A Fairy Tale

        It’s Sam, his best friend, who finds him in the shed at the corner of the yard and it’s Sam who calls her from the hospital: Emory, it’s James. He finally tried it. In a single breath her world narrows. She sucks cold air through her teeth. “Okay.” Another breath. “Where are you?”

         “We can do this, right?”
         “We?”
         “Sam, I-”
         “Emory,” Sam shifts his weight from one foot to the other and then back again. “I’m just the best friend. Em? You’re his wife.” What Sam’s not saying is where the fuck were you? But, maybe he should be.

         At first, it’s all paperwork, evaluations, and explanations. Where: home. Method: rope. Reason: depression. (It was the butler, in the pantry with the candlestick). How trivial.
        Later, she sits at his hospital bed and she tries to cry. He is sleeping and he looks dead, the rope bit into his neck and left angry, weeping welts and he’s ghastly pale, his eyes deep bruises. She says his name, quietly, he doesn’t wake.

         A fairy tale: He was on his way up and oh-so gorgeous and he was so obsessed with her, with taking her with him. It was manic: the way he held her face when they kissed and her hand when they walked, the way he could not, not ever, stop touching her. You’re a princess. A goddess. I love you. And she finally believed that she deserved the things she desired. She went to his first festival with him and he clutched at her arm and drank a lot and stuttered through every interview. Nerves, he complained. "You’ll be great," she said and he was. After, he promised to never doubt her.


         He spends the whole second day on the phone with Megan, the ex-wife. Emory stays outside the door but what she wants is to take the phone from him, from the room. She wants to grab his face in her hands and force him to see her because she is here and Megan is not; Megan, who left when life just wasn’t so easy, not anymore, Megan who he loved and who loved him. Through the Plexiglas Emma can hear: I can’t do this alone and she pretends it doesn’t hurt like a sunburn on her lungs and heart and chest; that it doesn’t feel like she’s breathing fire. That day and the days after he speaks to everyone who visits, the orderlies, the doctors and even his mother. Everyone, except for her. Speaks to anyone to avoid speaking to her. Speaks around her and over her and through her.
         By the fourth day she wants to scream: Is this a movie? Is my life a goddamn dream sequence?
         She wants to yell: Cut!
         She wants to ask for a rewrite.
         She wants to say: Hey, this is out of character, this scene just doesn’t work for me, he wouldn’t do this, not to me.
         Instead, she waits.
         When he falls asleep she reaches out and touches his weaving, healing scars and when he groans she thinks: This is almost like talking and she thinks: I am staying.

         “We can discharge him,” a doctor is saying. “You can take him home.”
         “He won’t talk to me.” She tries and feels sick.
         “It’s okay, he’ll come around. “ As if suicide is something you bounce back from.
         “He tried to hang himself.”
         “It’s all right now.” He smiles. “It’s all okay.”
         What Emory needs is for everyone to stop pretending. Everything is not okay, will not be okay. Instead she smiles, her smile a grimace, and says, “Where do I sign?”

         She wakes him slowly, says his name in tiny whispers, her fingers ghosting along his knuckles.
         He opens his eyes.
         “James,” she says and he blinks. “Time to go home, it’s okay,” she says. “I’m here.”

         The dogs cry when they see him. They scratch at him and nose him and he falls to his knees and buries his face in their fur. It’s a long moment but when he stands, he reaches for her.
         “Emory.”
         She starts to cry.

         Memory: Her dress glows in the sunlight and is distracting. The white catches all of the light and throws it back at him. She can feel him staring and she is proud, she takes his hand – her husband’s hand – and she can feel him tremble.
         “I love you, “ he says and she knows it to be true.
         He’s sorry, he says, but it feels like drowning.
         All the time it feels like falling,
         Like slipping,
         Like mud in a storm,
         Like there is no air, not here, not for him.
         She holds him and says “I’ll hold you.” And what she means is: See? I'm here. I stayed, I will always stay. What she means is: I am not Megan.
         They slip together and sit, shivering on the floor in the hallway where the rug ends and the living room begins. The dogs border them like sentry guards and he hides himself in her neck. It’s the first time they’ve touched since a week before he tried to end himself (kill, he tried to kill himself). With his arms around her Emory feels just safe enough to dwell on it and to ask the questions that have no answers: what happened? where was she? and, worst of all - will it happen again?

