by Harper Bliss
“Oh no? Then why have we never properly talked about this? Only argued our way through a bunch of miserable fights that don’t solve a thing.”
“Because you see your job as some sort of holy grail that can’t be criticized at all. Oh, it’s work, so that ends every discussion, because of what work means to you. Like your self-esteem depends on it. Like there’s nothing else more important than that company you work for. You sell wine. You’re not exactly saving lives.” Sheryl would not let this spiral into a critique on her personality so quickly. How could Kristin even think of accusing her of a lack of courage?
“And you do?”
“This has nothing to do with my job. My job does not interfere with our personal lives. When was the last time you came home from work and I wasn’t here? I come home to an empty house every single day and I’m sick of it. I might as well live alone.”
Kristin pushed her chair back a little. “Can’t you see I’m doing this for us?”
“No, because you’re not. I don’t know why you believe work to be so important. Perhaps it’s a sign of the times. Or perhaps it’s because you feel you need to prove something to your parents. Perhaps you feel like making a lot of money will somehow tamper their disappointment about you not following in their footsteps and becoming a doctor. Perhaps it’s even because you feel guilty about being a lesbian. The point is, I don’t know why, but it sure as hell isn’t for us. Because the only thing it’s doing for us, is ruining us.”
Kristin was silent for a long time. Sheryl’s heart thudded violently in her chest. She needed another sip of wine just to calm herself down, but she was afraid to reach for the glass. Afraid of being judged for it. Afraid of needing it beyond a point of no return.
“So what do you suggest I do? Tell my boss Hong Kong is off the table, lose my promotion, take a pay cut and go back to my previous position?” Kristin said it as though she was suggesting someone chop off her right arm. As though the loss of title, prestige, and income equaled the loss of her inner strength.
“We can’t go to Hong Kong and save this relationship at the same time. There’s just no way.”
“So you’re asking me to take a step back for you.”
“For us.”
Kristin gave an almost imperceptible nod. “I’m not sure I can do that.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
“I’m going for a walk. A long one.” Kristin rose. “Shall I pick you up another bottle of wine?”
Sheryl didn’t say anything, just stared at the glass in front of her. She counted the seconds until Kristin left—after wanting to be near her so desperately all those times she was away, she just wanted her to leave as quickly as possible. Once she’d gone, Sheryl tipped the glass to her lips and drank.
Chapter Fifteen
Kristin walked and walked. She walked until Sheryl’s words no longer reverberated throughout her. Until all she saw was Sheryl sitting on the patio with a glass of red wine in front of her. Had Kristin done that to her? Had she driven Sheryl to the bottle the way Sheryl’s mother’s suicide had driven her father to it? The image certainly shocked Kristin into giving herself a reality check. But why was it so hard for them? Cassie had two small children, ran a preschool, and had a successful marriage. Her boss Nigel, who worked about the same hours as Kristin did, had three children and a wife who worked part-time. She and Sheryl didn’t have children, leaving them plenty more time to focus on work, so why was Sheryl freaking out about it so much?
While it was true that most of her colleagues were always complaining about lack of time, that was just the way it was. It came with having a high-powered job. Never enough hours in the day and a to-do list that stretched a couple of weeks. Stress. Not seeing loved ones enough. Up until recently, Kristin had never questioned any of these things. It was simply the way things were when you had a full-time job. Coming home from work and flipping open the laptop in front of the TV to catch up on e-mails. Setting the alarm half an hour early so she could arrive at the office before the others and catch up on some more e-mails before colleagues started to trickle in with their own needs and questions.
Had she been engrossed in work so badly she had ignored her own partner, who was now drinking in secret? Which might not be a big deal for anyone else, but for Sheryl it was. No matter how lightly she brushed it off. It was a big deal. Because Kristin knew it wasn’t just conviction and trauma that had been keeping Sheryl from hitting the bottle. It was fear most of all. Fear that she was more like her father than she wanted to be. Fear that she might see the dark side of him in herself when she looked in the mirror. Or worse, her mother’s.
