She went from room to room like that, shoving and lifting and praying and calling out for his ring, his love, like a lost pup. “Where are you? Where the fuck are you?”
She did not find it.
Hours later she sat, defeated, in a shirt smeared with drain sludge and with a handful of slivers, but without a ring. She was crying. She was crying because that was the day she finally admitted something that had been crawling around the back of her mind like an infection. That day was the day she told herself that it wasn’t his love that was lost. It was hers. And everything was over.
How long had she known this? Like the ring, she couldn’t pinpoint it. A few months? A year? The whole four years? No. Not that long. She had loved him once. She was sure that was true. She hoped to hell it was, but if she were honest, she knew that she hadn’t felt that way in quite some time.
Did she love him when he’d asked her to move in? She thought so. When she’d bought the condo and not had him co-sign the lease? Maybe not. When he’d proposed?
No, she hadn’t loved him when he’d proposed. But sitting in that restaurant with that gleaming silver box, she thought she ought to love him. It was what she’d asked for. And she’d seen how very much Stuart loved her. She just smiled, said yes and hoped he had enough love for both of them.
Sitting there that cool spring day, dirty and aching behind her eyes, she knew he didn’t. She never should have expected it. She’d been unfair, and she’d been wrong, and he would be coming home today, and she was going to have to tell him so.
Except she didn’t. He came in the door that day with dinner in a brown paper bag, grease-stained and smelling fantastic. He plunked it on the table with the pride of a caveman presenting a slain beast.
He found her sitting on the patio, slumped against the sliding glass door and covered in grime, and he asked her what was wrong. She told him she had lost the ring. He took in her tragic expression and red eyes, and before she could say anything else, he told her not to cry, that it was all right. He grabbed her hands and helped her to stand, bringing her inside to get cleaned up. He hugged her, grease and all, smelled her hair and told her that he’d missed her, and he told her he’d brought home cheap Chinese and a bottle of wine.
Emily had always been under the misguided impression that once you realized that the love you had is gone, that it may not have ever existed in the first place, you couldn’t possibly have a hankering for sweet and sour spareribs. Somehow some innate decency would stop you from sitting in silence across from the man who adores you, ingesting a plate full of fried rice and chicken balls.
She was dead wrong. You can do it. You can even enjoy it, and you can appreciate being cared for when you’ve had a hard day, and you can feel justified that you deserve a meal after rolling under all of the beds in your house. You can talk about his day and never once mention your absolute change of heart and the ultimate necessity of a parting of the ways.
Then you can hoist yourself up from the table, waddle over to the couch and realize you live with someone who doesn’t care if you unzip your fly in a decidedly unsexy “ate so much you nearly split your pants” kind of way.
You can lie there comfortably drinking beer and mocking the people on your reality show of choice and remember how funny your boyfriend is.
When he reaches for your leg, you can let him, and when he asks if you’re ready for bed, you can tell him that you are.
It turns out you can take the truth that your relationship is over and shove it so far down, you can ride out one month in this pleasant company, then another. One day, when your eye spies something sparkling near the baseboard in the kitchen, you can pick it up and slip it on the third finger of your left hand.
But once you are sure that you have fallen out of love, you can’t, and don’t let anyone tell you differently, fall back.
Emily found this out on a very sunny Labour Day, when Stuart was actually labouring, sitting in a deserted office building trying to fix a bug in the most recent site he’d designed. She, for her part, had hoped to spend the day straightening up her, their, office. She hardly ever went in there except to Google the occasional restaurant or medical symptom, always tripping over boxes of paper and canvases and other miscellaneous crap Stuart had accumulated. Emily had always viewed September as the true beginning of the year, a hangover from school days, she supposed. It always brought about a fit of cleaning.
Hours passed as she made her way through his boxes of tax receipts and invoices, methodically sorting and filing and collecting an impressive pile for the shredder.
Next was Stuart’s mess of a desk. Opening drawer after drawer, she plowed through until she opened the bottom drawer and saw something that made her stop sorting, even stop breathing for a moment.
It was a letter, sitting loosely atop a packet of other letters held together with one of her hair elastics, having been removed, presumably to be reread. They were letters she had written Stuart during a three-month period he’d been in Europe travelling with his mother. They’d been together just under a year at that time and had decided they’d stay together while he was gone. She picked up the page of loose leaf, feeling a bit like a thief, even though the words were hers. She started reading.
Dear Stuart,
Now what do I say? The first official letter. A LOVE letter at that. The pressure of it is crippling. But I will carry on because (gasp! Dare she say it?) I love you. I said it at the airport, and no, it wasn’t just because you did. I said it because I do. So there. I miss you desperately, and I’m sitting here in a coffee shop like a graduate student surrounded by people who have no relation to me, and you are miles and miles across the ocean. How can this be right? It’s like time running backwards or talking goats, completely unnatural. It’s amazing the things you can say in a letter, isn’t it? Things you’d never say to someone’s face. All the things you can’t say. The Victorians were totally on to something.
A drop hit the paper, telling Emily that she was crying as she read this sheet full of her loopy writing and sloppy sentiments. She hadn’t known he had kept these letters; she knew she hadn’t kept his. She continued reading.
I can still see your face, though, if I screw my eyes up tight. I thought for a second last night that I couldn’t, that you’d been pushed right out of my head by the minutes from meetings and my desire to remember to bring back the videos I rented. But you are, in fact, still safely in view of my mind’s eye… I just checked. Can you see me? Have you looked? Go ahead take a peek, I’ll wait.
She leaned back against the desk leg, wiping her eyes. God, she sounded so young and sure of herself. So sweet on him. She didn’t feel any of that now. She read on.
I’m sending this to Dublin. If you’re reading it, I’m assuming you have arrived safe and did not murder our Glyniss on the trip over from Scotland. Is it raining in Dublin? It’s the odds-on favourite weather, I hear. It’s cold and miserable here, I’m happy to report. It suits my mood. I could tell you that the angels are crying because we’re apart, but I can’t. And not just because it’s too corny. It’s not actually raining here at all. The sky is just grey and watery. No cherubic tears, angelic hay fever maybe. Hmmm, I guess that last bit wasn’t very romantic, was it? I’ll make it up to you. Just keep reading…
keep reading…
keep reading….
I’m not wearing panties. Hah! Said the girl who misses you more by the day.
Em
Emily folded the letter, unable to pick up the next one. Even as she looked into a drawer full of proof, she couldn’t remember loving Stuart that way. Like her ring when it was missing, she could not remember its brilliance.
Whatever she felt for him now, it could never be that. And if she was ever to have a hope of feeling that way again, she was going to have to tell