Once More With Feeling

by Megan Crane

  And that was that.

  That was who he was. This was what he did.

  He’d never promised me anything, not then and not now. That was Alec.

  So I had no one to blame for that hollow, wrenching feeling inside me but myself.

  19

  When I walked into Tim’s room in the rehab centre the next day, I stopped short. He was on his bed – but so was Carolyn. They were curled around each other, kissing. It wasn’t wild and passionate. It was almost sweet, I thought. If they’d been other people. If I hadn’t been married to one of them and related to the other.

  It was also déjà vu.

  There was no blue blouse this time. No scales fell from my eyes as I was confronted with a terrible new reality I didn’t want to accept. There was no awful sense of a before and after that I had to come to terms with.

  No, this time I simply stood there, watching my husband make out with my sister.

  It could be worse, I thought philosophically. This could actually be a surprise. Or it could hurt. But it didn’t.

  And the fact that this sickening tableau aroused absolutely no response in me was the telling bit. The fact that I felt little more than empty, that I once again felt like a zombie, that my overwhelming urge was not to do anything but to turn around and simply walk out …

  ‘What is the matter with you two?’ I asked. I didn’t yell. I didn’t freak out. Unlike the last time, I didn’t scream.

  Carolyn did. She screamed and she jack-knifed up and then she scowled at me, her hands clapped over her heart.

  ‘Sarah! My God!’ she cried.

  I ignored her. I glared at Tim instead. He looked a little bit dazed. Uncomfortable and kind of guilty, if I was reading that pinched expression right. Neither of which, I felt, was the appropriate response.

  ‘You knew I was coming,’ I said quietly. ‘Did you stage this?’

  ‘Of course not.’ But he wouldn’t meet my gaze, and I wondered.

  ‘Listen,’ Carolyn said, pulling her drapey sweater tighter around her and sitting up straight, her tone suddenly businesslike. It was jarring, to put it mildly. ‘We need to talk to you, anyway. Tim will be getting out of here soon and going home. And I’m not living apart from him. I’m pregnant, and I need to be with the father of my baby.’ Her frown wore deep grooves into her forehead. ‘And it’s half his house, anyway.’

  ‘I would say I couldn’t possibly have heard you right,’ I said slowly, not really wanting to look at her but not able to look away. I sighed. ‘But I know I did.’

  ‘Maybe it’s time you thought about reality,’ Carolyn suggested, her eyes narrowing. It was a deliberate call back to the conversation we’d had, and we both knew it. She was challenging me.

  ‘And the reality you’d like me to think about now is you moving into my house?’ I asked. I actually laughed then. How could I not? ‘I think that’s taking the concept of sister wives to a whole new and horrifying level, to be honest.’

  ‘You’re getting divorced, Sarah,’ she said, and I had to admit that she wasn’t saying it in a particularly nasty way. It was the words themselves that were nasty. It was the fact that she was sitting on a bed with the man who was still married to me while she was saying them.

  ‘And you’re leaving this room,’ I told her. Not unkindly, to my credit. ‘Right now.’

  ‘Uh, no, I’m not—’

  ‘You are.’ I let my bag drop to the ground and crossed my arms. ‘I’m not having this conversation with you, Carolyn. If Tim wants to tell you all about it later, I can’t control that. But you already broke up my marriage. You don’t get to sit in on the conversations he and I have about that.’ She looked mutinous. ‘This is non-negotiable,’ I snapped.

  ‘Carolyn.’ I realized I’d never heard that particular tone of voice from him. My stomach rolled a little bit. It was like that tender moment I’d witnessed in the ICU. I didn’t want to know their private language. Nor should I have to know it, I felt.

  Carolyn looked at him, but she dropped her head slightly in silent acquiescence. And then she pushed herself off the bed and onto her feet.

  ‘I’ll be down in the lobby,’ she said. To Tim. I expected her to jump on him and kiss him again, to prove a point, but I supposed even she knew she didn’t need to do that.

