I have never once told my husband no.Last month I threw his dinner against the kitchen wall.

I have never once told my husband no. Not in 40 years of marriage. Last month I threw his dinner against the kitchen wall, and I would do it again.

I'm Cheryl. I am 62. I have been cooking for other people since I was 22. My husband. My daughter. The church.

My friend Gwen and I joined the women's committee the same year. Two young wives with casserole dishes. Now she runs it. And I am at the sink.

Rhonda has washed dishes beside me for twenty years. She is the only one who looks at my face.

The spring luncheon was Gwen's. I got there at seven with three pans of scalloped potatoes I loaded in the car while my husband Frank slept.

Rhonda took one look at me.

"Cheryl. You look exhausted."

"I'm fine."

"Cheryl, the urn's doing that thing again."

I fixed the urn. Nobody else knows how.

"Cheryl, somebody knocked the punch bowl over."

I got the mop.

My coffee sat by the big sink from eight o'clock on. I touched it twice. Both times it was cold. Both times I drank it standing up with my hands wet.

Ninety people ate a hot lunch. I ate six bites of ham off a napkin at the sink.

At two Gwen came through carrying nothing but a glass of punch, and set it down so somebody could take her coat. She squeezed my arm on the way past and said it loud enough for the room to hear.

"What would we ever do without our Cheryl."

The dishwater had gone cold on my wrists.

"Thank you," I said.

By four o'clock the hall was empty and swept. My feet were gone. Then I drove home and made dinner. Because that is what I do.

I was running on four hours of sleep and my third shirt since two in the morning.

Frank retired two years ago. He had been in that chair since noon. I carried his plate over with the gravy still moving. One of the everyday plates. I had not sat down since ten past five.

I was halfway into my chair when the phone went off. Frank picked it up. My hands were full.

"Hey, Sweetie."

Our daughter, Molly.

"Saturday? What time?"

I was still halfway down.

"Yeah. Yeah, she's free. She doesn't do anything."

He laughed.

'She doesn't do anything.'

Something came up out of my chest and into my hands and I could not hold it. I took that plate off the table and threw it at the wall as hard as I have thrown anything.

Gravy ran down the paint in three lines. A green bean stuck to the light switch.

Here is the part I am not proud of. For one second, before the shame hit me, it felt wonderful.

Frank came out of that chair shouting.

"What the hell are you doing? What is the matter with you?"

"Say it again."

"What?"

"What you just said to her. Say it to my face."

He did not say it.

"I have been on my feet since ten past five this morning. And you told my daughter I don't do anything."

"Then why do you go? Nobody makes you go."

"They needed me."

"Everybody needs you." He was pointing at that wall like it had insulted him. "Nobody needs me. I sit in that chair. You have not asked me for one thing in two years."

"You could have offered."

"You never asked me."

And that shut me up. I could not think of one time I ever asked that man for anything.

The phone was still on the table. I could hear Molly coming out of it.

'Dad. Dad, what was that. Dad, answer me.'

Neither one of us picked it up.

Frank got the broom out of the pantry. I have never seen that broom in his hands. I got down on my knees for the big pieces.

"Sit down."

"I've got it."

"Cheryl. Sit down."

So I sat with my hands in my lap and watched my husband sweep up a dinner I cooked for him. He found the dustpan under the sink. I did not know he knew where it was.

He wiped the paint down. He left the dent.

Then he stood at the pantry door, not looking at me.

"Cheryl. What do you want for dinner. Tell me and I will go get it."

Nothing came out. He waited a long time.

I have cooked what that man likes since 1985 and I could not have told you one thing I like.

I went up to bed first. I stood in the doorway of our room and looked at his side of it. In an hour he would come up. He would want to talk about it. He would want me to say something back.

I did not have it in me.

So I went into the spare room.

We keep the heat off in there. I opened the closet for something to put over me. And there was Molly's Christmas bag from two years ago. Her handwriting on the tag.

'To Mom. Love, Molly.'

It sat there for two years because I never got around to it. That is what happened to everything that was just for me.

I tore the wrap more than I unzipped it. It was a comforter. Dusty blue. The whole top was covered in little raised rows, and my fingers went down into them. Deep and even, one after another.

Somebody's hands made that.

I shook it out over that little bed and it went past both sides, almost to the carpet. I crawled under it in my clothes.

I was still working on what to say to him in the morning. 'I am sorry. I do not know what came over…'

I never got to the end of the sentence.

