Face-Slapping12 min read
Rabbit on the Plate, Lily in My Hands
ButterPicks14 views
I never thought a rabbit in a paper bag could start a war.
"Ring the bell," Kathy said as if it were ordinary Tuesday business.
"Who's there?" I called, wiping dirt from a vase I've already broken twice that week.
"It's me. Your son's studio sent over dinner," Kathy Watts said through the door.
"When did Aiden start ordering for me?" I asked, then opened the door.
She stood there with a paper bag the size of a small child. "Your refrigerator space, dear," she said. "Aiden's favorite. Put it in the fridge, he'll be home."
"I will." I took the bag, felt the slight warmth through the paper, and watched her fumble an awkward smile.
"How are you two?" she asked, as if she didn't know the answer.
"We..." I trailed off. "We're fine."
"Ah." Kathy lowered her voice in imitation of a confessional: "You two sound like you fight a lot lately."
"It's private," I said.
"Don't make me tell him," she said, then laughed and lifted a hand like she'd cleared an uncomfortable table.
She left before I could ask why she was really here. I held the bag by the kitchen counter and thought of lilies on the table I had already mended three times since he smashed the living room last night.
Two days earlier I had found the photo set.
"You're a photographer," he had shouted, scattering frames and glass like confetti. "I can take photos of whoever I like."
"You called her 'an artist' on the phone," I had said, picking lily petals off the floor.
"She's a model."
"She was naked in your office."
"She's art," he had said. "And you—you're overreacting."
"You think you're an artist, Aiden Bishop," I said, "not a husband."
He slammed the door and left me with the lilies.
That evening he came home late, teeth bared in false question, hands full of paper roses—cheap, but with stage props, he always knew how to arrange them.
"How about we make this right?" he had whispered, pressing his forehead to mine like we were teenagers in a movie.
"How?" I asked.
"Let me explain. Let me fix this."
"Fix?" I turned my face away. "You can't fix what you refuse to call hurt."
Aiden's breaths were small, like a man who's spent too many nights behind a camera lens and not enough moments looking at what's on his own side of the glass.
"You know I love you," he said. "I will make it right."
"I don't want your apologies made of flash and smoke," I said. "I want the truth."
He left after that, and I packed a single suitcase that still held the scent of his cologne. I left the apartment we had inherited from months of saving and fights over rent; I left the lilies by the windowsill where light came in like an accusation.
The first time I met Aiden Bishop was after class in the old alley behind the theater building.
"Look who's here," someone had hummed, and a boy with a camera and a defiant jaw smirked at me.
He followed me for the whole year—skipping the last study sessions, walking me home under a July sun that had no right to be so persistent.
"One day I'll buy lilies every day for you," he had promised, sweating beside a bus stop. "Even after the lights and the credits, every morning I'll bring lilies."
I memorized his promises like prayers.
Years can make someone tender and ruin them at the same time.
Two months after the lilies, I walked into his studio and found a woman in front of his red backdrop.
"Look at me," the photographer urged the woman. "Relax your shoulders. A smile like that is everything."
Her name was Jazlyn Greco, and she didn't look like the photos—they give you an impression, an intent, but in the flesh she was softer, uncanny, the kind of beauty that made the lights fall in love.
"Hi," I said and handed the rabbit to an intern.
Aiden's face didn't change when he saw me.
"Can we talk later?" he asked.
"No." I walked out.
Later that week I sat in a restaurant booth on my own when I saw them enter: Aiden, Jazlyn, and Kathy. They settled across the room, Kathy fussing like she'd always been the one to orchestrate the scene.
"You're adorable," Kathy told Jazlyn, fussing with her napkin as if she were picking out a dowry. "When's the big day?"
Jazlyn smiled, eyes lit with practiced softness. "Soon," she said.
"You're pregnant?" I blurted, as if that would make the world stop spinning.
"Three weeks," Jazlyn said like revealing a gift. "The doctor said so."
"That's when you were shooting?" I asked.
"Yes," Jazlyn said, delighted and distant at once. "He took such beautiful photos."
"You scheduled my life right through a pregnancy," I said. "You all decided to cut me out like an old prop."
The waitress stared. People at the next table glanced over like a rumor that had found its loudspeakers.