And yes, perhaps the solution to this problem was simple and Kristin should just take a step back at work. She was only forty. She had time to climb the ladder. Only, that went against every belief she’d ever held. Because Kristin worked harder than anyone else for a very good reason: she had no other choice. It was ingrained in her DNA. She didn’t tolerate spelling mistakes in sales reports the way some of her colleagues did. She double-checked every single number she put into a spreadsheet. And it might take up more of her valuable time, but mistakes were simply not permitted.
She firmly believed that her attention to detail and her intolerance for mistakes had landed her that promotion. And now she would have to give it up? In what world was that fair? Because it didn’t only mean her not doing the job anymore, but someone else, someone lesser, doing it.
Kristin rounded the corner again. She’d just been going around the block over and over. Every time she passed their front door, another opportunity presented itself to make up, to do the right thing. The only right thing there was to be done. Sure, she and Sheryl had had their problems over the course of their decade together, but they’d always, so easily, found a way out, and ended up the stronger for it. This felt different. Perhaps because it was so hard for Kristin to back down on this. But in the end, she always came back to that image of Sheryl and the wine. And their relationship. Their great, great love. Kristin started to realize that the reason she hadn’t told Sheryl about Hong Kong straight away wasn’t only because she was afraid of Sheryl’s reaction. She had been afraid of what it would do to their relationship as well. She didn’t even have to think about that anymore, because she had never really entertained it as a possibility. She imagined coming home from work every day in Hong Kong and finding Sheryl on the sofa with an empty bottle of wine. She’d give up a lot more to keep that from happening.
She’d have to talk with her boss, demand to be given another position in the company equal to the one she had now. After all, one of the main reasons Sterling Wines had thrived so much was because she worked there. Because she went to marketing seminars during weekends and on her own dime. Because she suggested they invest more in Asia. Because Kristin had only ever worked at one company in her life and she knew every single detail she was allowed to know—and a few she hierarchically didn’t have access to.
She walked past their front door and went for another go around the block. She suddenly thought of the leaflet on time management her colleague Ted had left on her desk a few weeks ago. Kristin had cast a furtive glance at it and thrown it in the trash immediately. Who had time for nonsense like that? She was a perfectionist, but she still got things done quicker than most. She had the elusive quality of being able to combine speed with thoroughness. And she was paid handsomely to do it. She wouldn’t take a pay cut. She couldn’t. That would somehow feel like cutting into her own flesh. Not that money was what drove her most, but it was the number that most accurately reflected her work ethic.
Kristin approached the door again. She stopped and unlocked it.
“I’m worried about your drinking,” Kristin said as soon as she walked in the door. Sheryl had retreated back inside. She’d poured the remainder of the bottle of wine away, assuaging some of her guilt as she watched it spill into the drain. She sat waiting for Kristin again, the way she would have done either way, even if Kirs
tin hadn’t come home early to surprise her. And what a surprise it had been.
“I’m worried about it too,” Sheryl admitted, out loud for the first time. “And I’m worried about us. The two might be related.”
“We’re not going to Hong Kong. I’ll inform Nigel tomorrow. It was a ludicrous idea in the first place.”
“It wasn’t ludicrous, just not very realistic. It might have shortened your business travel times, but it wouldn’t have changed anything for us. Besides, you wouldn’t be able to see your parents every weekend. You’d be devastated.”
“You mean they would be devastated.”
“No, I meant exactly what I said.” Sheryl rose from the sofa and went to stand next to Kristin, close enough to touch her if needed. “I don’t want to stand in the way of your dreams, and if it really is your big dream to move to Hong Kong, then we can discuss it. But the terms you presented are not feasible.”
“More than wanting to go to Hong Kong, I want to fix us,” Kristin said. “I will tell Nigel I expect to be kept at a position similar to where I am now. He doesn’t really have a choice, I’ve been an essential part of the company’s growth and he won’t want to lose me to a competitor. A minor financial loss might be inevitable, but I wouldn’t be traveling as much. And things can go back to how they were before.”
