by Kim Corum
“Then why didn’t you just tell me?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I guess I was a coward.”
“You got that one right.”
She blanched.
“So let me get this straight,” I said. “You left me to be on your own for a little while. Did you ever plan on coming home?”
“I’ve wanted to come home every day since I got here.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“I couldn’t face you.”
“Oh,” I said and sighed.
“I just…” she began then stopped and took a breath. “I mean, I don’t know how to explain it. I wanted something else, Bruce, I had to have it. It was driving me crazy.”
“What did you want?”
She stared me dead in the eye and said, “I wanted to see if I could do it.”
“If you could do what?”
“Live without you.”
I felt like a bowling ball hit me in the stomach.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It didn’t have anything to do with me not loving you or you not loving me. It was just… I felt suffocated and, at the same time, I felt powerless to do anything about it.”
“You weren’t looking to hook up with Frank?”
Her head snapped up and her eyes narrowed. “How do you know about Frank?”
“I just do.”
“No, you tell me.”
“I just do. He didn’t want you, did he?”
She looked away and hissed, “No, it’s not that. It’s hard to get in contact with someone like him. I just haven’t been able to get in touch yet.”
“Yet?”
“Yet.”
“So are you looking for him? Hoping to rekindle that flame?”
Her eyes narrowed. “You’ve been reading my journals. I knew I should have hidden them better.”
My face flushed. It suddenly dawned on me. Oh, God. Oh, no. No. She had left her journals. I should have hidden them better. Not, I should have taken them with me , but I should have hidden them bette r, like she would be back to get them sometime. Why? Maybe she had intended on coming home. Maybe she had been out just looking for herself or whatever the fuck she called it. You just don’t leave a journal if you don’t intend on coming back. But why take Gone with the Wind but not your personal journals?
Because, she could have sold Gone with the Wind if she had to, that’s why. I bet she wanted me to find the journals. It would be just like her to do something like that.
He never looked for me. How many times was that written in her journals? Good God! That was her game all along. A little drama. And when I hadn’t “looked” for her, it had, more than likely, killed her. He doesn’t love me, just like the others, he doesn’t love me! Just like my father. Then a dramatic fall to the floor, a sob and a soft fade.
But then again, I could have been wrong.
“You called Eric,” I said.
Her head jerked up and her eyes narrowed at me.
“He came by the house. He told me you called him.”
“Yeah, so?” she hissed.
“So why call Eric and not me?”
“I told you. I couldn’t face you. And I wanted to see how you were.”
No. No, no, no. She called Eric because she wanted me to find her. She wanted to be found. She needed that. Just like she had needed to find her father, she needed someone to find her.
“Sure you weren’t calling to see how miserable I was?” I asked. “Or that I might be seeing someone else?”
Her head snapped up. “What the hell does that mean?”
She knew what it meant. I was figuring this whole thing out and it would kill her to know I was onto her.
“Nothing,” I said.
“You shouldn’t have read my journals.”
So we were back on that game again? Fine. “How else was I supposed to find out where you were?” I asked. “And all these secrets you had. You never told me about your father!”
“Sorry! I should have but…” She stopped and shook her head. “Listen, I don’t know how to explain any of this. Okay? I just don’t.”
I cleared my throat but didn’t answer her.
“I had them hid very well, Bruce.”
They weren’t hidden that well. But I never went into the guest bathroom. She knew that. Maybe I was wrong. See? This was the exact reason I loved her. Keep Bruce guessing! Drive him completely and utterly insane.
“Did you go through my stuff or something?” she asked.
“Your stuff! Give me a break! You made me do this! Don’t you dare try to turn it around!”
“For all I know you’ve got some private detective following me around!”
It was my turn to blanch.
She stared at me and nodded. “I should have known! You always stick your nose into other people’s business!”
“You’re my wife! You disappeared! What was I supposed to do?”
“I tell you what you were supposed to do. You were supposed to leave me alone and let me deal with this!”
“Oh, yeah, look at you. You’re dealing so well, too, Sandy! So well!”
She gritted her teeth.
“I mean, who wouldn’t want a house like this? Living like a bum! You’d rather live like a bum than live with me!”
“You better shut up.”
“I mean, come on. Who would want someone to actually care about them? Actually give a shit if they’re okay? Not you! You even throw this in my face!”
“Shut up.”
“No, you shut up and you listen. I don’t give a fuck anymore. I got my answers.”
“What are they?” she asked.
“That you never gave two shits about me. You’re egotistical and selfish. I don’t mean shit to you and I never did.”
Now I was testing her. See how she liked it when the shoe was on the other foot. She didn’t bite. I should have known better.
“You’re full of shit,” she said and lit another cigarette.
“No, you’re full of shit, Sandy.”
She sighed. “I know I am. Bruce.” She looked up at me and tears rolled down her cheeks. I wanted to lean over and wipe them away. As much as she had hurt me, I couldn’t stand to see her cry. She said, “I did it because you love me so much. I did it because I knew you’d understand.”
