Together Apart: Change is Never Easy

by Maxxwell, Lexi

  “I’m showered. Hair done, casual yet appropriately tight-assed. Perfect for the spouse of an award-winner. I just need to get dressed.”

  “Zach … please?”

  He nodded her away with a good-natured head jerk. Ten minutes was an eternity, considering he needed only to drape the various pieces of a semi-fancy suit to his frame. He wanted to finish the sketch. It was of Sam, as a superhero, wearing a cape with an N on it (for NewsLady) and nothing else. Below the stylized sketch of the naked Sam was the legend Hottest Reporter Award and Congratulations, baby, Love Zach. She didn’t know about the sketch, just like she didn’t know about the champagne he’d stuck in the back of the fridge earlier in the week, about the flowers he’d picked up this morning, or the — wait for it — cherry cordials he’d stashed in an office drawer. Zach wasn’t sure if he was exposing himself as a one-trick pony by defaulting yet again to chocolates and flowers, and didn’t know if his drawing of a nude super chick was an inappropriate companion to champagne and celebration. But it was the thought that counted.

  “Thirty seconds,” he said.

  With visible effort, Sam inhaled, exhaled, and said, “OK.” She saw how he was hunched over the drawing and said, “What are you working on that’s so urgent?”

  He curled his arm around the pencil and paper. “Piss off. Trade secrets.”

  “Come on,” she said. “I want to know what you’ve been doing in here the past few weeks.”

  “Mostly painting,” he said. He nodded toward several canvases stacked against one wall, backs facing out. None was any good. Next week he’d rip them, re-stretch them with new canvases, and start over. Even so, painting them had been worth it. As he’d worked, he’d felt like the Tin Man returning to mobility after a few squirts of oil. He was producing shit, but any faucet dribbled at first after dormancy. The good stuff was coming, once Zach’s pipes and wires and joints remembered their most familiar rhythms. Sam had been right about all of it. Over the past weeks, Zach really had felt better. And from his end at least, they had been better for it.

  “And what’s that? A sketch?” She took another step.

  “Hey! Get out of here!”

  Sam gave him a small smile, then fell backward, never turning. At the door, she pointed forked fingers toward her eyes, then toward Zach at his drafting table: I’m watching you.

  “Nine minutes.”

  She closed the door and was gone.

  Zach looked down at the drawing. He picked up an eraser, erased, then adjusted the shape of Sam’s right boob. He’d made them bigger than her actual boobs, but what the hell. She’d think it was hilarious. And, with all of the pieces in place once they came home, it would be the perfect antidote to the stuffy news awards banquet.

  Zach looked down at the drawing, blew eraser shavings from the surface, declared it perfect, then slipped it into an envelope and set it aside. The woman in that illustration would laugh at the asses going to the news dinner, because she was a superhero. The real Sam would laugh when it was all over — but until then, the event was of paramount importance. Zach thought it was stupid. But what he thought didn’t matter, so he’d get through it like a good soldier. Later, they could celebrate in a way more befitting them as a couple.

  With the drawing stowed in its envelope, Zach stood and left the office. As he passed into the bedroom to dress, he saw that Sam had laid out his clothes, unbuttoned the shirt, loosened laces on his polished black shoes, and seemed to have run a lint roller across both pieces of the suit. Anything to shave a few seconds from his prep time. He began pulling the clothes on piece by piece, thinking that finally, everything was falling into place.

  Sam’s false pregnancy had been a blessing in disguise.

  Before, they’d been on diverging roads — not because they either wanted to be away from the other, but because they had rolled onto them by default. The pregnancy, such as it was, forced their hands — but they’d needed to have their hands forced. Difficult decisions weren’t the enemy, their ultimate foes were indifference, complacency, and living by rote.

  And that was what they had been doing: sailing along, never thinking to ask where their ship was sailing as they slowly drifted apart.

