Free Days with George

by Colin Campbell

  I sensed that whatever was coming next wouldn’t be good.

  “I’m getting married.”

  For more than two years I’d dealt with not being able to be with her by pushing my feelings aside. But in the background, I’d never shaken the belief that she would eventually break up with this guy and choose me. When she shared this news, I was crushed and knew I couldn’t see her anymore, even as a friend. I made the best of it in the moment—I smiled and told her I was happy for her and wished her luck. But from that point on, I made a conscious effort not to see her. She didn’t need me in her life. Reluctantly it was time for me to move on.

  By 2004, which was many years later, Jane was no longer on my mind. I was still single, had quit my job in Toronto and moved back to Nova Scotia to be near my grandfather. He was in poor health and I wanted to make the most of the time he had left. He was an anchor to me when I was growing up, and I wanted to return the love and care he’d given me as a boy. My grandfather was the most passionate person I’ve ever met, a man who lived life to the fullest no matter what he was doing—fixing a car, telling a joke, hosting a barbecue or swimming with his grandsons at the cottage.

  Helping take care of my grandfather meant being away from my normal life for quite a long time. I still made semi-regular trips to Toronto for business and to visit friends, and it was on one of those trips—to see my accountant in the early days of March—that I ran into Jane. She was at a crosswalk in the financial district, waiting for the light to change. She was partially hidden under a big winter jacket and hat, but it was her, all right. While over the years I had tried to move on—thought I had—the moment I saw her I knew I had not done a very good job.

  I watched her get closer and closer after the light changed. Then I caught her beautiful pale-blue eyes brighten as she noticed me. Her face broke into a beaming smile and she reached out and gave me a huge hug. I held her in the middle of the intersection, too stunned to speak. A taxi trying to turn the corner started honking at us, so I put my arm around her and ushered us over to the safety of the sidewalk.

  “I heard you’d moved away,” she said, out of breath. “I heard you were in Halifax.”

  All I could get out was “Yup.”

  “What are you doing back in Toronto?”

  I told her that I was in town for just a day and that I had moved out east because my grandfather was not doing so well.

  “I’m really sorry to hear that,” she said. “I remember every time you talked about him it always put a giant smile on your face.”

  “Thanks. I just want to spend some time with him while I still can.”

  Then she asked, “Would you like to have dinner tonight?”

  I was due to fly out in a couple of hours, so I did the only thing I could in order to see her: I lied. “I don’t leave until tomorrow. Sure—I’d love to have dinner!”

  I changed my flight and met her downtown in the bar of the King Edward Hotel. We ate and drank and caught up on each other’s lives. She told me that she had separated from her husband.

  “He wasn’t the guy I thought he was,” she said, lowering her gaze and studying her hands in her lap. “We just drifted. It didn’t work out,” she added. “I’ve actually thought about you a lot recently.”

  And that’s when she paused, looked me right in the eye and stated, “I married the wrong man.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. In the years since I’d met her, I’d dated other women and had even had a few meaningful relationships. But I’d never felt what I had with Jane, and I’d never been able to fully give myself to anyone else. Now, here Jane was, sitting across the table from me and saying the thing I’d always hoped she’d say. I felt elation, vindication, excitement. A little confusion. A ton of shock. And love. I thought my face would split in two from smiling. I told her I felt as strongly about her as I always had, that I loved her and had always loved her.

  “So, do you think we can make up for all the time we’ve lost?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes, we can.”

  A year later, on a beautiful fall day in front of forty of our closest family and friends in a tiny church right on the ocean in Boutiliers Point, Nova Scotia, enveloped in the comforting scent of maple wood burning in the woodstove, we were married.

  It was the happiest day of my life.

  I remembered all this on that frigid afternoon in New York City four years after I had married Jane, as the storm threatened to ground all planes at LaGuardia Airport. It still hadn’t yet started to snow, so there was still a chance I’d make it out of the city if I hurried. I took a break from silently willing the taxi through traffic to call Jane. “They haven’t canceled any flights yet but they will soon, so I’ll try for the earliest available.”