Sometime in the night the door came open. He did not turn the light on. I felt the mattress go down next to my hip. He was sitting right there in the dark and I could hear him breathing.

Ten years I have not let that man's hand stay on me. It was not him. I would get in that bed at the end of a day and could not stand the feel of my own skin.

His hand came down flat on my back, on top of that comforter. He left it there.

I got my arm out and grabbed his wrist in the dark. He went so still I could hear the clock in the hall.

I turned his hand over and kissed the inside of it. And I did not lift my head.

He made a sound I have not heard out of him in ten years. He did not say one word.

I pulled his hand under the comforter and laid it on my chest, over the third shirt I had put on since two in the morning.

His thumb moved once.

He did not lie down and he did not take his hand back. I went under holding it.

The sun was on my face when I woke up. The light was all the way across the floor and up the dresser.

My shoes were still on.

7:40.

I laid there and waited for what comes every morning. The dry mouth. The ache behind the eyes. The five minutes I never get.

My shirt was dry. My pillow was dry. I sat up. I did not have to talk myself into it.

Then I smelled coffee.

Frank was already at the table with his eggs. He poured a second cup and set it at my place.

"I checked on you twice."

"Why?"

"You were so quiet."

I started the sorry speech and he shook his head once and went back to his eggs.

Molly called four times that night. I let it ring. At ten her car came up the driveway. She looked at that dent for a long time.

"Mom. What is going on?"

I opened my mouth and nothing came out.

She went looking. Room to room, the way you do when somebody will not tell you. She stopped at the spare room door.

The bag was on the floor where I tore it. The comforter was thrown across that little bed with the shape of me still in it.

"You opened it."

"Molly."

"I gave you that two years ago."

And then my daughter, who is thirty six and did not cry at her own wedding, put her hand over her mouth. She sat down on the end of that bed.

"How long did you sleep?"

"I went up at nine."

"Mom. It's 7:40."

"Nine hours," I said. "I slept for nine hours."

"I didn't give you a blanket, Mom." She was crying now. "A woman at work got one for her mother. She said her mom stopped waking up. The night sweats stopped."

"And I never said why, because you'd have told me you were fine."

"I am fine."

"Mom, it's menopause. Ten years. And you never said the word out loud, not to a doctor, not to Dad, not to me."

"Don't."

"The hot flashes. The soaked shirts. You get up in the dark, you change, you lie back down on a wet pillow, and you do it all again."

"Molly. How would you know that?"

"Because you told me. Two years ago, on the phone. Then you said you were fine and changed the subject."

I do not remember saying it.

"You snapped at Ellie in the car last summer, Mom. She was six."

I did not have one word to say to my child.

She got her coat and stopped at the door.

"They quit making them like that years ago. Costs too much to do it right, so the big stores stopped and nobody told anybody. Every one of us has been lying awake under garbage thinking there is something wrong with our own bodies."

Then she left.

I found the tag and typed the name into my phone. A small company I had never heard of.

Every picture was a bed nobody had made. Thrown on, the way I threw it on, hanging over the sides almost to the floor.

And I knew that bed. My grandmother had one, and when it stormed I got in with my mother and did not move till morning.

Thirty steps of stitching. Every one of them by hand. The sides cut long, so it does not slide off you. All that cloth costs money, so they only make two hundred at a time, then stop for months.

Every blanket I ever bought, I bought for how it looked to somebody else.

Molly's stays in the spare room. I am buying one for my own bed, and this time I am buying it for me.

Later I called my sister Terri.

"Please tell me it was not the good china plate."

"It was the everyday."

"Oh thank God. You'll be finding pieces of that thing till Christmas."

By the end of it she was not laughing.

"Nine hours," she said. "Cheryl, I have not slept a whole night since Reagan."

"Terri, I have a closet full of bedding that did not work."

"You slept nine hours."

"And if it doesn't work, thirty days, back in the box. What are you protecting?"

She stayed on the phone while I bought it.

Twelve colors. My thumb went to the white, because white is what you pick when nobody can have an opinion about it.

"What did you pick?"

"White."

"Since when do you pick white, Cheryl?"

So I took it back out.

Moody Olive. It does not match one thing in that room.

"Terri. It says three left in king."

"Put it in the cart. Right now."

I put it in the cart, and while I was looking at it the number went to two.

Then she went quiet.

