In the Stillness

by Andrea Randall

“Well, this is fucking brutal.” My gums are numb. “Why did you suggest this, again?” I slur at Tosha.

  “I figured we ought to cleanse your entire aura at once, instead of piece by piece. Are you ever going to pick up your phone? Eric’s called a thousand times.”

  I ignore her question. “So. I loved Ryker. He loved me. PTSD came in and fucked us both royally over and, somehow, here I sit.” I look around her apartment. “Maybe I should have stuck it out with him—”

  “Stop right there. The point of this exercise is to remind you that you did the right thing. You agreed to be in a relationship with the man who wrote those letters. Not the one who came home—”

  “It wasn’t his fault, Tosha!” I snap.

  She takes a deep breath. “I know it wasn’t, Natalie. But what was his fault was his choice not to seek out help, and lying to you that he had . . .”

  “He was sick,” I whisper.

  “Mmhmm,” she stands up and sits back down next to me, wrapping her arms around my neck, “and so were you. Given the last time you saw each other, we’re lucky either one of you are alive. You can’t keep beating yourself up over it, Natalie. You didn’t ruin his life. You probably saved it. You saw him, he looks great. It’s time to leave the guilt behind.” She tucks my hair behind my ear and kisses my cheek.

  I lean my head on her shoulder as she continues. “I don’t mean that Ryker is the only person that can love you that way. I mean you’re worthy of the kind of love found in the pages of those letters, Nat. You hear me? But, it needs to come from you, first. You have to love you, again. Got it?”

  Leaving my head on her shoulder, I sit in eerie silence until I fall asleep.

  Chapter 27

  I’m not ready to talk to Eric. Or to stop drinking. This morning Tosha and Liz had to take off to visit her parents for a few days, leaving me to my own devices. I think she took the vodka and dumped it out. Oh, no, I drank it. I’ve filled my morning with organizing Ryker’s letters by date. Maybe I’ll get them bound into a book.

  Or throw them away.

  I spend the afternoon analyzing what the healthy thing to do would be, when I’m interrupted by a knock on Tosha’s door.

  “Who is it?” I ask, walking toward the door.

  “Natalie, it’s me, let me in.” Eric sounds thoroughly exhausted.

  Well, I’m out of liquor and, it appears, luck. I open the door.

  “What.”

  Good, he looks like shit.

  He seems to be struggling to make eye contact. “Can I come in?”

  I leave the door open as I walk away and sit on the couch. Eric moves to sit next to me.

  “I didn’t ask you to sit.”

  He stands without protest. “Will you at least look at me?”

  “I don’t think I can.” I’m honest, and am tempted to remind him that he likes that about me.

  “Nat . . .”

  “Don’t. Call. Me. Nat.” I growl as I finally make eye contact with him.

  I can tell by the puffiness around his eyes that he’s been crying, or that he’s massively hung over. If his night was anything like mine, it’s probably a little bit of both.

  “I’m sorry,” he says in the same tone he met me with in the kitchen yesterday.

  Then, it hits me.

  “Is that what you were apologizing for in the kitchen yesterday? Cheating on me?”

  “No, I was saying sorry for . . . just . . .”

  “Do me the decency of telling me how long it’s been going on. And not just with her. With anyone else, too.” I hug my knees to my chest to prevent my guts from spilling out as I realize she likely wasn’t the first woman to wrap her legs around his waist while he’s been married to me.

  “It was just her.”

  “Who is she?” I didn’t give myself permission to ask that question, but out it came.

  Eric folds his hands into his pockets. “A colleague. She works in the same department.”

  “How long, Eric?” I start to regret asking again as I watch his face turn a slight shade of green.

  Looking at the floor, he barely manages a whisper. “Just over a year.”

  My hands fly to my mouth to prevent vomit from spewing all over him as I race to the kitchen sink. I’m only half-embarrassed that this is happening in front of him. The other half reminds me he deserves to see this. I walk toward him after rinsing my mouth out. He has tears in his eyes. Bastard.