  She glanced at me as she walked by, and her mouth moved as if she might say something. We looked at each other for a long moment, and then she bowed her head again, and left. I told myself I was relieved.

  And so I just stood there by the wall, arms still crossed, and looked at Tim. He lay there on his industrial bed, probably a bit weaker than he appeared. He’d cut his hair – had Carolyn trimmed it for him? I bet she had, and hated the images that inspired – and he’d shaved. He looked exactly like my husband. Like the man I’d lost.

  I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t still grieving that. Him.

  I noticed that he did not leap into the silence that stretched between us to apologize for what I’d walked in on today. Or to attempt to excuse himself in any way.

  ‘Did you get your memories back?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’ He studied me. ‘But the fact that’s your first question makes me think Carolyn is right. That I really did want to leave you – this marriage – that badly.’

  I shook my head. And recognized that finally, finally, I was angry. At him, as he deserved.

  ‘I understand that this must be a difficult time for you, Tim,’ I bit out. ‘I can’t imagine what it must be like. But you’re still married to me. And I’ve cared for you throughout this whole ordeal, when a lot of people might have walked away and left you to it.’ I didn’t try to hide what I felt. I didn’t try to control the way I glared at him. ‘If you can’t muster up any kind of respect for the five years we’ve been married – if you think I somehow deserve less consideration than you would give to one of the nurses here who you don’t even know – at least have some respect for that!’

  It only occurred to me then that the door to the hallway was open, that anyone could hear and that this was Rivermark, where people were certain to be listening, but I couldn’t let myself focus on that. Tim sucked in a long breath.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said after a moment. ‘I’m sorry.’

  I sighed then. I slumped back against the wall behind me, stared at him, and had no idea what to do. The apology was nice, but anticlimactic.

  I could remember, so vividly, standing in Brooke’s apartment before Christmas and vowing that it was time to unclench my fist from around this marriage, from this man. I’d thought the same thing in Vermont when I’d finally taken off my wedding rings. I’d been ready to move on, whether Tim woke or not. And yet the slightest indication that I could get back in, that I could dive back into this little life of ours no matter what I had to swallow and hide to do it, and I’d leapt right in.

  What was that about? What was I so afraid of?

  But I knew.

  Given the choice, I wanted simple. Easy. Smooth. I wanted the things that didn’t require work. The easy way out. It was hard to be honest with yourself, much less with a partner. It was hard to choose to do the right thing when the right thing hurt and the other option wasn’t wrong so much as it was not really as good. Black-and-white choices were always so much easier to make, weren’t they?

  My God, I thought, in dawning realization and no little horror, I am such a coward.

  ‘I want more,’ Tim said then, with heartbreaking simplicity, and it didn’t matter, then, what I was afraid of facing because it was right there in front of me whether I liked it or not. ‘I want to be with someone who loves me so much it would kill her to lose me. I want to be with someone who would risk everything for me.’

  My throat was dry. ‘That’s very romantic.’ I couldn’t help the bitter little laugh that came out then. ‘Maybe a little less romantic than it would be if you weren’t saying that to the woman you’re still married to. The one who, presumably, is not the one—’

  �
��I loved you so much,’ he said then, struggling to sit up straighter and reaching out to pull himself up on the side rail of his bed, like it was a fight against gravity and he wasn’t sure he’d win. ‘That’s what I remember, Sarah, and it has nothing to do with Carolyn. I didn’t care that you didn’t feel the same way about me. I thought I’d win you over. That’s what I do. I’m the guy who can sell anyone on anything. I figured it was only a matter of time.’

  ‘I loved you too!’ I threw at him. ‘I trusted you. I trusted you more than I’d ever trusted anyone, Tim. I believed you.’

  ‘I know,’ he said in that same way, that determined way, ‘but we’re not talking about the same thing, are we? Do you think I didn’t know you were hung up on that guy when I met you? I didn’t think it would matter. He was gone. I was there. I thought you would figure out that I was much better for you than he ever could be.’

