“I don’t know what to say, Phil. I am sorry all of this happened.”
It would always be a mess, she thought, if Linda did not go.
A few days later, when she met Josh for coffee, and she mentioned that Phil had visited for the weekend, she saw the muscles in Josh’s face tense. She did not want to spend the energy once again explaining everything to Josh and hear him tell her that what she was doing wasn’t going to work. She did not tell him that Phil’s daughter called, that Phil had left in the middle of the night, and that she felt the whole thing was strange, being in the midst of someone else’s divorce. Josh had been right in so many of these circumstances, and she didn’t want to hear it again. So, she said nothing more than, “Phil stayed over for the weekend,” a brief report that would explain what she had done, and saw that Josh picked up her cue. He did not question her.
She removes Phil’s vegetables from the bags and puts them in the garbage, washing the plastic bags and propping them up to dry with chopsticks on the drain board. It was a shame to waste everything.
The time with Phil had not been spectacular before his daughter called about the dog. There were moments of comfort, and the sex was nice. Sarayu didn’t bring up the fact that Phil was still not moving forward on the divorce or that his wife had yet to move out, but something like a light switch turned on for her when he left, as if to say out loud that Phil is not divorced yet and may never be divorced. Things have not changed much. The difference is that they are now not hiding in hotels.
All of this feels to Sarayu as though they are fitting themselves into old patterns. Still, she isn’t going to bring up her dissatisfaction just yet, not after the drama of losing his dog, she thinks as she wraps her turkey sandwich in plastic and puts it into her lunch pouch.
Phil comes to her with vegetables from his garden that wilt and become inedible. She gathers the trash bin liner, ties the ends, and deposits it in the garbage chute outside her apartment. She is well aware of the symbolism.
Her phone buzzes with a text message from Phil. “Good morning, Gorgeous!” No word about what happened as he left her. Nothing about the dog.
Is this good or bad? Does it mean that it’s her job now to call him and ask? Maybe. That is what one does if one is in a relationship. And yet, Sarayu doesn’t answer him.
She wonders if she will get an email from Linda. She never answered Linda’s last email, and it seems to her that Linda would only contact Sarayu if she had been prompted by a previous response. Yet, Linda will always be in the background of any relationship with Phil. Sarayu doesn’t want this. She values her space, her privacy. Maybe this is why she never settled down. Maybe this is why she picked men who wouldn’t.
She would answer Phil’s text later from the bus. She was in no hurry.
KAYE PULLS OUT the carry-on suitcase from the back of her closet. In it she has kept two pairs of jeans, two blouses, a wool sweater from college, an old winter jacket, socks, shoes, underwear. She fills a quart-sized Ziplock bag with toiletries and goes to the strongbox in her husband’s closet to take out cash and her passport. He has five hundred dollars in the box, and she puts these notes, all crisp and new, into her purse.
She has called for a taxi, which arrives twenty minutes early. She locks the front door behind her and asks the driver to take her to the airport. As she explains the best route to take her from her house, she suddenly realizes that it isn’t necessary to drive the most efficient way to the airport. She is not on a schedule. She is not coming back.
When the driver approaches the departure drop-off, he asks her which airline he should leave her at. She makes something up. She has no particular destination but selects the terminal from which she can also leave for London, Madrid, and Tokyo, as well as several cities in Canada. Maybe she will purchase a ticket to Toronto.
She lifts her purse and suitcase out of the taxi and hands the driver what she thinks might be twice the cost of the ride, she wasn’t paying attention.
She is shedding an old skin.
THE SUN IS out in the morning, and Eleanor takes her coffee to the balcony outside her bedroom. There she sits, checking her morning emails, in the quiet of the space overlooking her backyard and those of the neighbors. There are no sparrow nests now. She had called an exterminator and a man with a ladder came to remove them and repair the pigeon spikes.
When this was all done, she wrote out a check for two hundred fifty dollars.
From her perch, Eleanor writes on her computer.
Hello Linda,
I feel that the time has come for me to tell you not to send me any more email. My friendship with your husband, or ex-husband (whatever you are calling yourselves these days), has come to an end. Finis. Over.
I don’t know why you spend so much time emailing me with your problems. They are not my problems. Like you, I have a husband and teenage children, and they take up the space in my brain devoted to problems. I have no room for the issues of other people and I am not a therapist. I’ve only met you once, and at that time you had the wrong idea about my relationship with Phil. You are a physically beautiful woman—far more beautiful than I—but you are a bit twisted, and I don’t need that in my life. In fact, I don’t need either of you to mess things up for me. What I have is reasonably stable, even if it is a bit dull. So, please, from now on, leave me alone.
She rereads the message. Then presses delete. Then closes the computer.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
One can’t produce a novel on one’s own anymore. I have several people to thank.
First, if it had not been for my husband Brian Ostrow’s love and good humor this book would still be in my head.
I would like to also thank Ian Morris, Anne Saywitz, and Joan Slavin for their comments and editing help. Kay Day was my first reader and immensely supportive, always wanting to read more. Pat Skalka, Jeanne Mellet, and Ellen Pinkham helped in ways only the best of writing groups can, critically and emotionally. Mike Ostrow, my web guru, sorted out anything technical, for which I have no skill and am very grateful. Thanks to the editors of Hamilton Stone Review, in which an earlier version of some elements of this novel appeared in short story form. And thank you to Deborah Robertson and Gibson House Press for finally creating the published piece.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and raised in Champaign, Illinois, Esther Yin-ling Spodek is a graduate of the University of Virginia and received her MFA in Creative Writing from Indiana University. Her short stories have appeared in literary magazines and she taught composition at Columbia College in Chicago. She currently lives in Evanston, Illinois, with her husband and border collie.
GIBSON HOUSE PRESS connects literary fiction with curious and discerning readers. We publish novels by musicians and other artists who love music.
GibsonHousePress.com
GibsonHousePress
@GibsonPress
@GHPress
FOR DOWNLOADS OF READING GROUP GUIDES
for Gibson House books, visit GibsonHousePress.com/Reading-Group-Guides
We Have Everything Before Us Page 16