  It was scary to confront certain truths about their marriage, but facing them was better than shoving them under the rug and pretending they weren’t there. Now that they had stared into the eyes of those truths, and turned together to make a decision, things were getting better. Because they were paying attention, roads were no longer diverging. Over the past two weeks, they’d consciously spent more time together, and more consciously took time for themselves, knowing that the more they were individually satisfied, the more each would have for the other.

  They were more open than they had been in years. Sam told Zach she felt him growing distant, as if he resented her. Zach told Sam that she seemed obsessed with her job, and had been bringing that stress home. Zach confessed to feeling trapped in his job, because his income was good and he couldn’t leave. Sam confessed to feeling sad at the way Zach had turned his back on himself. She hadn’t fallen in love with a man who “went through life.” She’d fallen in love with a crazy dreamer, who was always reaching unrealistically for a fresh orbit — a starry-eyed optimist with the heart of a poet.

  And on and on. Through the hard conversations, they had started to heal. He’d returned to his studio. She’d returned to her private creative writing, which she’d always had trouble “wasting” time on because, she said, it felt like a fool’s errand. Sam’s willingness to delve back into those fools’ errands turned Zach on, as if he was meeting her anew. Zach rediscovered emotions he thought he’d forgotten. He joined a few online social networks and began connecting with like-minded artists. On his own, he looked up a local artists group. He hadn’t gone to one of their meet-ups yet, but at least it felt like he was rediscovering his center after long years spent losing it.

  Then they’d faced the question that had started it all in the first place: whether they should have a baby. Ultimately, Sam wanted to wait. They were too tenuous, she said. They’d skidded close to the cliff’s edge without even realizing it. They had to first step back from the chasm. They didn’t want a child as a Band-Aid, born with the burden of holding its parents together.

  But it was okay. They had time. They were young; they were in love (again); they were both on the right paths and in pursuit of their life’s true purpose.

  Zach had finished dressing and was knotting his tie when Sam entered. “Three minutes,” she said.

  He laughed. “Time enough to readjust my tie.” Then he unknotted it and did just that.

  “Don’t push it. I’d rather not cut it down to the wire.”

  “Like you haven’t already baked time in,” he said, grinning.

  “Some,” she said. “But never enough. Now come on, sexy.” She took him by the arm and pulled. He made sarcastic noises of protest. She pretended to pull harder than she actually was.

  It felt like they were kids again, so he pretended they were.

  “That dress makes you so hot, I just want to spend the whole night fingering you under the table.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Ooo-kay.”

  “I’m going to,” he said. “Seriously.”

  “Come on,” Sam urged. “I want to make the social hour.”

  Zach groaned. He did not want to make the social hour. In Zach’s estimation, pretty much everyone Sam worked with were the diametric opposites of the kinds of people who turned him on, inspired him, lit all of his buttons. They were ladder-climbers, muckrakers, sycophants, and generally people who, despite learning to write at one point, had no creativity left inside them (if it was ever there at all). Zach had promised to shake hands and smile, to be his best self through the night.

  “I don’t want to talk to your boss,” he said as Sam pulled him out the door.

  “You have to. You promised.”

  “Then I refuse to talk to Danny. I’m drawing the line
at Danny.” Danny was one of the paper’s photographers. He kept submitting his photos for Pulitzer consideration, but to Zach’s eyes, his pics all looked like vacation snaps. When Zach saw Danny’s photos online or in Sam’s work piles, he made retching noises. Sam played along, and always had some story to fuel the fire, inevitably about Danny’s ass licking.

  “Fine.”

  “Or even … ”

  She gave him an impatient lips-pressed smile and cut him off. “Seriously, Zach. We’ve got to go.”

  He sighed. “Okay, okay.”

  They left, locked the door, and walked down to the apartment’s parking lot.

  But there was one more thing to do, so Zach fumbled after closing Sam’s door. He had to get back upstairs without her and toss the champagne into an ice bucket, pull the cordials and flowers from their hiding places, and set it all (plus his “award” drawing) on the table in the front room. He opened her door back up.

  “Wait,” he said, patting his pockets. “I forgot my wallet.”

