BEHIND ME - rebecca kanner

Now I'm this bitch. It's not all the war's fault, but it's not all mine either. I had John--I had a good man. Call me old-fashioned but sometimes that's enough. I didn't shine his shoes or fetch the morning paper or clean his splash-back off the toilet, he did all those things himself. We let everything slide on Sundays to stay in bed all day.

"All day? That can't be good for you," my friend Pam had said on the phone when I told her, with more than a hint of jealousy in her voice.

But then John was gone and when he returned four years later we no longer spent Sundays in bed and I had to move all the alcohol out of the house on account of how fast it was disappearing. Now I never get to do anything not good for me, except think. And this is what I think: The war John tried to come home from is with us in our kitchen every morning, in our bed each night, and even here in the car with me now as I try to leave it with John, behind me.