"The sage green's gone. Every size. It just says 'notify me,' and I have wanted that green for ten years."

"So get on the list."

The comforter came on a Thursday. I threw it over the bed and walked out without straightening a corner. It hung down past the frame on both sides, almost to the carpet.

And it did not need me.

I still come up warm at two. I push it down to my waist and it stays where I put it. My arms cool off, my legs stay covered, and there is nothing on the floor to go looking for.

I go back under. I do not see that clock again till morning.

Eight hours. Every night.

I asked him to take my car in for the oil. He was out of that chair before I finished the sentence.

That week I had both hands in the sink and he came up behind me and put his mouth on the back of my neck. I turned around and took a fistful of his shirt. He shut the water off and dropped my towel on the floor.

"Leave them."

I am 62 and I have a bruise on my hip from my own kitchen counter. We did not get to those dishes till morning.

Molly called and asked if I was free Saturday. She has asked her father every time for ten years.

"No, honey. Not this one."

"Okay," she said.

And nothing fell down.

Then I called her back and asked her to bring Ellie. I got down on my knees in the garden with my granddaughter and planted forty bulbs. Three hours. I never sat down.

At the door she put both arms around my neck.

"Grandma. You're not tired anymore."

A woman from our church died. Nobody says no to a funeral, so I went back in that kitchen.

I stood in there rested, for the first time in my life, and watched us. Eleven women. Every one with something in her hands.

Gwen came through and asked me to put on more coffee. I told her where the pot was.

Rhonda was drying a pan beside me. She looked at me twice, then set it down.

"Cheryl. Turn around."

I turned around with my hands still wet at the sink. She took hold of my chin and turned my face to the window.

"That gray. Under your eyes. You have had it as long as I have known you. Your whole face came back. What did you do?"

So I told them. The plate. The wall. The broom in my husband's hands.

Nobody laughed.

Then it came out of them, the way it does when one woman goes first.

"There is a stack of clean shirts on the floor where I sleep. Twenty years. My husband thinks it's laundry."

"He stopped reaching for me six years ago. And I was relieved. I have never told a living soul until now."

Nobody said one word.

Rhonda was still holding that pan.

"Thirty years I have been telling everybody I'm just not a morning person," she said.

And every woman in that kitchen looked at me.

"Cheryl. What did you do?"

"I slept."

"That is not an answer."

"It's the only one I have. My daughter gave me a comforter two years ago and I never opened it. I opened it the night I threw the plate. Nine hours. I have slept eight every night since."

"Eight hours?"

"It stays on me all night. It's not on the floor at two and I'm not up looking for it."

"Cheryl. Say the name."

I put my phone on the counter and turned it around. Then the phones came out. Wet hands wiped down aprons, five at once.

"Sage green's gone. Every size. It only says notify me."

"Try the ivory."

"Ivory's gone too. How is it all gone?"

"They only make two hundred at a time. By hand."

"Dusty Blue. Four left in the king."

"Order it! Right now, don't sit there."

"Caramel says two, and that one's the limited one."

One of them got hers and held her phone up so the room could see. The youngest one asked about the shams.

"They come with it. I took mine off once and the bed looked wrong."

"Then I'm doing the whole thing."

Rhonda had not moved.

"How long is this list?"

"Months."

Rhonda put her phone face down. Then she picked it up.

"Dark Grey," she said. "Three left in the king."

Last Tuesday I came downstairs at eight. Rested. In no hurry. And I stopped in the doorway.

The good china was out. The good china that has sat in that hutch since our wedding. Two places set. Frank at the stove with a towel over his shoulder.

He put my plate down first.

"Sit down, Cheryl."

I sat down in my own kitchen and he poured me a cup and it was hot.

"What do you want for dinner?"

He has asked me that every night since. Every night I said whatever you want.

"I don't want to cook," I said.

He put the pot down.

"Good," he said. "Get your coat."

Nobody took those years from me. I handed them over at two in the morning, one wet shirt at a time, and I called it getting older.

I had not slept a whole night in ten years, and every single thing I lost, I lost to that.

Eight hours. Every night since.

Last night Frank came up to bed at nine. He has not done that since Molly was in high school. He got in beside me, under the comforter.

He put his hand flat on my hip. Right on the bruise. And he left it there.

"You awake?"

"I'm awake."

And I turned over to him in the dark.

I am 62 years old and I am not tired anymore.