She

by Shireen Jeejeebhoy

chapter ten

  HOW LONG WILL SHE HUNT?

  “I’M LEAVING.”

  The words bring her up short in the living room. Jim had just walked in the front door from his week-long trip and set down his suitcase when he’d pronounced those words. She stares at the tableau of man and suitcase in front of the shut Chinese-red door that they had painted together. The music beating out of the stereo fades out of her hearing.

  “You’re leaving?”

  “Yes. I’m going to get my things and go. I have a place to stay. And turn that down.”

  “You just got back.”

  “I’m leaving.” He takes a step forward, hesitates, then brushes past her. He bounds up the stairs to the tiny upper hall and disappears right, through the bedroom door. She hears his footsteps thump to the closet. She follows him up the stairs and into the bedroom. He’s hauling his suits, hangers and all, out of the closet and putting them on the bed.

  “Why?”

  “This isn’t working.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You, us. We’re not working. You’re not the person you were. You’re not the person I became engaged to.”

  “I’m still me.”

  “No you’re not, and you’re not going anywhere. I don’t know about all this Akaesman stuff. I think you’re using it as an excuse to depend on me and not get a job. You’re keeping me from doing mine. I won’t live with someone who won’t pull her weight.”

  “But I do. I mean. I mean, I will get back to it. I had a job. I loved my job. My songs were selling. I just have to get better.”

  “You’re not getting better!”

  He retrieves the large suitcase from under the bed, smacks it on top of the bed, which bounces from the impact, turns one-hundred-and-eighty degrees, and grabs his T-shirts from the white plastic-coated wire shelves screwed into the pink-and-white flower-patterned wall next to the closet.

  “But I am. They said so. I’m seeing so-so-so many people. How can I not be getting better?” she asks with no prosody in her voice; she doesn’t notice the strangeness of no inflections, no intonations, no emotion in her voice. It’s as if she’s talking about the most boring subject in the world.

  “I’m not getting any help. Where’s your grandmother, eh? Have you seen her this past year? Does she even know or care? She expects me to do all the work. Now she can find out how hard it is to look after you. Maybe you’ll be better with me gone. You’ll have no choice but to get on with your life.”

  “I am better. I know I’m not the same. But I will be. I, I am improving.”

  He continues packing in silence.

  “Answer me,” she screams in her head. “I’ve been working so hard. I need you,” she hollers in the cavern of her skull. “Why is it so wrong to need you, need people, need my friends to understand, need my grandmother? Why is being busy such a virtue and supporting me such a vice? Why do I only have value if I can earn money?” she wants to ask. Instead, she says out loud, “I don’t understand.”

  He looks up and right at her, “I’m leaving, that’s all you need to know.” He opens the top dresser drawer, sweeps up all his underwear and neatly folded socks with both hands, dumps them on top of his shirts and sweaters, flips down the top of the suitcase, brusquely zips it closed, grabs the handle with one hand, picks up the hangers holding his suits with the other, and says, “I’ll be back later to get the rest of my things, my books and photos. My camera and laptop are still in the car. I’ll send you an email when.” He pushes past her in the tight space and jogs down the stairs. “And don’t forget to feed and water the cat! You’re going to kill it if you keep forgetting!”

  By the time she gets downstairs, all she sees is the red door closing, as the Philosopher Kings’s Castles in the Sand sings to a close on the stereo. She stands frozen, blinking rapidly at the closed door. Smokey pads up behind her and twines around her legs until she picks her up. She purrs in her arms.

  Suddenly hating the loud music, she snaps it off. She heads to her desk. Upset wells up into her numb heart as Smokey struggles to jump down. She lets go and picks up the phone.

  “Nance, he left.”

  “I know. He told me last week before he left on his business trip that he was going to leave.”

  “How could he?” Suddenly grief, confusion sweep through her. She falls into the desk chair. She hiccups a sob. She fights to retain control of her voice.

  “This is for the best. You have to let him go because he knows what he wants.”

  “What do you mean I have to?” she sniffles.

  “You can’t hang on to him.”

  “Wait, I don’t get it, how did you know before I called?”

  “This is for the best. You may not feel it now, but it is. You’re better off without him.”

  Her mouth trembles, she tries to speak, but she weeps instead.

  “He’s no good for you. If he was, he’d stay,” Nance says, trying to comfort her. But she doesn’t hear the comfort. Nance softens her tone, speaks gently about how she’ll get through this. She struggles to regain control; she hears clicking as Nance resumes her typing. She’d called her at work, it is the middle of the week, the middle of November, when most people are working, earning. She cries harder, all control lost.

  “You’re better off without him,” Nance repeats. “You can focus on your own healing now. And think about this, he won’t be around to nag you anymore. How great is that? If you want to keep the newspapers on the table all day, you can. If you want to spend your trust fund money on some strange therapy like acupuncture, you can. You’ll have more energy not trying to please him. You’re a people pleaser like me. We have to make ourselves look after ourselves. This is good for you. You’ll see.”

  She doesn’t see, but suddenly her tears dry up. She’s in neutral. She’s calm. She wipes her eyes and face with her fingers. “Thanks Nance. I f-f-feel better now. I’d better let you go.”

  “Call me anytime, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Her need to talk hasn’t gone away though. That need to know her own mind, not the mind of the one in her, urges her on to dial another number.

  “You got Charlie,” he says as he answers the phone. She can hear traffic noises in the background.

  “Hi Charlie.”

  “Hey! How you doin’?”

  “Not too good.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “Jim left.”