"You're being dramatic," Jazlyn said, cool at first.
"I'm the one you call the 'crazy ex' now?" I laughed and cried at the same time. "You're sixteen years younger. You got a better backdrop."
Aiden stood up to come to me. "Eleanor, can we—"
"I want to know," I said to him. "Do we have vows or do we have contracts? Which do I live with, Aiden?"
Kathy tried to drag him away. "Let's not make a scene," she said. "Come on, dear. We can talk later."
"Later?" I repeated. "Later like you did when you scheduled a wedding for my life without me?"
That night I took a taxi home with my face grimy from the restaurant's cold water. He followed—unsure, clumsy. He pressed himself against me on the stairwell.
"Don't leave," he begged.
"I am leaving."
"You can't say that now."
"Why not? You married me with light and camera and a promise to be mine. You married Jazlyn with a studio shot."
"That's not—"
"It is," I said. "You can't tell me you didn't know."
He looked as if someone had carved a notch through his chest. "I don't love her," he said. "It was a moment. It meant nothing."
"Mom bought the rabbit," I said. "You shared a table. You arranged the seating. It was a scene."
"You're saying I'm a liar."
"I'm saying I can't build a life with a man who rehearses his infidelity."
He reached for me again. I pushed away and walked out.
I moved in with Hattie Mahmoud—my old teacher who runs the studio where the younger kids learn pliés and courage. "Come help," she said the day after I left. "Stand in the doorway and count breaths. Help the kids step."
"You're asking me to do what I'd always loved even though it scares the hell out of me," I said.
"Then do it," she said.
I started to breathe again between the counts of eight. The studio smelled of rosin and sweat and the kind of hope only ten-year-olds have when they learn to jump and land like the sky belongs to them.
The next important thing that happened was at the university auditorium where a man named Leonardo Semyonov performed a role that made the entire room hold its breath.
"That line—bring it here," my father said, clapping after the curtain call. "You must know him. He's extraordinary."
"He's a poet on stage," Hattie said, grinning like a child who'd found treasure.
"Hello," said Leonardo when my father introduced us. "Your father's voice on the stage is something I have chased for years."
"Call me Eleanor," I said, shaking the hand of a man whose presence was as precise as a metronome and as gentle as a bow.
He listened like a lake collects rain. "Your father mentions you often," he said.
I thought of the day my father wanted me to meet someone who might be a new path, someone whose art was not mine but who respected the craft.
"Would you mind if I asked you to help with rehearsal?" he said later, a soft request. "It is my concert, but sometimes the stage needs an honest eye."
"Of course," I said.
Days after that, he arranged his schedule so that the two of us were alone in cities and small rooms where the lights were polite and careful. He would show up with a quiet cup of tea and sit in the back of the practice room, watching me teach.
"You look tired," he would say.
"Don't be sentimental," I would answer.
He would smile like someone who liked melodies better than interruptions.
"You must have been scared to come back to dance," Leonardo said once, after a show. "Why did you stop?"
"Fear," I said. "And a man who preferred a camera over my feet."
He took my hand and, for the first time in months, I felt fingers that did not claim me with a camera lens.
"Stay for the next show," he asked. "I want you to see the parts where I forget myself."
At the airport before my first trip to take a teaching residency abroad, Leonardo found me among lines and trolleys.
"One more thing," he said. "Will you take this?"
He handed me a folded piece of paper. On it, he had written a single line: "井灯深烛."
"What?" I asked.
"A phrase," he said, voice catching like an old melody. "It means a light kept burning through the deep night."
I smiled because his words made sense in a way the city had not.
"I'll write you," he said, then corrected himself. "I will send you places I know. If the stage doesn't let me speak, the paper will."
The months that followed were slow stitches.
I wrote letters and he sent postcards. He wrote about stages and odd hotel rooms. I wrote about pliés and a child's endless frustration with the split jump.
"Does it hurt?" Leonardo asked once when I described how the right ankle still twinged.
"It did," I admitted. "But the body is a stubborn thing. The heart is the soft, stupid one."
He laughed like a bell.
Letters stacked like a slow evidence of warmth. His words were not fire; they were tea that warmed without burning. He never said loud promises. He asked quietly about the small things—the name of a teacher's son, the color of a particular curtain.