  “So I’m still going to see you tonight?” she asked, trepidation in her voice.

  “I hope so.”

  “What time do you think you’ll get back?”

  “Around dinnertime if I can get re-routed.”

  “Please try,” she said.

  “You know I will.”

  At long last I arrived at the airport, to find everyone there in full-fledged revolt. Businessmen with compact suitcases viciously elbowed their way through groups of panicked tourists, and airport workers were being grilled like key witnesses in a murder trial. The line snaking from the Air Canada desk was impossibly long and full of screaming children. I took my place at the end. After what seemed like hours, I was finally face to face with an Air Canada employee having one of the worst days of her life.

  “Hanging in there?” I asked as I placed my ticket on the counter.

  “Just barely,” she said. “People go crazy in bad weather. How can I help you?”

  I took a deep breath. “I know this is probably the same thing everyone’s asking,” I began, “but I’m looking to get home to Toronto as soon as I can. I don’t think my flight’s going to make it out tonight, and if you could help me find an alternate route, I’d really appreciate it.”

  She took my ticket and asked for my passport. Then she began typing away at her computer. A few moments later, she glanced up and flashed me a smile. “All the current Toronto-bound flights are full. I may be able to get you on a flight to Charleston. It’s not affected by the snow. From there we have a direct flight to Toronto, and you should make it home just fine.”

  “That would be perfect,” I said. “And thank you.”

  She printed out my new boarding pass and handed it over the counter.

  I called Jane when I deplaned in Charleston. “I’m stuck here for about two hours, but I made it out of New York.”

  “I thought you’d be home around dinnertime.” She sounded disappointed, maybe even a bit annoyed.

  “This is the best I could do. If I hadn’t come this way, I would’ve been stuck in New York for I don’t know how long.”

  “I guess,” she said. This time she definitely sounded annoyed.

  “I’m sorry. I wish I were already there. But I’ll be home soon. That’s the important thing. I love you.”

  There was a short pause, and then she said, “See you soon.”

  TWO

  I made it home to Toronto just before midnight on what turned out to be the coldest night of the year. Snow lay thick on either side of the runway, but the dark sky was clear and dotted with stars. As the plane taxied up to the gate, I pulled out my phone and sent Jane a quick text: “Back safe. It’s late. Don’t worry about picking me up. I’ll grab a taxi.” I was exhausted, but I didn’t want her to have to leave the house so late, especially considering it felt like the coldest night of the year. I couldn’t help but smile when her reply came a minute later: “Don’t worry. Already on my way.” It’s amazing how good something little like that can make you feel.

  Standing on the curb, I dropped my bag on the asphalt and turned my back to the wind. I tried to warm myself up by thinking about the vacation Jane and I had been talking about. I pictured us lying on
a beach in Barbados, our favorite vacation destination, the sound of the surf licking at the shore, lounge chairs pushed right up against each other as we read under the sun, always making sure that some body part was in contact—fingers just touching, legs in a lazy tangle. I held the vision for a minute and then opened my eyes to snow-covered cars driving by, splashing salt-infused slush up onto the sidewalk. As I breathed, the hair in my nostrils froze.

  Jane’s Ford Escape rounded into view. One last leg—a short, warm car ride with the person I loved most in the world—and I could drop my bag, ditch my coat and curl up in bed with her. When she pulled to a stop in front of me, I was grinning like an idiot.

  I opened the rear door and threw my bag in the back. Then I jumped into the passenger seat, shivering a little. “Man, am I glad to see you.” I leaned in for a kiss across the console.

  “Welcome home,” she said, before pecking me on the mouth. Then she turned back to the steering wheel and pulled away from the curb. “How are you? How was the flight?” She was wearing her puffy parka and a knit tuque, from which a few stray strands of her golden hair had fallen loose. She looked cozy and adorable. I was so happy to see her.

