She found herself in that perfect moment of rest, transitioning back into consciousness, while the pillow and the blanket provided a deep cloud of comfort, and the last bits of a dream faded away. She felt his hand on her back and she stiffened, remembering that she was angry.
She rolled away from him, refusing to open her eyes, and mumbled “Go away.” as she flipped on her side just for a moment so she could tuck the blanket underneath her, get comfortable again. She could finish that dream. But her heart thudded loudly, and the feeling of peace slipped away, and all she could see was red behind her eyelids. The red quickly gave way to seeing herself from his eyes, her hair, long and dark, spread out over the pink of the pillow, the rest of her hidden underneath the covers.
His eyes glanced away, a sigh settling in his chest, taking in the art on the walls, his own work, one portrait of her hanging above the dresser, her hair cascading down her shoulders much like how it fell across the pillow.
As quickly as the moment came, it slipped away, fading into the darkness of her own closed eyes.
He pulled his hand away, shifting on the bed, but didn’t leave.
“Can we talk?” Reuben’s voice was calm, low. His voice had been one of the things she’d fallen in love with a year ago, the steadiness that she had thought reflected his character.
She resented that he was calm. That he got to be calm. The anger built up again. This time, she saw through the eyes of their neighbor from the apartment next door, as he jogged down the stairs and threw a bag of trash into the dumpster behind the building. She heard the clang of the lid as it slapped back down, and the smell of rotting vegetables clogging up his nose.
She recoiled, sitting up. But the anger kept coming in waves, and she flitted into other minds — someone waiting for the bus at the corner, then another buying milk at the convenience store down the street, then a driver, sitting at a red light and scrolling through messages on his phone.
“Are you okay?” Reuben said, his voice pulling her back, his concern cutting through her rage.
She focused on breathing, calming herself. “I can’t see straight right now,” she said.
“I understand,” he responded.
“No, you don’t,” she said, throwing her arms over her chest, trying to manage the disappointment, the sadness, and the anger without falling away again into someone else’s eyes.
She hadn’t been this angry in a long time. “You really don’t,” she continued.
Any other words felt empty. He knew. Work had become rote for her — a daily pattern of all the same things, in the same order. She’d fallen in love with him instantly that day, finding him in the park on her lunch break, watching him sketch the portrait that he would later turn into the painting that hung on the wall. Everything had been a rush for her – the feelings, the emotions, but he’d come along more slowly, more hesitantly, unsure. He was the perfect distraction from her own problems, the troubling ability she’d had since she was very small, the mindnumbing work she completed every day. She discovered passion and joy with him, threw herself into his work, found a coffee shop that wanted to hang the art he’d created. It was his first show, a real show, if not a gallery one, and she’d invited everyone to see his art but also to meet him. But he immersed himself in other things when she stepped into his world, and he started helping other people, finding the perfect excuse for his own avoidant behavior.
“I understand,” he said, reasonably. “It meant a lot to me that you did that for me, and I’m sorry that I hurt you.”
“That’s it?” she stared at him. “All of my family, my friends come to a show that I put together for you. You don’t even make an appearance. No text. No call. And you don’t even have an excuse? I get the family dinner, I guess. Why you couldn’t come for Christmas, even. That was for me. I suppose I was silly to expect my boyfriend to want to meet my family. But this was your show, Reuben. This was for you.”
He said nothing.
This time she saw through the eyes of a child, small hands reaching out to catch the concrete.
“I needed you to be there last night,” she said. “I needed to be able to trust you last night. And then I get home, and there’s this mess, of your shit everywhere, and it’s just part of the constant reminder that I clean up your messes, and I cover for you. Did you just forget? Did you forget about the show I’ve been planning for the past three months? I know you forget sometimes. I get that you have this creative process that’s so important, and my plans get in the way.” She could feel the anger giving way to tears, and she pulled the blanket up, over her chest, trying to form a protective shield.
“I didn’t forget,” he said.
She hated his dumb calmness and his stupid face. For the first time, she wanted to hurt him. She wanted to see him suffer and feel the way that she felt. She’d worked so hard to compromise with him. She’d picked out this comforter with its reds and blacks as a favor to him when they’d moved in together three months ago. She’d wanted lavender, but he wasn’t a fan of purple. He liked the deeper colors in his art and his home, he’d said.
They’d settled on light accents instead. She’d been proud of how they’d worked through that. She’d wanted to make him happy.