Meanwhile, Aiden did not let me go easily.
"I fixed it," he said once on the phone. "Jazlyn and I—we didn't mean to hurt you. It was a misunderstanding."
"Timing is not a misunderstanding," I said.
"Then forgive me."
"I already have forgiven the lilies," I said. "Forgiveness is not a bridge I build to someone who won't walk across it."
He came to the studio where Hattie taught and confronted Leonardo.
"You have no right to be in her life," Aiden said.
"Are you interested in art or possession?" Leonardo asked.
Aiden's face went through a cycle I knew well: smugness, confusion, desperation, then collapse.
"You can't tell me what I can and can't do," he said.
"No," Leonardo said softly. "But I can choose not to stand near you."
That was the softest remove I'd ever seen.
Aiden's third act came at a charity gala where he had been invited to display his work.
The hall glittered with cameras and champagne. The crowd was composed of people who liked the look of grief on others' faces as if it were a proper accessory.
I stepped in because Kathy had sent me an invitation in the mail—pretending that peace was possible. I dressed cleanly and carried myself like someone with a purpose.
On the wall, Aiden's images flashed—from mountains to women, sun to shadow. In a corner, Jazlyn smiled like a billboard that had somehow convinced itself of depth.
I went to the microphone.
"You don't have the right to occupy this space," I said into the microphone, my voice steady as a metronome.
Aiden smiled as if I had complimented him. "Eleanor," he said. "Sit down. This isn't a place for—"
"This," I said, and clicked the projector, "is a place for truth."
The large screen behind him filled with images: not curated portraits framed in his light, but behind-the-scenes photos, text messages I had found, drafts of emails where he wrote about arrangements, and receipts that tied Kathy to phone calls.
Gasps like small storms rose from the crowd.
"How did you—" Aiden started.
"How did I what?" I asked. "Find out you'd rehearsed my life with props? Find out you'd scheduled a ceremony without me? You didn't think I'd notice?"
Jazlyn stood like a mannequin who'd been asked a difficult question.
"That's private," she said.
"Private?" I repeated. "You sat across from my family and relished the scene. You let her sit where the bride should sit. You let her eat the crab. That's private?"
Kathy's face had lost its paint; she shuffled like paper.
"You don't know the whole story," she said, in that insurance-ad copy that women like to lean on when they've arranged another's life.
"Tell us," I said. "Tell us to whom you promised papers and rings. Tell us how you told him to give the rabbit to my refrigerator like it was a peace offering you'd already spent."
A man at the back snapped a picture. Someone mouthed the words "scandal."
Aiden's smile slivered. "You shouldn't have come," he said. "This is humiliating."
"Humiliation," I said, "is a word you use when your ego is hurt. Let me be clear—this is accountability."
His reaction changed like weather. First, he blinked, then his face went pale, then he sputtered denial.
"It wasn't like that," he insisted. "You are twisting things. You're jealous."
"Am I jealous of a woman you used to photograph?" I asked. "Or jealous of a lifetime you gave to an idea instead of me?"
The audience shifted. A few people laughed, nervous. Some took out their phones.
"You're being dramatic," Jazlyn whispered, eyes glossy. "I never—"
"Never what?" I asked. "Embarrassed you? Never used you as a place to hide while you planned who you'd legally tie to? Never took your hand when it was convenient?"
Aiden's jaw trembled. "Stop it."
"Stop what?" I asked. "Telling yourself you can have both the palette and the person? You can't."
Kathy tried to find a foothold. "Eleanor, son, we love you—"
"There's a video of you two," I said, "where you describe 'the arrangement' like it's an art piece. You told Jazlyn she'd be 'welcome to stay' and that 'papers could follow.' You told her you'd press pause on us. You told her the date. Do you deny this?"
He went through the expected stages.
"You're lying," he said at first.
"No," I replied.
"I never said—"
The public witnessed his attempt to back away, watched his chest tighten, then watched him flail into protests. "I love you," he begged, but the line was thin and worn.
Around us, people shifted from curiosity to scorn. "How could you?" someone whispered. Others started recording, like hungry birds.
"You are a liar," Leonardo said from the edge of the crowd. "You are a man who photographs truth and can't live it."
