She's not doing well. It's not my fault but it's not... not my fault. She tells me it's not my fault but I know there's something I could do better. I haven't found it yet. She's always saying how there's nothing left. How she doesn't want to be here anymore. It physically hurts my chest when she says that. I feel an invisibly unending grip on my lungs and an untiring pressure on my stomach.
Her eyes were alive once. Years ago when I met her they were alive. They laughed. Her eyes smiled without her mouth needing to move. Now they're hard. They aren't foreign but they're broken. They aren't concerned with smiling or laughing anymore. I look into them and see nothing. I see my reflection in them, sometimes, when the lighting is right. She doesn't look into my eyes. She looks through.
I try to hold her but her body doesn't curl into mine anymore. It's cold when I bring her into my chest. I kiss around her face but she doesn't turn her head to me. I hold a statue, or a figurine. I hold an emptiness. It spreads into me but I fight it. I don't let it drag me in. I'm going to pull her out, as soon as I find out where exactly she is. I can't give up, because she needs me. I need her. I need her to come back. She doesn't understand how much I need her to come back. She doesn't try hard enough, that's what I think, behind it all. I know she can, but she won't. There's no fight left in her. But if she cared enough, she would fight. For me. For herself. Especially for herself.
When I leave in the morning for work, my mind stays here with her. I sit at my desk, staring at spreadsheets, but my thoughts are here with her. I can't sleep at night because I'm awaiting a sound from the hallway or bathroom or... kitchen. Sometimes I find her on the floor in the middle of the night. I think it's sleepwalking. She never did that before, though. I safety check the house before I leave. I carry the Tylenol bottles with me to work. I put all the knives and scissors in a box in the back of the pantry. I get Gail to check up on her when she can. I call during my breaks but she only answers half of the time. When I'm done work, if I can't leave early, I run to the subway and call her on the train. If she answers, I'm calm again. If she doesn't, I push people out of the way at the stop. I run home to find her. She's usually on the bed, sometimes on the floor, sometimes staring at the ceiling, sometimes holding her ribcage.
The weekends are better. I can stay home for two days. Two whole days to make sure nothing happens. Sometimes she joins me in the kitchen when I'm making breakfast – sometimes I don't even ask her to. It's those days that I'm filled with even more hope. She's coming back, I think to myself. Sometimes she even smiles at me. When I kiss her forehead and slide the eggs onto her plate, she thanks me. On those days, she even looks into my eyes, not through. We eat together, silent, but I hum, I look at her, I bobble my head back and forth to try and make her laugh. I smile, I hold her hand. Sometimes she holds mine too. Sometimes I see her staring at my chest, frowning, slowly chewing her food. Usually it's left half eaten on the plate, but at least she eats something on good days.
I helped her move into this apartment when she moved across the province to go to a school closer to mine. We met through mutual friends at church when I was visiting my old university. She was going to school there, of course. When I saw her, I didn't think too much about it. We talked for a few minutes. I thought she was pretty, but I didn't think I would see her again. I did. The second time I saw her, I realized a whole lot more. I saw that a top tooth was crooked, and that when she smiled she closed her lips again quickly. I saw that her eyes were a darker brown than I had originally thought. I saw that her cheeks still had a bit of adolescent chubbiness to them. I saw that she didn't just look at me, but into me. She laughed when I spilled tea on my lap and teased me about it for months afterwards. She always brushed her hands over the hair spilling onto her face. She always acted embarrassed when I kissed her in public, but she never asked me to stop.
Now her cheeks aren't chubby. I don't see that one crooked tooth at all. I don't kiss her in public because we're never in public. She would rather die than go out, and that's not hyperbole. She doesn't look into me, she looks through.
* * *
I'm not doing well. It's not his fault. I tell him it has nothing to do with him but he takes everything personally. When I mention that I don't want to be alive, he's devastated every time. Every time it gets worse. He thinks that I don't care about him enough to try. He implies that I'm selfish. He doesn't understand. He's trying to fix me, but he can't. I don't know what can. He finds his purpose in trying, though. He needs me, he says. He needs me more than I need him.
He goes to work and I stay here. My migration path is a short circuit between the bed and the kitchen. In the kitchen I open the fridge door and look inside for about three minutes. I close it and go back to the bed. In the bed I stare at the ceiling or the wall or pluck at my skin or see black. Sometimes I cry but not very often. In the beginning, I cried daily. But gradually, the emotion required to exert so much energy into sobs died out. I don't feel very much of anything, anymore. He doesn't understand what it's like. And I can't expect him to. If he felt the same as me, then... I don't know. Who would take care of the both of us?
