“It’s not a game. We have to stop playing, Tobin. Pretending we’re close when we’re just… near each other. We have to stop.Ihave to stop.”
He doesn’t recover his words until I’m dressed and rummaging through the closet for my weekend bag.
“What are you doing?” His voice is edged with panic.
“Taking a break. I need space.”
“For the night?”
“For as long as it takes!” I say, unzipping the bag so hard I might break it.Maybe forever,I don’t say. Looking at his face, though, I think he hears it, and I can’t help caving a little. “Give me some time, Tobin. Please. Just let me think for a week. Alone. Okay?”
He nods, eyes pinched shut. The sound of his breathing, fast and harsh, cracks my courage with a shuddering splinter down the center of my body. I have to get out of here. Eyes everywhere but on my husband, I sweep underwear, tampons, charging cords into my bag. He wanted our marriage to be perfect, I know. He wantedusto be perfect. But we’re not.
I don’t fit at West by North because theycan’tsee me. I don’t fit with Tobin because hewon’t. One I can fix; one I can’t. Not by myself.
Palming my phone, I open my List app. No more marriage where he turns away from my failures. And while I’m at it, no more failures. I want people’s eyes to stop sliding over me because I’m not shiny or hilarious or loud. I want to be interesting, and welcomed, and valued. And not because I’m by Tobin’s side. Because I’mme.
Whatever it is Tobin has that I don’t, I’m going to get it. Whatever it is that makes the gatekeepers say no, I’ll bury it in everything that makes them say yes.
GET MAGIC, I type a second time. Then I book it out of my house.
Chapter Three
Improvisers who are “determined to do their best” scan the “future” for “better” ideas, and cease to pay attention to each other.
—Impro for Storytellers
My new favorite time of day: the moment before I fall asleep, when logical ideas give way to comforting, dreamlike thoughts and I forget how much I want a take-back for Friday night.
My new least favorite: waking up in my childhood home on a Monday morning, one second before all the negative emotions resume their deafening parade through my brain.
I came so damn close to caving and going home this weekend. But then I imagined an empty house, Tobin on the trail delighting guests by showing them how to harvest spruce tips for a tea he’ll serve that afternoon, all while lifting loaded dogsleds over bare patches in the snow. Tobin popping painkillers morning and night.To know my words couldn’t reach him… that would feel final in a way nothing else could.
Still, there’s a strange sort of relief threaded through the agony. At least I can stop waiting for the worst to happen. At least I have Amber and Eleanor and their around-the-clock kid-and-pet chaos instead of the silence of a house with Tobin absent. Or Tobin present.
I’ve done countless weekday mornings with Eleanor, but they’re a different flavor when my sister’s here. For example, when Amber’s wrapping up a night shift at the hospital, no one heaves the porridge pot into the sink with deliberate loudness, looking at me sideways.
My mom catches the clatter over the landline she insists on keeping so she can get a non-glitchy connection from Arizona to Grey Tusk. “Do you have to go, honey? Sounds like it’s time for you to get washing so Amber can dry.”
The Mothership is over the moon about Amber and me being roommates again, even though it means my marriage might be over. And although Mom was supportive when I sobbed out the story on Saturday, she couldn’t help pointing out the importance of family in a crisis. I think she called this morning so she could hear me washing and Amber drying, Amber sweeping and me mopping.
It’s easy that way. No fighting.
I didn’t tell Mom I’m only here because Stellar’s out of town. Her girlfriend, Jen, would let me crash, but I need someone to shove me into the shower every day or two, and for that I’d need Stellar’s love. Or Amber’s blunt frustration, which Mom calls love.
“Yeah, I’d better go. Love you, Mom.”
“Love you, sweetie.”
The second I hang up, Amber looks at me, looks at the pot, back to me. She’s always beautiful, though I tend to get the severe,unsmiling side of her. Usually, a look like this one would make me fill with worry and hop to do her bidding.
Today, though, my emotional tank is full up with heartache and fear and a jumble of huge black letters spelling “WHAT NOW?!” There’s no room for the drip-drip-drip of sisterly resentment.
“I want to dry,” I declare.
“You’re used to washing,” Amber returns, slipping forbidden table scraps to Kris Kristofferson, her senselessly energetic rescue mutt. Kris is the smartest dog I know. She understands over fifty words and can find things on command, like her bowl, or her leash. Or the cat, whom she loves to pin down with one paw so she can hold his head inside her mouth. Gently. Just to show shecan.
Yeti, too old for this game, vexes her by not trying to escape. Although it occurs to me I haven’t seen the cat all morning.