Sheryl was simultaneously impressed and worried. Kristin was actually putting their relationship first and she had managed to find a way to do so with only having to take a minor financial loss. But Sheryl worried that Kristin’s unbridled ambition, that invisible thing that drove her to work her ass off for this company she didn’t even own stock in or shared profit with, would never be fully satisfied. Maybe the kind of drive Kristin displayed could find a much better use if she started her own company. Not a new thought to Sheryl at all, but one she had never voiced out of fear that if Kristin were running her own business, she might actually work herself into an early grave. Perhaps the fact that she was paid a salary, which only went up at certain intervals, was what kept her from going totally crazy and working fourteen hours a day for a boss she only owed eight.
“Maybe we need some new ground rules,” Sheryl offered. “Have a couple of date nights every week.”
Kristin, who was leaning against the dining room table, said, “That sounds like a great idea.”
“But you have to promise me one thing.” Sheryl inched closer, curled her fingers around Kristin’s wrists. “You won’t hold not going to Hong Kong against me.”
“I won’t. I know it’s not right for us.” She slanted her head. “And who knows what tomorrow will bring?”
“Tomorrow will bring Friday and then Friday evening, when I will take you out for a nice date.”
Kristin froze for an instant, the way she did, Sheryl knew from experience, when she was mentally checking her diary. “Can’t wait,” she said, after a beat, and stepped into Sheryl’s embrace.
After a minute-long hug, which always managed to calm Sheryl down, Kristin whispered, “Now let’s talk about you. Do I need to send you to AA?”
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Sheryl said, injecting a confidence into her tone she didn’t feel. “I’m hardly at the substance abuse stage, and the only thing I like about having a glass of wine is how it makes me feel for a brief moment.”
“How does it make you feel?” Kristin took a step back and scanned Sheryl’s face.
“Like everything will be all right.”
“You don’t need wine for that.” Kristin kissed her on the cheek. “From now on, I’ll be here to tell you.”
2014
Chapter Sixteen
“I’m so, so tired,” Kristin said, very aware she’d been saying the exact same thing every single evening for weeks upon coming home. It wasn’t only a declaration of her mental and physical state, it was also a warning. A warning to the woman she loved: don’t come too close, because I’ve had about all I can handle.
Sheryl looked up from the book she was reading, clapped it shut, and examined Kristin’s face. “Straight to bed?” she asked.
“No.” The only reason Kristin noticed the empty bottle of wine on the coffee table was because her foot bumped into it as she sat down next to Sheryl. “I want to sit here a bit with you.”
“Do you want to talk about your day?” Sheryl asked.
Kristin shook her head. She just wanted to forget about this day that seemed to be never-ending. There used to be a time, not even so long ago, that she would arrive at the office early in the morning, and before she knew it, it was time to go home. The day would have just passed without her noticing, that was how engrossed she had been in work, dealing with one urgent thing after another, and never stopping to check the time, and, more often than not, forgetting to have lunch. That day had not been like that, nor had any others in the recent past. She’d butted heads with management again about which direction to take Sterling Wines into. A management she should have been part of by then, but wasn’t because Sterling Wines had sold out to a big international group two years ago. Kristin’s influence in most matters in which her opinion had always been respected and, more importantly, acted upon, seemed to have dwindled with every passing day.
“Do you want to talk about yours?” Kristin sank her head against Sheryl’s shoulder.
“I had lunch with Martha. She finally came out to her children.”
“Wow.” Even though this was great news, Kristin found it hard to muster any enthusiasm for anyone’s good tidings, not her own, few and far between as they had become, nor anyone else’s.
“Shall we have her over for dinner some time?” Sheryl clasped her arm around Kristin’s shoulder. Being ensconced in her partner’s embrace worked like a temporary sleeping aid. Kristin could fall asleep there and then, but it would only result in more of the tossing and turning she’d been doing too much of in bed lately. “Babe?” Sheryl asked.