  “Yeah, sorry ‘bout that, he told me what he was planning, said to keep an eye on you.”

  “He did?”

  “Yeah, a couple weeks ago. We went out for a drink; he said he needed to talk to someone about you. You’ve not been easy to live with this past year, you know. You can’t expect a guy to put up with all this nonsense for that long.”

  “Nonsense?”

  “You’ve changed, you know. We’ve all had to adjust, but you know, he’s the one closest to you, and he knows you best. If he says you’re not helping yourself, you’re depending on him too much, I gotta trust him. He was telling me ‘bout how his clients notice if he’s having to look after you instead of doing his job, and they’re not happy ‘bout that. And he told me how you haven’t been paying the bills. You can’t do that to a guy’s credit rating.”

  She opens her mouth. He chatters on, “Yeah, I know this is rough, kind of sudden and all, but you know, you didn’t miss him when he was gone and all. You acted like he was a piece of furniture who cooked and cleaned and brought home the bacon. You can’t marry a guy if you don’t love him, you know. You gotta know that.”

  “I love him.”

  “Sorry, I gotta disagree with you on that. I respect you and all, but you don’t love him. Look, there’s nothing wrong with it, just admit it. We understand. People fall out of love all the time. Anyway, he doesn’t love you anymore either.”

  “He loves me.”

  Charlie sighs over the phone, “Look, I’m at my client’s now. Gotta run. Call me anytime, we can tal
k more later. ‘K?”

  “‘K.”

  She’s back to staring at the phone. Maybe Belinda, the one who’s gone through many breakups, will understand.

  “Hey babe, did Jim talk to you?”

  She blinks, “Talk to me?”

  “Oh maybe I’m jumping the gun here. Oops.”

  “You mean did he talk to me about leaving me?”

  “He did talk to you. How’re you doing?”

  “Not well,” she says with no emotion.

  “You sound good for having just broken up. I mean, crying would be normal. I was always a mess right after and for days,” she laughs. “Hey, you know that. And yeah, it probably wasn’t a surprise or anything, him getting distant for months and all. Still I was expecting to have to feed you Kleenex through the phone. I’m kinda glad I don’t.” She giggles, “You know he tried to come onto me back in September, eh? I wanted to tell you then, but figured better not mess that nest. Don’t worry, I brushed him off, reminded him he’s engaged to you. You’re my friend and all.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Hey babe, no problem. Jim knows his own mind. He has goals, and you don’t share em. He wants children, and you’ve been making therapy your child instead. You need to change, babe. You can’t hang onto a man by keeping yourself sick.”

  Children? Sick? What’s she talking about? Confusion clouds her mind and makes her angry. “Jim and I talked about children before we moved in together. We were in one accord.”

  “Hey, don’t snap at me. He told me he’d expected to be having children by this time, and I gotta believe him.”

  “We’re not married yet!”

  “Hey, you know what I mean. You were supposed to be married, what, a month ago?”

  “Next year.”

  “Picky, picky,” she sighs. “C’mon babe, you’re more interested in yourself than in getting married and getting on with having kids. You’re never going to have children. You gotta admit it.”

  These phone calls are giving her a headache. She had hoped her friends would understand, even speak to Jim for her — she can’t fight for Jim by herself with her slow thinking, fatigue, and inability to follow him every time he slams out of the house.

  “… really important to him, you know. You can’t decide on your own about these things.”

  What things? She suddenly doesn’t care. “I, I didn’t expect to decide things on my own. But he won’t even talk.”

  “Hey, what’s there to talk about? He knows his own mind.” She drops her voice, “He’s a real man, you know. A hunk of, hey, you know. But he’s gone. You gotta get over him. Oops got a customer. Talk to you later.”

  The dial tone buzzes in her ear. She hangs up slowly. Tomorrow, no the next day, Friday, she’ll see her TARC team. She’ll lose herself in that work. Maybe then things will start to make sense.

  Sitting with Zenobia two days later, she finds she’s right. The obsessive thoughts of Jim and her friends leave her be as Zenobia explains the concept of visual distraction, which sounds a bit lame to her. Irritation creeps up her skin, and she tries to ignore it in order to listen to Zenobia better as she explains that to conserve her energy, she needs to have as clean, as tidy, as visually non-distracting a home as possible. Do things like put paper away in file drawers, line up books on shelves, clean off the surface of her coffee table and desk — those newspapers can’t stay scattered on the table anymore — keep the kitchen counters clear, put the dishes straight into the dishwasher, remove knick-knacks from surfaces and put them behind glass in orderly positions, have CDs in their place, not flung about on top of the stereo. And paint her walls soothing colours.

  Her irritation climbs into resentment. She likes the chaos of her home. She likes the cluttered look. Besides she’s always been able to find what she wants, no matter how high the stack of papers or bills. Well, okay, maybe in the last year or so, it’s been a bit more difficult. But she hates those Zen-looking homes. They were never her look.

  But what is her look now? The look of who she is today? Who is she anyway?

  All the way home in the Ride Link, on the bus and streetcar, on foot, she worries that question in her head. And when she tries to shake herself free of that question, she remembers how upbeat she’d sounded when relating to Sunny how Jim had left. She feels freakish.

  She opens her red front door, her too-cheerful front door, and walks in to see Smokey looking up at her. Her cat bows, stretches out her front paws toward her, showing off the white fur between her toes before standing up tall again and waving her tail slowly, a big anthropomorphic smile on her face, purring. She drops to her knees and hugs her cat. Her sanity, the one being in the whole world who loves her just as she is.

  ~~~*~~~