  ‘And you succeeded,’ I said, very distinctly. Because he had. How could he not know that? Brooke knew it. Hell, even I knew it. ‘Did you miss the part where we moved out here? Where we bought a pretty house and opened a practice and built a whole life together? What part of that was me pining away? What part was me not loving and trusting you?’

  ‘Sarah,’ he said, like my name was a sigh, deep and sad. ‘Please don’t do this.’

  ‘I’m sorry that I didn’t love you the way you think I should have,’ I said stiffly. ‘I guess I should have asked my sister for pointers.’

  He looked like he was biting his lip. Biting back words. It made me wonder what he thought would qualify as too harsh in this scenario.

  ‘It isn’t your fault,’ he said, but there was a chill in his voice and I suspected he wanted to defend Carolyn. See? I told myself. He’s still the man you married, the great defender of the innocent and protector of all he can. That just doesn’t include you any longer. ‘I shouldn’t have done it the way I did. I can’t pretend I’m not the shithead here.’

  ‘I don’t think anyone’s pretending that,’ I agreed. I was not biting back my words. Clearly.

  ‘We weren’t happy,’ he said quietly, and I could see he meant that. That he wasn’t confused. That this was his truth, however unfair or unpleasant I thought it was. ‘I think on some level, you know that.’

  I wanted to throw something back at him, but instead, I thought about the photographs I’d seen of Prague in my guidebooks last night, and on the postcards I’d collected from various bookstores over the years. The fairy-tale city, that beautiful bridge bristling with artists and statues and a different kind of life than anything I’d find here. It was only one of the magical places I’d wanted to go to, but I’d given that up as one of those childish daydreams that real adults like me didn’t get to hold on to any longer. I’d given up everything because I’d thought that’s what I was supposed to do.

  I thought about what happy really was. I’d thought for so long that it was a choice between temporary and permanent and Alec had been such a clear, self-proclaimed temporary situation, and he’d hurt me so terribly when he’d left. When I’d been too scared to go with him, because I’d known that I wanted things he couldn’t give. I’d known better than to force that issue on a different continent. I’d been right back then, for a variety of reasons and because I couldn’t possibly have handled him, but that didn’t change how badly it had hurt.

  And I’d thought that the permanence Tim offered could save me from that. From the hurt, from the part of me that wanted to ignore the things I felt and follow Alec around anyway. I’d believed Tim knew better than me – that he had a reason to be confident enough to propose forever on the third date. That he was right. And I’d done whatever I’d had to do to make sure that forever worked. Drunk-driving cases in my safe suburban hometown. Cutting off Brooke, who challenged me and my brand-new fascination with the status quo, to preserve that sense of safety. Whatever it took.

  But what would happen if I decided I could … be happy? If I let that take whatever form it took? If finally, once and for all, I just let go and let whatever happened, happen?

  How fucking revolutionary.

  ‘Say something,’ Tim urged me.

  ‘I don’t see why,’ I said after a moment. When I could speak without all that emotion in my voice. He didn’t deserve to hear any of that. Not any more. It was mine, I realized. Not his. ‘There’s not really anything left to say, is there? It’s not like I’m going to debate you into being happy with me if you weren’t.’

  I pushed away from the wall. I scooped my bag up by its strap.

  ‘I wish I hadn’t handled all of this so badly,’ he whispered. ‘If I could have done this without hurting you, Sarah, I would have.’

  ‘You’ve said that before, Tim.’ I shrugged. ‘That’s actually kind of a meaningless and shitty thing to say, if you think about it.’

  ‘That’s not how I mean it,’ he said, rubbing at his face. ‘Really.’

  I inclined my head as if I understood, and maybe some part of me did. But none of it mattered. I finally got that.