“Hm. Sure.”
“I’ll set it up,” Sheryl said, and it was the last thing Kristin heard before she fell asleep on Sheryl’s shoulder.
Sheryl couldn’t move. Not if she didn’t want to wake Kristin, who looked like she desperately needed every minute of sleep she could get. She listened to her partner’s slowed breathing and took a deep breath herself. This was their life. Exhausted Friday evenings on the sofa, barely time for a decent chat. The bottle of wine Sheryl had easily polished off on her own hardly made a difference. She was of half a mind to open another, but that would involve moving and Kristin sleeping on her shoulder was about the pinnacle of intimacy they reached these days. Often, when Sheryl sat drinking alone, she wondered if this was it. If this was what it all amounted to. Despite not having to travel for work outside of Australia, Kristin’s hours had still grown longer over time. Each year, she’d given that company a little bit more: more time, more dedication, more pieces of herself. Parts of her that were once reserved for Sheryl had been squandered on work. But it wasn’t what worried Sheryl most.
Kristin used to take such pride in her work. The sparkle in her eyes when she came home after a great day was almost worth not seeing her often enough. Because Sheryl knew what it was like to have a job that fulfilled you, an occupation that made it all worthwhile. But that sparkle had faded in the past year. These days, Kristin only seemed to give more and more, emptying herself into a void, without getting anything back. Her energy didn’t get replenished anymore. She was depleting herself. Sheryl saw it. She suspected Kristin knew it. But she didn’t know how to start that particular conversation, as if time had silently but slowly chipped away at their means of communication.
Kristin stirred, made a noise in the back of her throat, and pushed herself away from Sheryl. “I fell asleep again,” she said, sounding apologetic, though this happened almost every night, and if she was truly sorry, she would perhaps try harder, however physically impossible, to stay awake.
“Don’t I know it,” Sheryl said, mustering a smile.
“Do you wa
nt to go to bed?” Kristen barely managed to suppress another yawn.
“You go. I’ll be up in a bit.” Every time she said those words—almost every evening of their life together, Sheryl mused: the couple who goes to bed together, stays together. They only went to bed together on weekends and, Sheryl had to be honest, then she was usually the one falling asleep like a log.
“Good night, hon.” Kristin pressed a light kiss on Sheryl’s cheek and went upstairs.
Sheryl looked at the empty bottle of wine. When was the last time Kristin had said anything about her drinking habits? Years ago. Then her mind wandered back to her conversation with her colleague Martha earlier that day.
“You and Kristin are my role models,” she’d said. “I want what you ladies have.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” Sheryl had joked, put on a smile, and hidden all the anguish, all the lonely days, and all the conversations they so desperately needed to have, behind it.
She got up and opened another bottle.
Chapter Seventeen
Kristin looked at her corner office and the view behind it—one she wouldn’t miss one bit. The surface of her desk was immaculate as always. She didn’t understand how people could work in chaos. Whereas she had loved the gentle disarray of Sheryl’s student flat when they’d first met, the coziness it created, her admiration had soon made way for stupefaction when she’d visited Sheryl’s office. It had been such a big mess, Kristin’s mouth had uncontrollably fallen open.
“You may not see it, but there’s order in my chaos,” Sheryl had said, her voice low and seductive, and Kristin had believed her. Kristin always believed Sheryl. Up until recently, she’d had no reason not to.
She walked behind her desk and sat in her chair. Would it be the last time? Did she owe it to herself to work through her notice period or just take gardening leave? After seventeen years, her best years, she certainly didn’t owe it to the company. But she knew she would. She would train her successor, transfer her knowledge as best she could, and walk out of that very office four weeks from now guilt free. She’d not just given everything to Sterling Wines, she had given more than she had. Which was all well and good when she could thrive on the satisfaction she got from helping build the company from a local distributor to a worldwide one. But those times had long gone.