  Sam looked at her watch — a gold thing she’d won as part of a lesser journalism award the prior year, back in Portland. “Zach … ”

  “I know right where it is.”

  “We don’t need your wallet. I still have your license in my purse from the other night. I have credit cards and cash. Let’s go!”

  “It’ll just take a second.”

  “Oh, come on, Zach!” she whined. “This time of day, you never know what kind of traffic you might run into on … ”

  “I’ll be quick.”

  “If you hadn’t screwed around until the last minute … ”

  “Sixty seconds,” he said. “I’ll run.” He slammed the car door and scampered off, leaving Sam annoyed. It was worth it. Yes, she was agitated, but she’d get over it when she saw why he’d “screwed around until the last minute” and why he’d insisted on running up, ostensibly for his wallet.

  Zach scampered up the apartment steps two at a time, his suit coat flapping behind him. He reached the door and realized he’d left his keys in the car.

  Well, no way he was going back down there now. They had a key hidden behind one of the fire extinguishers. Zach joked that if the apartment ever burned down, all of the neighbors would see the key, then let themselves in and take all of their shitty furniture. But when he yanked the case open and began rummaging, he couldn’t find it. The key had vanished.

  Shit.

  Now he was pissing Sam off and unable to deliver the payoff. This was intolerable. He’d promised to be quick, and could picture her in the car, angrily tapping her foot. He’d have to return with nothing, his errand unaccomplished. And if he took her keys to try again, she’d surely bite his head off.

  Just before he closed the extinguisher case, Zach saw something brass glint toward the bottom.

  The key.

  But it was wedged behind the clip holding the extinguisher in place, and Zach couldn’t pry it loose. He could hear a ticking clock in his head, counting one second after another. He imagined Sam rolling to a boil. He had to hurry. If he could just get the goddamn key, this could be over in 30 seconds.

  The key finally came loose. He slammed it into the lock, shoved the door open, and sprinted into the apartment. Sam wasn’t kidding about the traffic across town; sometimes it was no problem and sometimes it was murder. If they hit it — and, he realized, they weren’t out of rush hour yet; he’d not thought of that fun bit of trivia — she would be supremely pissed. This banquet was a big deal to her; this award was a huge deal to her; the accolades and public cred that came with the award were an astronomical deal to her. Zach wondered if he could have planned better. Maybe he could have set up in his studio, then slyly slipped a note onto the front table on their way out, tented in the middle so it stood up.

  Too late for that now. Zach rushed into the kitchen, grabbed the champagne, tossed it into the pre-prepped ice bucket and slammed the bucket onto the table. He grabbed the envelope from his studio and snagged the cherry cordials — fatigued but cherished symbol that they were — and was going for the flowers when he heard a voice behind him.

  “What the hell is taking you so long up here?”

  Zach turned. Sam’s dress looked like a mood ring, betraying emotions, hot as lava. Her blue eyes looked like ice, two extremes harmonizing in fury.

  “Just … ” he stammered, torn between wanting to hide what he was doing to maintain the surprise and wanting to reveal it and clear his name, “ … setting up some stuff.”

  “I know you hate this event,” she said, not seeing. “But how about you just do it because it matters to me?”

  “Sam, I’m just … ”

  “This one thing!” she said. “It’s all I’ve asked! ‘Hey, Zach, I’ve got my banquet next week. You can come, right?’ ”

  He didn’t want to be drawn in, to become angry, but her accusations and condescending tone were making it hard. “I’m not NOT coming. I just had to run back up.” He subtly sat down what he was holding, then marched forward to block her view. “Okay. Now I’m ready.”

  “You’ve been complaining all day,” she said, not moving.

  “I just had to run up! I’m ready. Let’s go.” He tugged, but it seemed like this was something that had been brewing, something Sam was determined to say … even if it cost them precious time.

  “I just don’t understand why you can’t support me.”

  “Don’t support you? Jesus, Sam! That’s practically all I do!”

  “So, why are we having this argument?”