“No you didn’t. You did it because you’re selfish.”
“That too.”
“Whatever, Sandy.”
“I just had to try, Bruce. For me. And I did it. It’s not on your level, we’re not all like you, you know? Some of us don’t succeed like you and that’s okay.”
“Is that right?”
She nodded.
I rolled my eyes. “What do you want, Sandy?”
She stared at me and burst into tears. “I want to come home.”
I was over to her in a second flat. She fell apart in my arms. Years of frustration came out of her. Years of hurt, of pain. She cried like a baby, cried her little heart out and held onto me for dear life.
“I love you,” she sobbed. “Even if you divorce me, and I deserve it, I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone. But you got lost in your job and I didn’t think I meant anything to you anymore and it scared me.”
That’s why she had run away. It was obvious, apparent. I was the selfish one thinking she’d always be around. That wasn’t Sandy. She didn’t kowtow to anyone. Least of all me. She did this to make me pay attention. She had taken it too far, though. Another week or so, I would have told the private detective to forget it. As much as it would have killed me, I would have. I would have stopped looking for answers. She should have known one thing about me was that when I move on, I move on. Even if it killed me, I would have done it.
“And I waited until the building was done. I waited because I didn’t want to fuck that up for you. I waited because I really didn’t want to leave.”
She waited because she knew I’d have time to look for her then. If she had done this while I was w
orking on the building, I would have still fallen apart. I would have looked for her. She should’ve known that. I would be willing to bet that when I saw her earlier she had been pissed off that it had taken me so long to find her. That’s why she had been so angry. Also why she walked around the divorce issue. She didn’t want a divorce. She wanted a little drama. She wanted me to pay for ignoring her for all those months. Well, years.
“Then why did you?” I asked.
“I just had to see, Bruce,” she muttered and put her head on my shoulder. “I just had to. It was in me. Every once in a while, I’d just feel like I was going to break in two. I don’t know what it was, but it just told me to leave and one day, I just listened to it and it sounded like the right thing to do. And I had cheated on you and it was eating me up inside. I couldn’t face you anymore. I couldn’t lie anymore.”
I cleared my throat and said, “I cheated too.”
She pulled away from me. Her eyes took on a look of shock, disbelief, which was soon replaced by a, “I knew it!”
“I cheated,” I said. “But I never had an affair.”
She swallowed hard and nodded.
“They didn’t mean anything. I did it a lot of times when we were fighting. I did it a couple of times when you left.”
“I haven’t slept with anyone since I left,” she said and scoffed. “I’ve had plenty of opportunity. I just…didn’t want to.” She paused and wiped her face with the back of her hand. “I don’t care,” she said. “I don’t care and I don’t want to know anything about those other women. It doesn’t matter anymore. If you had told me a year ago, it would have killed me. But now it seems insignificant.”
She had changed. Maybe her doing this wasn’t such a bad idea.
“I’m sorry,” I said and kissed her cheek. “I’m so sorry.”
She held my face still and stared into my eyes for a long moment. She looked a little tired around the eyes, nothing a little rest wouldn’t take care of. But she was still stunning.
“If you ever do it again,” she said. “I’ll kill you.”
I grinned. For some reason, if she had said it was okay, I would have been disappointed. It meant she cared; she still cared enough about me to say something like that, even if she really didn’t mean it. It said she still had passion for me. It told me everything I needed to hear.
“I want to fuck you now,” she said and climbed into my lap, straddling me. “I want your dick inside me and I want to be close to you.”
I got hard just from that.
She began to suck on my neck. I pulled her head back and sucked on hers. Then I threw her down on the sofa and climbed on top of her. She opened her legs and grabbed my face, kissing me. It was the best kiss I’d ever had, would ever have. That kiss told me that this hadn’t broken us and that we had weathered the storm and whatever came next wouldn’t break us; we were too strong for that.
“I love you,” I said.
“I love you, too,” she said, staring into my eyes.
I moved back and stared into her eyes. “So did you find out?”
“What?”
“You said you wanted to find out if you could live without me, right?”
She nodded.
“Did you find out?” I asked.
“I did,” she said and stared me dead in the eye.
“And?”
“I can’t.”
I kissed her then, all of her, all of her body, loving the way she tasted. Loving that she was no longer crying or hurting. Loving to be near her. Loving that she had let me near her. Loving to know she didn’t leave because she hated me. She had many reasons why she had left. Maybe she just thought she should. Maybe she thought it was over. Maybe all of this had been a test. She had to see if I loved her, see if she could live without me. She couldn’t face a divorce. Another letdown in a long line of letdowns.
But the main reason she had left was because she had wanted me to follow.
She didn’t tell me these things, but I knew that was the real reason. I had found out all about her. And I wanted to know more.
What else could I do? I took her home. The first words out of her mouth were, “Where’s all my stuff?”