  “Just over a year? Just over a year! Eric?”

  I feel like every woman I’ve known on TV or in real life that I’ve made fun of. Dumb. Clueless. I always stare at these women, the ones who couldn’t hang on to their husbands, and wonder how on God’s green earth they couldn’t know something. It’s been a solid three years since I’ve felt like Eric and I were in anything that could be considered a “happy” marriage. But, an affair? It’s never once crossed my mind that he might be having one, or to have one myself. He was working long hours on his Ph.D. while I was busy with our boys and trying to hold it together. Trying to get us through the experience in one piece. Apparently, we had different goals.

  He opens his mouth, maybe to answer, but I continue. “Aside from the complete disregard you had for our marriage and our family, do you realize what physical risk you put me at by having sex with someone else?”

  “We weren’t having sex the whole time, Natalie.” His honesty is like a machine gun. While I assumed that they were having sex, I both now know for sure that they were, and am faced with the reality that their relationship had time to develop to that of a sexual one.

  I collapse onto the couch again. “When did the sex start?”

  He kneels in front of me and I literally do not have the energy to push him away. “We only had sex once. Last week.”

  “Ah, yes,” I proceed sarcastically, “last week was a tough one for us. I can see how bringing someone else into our marriage would help. But, come on, Eric. You can’t expect me to believe that you’ve been sneaking around behind my back for a year and have only had sex once.”

  Eric sits back on his heels. For a second, I think he’s going to try to convince me that they really did only have sex one time. Maybe that’s wishful thinking. He doesn’t argue, though, and that’s the only answer I need.

  “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”

  He has the audacity to look annoyed. “Come on. You said yourself we haven’t had a marriage in a long time—”

  “We haven’t, but I still never cheated on you. Though I suppose you knew that since I was rarely let out of the house by myself. Was that part of your master plan? To keep me at home so you could go fool around and come home to your version of a perfect family, confident that I wasn’t with anyone else?” As I stand, so does he. He follows me into the kitchen.

  “I fucked up—”

  “A year, Eric? A fucking year! Do you understand that that means every single second of every single day for the last year you told me a lie? You’re a doctor, quick, add it up. How many lies is that?”

  His head shakes as he looks down and licks his lips.

  I step toward him again and duck down to meet his eyes, and with a cold voice I tell him. “It’s over thirty-one million. You’ve told over thirty-one million lies to me and to your boys.”

  “I’m sorry, Natalie . . .” his voice seems to catch on some brewing tears as he walks to the couch and sits down, burying his head in his hands. “I honestly didn’t think you’d care,” he says, looking up. “You’ve hated me for more than a year.”

  True.

  “I’ve never completely disregarded your humanity by turning myself over to someone else, while still in the ring with you. For God’s sake, Eric, you’d come home and lay in bed with me after kissing someone else? How did you do it without going completely insane?” I sit on the chair across from him, he follows my every move. “And, to think, I beat myself up over feeling detached from you for so long. I reminded myself daily how much you cared for me and the boys. How m
uch you loved me. How I was fucking everything up by being so selfish in being angry that I had to put everything on hold . . .”

  “Like I said, I didn’t think you’d care. Then, the look on your face when you walked into my office . . .” Eric rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands.

  “You can’t erase a visual memory that way.”

  “You looked like you still loved me . . .”

  “That was betrayal I was feeling, Eric. Not love. You don’t have to love someone to feel betrayed by them. I still trusted you, even when I stopped loving you.”

  Ryker’s Valentine’s letter sits inches from Eric’s foot. I reach for it and tuck it in the box behind me while Eric still sits with his eyes tightly closed. I resist the urge to show Eric all of the letters, to show him what true love looks like. To explain that when someone you love is hurting, you would walk barefoot through hell and back to bring them back to you, even when you know you’re fighting a losing battle. You don’t turn to someone else. War, though, is a crueler mistress than a scientist with morals with the tensile strength of a Twizzler.

  “I think we can fix us.” He kneels in front of me again, taking my hands.

