by June Gray
“I can’t do that.”
I wanted to tell her I loved her for trying. Instead I said, “This isn’t your battle, Elsie. It’s mine. And I’m sorry that you’re caught in it. You shouldn’t have to carry my burden on your shoulders.”
The corners of her mouth lifted but there was sadness, not joy, in that smile. “Don’t you know by now that I’m your battle buddy? Everything you’ve gone through, I’ve been at your back, watching your six.”
Tears stung my eyes. And here I thought I’d been fighting alone all this time.
“You’ve been so busy trying to protect me, you never saw that I was doing the same for you,” she said.
“I’m sorry I let you down.” I pressed my forehead against hers. “I promised I’d always keep you safe, but I’m the one that ended up hurting you.”
“If this was a dream, you’d beg me to come home and I’d say yes, because it’s romantic,” she said. I opened my mouth to do just that when she silenced me with a finger. “But the reality is that I need a break from us. You need to take a step back and examine your life, and really think about these destructive feelings you’re holding on to. Are they worth losing your wife and child over?”
“I wish it were that simple. I’m not holding on to these issues because I want to. They’re just there, embedded in my skin,” I said. “I thought that punishing my body would help, that after so many bruises and wounds, I’d feel like I’d repented.”
She shook her head. “I can’t come home until you get better,” she said, confirming what I’d suspected. “The stress, the fighting; none of it is good for the baby. The doctor says if it continues—”
I pressed my lips to hers. I couldn’t bear to hear the what-ifs right now. “I’ll try harder. I promise.”
“I don’t want to live like that, worrying every day,” she said with a wavery voice. “I just want to be with you and have the boring, happy life we dreamed of.”
“I want that too, Els. More than anything.” I climbed on the bed, curling around her back and holding her close. It felt like I hadn’t held her like this in years. “We’ll get there. I’ll fix this.”
“And what if you can’t?”
“I have to. I can’t fail.” I buried my face in her hair, losing myself in her scent. “Living without you is not an option.”
—
I woke up a few hours later on the other side of the bed, but even if our bodies were separated, our hands were between us, still entwined. It goes to show that even while unconscious, I’m unable to let her go.
I watched her sleep for long minutes, my heart clenching at the thought that she’d had to go to the hospital, and once more, I hadn’t been there. I was sure by now she was asking herself if I would ever be there for her again.
When the thoughts in my head became nearly unbearable, I kissed her hand and rolled off the bed. I closed the door behind me and padded downstairs, in search for some alcohol but instead finding Julie and Will in the kitchen.
“Henry!” Will cried, jumping out of the chair and nearly spilling his cereal in order to hug me.
I picked him up, threw him in the air, then set him down soundly. “What’s up, buddy?” I asked, pasting on a happy face.
“What are you doing here?”
I glanced over at his mom, who just raised an eyebrow and shook her head.
I ruffled his hair. “Elsie and I just came for a visit.”
“Okay, Will, get back to your breakfast please. I’ll just finish getting ready. When I come down, I want you ready for school, okay?” Julie said, putting Will’s lunch box in his backpack.
“Yes, Mom.”
Julie turned to me. “There’s coffee in the pot and help yourself to anything in the fridge.”
After she left, I poured myself a cup of coffee and Will a glass of orange juice from the fridge. I sat down at the table and slid the glass over to him.
“We had to take Aunt Elsie to the hospital last night,” he said around a mouthful of colorful cereal.
“I heard,” I said, holding my palms against the hot surface of the mug. “What happened?”
“She was just talking with Mom, then she said she was really dizzy. We made her sit down on the couch. I went to the fridge and got her some water. But she was still dizzy and no shoes.”
“Nauseous?”
“Yeah. Mom was scared, so we went to the hospital and Aunt Elsie saw a doctor while we stayed in this big room with lots of chairs and other people who were coughing and sick.” He wrinkled his nose then brightened. “But she’s okay now.”
“Thank you for taking good care of her, buddy.” I decided right then that, whatever happened, I would never let this little guy down.
Will set aside his empty cereal bowl and took a drink, wiping off his orange juice mustache with the back of his hand. “No problemo,” he said with a proud smile.
He reminded me so much of Jason in that moment, with the same self-assured mannerisms and the same boyish smile, that I was instantly filled with longing for my best friend. If Jason were around, I knew for a fact I wouldn’t be in this predicament right now. If Jason were still alive, I wouldn’t be so unstable.
But then again, if Jason were around, I might never have found the courage to marry his sister.
It sucked to know I couldn’t have it all—the best friend; the love of my life; the happy, untroubled life—and hurt even more to know that I might very well lose the things I did have.
“What should I do?” I asked his son instead.
Will finished his drink and set the glass down. “Make sure Aunt Elsie doesn’t have to go to the hospital ever again. That place is yucky.”
I nodded. “You’re right. I have to do my best to make sure the rest of her pregnancy is stress-free.”
“And make sure the baby is okay,” he added with a seriousness beyond his years. “I want my girl cousin to be healthy. I don’t want her to die like my dad.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat with a mouthful of coffee. “Me too, bud. Me too.”