         It’s weeks before Sam visits and when he does it makes him sick. Emory listens from the kitchen window as Sam loses his lunch in the garden where the plants are always dying. She watches from her perch as James crosses from the stoop. “I’m sorry,” He says, his voice hoarse. “You weren’t supposed to find me.”
         “That’s the worst part. “ Sam spits. He stands. “What if it had been her? . . .you just hanging there, her too weak to lift you. Jesus, James.”
         She steps away. What if? What if? What if? She feels sick too but she has to start dinner. She sips water and stares at the clock ticking slowly on the wall.
         The nausea passes.

         A dream: She is drowning. The water is calm and warm and she isn’t scared, exactly, only a little worried and not even that. She can’t see land and when she moves it doesn’t feel like moving. There are people and they reach for her but their arms are too slow.
         She sinks.

         James is on the back porch finishing a pint of whiskey. He is watching the sun setting behind their fence (the same fence they meant to paint that summer they found out she was pregnant, forgotten after the miscarriage it rests, peeling, now more gray than white).
         “Are you hungry?” She asks and he holds up the bottle. “You should eat,” she tries but he doesn’t answer. She calls the dogs and walks inside. “I love you,” she says to their beagle. “I love you,” she says to their lab. She kisses their heads. “I love you both.”

         “Take it from me,” Megan says on the telephone one Tuesday. “It’s pretty much already over for you two.”
         “We’re doing okay.”
         “Is he there?” Megan asks.
         “No, he’s out.” And then, “Really, we’re fine.”
         “Okay,” Megan says. “I’m just the ex-wife.” She sighs and it sounds like smiling. “What do I know?”

         The house is too bright and then too dark.
         They go on vacation.

         They’ve been to this cabin before. She starts a fire, she starts dinner, she starts cleaning. James kisses her neck and tells her he loves her. You are beautiful. Amazing. Inspiring.
         She smiles into his mouth.
         I love you.
         They stay until the weather turns cold again, the wind like ice whistling along invisible drafts. Their last night the dogs sleep with them and they huddle together to stay warm. Family.

         Emory shouldn’t be eavesdropping but she is and if she hangs up now, he’ll know.
         “Well?” Megan asks and James just breathes. “James,” Megan says, “Talk to me.”
         Emory imagines all the things he should say. Emory is with me, I’m surviving. I’m okay. Instead James just coughs and says, “Just getting out of bed is hard.“ And, “How the fuck am I supposed to know what to say?” And finally, “What do you want to hear?”
         For a moment the line is silent with their breathing. Emory, Megan and James breathing together.
         Then Megan says,“I’m on the next flight, I’ll be there tomorrow.” As if she can fix anything this broken.

         That night, in their bed Emory is stiff and quiet.
         “Emory,” James says. “It’s not that bad.”
         “She’s your ex-wife.”
         “Emory,” he says. “She’s worried.”
         “Stop saying my name like that.”
         “Like what?”
         “Like it’ll calm me down.” And then, “I’m worried.”
         Angry now, James grabs his pillow. Standing he says, “Then you can worry together.”

         At first, it’s not so bad having Megan in the house. It feels safe having this third person; Emory, for once, not alone. And, she calms James out of his rages and she talks a lot and cooks for them and with them. She is this whirlwind to focus on, to spend energy on. But then, there one night Jams is laughing so hard it’s barely a sound and the dogs are curled up at Meg’s feet and Emma for all she tries to be a part she is only apart. Then the next night Emma puts on music, pours wine and it’s Megan saying Not tonight, can’t you see he’s upset. And, of course, Emma can't, which has been the problem this whole time. And a night where James is saying Just one more drink, then I’ll be up. Only, Emma falls asleep, wakes up alone.
        The nights add up and then those nights are every night.

         “Emory,” James says, “We’re out of cigarettes.” He and Megan are sitting on opposite sides of the couch they bought back when they were still in love. They are three drinks to drunk and smiling. “Emory,” he says, “are you going to the store?”
         Keys in one hand, purse in the other Emory says, “Yes, I’m going.” In the car, her head resting on her hands she says out loud to no one, “I am not staying.”