  “Don’t touch me.” Recoiling, I pull my hands away and tuck them between my legs. “I want you to leave, Eric. I’ve heard all I need to know, and I don’t think I can take anymore today. Don’t say anything to your parents yet, and I won’t say anything to mine.” I stand and walk to the door, opening it.

  “Come on, Nat—”

  “No, Eric. This . . . this is too much. We might be broken, but I’ve been broken for longer, and I need to figure some shit out. Just leave, please.”

  Eric walks, slumped-shouldered, toward the door. “I love you,” he says as he meets me in the doorway.

  “Just because you say it doesn’t make it true, you know.” I look toward the stairs, where I want him to go.

  “I do love you, Natalie.” His brown eyes are faded, pleading. He’s actually able to pull off looking remorseful, which makes me feel even sicker. He’s an actor of the most threatening kind.

  “Yeah?” I huff. “Well, you’ve just proven that it’s not enough.”

  Feeling used, disgusting, and disregarded, I let my tears fall freely out of his view when he leaves. I can’t get over the gratefulness I feel over our boys being gone for the week.

  Our boys.

  I can’t make a clean break and never see him again. There’s no restraining order or semester at home with my parents that will make this all go away. Not this time. I’m going to actually have to deal with this. So, grabbing my purse, I decide the first place to start is a quiet townie bar on a Sunday afternoon. One I’ve never been to with anyone before. One that will be free of any memories the last twelve years have etched into my brain.

  Chapter 28

  This entire time I’ve been thinking how awful I would look leaving my marriage—breaking up my family—while one of my boys begins dealing with what will be a lifelong disability. How distasteful and unspeakable it would look to others for me to leave my doctor husband while unemployed. For the last three years I’ve talked myself up, saying women have done this for centuries—this motherhood thing. It’s not that I don’t want to be a mother. I simply don’t want to be the mother in Tim Burton’s version of a family.

  The last several weeks have had me hiding in the bathroom, cutting my skin open to relieve the guilt and shame I’ve felt about wanting to leave. Yes, I’ve wanted to leave the boys at times, too, but I can’t do that. Especially not now. I feel my heart clinging to them all of a sudden, like they’re the only true and pure things left in my life. The rest is complete shit.

  “Fucking guilt,” I mumble as I turn into the parking lot of “The Harp” in North Amherst. It’s an Irish bar I’ve been to about two times in a decade and a half, but that’s just enough to know where it is and that I’ll be away from people I know.

  Guilt is intense. Suffocating. A brick, tied quietly around your ankles while you sleep. You never fall slowly into guilt—you wake up with little time to take your last breath before being pulled under. Guilt over being a bad wife turns on a dime into guilt over being a dumb one. Self-condemnation over wanting to leave your children behind flips into shame that they’re in love with a mother who doesn’t love herself. Who doesn’t know how.

  “Afternoon.” Three post-middle-aged heads turn in my direction as the bartender greets me.

  Breathing a sigh of relief at the relatively empty bar, I smile. “Good afternoon.”

  “What can I get for you?” the man who appears slightly older than my dad asks as he leans on the bar.

  I stare at the vodka for a few seconds before deciding I’ve had enough of that this week. It’s time to move on. “Tequila.”

  He raises his eyebrows. “Just . . . tequila?”

  “You feel like mixing me a margarita?” I shrug.

  He laughs. “Sure thing, Honey.”

  I grin. “Mix up a pitcher to save yourself some time. I’m gonna be here for a while.”

  Two of the three men at the bar whistle in surprise. The third seems to be asleep.

  “Here ya go,” he says, handing me a glass and the pitcher full of guilt-numbing goodness.

  “Thanks.” I grab them and head to the furthest table from the entrance—one with the least amount of light—and start pouring.

  As I reach the glass to my lips to take the first sip, I spot a faded scar on my wrist. I don’t know if it will actually turn into a real scar, but it’s there.

  I have to stop this . . .

  With one more drop of self-loathing filling my glass to the brim, I open my mouth and tip my head back, swallowing half the glass at once.

