was pretty. Because the shame was his, not mine.

“Letters into folders. The page into the notebook. I’ll check tomorrow’s shopping list. Back around eleven.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“If something happens, call. If nothing happens, don’t.”

He nodded without raising his eyes. I took my bag and left. Closed the door quietly. The key to the cage was in my bag, in the small zipped pocket, and in the lift I found it with my fingers, just to feel it there.

Dinner

There were four of us. A restaurant near Marina’s place, wine, talk about holidays and whose job was doing what. I listened and ate and looked at my watch once: a quarter to nine. Right then he was probably sitting on the floor by the living-room table, laying out bank letters by date and feeling the band bite into his thigh. I finished my wine. Until Tuesday the key had lived at home, in a box. After that dinner I moved it to my bag and have carried it since. He saw that, and never once asked why.

“Where’s yours?” Marina asked.

“At home. Sorting paperwork.”

“Lucky you.”

I said yes and didn’t say in what way. Nobody at that table knew and nobody will. I don’t need them to. I needed him to sit alone for four hours in my stockings and know that I knew where he was.

I didn’t text him once. He didn’t text me. That was the condition, and he kept it.

The sofa

Ten to eleven. The hall light was off, the floor lamp on in the living room. He was sitting on the sofa, hands on his knees, back straight. The letters — three piles on the table, each in its folder. The notebook closed. The left stocking had slipped: the band had worked its way down to mid-thigh and gathered in a fold. He knew it and hadn’t fixed it, because he is not allowed to touch himself while I am out.

I hung up my bag, took off my shoes and came over. Sat beside him. Put my palm on his right knee, over the stocking — smooth, warm through the nylon.

“Well. Have you thought about how you behaved?”

He opened the notebook and held it out. I didn’t take it.

“Tell me.”

He was silent for about ten seconds. Then he said, looking at his knees:

“I wanted your mother to see that I knew better. That I’m not here for nothing. It was your table and your story, and I pushed in because I cared how I looked to her.”

“To her, or to me?”

“To her. I know how I look to you.”

I looked at the slipped stocking and thought: yes, he does. It was an honest answer and I didn’t press him further. The talk took about twenty minutes: what he will say to my mother next time he feels like correcting me — nothing; what he does if he badly wants to — goes and puts the kettle on. I spoke briefly. He answered more briefly still.

Then I leaned down, took the band of the left stocking between two fingers and pulled it back into place. Smoothed it up his thigh with my palm all the way to the cage, where the steel was cold and the skin next to it hot. He held his breath.

“Bed. In the stockings. You take them off when I say.”

He went to the bedroom. I sat another half hour in the kitchen with a book and a glass of water, checked tomorrow’s list — small handwriting, everything there — and turned off the light. In bed I lay with my back to him and put his hand on my stomach. No lower. He lay without moving, I felt nylon against my calf, and I fell asleep before he did.

Morning

He was up first. When I came into the kitchen the kettle had boiled, breakfast was laid, and he was in the stockings and an apron and nothing else. The left one had slipped again. I looked at the fold on his thigh, then at him.

“Take them off.”

He took them off right there by the stove, standing on one leg, then the other, carefully, so as not to snag them. Folded them and set them on the edge of the table. Cage in place, key in my bag. I took the list, wrote “milk” at the bottom and, a line lower, “stockings, your own, size L, black”.

“You’ve stretched mine.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

We never spoke of Tuesday again. Two weeks later my mother had dinner with us again, and once he opened his mouth, closed it, and went to put the kettle on. My mother said he was a treasure. I didn’t argue.

• Don’t have the talk the same night. Give it two or three days and one evening alone with a task.
• Leave a job you can check at a glance: letters in folders, a page in a notebook, the hall floor.
• Actually leave: no texts, no calls. Four hours alone do more than an hour of lecturing.
• One question when you come back. Don’t take the notebook — make him say it out loud.
• In the morning, check the result and move on. He will believe a shopping list more than a speech.