2
I convinced Elsie to come back home the next day, with a lot of promises on my part, promises I didn’t know if I could keep but wanted to make regardless. All I knew for certain was that we couldn’t fix our problems while she was a few states away. We were always better together, not apart.
Still, as I sat beside her on that plane as we flew somewhere over Oklahoma, Julie’s words rattled around in my head.
“She needs to eliminate any and all stressors in her life.”
I knew what I had to do, knew that it was absolutely the right thing for Elsie. I just hoped she’d understand that, this time, it was different, that the past was not repeating itself.
I turned to her as she stared out the window. My eyes traced the graceful curve of her jaw down to her chest, which had grown in size over the months, and finally to the swell of her stomach. It made my heart hurt looking at her, knowing what had to be done.
“Els,” I said, taking hold of her hand.
She turned to me, the expression on her face revealing that she already knew what I would say. Maybe she’d been thinking it herself.
“I’ll move out.” I forced the words out of my mouth, even if it was the last thing in the world I wanted.
She nodded.
“But this is not like before. I’m not leaving you. I’m just taking a step back so you can breathe.”
A tear slid down her cheek. God, even when I was trying to do the right thing, I hurt her. “How long?” she asked.
I wiped away the tear with my thumb. This was absolute torture. How was it possible to miss someone this fiercely when she was sitting right beside you? “Until all is well again,” I said.
She tangled her fingers in mine and squeezed hard. “And what if I need you in the middle of the night? What if someth
ing goes wrong? What if I can’t do it on my own?”
“I’ll be there, Els,” I promised. “Just call me and I’ll be there.”
“This is just temporary,” she said with a resolute nod. “We’re not separating or divorcing.”
I let out a breath at the mention of divorce. “No, we’re not,” I said and gave our entwined hands a shake. “Just don’t give up on me yet, okay? I can’t do this without you.”
Her eyebrows drew together, but she nodded. Thank God she nodded.
—
When we arrived home in our separate cars, Elsie said she’d go next door and get Law. “To give you some time to pack,” she said.
It all came crashing down on me then, that this was real. I was really moving out for an indefinite amount of time.
I went upstairs and packed my bags, moving quickly so as not to draw out the absolute heartbreak of leaving my home. I knew I was doing the right thing but that didn’t stop the pain that radiated around that one muscle in my chest.
Elsie, for her part, stayed out of the way after she retrieved Law. She went into the home office, saying she needed to catch up on work. Her absence was a little blessing; I didn’t know how I’d stop myself from refusing to leave if she was around.
Law, realizing that something was up, followed me from room to room, whining and making a general nuisance of himself. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore and sat down on the carpet in the bedroom, wrapping an arm around his neck. “I’ll miss you too,” I said, scratching his back.
I felt a tickle in the back of my nose as I said good-bye to my first dog, my first house, my first love. “Take care of Elsie, okay?” I told him. “Bark loud if you hear anything weird, and sink those chompers on anyone you think deserves it. I trust your judgment on this.”
Law licked my face in response.
“I’ll try to come by so we can go jogging, but don’t be offended if I want to spend more time with Elsie than you. It’s just . . . I need her to fall in love with me again.”
I gave him one more good belly rub before rising to my feet and collecting my bags. I knocked on the office door before I pushed it open, and found Elsie hunched over the desk, crying silently into her hands.
Though it was hard, I ignored my instinct to comfort her; instead I cleared my throat. “I’m all set.”
She looked up with a wretched expression on her face. “I hate this. I want a do-over.”
“Me too. A marriage mulligan.”
“If only.”
“The time apart will be good for us,” I said, willing it to be true. “But I’m not leaving you, Els. I’ll still be around. I just need to take myself out of the picture to keep you and the baby healthy. I know myself, and I know what’s going to happen. It might get worse before it gets better.”
—
My heart was beating out of my chest as we walked downstairs and into the garage. I busied myself packing bags into the trunk, giving Elsie every chance to ask me to stay.
But she didn’t, like I knew she wouldn’t.
I stood in front of her and lifted her chin with my finger. “I love you, Elsie Logan,” I said, pressing a soft kiss to her forehead. “So fucking much.”
“Then get better, Henry,” she said, fisting the collar of my shirt. “Come back to me whole.”
I leaned into her, unable to keep away. My hands slid around to her head, cupping her face as I gave her one last kiss. I tilted my head and deepened the connection, wanting to make it last forever, wanting to meld my entire being with hers so that we’d never have to say good-bye.
In some ways, she had always been a part of me ever since the day I met her and teased her about her hair. I’d once tried to run away from that truth, to shed her memory like a snake sheds its skin, but what I’d discovered was that she ran deep in my veins. She was in my cells, embedded in my very DNA. To be without her was to be incomplete.
All too soon I was in my car, backing out of the driveway as Elsie stood in the garage with her arms wrapped around herself. Before I drove away, I took a moment to compose myself, to blink away the sadness and convince myself that this was possible, that I could do this on my own again. And then I left her.
