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Here's the biggest problem, here's the thing that hurts, here's the thing that is making him grit his teeth: he does not understand. It makes no sense. It is too complicated and obscure and violence would be so easy, so direct, and he would win. He aches for violence in a way that he never has before.

He has done everything for her. Just two hours prior she was perched on the edge of the counter running her fingers over the stubble of his head, mourning his haircut once again in what was by now a familiar litany, while he gave the baby a bath. And she'd been fine, fine; she'd been smiling, she'd been talking in that sweet slurred slow voice of hers, and now she was curled up in the corner of the spotless bathroom, spotless because he'd cleaned it because he never ******** asked her to do more than fold the ******** laundry once in a while, and she was crying again, again, again.

He's asked her why. He's begged, he's cajoled, he's held her hands and he's kissed her and he's pleaded please please please just tell me what's wrong so I can fix it, but she refuses to answer him, or maybe she can't, and this is what infuriates him. She cries all the time now. She says she's just stressed. And every time he's felt the need to scream and to hurt her rising up in him, horrible and vicious, and every time he's stifled it down and coerced and petted and soothed until the sobbing gave way to hiccups but today he can't. Today the baby is wailing horrible sickly little wails and she's been to the doctor twice in the past month for her lingering baby cold that keeps Taym up in terror at night and April, who still has not tried to find a job, is crying and rocking back and forth and all she can say is: "I can't."

It feels like a relief. His nails dig red crescents into his palm and his jaw aches from the clench of his teeth and he yells himself hoarse, and he curses, and he belittles and pours out all of his perpetual disgust for her without censoring and to the rising crescendo of her sobs he yanks her up by the collar of her shirt and half-drags, half-chases her, against her struggling and fighting and shrieking, until he's left bruises on her arms and she's left bloody claw marks on his, and he shoves her hard, hard, into the wall next to the crib and it knocks the air out of her and interrupts her crying with a sick-satisfying gasp for breath. She tries to recede back to the floor but he holds her up by her arms and her hair, forcing her head back, forcing her to look at him, forcing her to acknowledge by means of that desperate look in her beautiful half-blind eyes that he is stronger than her and that she would be nowhere without him because he loves her and he has given up everything he had to take care of her and to take care of their child and look how much she's hurting him because he doesn't want to do this (he does; he does; just once and it'll be over, because just once is always what he says). She goes still and shaking, choking back her tears, nodding, acquiescing, begging quietly, and he lets her go after another vicious shake and tells her, lifting his voice over the baby's constant wailing, to take care of her ******** daughter.