  We looked at each other then, for what felt like a long time. I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel. I knew how his mouth tasted. I knew what noises he made when he was sick, when he was being silly, when he was about to come. I knew what he liked to eat on Sunday afternoons in front of the game, and how he liked his toast. I knew what he smelled like without a shower. I knew what he was afraid of, and what he regretted from his childhood years. I remembered how he’d held me close on our honeymoon, and the things he’d whispered in my ear. I’d soothed him as he sobbed over the deaths of his parents. I’d stroked his forehead through fevers, even held him when he’d woken from this coma and had known no one in all the world but me.

  Did all of that disappear now? Did it matter less because it was over? I didn’t know how this worked. I didn’t know how to shift into a space where we weren’t intimate, where we weren’t close, because we knew too much about each other. Maybe that was what I’d been fighting all this time. I didn’t want to give this up. Because whatever else it was, whether it was as happy as it should have been, as I’d thought it was, it was ours. It was real.

  ‘I really did love you,’ I whispered. ‘Whatever you might have decided since then.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know you did. As much as you could.’

  And when I left, when I finally turned and walked away the way I should have done in September or maybe long before that, he let me go. He didn’t even say goodbye.

  But then again, he’d been saying goodbye for a long time. I had only just learned how to listen.

  It was snowing again when I got back into my car, and it annoyed me.

  Snow was lovely and picturesque in December, when everything was some kind of extended, interactive Christmas card, and there were whole radio stations dedicated to playing endless loops of carols telling us all how wonderful winter was.

  Snow in January was nothing more than cold. And spoke of the endless, gruelling, impossible winter months laid out before us, with spring the barest hint of possibility in the far-off future.

  But that was fine, I told myself now, glaring at the flurries that dusted my windshield, because I had a plan.

  My plan.

  It was funny how clear everything had become. How much sense it all made all of a sudden.

  I didn’t want this. This marriage. These choices. This life. I didn’t want any of it. And I certainly wasn’t going to fight for it any longer.

  I was going to do something much better. I was going to go home and buy a plane ticket to somewhere far, far away. So far away it was already summer, like in Australia. And then I was going to very carefully pack up that backpack of mine, and I was going to simply … go.

  I was going to open my hands as wide as they could, and I was going to let all of this flow through them and disappear. I was going to stop looking back. I was going to let life find me, instead of imposing my plans on it out of fear and heartbreak and a knee-jerk reaction to
what I ought to do. I was going to let go, starting right now. I was going to make room for whatever came next.

  I drove carefully through town, and then started up the hill towards the house. I would have to make some phone calls. There was the question of what to do with the stuff I actually wanted from this old life of mine, and what to do with it while I was travelling, but that was what storage facilities were for. There were also the legal issues to work out – the divorce and all our assets – but I didn’t really think there would be a fight. Tim had a baby on the way, after all. I suspected he would want it all over as quickly as possible.

  And I wanted to be free. I wanted to see what I found out there, and then, when I was done with that, I wanted to spend my life helping people who needed help – not tending to the kind of people who risked others’ lives in so cavalier a fashion and then complained about it afterward. The Benjy Strattons of the world were not my problem. Not any more. Not ever again.

  I went down lists in my head. Tim and I had always maintained three bank accounts: his, ours and mine. I would be more than fine, and if he bought me out of the practice and the house as I expected he would, I would be even better. In a way, I thought a bit ruefully as I turned down our street, it was as if we’d been planning for our divorce since the day we met. I hadn’t thought that then, of course. I’d thought we were so practical, so clear-eyed and unemotional about things like assets and worst-case scenarios. I wasn’t sure that meant the things Tim thought it meant, but there was no denying the fact that would make all of this that much easier now.

  I had come full circle. I understood my life in a way I hadn’t before – because I’d been actively hiding from myself. All my depositions had led me to one inescapable conclusion: I’d created my own prison. I’d put up these bars and locked myself away in safe and easy. And that was sad, but the good news was, I was the one who could walk free of it whenever I wanted. Maybe Tim had always known that, on some level.

  And now I did, too.