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was immediately arrested. She continued to scream and insist that they should just go talk to her boyfriend who was “being a lazy-ass as usual” in the living room, but upon inspection, the officers found no boyfriend and assumed he’d fled through the back door (and who could blame him?). They did however, find evidence that there had been some kind of domestic disturbance and brought the woman to the county jail and treated her to an entire night’s stay due to her extremely agitated state. They didn’t want her to hurt herself or anyone else, they said, and she couldn’t much blame them. At that point in time, she didn’t trust herself not to murder Wally.
     
    * * * * *
     
         Everyone knows—or should know—that after an incident of domestic violence, a household can never quite be the same and thus it was true for the woman and Wally.
         Even later, when she honestly regretted her actions and did her best to make it up to him, to apologize, to swear it would never happen again, she didn’t think either of them truly believed that it wouldn’t.
         She grew quiet and distant, not because she didn’t love him anymore but because she feared saying the wrong thing. For his part, Wally became sullen and uncommunicative, most likely resenting the things she’d said out of anger more than the actual violence that had been perpetrated against him. He didn’t seem afraid of her, she suspected because he knew that, try as she might, she couldn’t do that much damage to him.
         They lived in this way—each in their own world—until it became intolerable to the woman and then, despite all her promises, she began complaining about things again.
        “ Do you realize,” she said one night while watching a football game with the wall, “that you have never brought me flowers? Not even once.” She shook her head sadly. “It boggles my mind. I mean, every other guy I’ve ever dated has at least brought me flowers at one time or another. Once,one of them gave me one flower . Just one. But you know what? That flower meant the world to me.”
         Suddenly, she shot him a dirty look. “Oh, so now you’re gonna sigh at me? Now I’m boring you?” She sighed dramatically herself and pushed out her lower lip. “I’m sorry. I was just thinking out loud. Don’t pay any attention to me.”
         She barely spoke to him for the rest of the evening.
     
    * * * * *
     
         The next weekend while she was dusting the baseboards in the living room—not just Wally’s but all of them—she abruptly stopped, straightened up, and looked at Wally with a sour expression. “Oh, you can’t be serious,” she said to the wall.
         Tapping her foot, her head cocked, she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She threw her dust rag on the floor. “Ok, fine! So I was looking at the other wall. Big deal! You stare out the window at that slut across the way all damn summer and then I’m told it’s disrespectful of me to look at another wall? You can’t possibly be serious!”
         She had to bite her tongue in order not to interrupt Wally, but she let him have his say and was proud of herself for doing so. When he was finished, she marched up to the wall and poked it with her finger. “You have some nerve! What the hell would I want with that other wall? Don’t you think I have my hands full with one wall? Christ, it’s like taking care of a baby! Cooking for you, cleaning for you, entertaining you. And what do I get in return? Nothing, that’s what! Complete and utter silence from you except for the rare occasion when you deem me worthy to change the goddamn channel on the TV! And now you have the audacity to be jealous of some other wall? Are you crazy?”
         Letting him rant and rave endlessly was not what she was prepared to do, so after listening to him go on for another five minutes, she held up her hand in a stop gesture. “Okay, you know what? This