—
I stayed at a Residence Inn, but I refused to unpack. I simply threw my bags in the closet and left it at that. I had to believe I’d only be here for a few days or else I’d fall apart.
After a long shower, I went to work. I didn’t tell anybody about my marriage troubles, even if many people at the station would have been able to sympathize. But I didn’t talk so it wouldn’t be real. Elsie and I wouldn’t become one of those LEO marriage statistics. I wouldn’t let us.
Patrol that night was quiet and uneventful. Never before had I felt so lonely than in that dark car, with only the chatter on the radio to keep me company. The silence was unbearable; I sang songs out loud, recited my favorite poetry (or what I could remember), even pretended to pour my heart out to a phantom Elsie in my passenger seat. I’m sure anybody who saw me thought I had gone off the rails.
Several hours into patrol, I pulled into the nearest strip mall to find some coffee, snickering when I realized I’d inadvertently chosen a doughnut shop.
“Way to live the stereotype,” I said before realizing I was still talking to myself. A few minutes later, I slid back into my car with a cup of coffee and a box of Elsie’s favorite kind of doughnuts.
For the first time that night, I felt some purpose. I stopped at a grocery store then drove home, back to my fixer-upper house in Cherry Creek. I parked out front and saw that everything but the porch light was already dark. I almost drove away but pure selfishness propelled me to the front door and made my finger push that doorbell.
I needed to see her, needed the reassurance of her smile and, perhaps, her kiss.
I heard Law thumping down the stairs. A second later, he barked at the front door. “Good boy, Law,” I said, letting him know I was no intruder.
After realizing Elsie probably wouldn’t answer the door at eleven at night, I called her on my cell.
“Henry, there’s a strange man at the front door holding a box of doughnuts and a grocery bag,” she said with some amusement.
My chest warmed at the sound of her voice. “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you from the bastard.”
Then the front door opened and Elsie appeared wearing a tank top, shorts, and a smile on her face. The shirt was tight, accentuating her changed figure. If I were a bartender, I would have spent the entire night taking her order just to see her bending over the bar.
“Hey, up here,” she said, pointing to her eyes.
I grinned sheepishly. “Busted.” I held out the box of doughnuts. “I have a special delivery.”
She peered into the box and smiled. “Thank you.”
“But wait, there’s more,” I said, pulling out a jar of pickles and a bottle of olives from the grocery bag. “I figured you could mix them all together.”
She scrunched her nose. “That is disgusting,” she said with a laugh. “And maybe perfect.”
I found myself smiling, feeling a little weight lift off my chest for those few minutes. It had been so long since I’d seen a genuine smile on her face. “Anything for you.”
“Do you want to come in and eat some with me?”
God, I wanted to, but I knew if I took one step in there, I would never want to leave. “Nah, I’m still on the clock.” My eyes flew across her face, so fresh and beautiful even without a trace of makeup. She looked younger somehow, more vulnerable. “I just wanted to see you.”
The corner of her mouth curled up into a wry grin. “Law misses you already.” And on cue, our dog emitted a low whine on the other side of the door.
“Just Law?” I asked.
“No. Not just Law.”
We stared at each other awkwardly for a
few minutes. The entire time I wanted to blurt out my every thought in hopes we could sift through the rubble and piece something coherent together. But I didn’t. I couldn’t burden her with everything that was weighing me down. She was carrying enough on her own already.
My radio crackled to life just then, the dispatcher asking for the nearest car to answer a call on Downing and East Colfax. I pressed the button on my shoulder and gave a quick response. “I have to go. Domestic abuse call,” I said to Elsie.
“Do you still wear that Saint Michael medallion I gave you?”
I reached into my collar and pulled it out. “Every day.”
She cupped my cheek with her palm. “Be careful, Henry. I love you.”
I breathed in her words and nodded. “I love you too, Els,” I said and opened the front door for her. “Good night. I’ll wait until you’re done locking up.”
—
I was grateful to be on the swing shift for the next five nights; I was so exhausted I fell asleep as soon as my body hit the mattress. The problem, as always, was staying asleep.
That morning, the fifth day I spent away from home, I lay in bed and stared at the popcorn ceiling of the hotel room while the sunlight tried its best to steal around the blackout curtains. I called Elsie’s phones—both her cell and her work number—hoping that hearing her voice would quiet the noise in my head, but she didn’t answer.
I got out of bed and put on my running gear and a few seconds later I was pounding the pavement. I ran hard, pushing to feel the burn in my lungs and the ache in my legs. But it didn’t seem enough. I needed something more, something to take focus away from my inner turmoil.
I don’t know how it happened but when my feet came to a stop, I found myself standing in front of a boxing gym. Every self-destructive particle in my body wanted to go inside and join, to have a legitimate place to physically work out my issues.
As I stood there, staring at the vinyl letters arching across the glass window, the fog in my mind cleared long enough for me to glimpse a moment of clarity: I was standing at a crossroads. One way took me to instant gratification; the other led me home.