an unrehearsed universe

Bedtime Stories

"Don't leave me," she mouthed at the comma his sleeping form made.  "I know you want to.  But don't leave me." 

He'd been retreating for months now.  Wearing a groove between them with his slow pulling away.  The evidence unmistakable now.  Confidence replaced his middle-aged fatigue.  He spoke to everyone except her in short snazzy sentences, a new jazziness of character to go with the sharper, stronger man leaving her behind.  It was the children of course.  Their leaving.  With them gone, the flood-waters of his discontent surged over the barriers of her love.  And there was someone else.  Not that he'd said, or even hinted.  Yet how could she not know?  The glow in his eyes died when he came home.  Her shrillness was a mask for desperation.  It chased him from her arms.  Still, she could not stop herself, not even knowing the spectacle she'd become.  A harridan.  Her mother.  Wasn't she replaying the damned, doomed story of her childhood? 

He stirred uneasily in his sleep.  Even with the lights off she knew the folds of his face like the workings of her insides.  Do you love him?  The thought caught her off-guard.  Of course she loved him.  She'd loved him since before they'd even met, his letters to her sister the highlight of her week.  But do you love him?  Wherever it came from, she couldn't unthink it.  Or are you afraid?  True enough.  She was not meant to be alone. She was not one of those women built for independence. 

Involuntarily, her eyes were drawn to him.  Had familiarity bred contempt in both of them?  She turned that treacherous thought over in her head.  Was it possible - even a little bit - that she no longer loved her husband?  That her anxieties stemmed from fear of growing old alone?

That last one propelled her straight up in bed.  He turned over and burrowed himself into the warmth of the pillow away from where her body had been.  "It's ok, I'm getting up," she whispered.  "The bed's all yours."  Though she needn't have bothered whispering.  Short of an earthquake, little woke him.  Including the alarm, which was on her side of the bed.  Even though he always had to be up earlier.  Another of the little resentful accommodations their marriage rested on. 

Even while asleep he's trying to escape me.  I might as well let him be.  If she was going to keep thinking these thoughts, she needed hot chocolate, and damn the calories.  My marriage is over.  She tried the phrase on for size, letting it rattle around her brain unimpeded.  As she traipsed down the kitchen, the truth of the words settled into her stomach.  Her marriage was over.  The rest was just picking up the pieces, moving on. 

Now that it'd finally come, the end of life as she knew it didn't seem that dire.  Nothing copious amounts of sugar and milk couldn't solve.  Hugging herself tightly, she managed a wry grin in between the tears.  They'll enhance the chocolate with a little bitterness.