“Last time, you’d said, that when you made a promise to do something I asked you to do, that you would make sure that you did it, no matter what,” she said. “Are you telling me now that I can’t trust what you say anymore?”
“I’m realizing,” he said, “that I am too quick to promise. And I thought I just needed to be more careful of what I said I would do, but sometimes, things happen that I can’t control. I can’t tell you the details, but someone needed me last night more than the people at your show. And I’m sorry. But sometimes that happens and I can’t control it.”
“ My show,” she murmured. She twisted the edge of the blanket up between her fingers. “Who was it?”
She thought she knew. She suspected.
“I can’t tell you. It’s a pretty personal thing for this person, and it’s a story I can’t share.” He started backing up off of the bed.
“Just tell me who it was. I don’t need to know the story. I just want to know who it was.”
He was halfway out of the bedroom door, heading towards the kitchen. “Do you want some coffee? I’ll make some coffee.”
She darted up, following him. “Just tell me,” she said.
He said nothing, reaching for the coffee in the cabinet.
She felt the rage building up again, furious at him, furious that he kept picking someone else, being there for whoever needed him. Then she was in his mind again, looking at the coffee in his hand, and instead of just a moment, she lingered, feeling her own consciousness hit his, and she pushed.
She saw it all right there – the phone call he picked up, the jumbled texts, him changing direction at the last minute to find Laura, the one nice shirt he owned getting bloody when he found her, her shoes missing, bloody and bruised in a run-down house, taking her to the hospital.
The screams tore her back out — guttural and piercing. She slipped back into her own head and found Rueben writhing around on the floor. She threw herself to the ground, trying to hold him, comfort him, and he seized up, going silent.
She was cold, and she wished she’d brought a jacket. She shifted around in the hard chair, sneaking glances at him on the hospital bed as he avoided eye contact, his arms wrapped around himself.
He flinched every time she moved.
“You’re the first person who has allowed me to really feel everything,” she said, finally giving in to the weight, the pressure, the understanding that she’d ruined everything between them. She couldn’t look at him — she stared down at the ground, her mouth dry. “You let me get angry, and you try to make it right. I know that. Most of the time. I know you care about people. I know you’re always going to be there for Laura, before me. And that hurts me a lot. Even more than you not keeping your promises to me. And because you let me feel, and I feel a lot, after repressing it for so long, it’s activated something again I’ve fought against since I was a kid. Any emotion, when I was younger, was punished. Pretty severely. Especially anger. And anger — and this going to sound bizarre, and I don’t know how else to say it — activates this ability … thing … I can do. I can see what other people see, just for a moment. This morning was the first time I’d pushed any deeper. I’ve never done that before. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have.”
“I think you took something from me,” he whispered.
“No, no,” she said, popping up out of the chair, unable to help herself. “I didn’t!”
He grabbed a pen from beside the bed, the napkin that had been provided with lunch, and tried to draw. The lines came out stunted and rough, the shapes lose and uncontrolled.
“You like to say you can’t draw,” he said, finally looking up at her, his eyes hard. “You try.”
He held out the pen.
Her hands shook as she placed the napkin on the countertop, sweating as she tried to grip it, and the lines flowed quickly as she sketched, drawing him, so small in the hospital bed. There was nuance in the lines, then there was controlled technique in the shapes, and goodness, the shading tumbled out. Then the details of his beard emerged easily, and she captured the character in his eyes.
She looked up at him, confused, tried to approach him again. “We can fix this,” she said.
He shook his head. “That–” he nodded towards the crumpled napkin in her hand. “That cost me 30 years. Over $100,000. Hundreds of pencils and erasers. Thousands of pieces of paper. And you just took it, because you were embarrassed. Because you were upset I’d made a choice to go save someone’s life instead of coming to your party.”
She flushed, the room spinning.
“I loved you,” he said. “I know I’m not perfect, but I try as much as I can to be a man of my word. To own up to my mistakes. To try to make it right. Laura is self-destructing, and she needed me, and I don’t pick her over you. But I did choose life for her.”
Her mouth was dry. She shoved the napkin into her pocket, and left slouched, trying to fill the emptiness with the space of her own body.
She sobbed on the way home, riding the train, her tears blinding her to the stares of strangers. When she stepped in the door, it wasn’t home anymore, and she packed a bag, taking only a few things, including the painting, the first time she’d seen herself through his eyes without leaving her own.
Originally published in True Girl: Anthology. Download your free copy here. The full text includes another short story of mine and a personal essay on losing my faith.