  “So, how were your meetings?”

  “They went great. We’re really starting to get things together for the show—it’s pretty exciting.”

  “That’s awesome!” she said, taking her eyes off the road for a moment and flashing a smile.

  I filled her in on a few more details and asked how her days had been.

  “Oh, it was all fine,” she said, shrugging off the question. “Are you hungry at all? We don’t have much to eat at the house, but I can stop somewhere.”

  “I’m okay. I just want to get home.”

  For me at that moment in my life “home” had extra meaning. Never had any other house I’d lived in felt so much like a home. And that was mostly because I associated the place with Jane; all our memories as a married couple were stored there. Its location—across from a park, looking out at a children’s playground on a quiet one-way street in the east end of the city—was what we’d fallen in love with first. The house itself had good bones. We got it at a decent price because its last major repairs had been done in the 1960s. Over three and a half months, with friends and family pitching in here and there, we gutted then totally rebuilt the place. We installed new wiring and plumbing—using three-quarter-inch pipe instead of half-inch, so the water pressure was amazing—redid all the drywall, turned three tiny bedrooms into two bigger ones with vaulted ceilings, renovated the kitchen, repaired the roof and the front porch and tore off the old aluminum siding to reveal a red-brick exterior. We even hired “brick hippies” to clean and restore the beautiful old brick. Though we’d lived together for more than a year already when we bought it, it meant something extra that we’d renovated the house together rather than piggybacking on someone else’s work.

  Jane had a way with plants and put it to use in the perennial beds we laid in the front yard. My thumb was less than green, but I still loved working out there alongside her. At the end of a long summer day’s weeding and watering, we’d sit on the porch with a couple of glasses of wine and admire our handiwork as the sun set over the park.

  The night Jane drove me home from the airport it struck me as odd that she pulled up in front of the house. A laneway led to the garage at the back of our property, but she didn’t turn into it. “Hey,” I said, “you missed the laneway.”

  She didn’t respond at first, just steered smoothly and brought the car to a stop alongside the curb. She put the car in park but didn’t kill the engine. Keeping both hands on the wheel, she waited a beat, and then, looking straight ahead, she announced, “I’m not going in.”

  Kind of a rough joke to lay on me after the travel ordeal I’d just been through. “Okay, sure,” I said, chuckling. “Seriously, though, why are we out front?”

  The beat was longer the second time, but the answer was the same: “I’m not going in, Colin.”

  This time I registered her tone. It was a cold, clipped monotone, robotic and completely unrecognizable. The smile disappeared from my face. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I’m not going in,” she said yet again. She continued to stare straight ahead, her expression fixed and unreadable. In the fifteen years I’d known her, it was the first time I could remember her not looking me in the eye as we spoke. “Colin, I’m very unhappy and I’ve been unhappy for a long time. I need some time to think and I need to do it away from here. I’m going to stay at a friend’s house.”

  Suddenly I couldn’t breathe. I felt like I was underwater. Panic struck me right in the gut. I remembered when I was in university and spent my summers lifeguarding at a park in Nova Scotia called Rissers Beach. To get the job, I took advanced CPR and first aid, and passed a host of extreme fitness and swimming tests. Throughout the training we were taught again and again that in emergency situations the biggest killer is panic. If you panic, you waste energy—you can’t focus on keeping your head above water and swimming out of danger. If you yell for help and swallow water, you panic even more, and eventually you go under. The importance of keeping a level head was drilled into us, and having that ability was prized above any amount of strength or endurance. Sitting in that car, with the heat vents blasting and my pulse racing so fast and loud I felt like my heart was trying to push its way out the side of my chest, I couldn’t think rationally. For the first time in my life I felt pure, unfiltered panic—like I was drowning.