  “That bad, huh?” one of the men at the bar hollers across the empty space.

  I chuckle. “You have no fucking idea . . .”

  Well, two hours later, they have an idea. After finishing half the pitcher, I saunter over to the bar, ready to talk. And, I do. For twenty minutes straight.

  “And, the bitch of it is, I have no fucking clue who this woman is.” The guy who was sleeping is now awake, starting at me wide-eyed.

  “Sorry, Kid,” one of them says.

  “My name is Natalie. But you? You can call me Nat.” They laugh as I continue drinking. If I’m not careful I’ll start speaking Spanish soon with all this Cuervo swimming through my blood.

  “You’ve never seen her before?” A tired looking hippie with a grey ponytail shakes his head. Leave it to the hippie to start asking questions.

  “Never. I mean, maybe she was at one of the, like, five functions I attended with him over the last few years but . . . psh . . .I spent most of those watching the clock, waiting to go home. I certainly wasn’t on the lookout for the woman my husband might fool around with. Oh, and to top it all off,” I slam my hand at the bar, commanding the attention I already have, “I ran into my ex-boyfriend last week. I haven’t seen him in, what’d I say? Ten years? And, you know what? He looks great. Just. Fucking. Great.”

  Their sudden silence when I sniff away impending tears makes me uncomfortable. It occurs to me that maybe they’ve cheated on their wives, too, which is why they find themselves alone at a bar on a Sunday evening. Or, they’ve been cheated on. Either way, I don’t want them looking at me anymore.

  “I’m going back to my dark and dreary corner. Thanks for listening, guys.” I slide with what I hope looks like grace off the stool and sway a bit with my 1/4-full pitcher back to my booth. Yeah, it’s my booth now. I’ve decided.

  As soon as I sit again, I feel incredibly dizzy, and am thankful I made it to the booth before falling over. I’d hate to waste so much tequila. Biting down on my tongue, I find it completely devoid of feeling.

  Great, now I have to stay here long enough to sober up to drive home. Or to Tosha’s. Or wherever the fuck it is I’m supposed to go.

  A few more people enter the bar, and maybe some leave, but I can’t tell because I’ve put my back
to the door and the bar. It’s a habit I got into quickly when Ryker got home. He always had to face the door, for reasons I never asked about. So, I just sit this way. Always. The conversation around the bartender is quiet, while the voices in my head are screaming as I finish the last of my pitcher an hour later. Deciding it’s time to start drinking some water if I have plans of ever leaving here tonight, I slowly stand and start my hike to the bar.

  There are quite a few more men at the bar, and one woman, most of whom have their backs to me as the bartender catches my eye.

  “Anything else, Sweetheart?” he asks with a look of caution.

  “Just fill this up with water, please.”

  A couple of people jump and turn their heads in my direction. They clearly didn’t see me when they’d walked in, which was my intention. Trying to force a semi-sober smile, I slide between two patrons and hand the bartender my pitcher.

  “Natalie?” a voice comes from my right. Directly to my right. Like, our shoulders are touching to my right.

  Turning, I pray that was just a voice in my head. No luck. I’m face-to-face and shoulder-to-shoulder with Ryker fucking Manning.

  “Oh, come on! You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” Tears pool in my eyes as I make a hasty break for my booth to collect my wallet and car keys, picking up the bottom of my summer dress so I don’t fall flat on my face.

  “Miss, you really shouldn’t be driving . . .” the bartender calls after me as I reach for the door handle. I ignore him.

  “It’s okay, Mike, I got this,” Ryker says as I watch him leap from his barstool.

  With any luck, I’ll make it to my car and lock my doors before he catches up to me. Or, I could trip on the last stair and land on my hands and knees on the fresh crusher run, slicing my arm open on a broken beer bottle.

  Sweet irony.

  “Fuck my life,” I groan as I collect myself enough to sit upright and lean against the bottom stair. “Dammit!” I yell as I instinctively pull the bottom of my dress to my arm to stop the bleeding, where I find my knees are scraped pretty good, too.