On the days that he is particularly concerned, he calls his sister to check on me. I hate it. I hate her seeing me like this. But this is everything anyone has seen for the last year. She looks at me with pity—for me, yes, but more so for him. I know she loves me, but she loves him more. She doesn't like to see him stuck. And she tells him he's stuck, thinking that I'm not listening. She comes over sometimes when he's at work to cook. To her, she's helping us both. She looks with static eyes at the build up of dishes and laundry and wrappers. I can read her thoughts because they seep out of her eyes. Loud. I'm not doing my part. I think that's pretty obvious by now. She usually cooks rice and eggs and brings it to the bed. She doesn't leave it on the table anymore because he ended up coming home from work to stale food one too many times. She doesn't want him to stay here. I know he loves her but he loves me more. His family tells him it's not his job to stay here, that he can leave and find something easier. He's still young, he doesn't have to resign his life. He doesn't talk to them as much anymore.
We're not married. He sleeps here every night, but on the couch. I stay on the bed. He doesn't hold me very often anymore because I don't want him too close. I don't kiss him anymore. He kisses me when he can and when I don't pull away, but my skin is cold to his lips. He kisses my nose and my forehead and my eyes but I don't feel it. I don't, can't, look into his eyes anymore. Even when I want to. I can only look through.
Some nights he wakes up to carry me back to the bed. I wake up to go to the bathroom or sometimes I'm already awake and I get out of bed but don't want to stand anymore. It all seems to much at some particular times. I lay down on the floor in the hallway and he comes to bring me back. He gives me water and kisses my cheek and pulls the covers over me. I look through, not saying anything. He goes back to sleep on the couch.
A few days ago, his sister came at 10. That means he was exceptionally worried about me. I don't know why it's different on certain days. I don't do anything differently. She didn't come into my room. Headed straight for the sink to do the dishes. I didn't want her there. I didn't want her to check on me anymore, let alone do my goddamn dishes.
"Gail. You don't have to do that."
"I'm not doing it for you. You know that. He's already stressed enough. He shouldn't have to come home to a mess."
"I know."
I had more to say, but it wouldn't come out. I stood there for a minute, hoping it would come, hoping I could try to make her leave, but, nothing. I went back to my room. I closed the door so I couldn't hear the water and soap sounds anymore.
He came home early that day and rushed to the room. I told him about Gail. I told him I didn't want her to come anymore. I don't need her. I'm fine. And I cried. I used to cry a lot, like I said, but lately it's hardly ever. But this time I cried and he held me and his arms cradled my chest and his head pressed up against mine and I sank into him and wept. I didn't feel particularly sad but I couldn't stop it from flowing. Everything flowed out, all the words I couldn't say and the emotions I couldn't find. I turned and kissed him, and for a few minutes it felt like everything was normal. Maybe for a few minutes it was heaven. Maybe for a few minutes I was okay. He continued to hold me, and he started crying too. I hate it when he cries, so I cried more. We fell asleep together. In the morning when I woke up, again I looked through. He felt it. He got out of bed and kissed my forehead, but it wasn't the same kiss as the night before.
Sometimes I think about the first time I met him. My friends were telling me about him, how funny he was, how fun it was when they used to spend time together. They introduced me in the foyer and he seemed like a nice guy. People were waiting around behind us to say hi to him. I wondered how he had so many friends and why. I found out later when I saw him again at a coffee shop. This was months later when he was visiting his friends again. He was waiting in line and I recognized him, said hi. He was so excited to see me. I realized that's why so many people loved him. He didn't just look at me, he looked into my eyes and I could feel genuine care seeping in. He made me feel brighter. I was pretending to be bright so often, but with him I didn't have to pretend. He asked me to join him and we talked for an hour.
Sometimes when he's making me breakfast, I remember that day. Sometimes I wake up from a dream and I feel different, I feel bright again, I feel ready and I jump out of bed and I rush to the kitchen to tell him that I want to come back but when I get there it's gone. I want to burry myself in his warmth but I can't bring myself to it. I can't tell him about my quick failure because it wouldn't make any difference. Instead I sit at the table and watch him make breakfast and think about the first dates and the family weekends and meeting his dad and introducing him to my parents and going to the aquarium and driving to the mountains and kissing in the car and sitting on the porch and waking up to his laugh. I can smile sometimes when I'm there. I can feel it again. Feel how it used to be, how I used to be, how we used to be. And then I slowly come back and look around. Look at all the failures I've had in this apartment, all the times I've let him down, all the suffering I've put him through, all the times I've tried to come back so that he could be happy again. And I look through him. I can't look into him anymore. I don't want to see what's there—what I've put there.
In the note I tell him I'll watch him from up there. I write it all out, everything. I fold it up and put it in my underwear drawer. Maybe one day I'll finally use it.