  He gave her an exaggerated look of confusion. “Hell if I know!” He put a hand on her back, again trying to urge her toward the door. “Come on. Let’s go.” If he could get her moving, she wouldn’t be able to stay angry. If they could just get to the car, the bomb would diffuse. He’d have the whole night to impress her with how well he could kiss her bosses’ and co-workers’ asses.

  But Sam stayed where she was.

  “What?” he said, looking back at her.

  “You think what I do is bullshit. You think it’s selling out.”

  “No. Look, Sam … ”

  “Tell me the truth. Look me in the eye and tell me that you think writing topical, journalistic stories is a legit way to spend my talents.”

  “Sam … really?” He turned his wrist over to look at his watch, to remind her that they were indeed late. “Come on. Like you said, traffic.”

  “Answer the question.”

  “You want to do this now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Look,” he said. “However you want to spend your time is fine with me. It’s your life.”

  “Really.”

  “Really.”

  “Even if you disapprove. Even if, personally, you’d think it was a stupid waste of talent.”

  Zach narrowed his eyes, shaking his head. “What is this about, Sam?”

  She shrugged. “I haven’t been doing any creative writing at all. I lied. When you’ve been in your studio, I’ve been working.”

  Zach felt all the air leave his lungs. Sam might have just told him that she’d been dismembering her childhood teddy bear or that she’d never cared for how he kissed. It was a below-the-belt betrayal, bleaching his sense of optimism brewing through the previous two weeks. In one stroke, he felt it all collapse.

  “Work?”

  “A story about an underground cult, mostly. Centered nearby. I got an in with the FBI, and … ”

  “WORK?”

  “Yes, goddammit! Work! I like work! I love research! I enjoy digging shit up and exposing it! It’s why I chose to do what I do!”

  “You said you were writing short stories.”

  “I said what you wanted to hear.”

  “What I wanted to hear?”

  “Yes, Zach! What you wanted to hear. You didn’t actually want me to do what I wanted to do. You wanted me to do what you wanted me to want to do.”

  “I don’t even know what that means.”

  �
��Oh, of course you do. I don’t want to be a creative writer anymore! I want to be a journalist! It’s why I went into journalism! Not everyone is like you! Not everyone wants to delve and emote all the goddamned fucking time.”

  “That’s fear talking.”

  “It’s preference talking!”

  “Sam, you’re a beautiful writer. Relegated is … ”

  “ … the work of a scared, young girl! But that’s not who I am anymore, Zach!” She looked less mad, more tired. Sam started pacing the room, red dress swishing at her feet. “Sure, I used to want to write books and stories and poems. But I also wanted a pony and to be a princess when I grew up. After that, I wanted to be a vet and have a farm where, somehow, I’d get my hands on a unicorn. I used to draw pictures in a spiral-bound journal, called My Book of Dreams. But I grew up, Zach.”

  “What most people call ‘growing up’ is conditioning.”

  “Easy for you to say. You never grew up.”

  “That’s a good thing!”

  Sam shook her head. “You can’t argue like Peter Pan. It’s not fair. You think youth and art is right and that being an adult and changing is wrong. But that’s not how it is for everyone, Zach. And it’s not how it is for me.”

  He took her arms. “I know you, Sam. I know who you are inside, and … ”

  “You think what I do is selling out.”

  The question slapped Zach in the face. He wasn’t prepared, and could only stammer. “I didn’t say that.”

  “But you think it. You keep trying to get me to do what you want me to want to do. If you can get me to want to be a novelist or whatever, then it’ll be safe for you to say what you actually want to say — that journalism sucks, and I only went into it because I was afraid to write books for a living. It’s like how you can’t say that a girl’s boyfriend was a total shit until they finally break up, until she agrees with you. I haven’t agreed, so you can’t tell me outright — yet — that my career is stupid. But that’s phase two, right? After you get me to admit that I’ve always secretly wanted to write about my inner fairies and light and shit?”

  “You act like I’m forcing you,” he said, feeling a pout creep into his voice. “I thought you wanted to do it.”