  “What? What are you saying? And where are you staying?” I asked. “Who are you staying with? Why are you doing this? What do you need to think about?” The questions came out as fast as I thought them. She said nothing.

  “Jane, this is crazy,” I said. “Look, we are smart, logical people. I love you. We can figure this out.”

  “I told you already.” Her face was a mask, her voice filled with aggravation. “We’re different people. Like I said, I’ve not been happy for some time, and I’ve decided to leave. This isn’t about you and it’s not about us. This is my decision and I’ve already made it.”

  I felt sick and cold and I’d broken out in a sweat. “Just come inside,” I pleaded. “Let’s just go inside. We can talk about this.”

  “I—am—leaving, Colin.” She enunciated each word as though speaking to someone who didn’t understand English. “There is nothing you can say. You need to let me go. Please get out of the car.”

  I knew then that my only hope lay in getting her out of the car and into the house so I could make sense of what was happening, so I could just talk to her until the old Jane was back and this whole nightmare went away. But my mouth wouldn’t move. I sat silently, defeated, tears running down my cheeks. She didn’t turn her head or look at me, yet she seemed to soften slightly. “It’s only for a few days,” she said. “I just need to think for a few days. I’ll call you.”

  In my state of panic I snatched at this hope. If it’s only for a few days, I thought, then fine. I’ll go in the house and regroup, and she can go figure herself out and she’ll come to her senses. She will come home. I reached into the backseat for my bag and got out of the car. She drove away the instant I closed the door.

  The front door was no more than twenty feet from where Jane had left me. I felt like I was walking in a daze, while at the same time barely holding in a scream. The snow crunching under my boots was the only sound. Even though it was eighteen below, my face felt like it was burning. I have no idea how long it took me to reach the porch. When I made it to the door, I reached for my keys but dropped them. I bent to pick them up and I noticed how violently my hand was shaking. I drew a breath and tried the lock, but whether from the cold or the shock, I couldn’t steady my hand enough to open the door. I tried again, then a third, fourth and fifth time. After several minutes the lock finally clicked and the door swung into our home—Jane’s and mine.

  I put my suitcase down in the front hall. I can’t remember closing the door.
I turned on the entrance light, and when I went to the hall closet, I noticed that all Jane’s coats, scarves, sweaters, hats and shoes were missing. I ran up the stairs to our bedroom with my coat and boots still on. I dropped to my knees in front of our dresser and started pulling out drawers. All Jane’s clothes were gone. Half the bedroom closet was empty, too. I stood and walked to the upstairs bathroom. My breath came difficult and shallow. Shampoos, conditioners, moisturizers, creams, lotions—not just a few days’ worth of supplies—all gone. Stumbling back downstairs, I passed half-empty bookshelves and pale patches of wall where pictures had hung. She’d scrubbed any trace of herself from our home. All that was left in her place was empty space.

  In the kitchen I threw open every cupboard. Most of our plates, mugs and glasses—things we’d bought together—were still there, but our good plates, the ones we used when company came over and the ones that Jane had owned before we met, were gone. Faint circles in the dust on the credenza marked where they’d sat.

  Afraid of what else I might find missing, I opened the door to our unfinished basement and descended the wooden steps into the dark. It was colder down here. My chest felt more constricted, like I was suffocating. The only light was a bare bulb with a pull chain. I reached up and tugged it. A workbench ran along one wall, with all my tools neatly arranged. The area at the far end of it where Jane stored her gardening equipment was empty. Her bike was gone, too. The rush of tears nearly choked me. It was February 25, one of the coldest days of the year. Spring was still months away … and she’d taken her bike? And that was when it hit me: she’s not coming back.

  My legs gave out from under me and I fell to the floor. I cried harder than I thought I could for longer than I thought I could. I struggled for breath but didn’t try to get up. At some point I stopped crying and lay still under the light of the bare bulb. I listened to the furnace switching on and off. I stayed there for hours. It was the longest and the worst night of my life.