Aiden's face first flushed, then drained; his hands went to his pockets; he looked for Kathy as if she'd anchor him. She couldn't. The gallery lights were cruel.
"This is so—" Jazlyn tried to shout, but her voice broke.
"Stop acting like the victim," I said. "You booked the bride's seat. You ordered the rabbit dinner that she ate from my plate. You told my family she was 'ideal.' You called me 'settled' like it was a word of affection."
He stumbled backward. The people who had once clinked glasses with him now looked like vultures circling an injured thing.
"Do you understand?" I asked. "The difference between art and life?"
"It's complicated," he said weakly.
"Do you know what makes it complicated?" I asked. "The fact that everywhere you turned, someone else had to adapt for your ego."
His eyes filled. "You're destroying my career," he spat.
"And you destroyed what we had with a rehearsal," I said. "What you called 'work' ate my life. That is not a career move. That is betrayal."
The crowd's noise became a backdrop that muffled his attempts at pleas. He went from defiant to pleading to stunned silence.
"I am sorry," he said finally, the words flat as a photograph that had been overexposed.
"Sorry is a light in a room you left," I said. "It doesn't warm the people you made cold."
Around him the whispers hardened into judgment. Some people applauded—sharp, shocking like knives. A middle-aged woman I didn't know cried out, "Shame," under her breath.
Kathy sank into a chair as if her legs had been cut. Jazlyn's expression dissolved from practiced poise into wet confusion. She tried to hold the high ground until the world counted in the wrong direction and said, "I didn't know—"
"Yes, you did," I said. "You ate the crab and called it a blessing. You wore the dress," I told her. "You took the place that was mine without knowing."
Her face crumpled.
"Who are you to stand here and claim ignorance?" I asked.
She couldn't answer.
By the time the evening ended, the gallery manager had quietly asked Aiden to leave. People who had once liked his images now scrolled his feed and scrolled past in silence. A sponsor who'd once praised him in a column that ran in glossy pages pulled his endorsement.
Aiden went from swagger to smallness, from a man used to commanding a room to a man who could barely look at his shoes. He tried to hold an explanation, but it fell apart. His voice shook. He tried to call me later and left messages that were so thin with apology they might as well have been dust.
That night the headlines were gentle but precise: "Local Photographer's Private Life in Public View."
He lost clients. Jazlyn unfollowed him on every platform. Kathy stopped attending gallery openings. The people who had once laughed at our little fights now used the story as a cautionary tale.
After that, I didn't expect fireworks. I expected a slow thaw where I would melt further and then harden into something new.
The longer road back to myself was paved with rehearsals. I taught children's classes and corrected arabesques. I relearned how to fall and to rise in clean counts.
Leonardo kept his distance like a tide that returns predictable and steady. "I like to be near someone who stands for their art," he said. "And you, Eleanor, are splendid at standing."
His love was a soft architecture—no dramatic gestures, only rooms made with care.
Once, before I boarded a plane to teach abroad, he stopped me at security.
"Don't forget the phrase," he said, and handed me a folded poem page.
"井灯深烛," I read aloud.
"It is a promise," he said. "That the light you keep will have company."
We did not make a vow in front of anyone. We did not shout love into microphones. We simply sent postcards.
Years later, we walked past a modest restaurant where rabbits still hung in windows like advertisements for comfort food. I paused, touched the paper bag in my hand, and thought of lilies left in a vase.
Leonardo squeezed my hand. "Shall we go in?" he asked.
"No," I said. "Let's go see the rehearsal hall."
He smiled, the way someone smiles when they know the count.
"One, two, three—" we started the rhythm of the life we had chosen.
The past remains like bruised light in a photograph—visible, but altered by the way we decide to hang it.
I put my hand on the cover of my dance notebook, feeling the creased ticket to a contest long past—the one I missed because of a crash. I think of Ten-Fold Ambush, the piece that took me apart and put me back together. I think of lilies and rabbits and a line of music.
"Keep the light," Leonardo says.
"I will," I say.
I will keep my lilies in water, and my hands will know the steps. I will keep the light in a small room and let it warm us quietly.
The candle on the stage will keep burning. The dance will start.
The End
— Thank you for reading —