AbbyNormal.Blog

With a trembling hand, I set down the pierogi I had been holding. I’d said it. I took another sip of my beer, a warm flush spreading across my body slowly like the crawl of CAT scan contrast through veins. My heart beat into my eyes and my fingertips tingled. My body began the emergency disconnect I’d perfected over the years when I had been too embarrassed to speak or terrified someone had discovered the door that until now I’d guarded with my life. I waited to see if she realized I’d just swung it open.

“No, I think Tina will be fine now,” she said, perhaps misunderstanding what I had just said. The slightly confused look on her face told me, though, she was considering other meanings.

With my thumb I rubbed the condensation off the top of the glass in front of me, making a small clear spot and leaving a thumb print. The universe had offered me an out if I wanted it; the green “jump” light was lit, the door was open… but to end it I had only to sit back down like I had a dozen times before. I thought to myself, “Should I ta—“

“No, I’m not talking about Tina,” I said aloud, my words interrupting my own thoughts. Autopilot had pushed me out the door. “The girl I’m talking about is me.”

Free fall.

The brew pub’s Christmas light ambiance froze like ice. Next to us a man and a woman took a seat, their movements registering to me only in slow motion. Music played but I didn’t know the song. I could smell the hops and lavender in the beer I’d only sipped twice. At any other time, I’d have realized how odd that was.

Though the world slowed my thoughts raced. “It’s over” rang in my head. Each of the million lights around us lay scattered across the glass table like shards.

I searched her eyes looking for any indication she’d registered what I’d just said, and when it came my breath caught in my throat.

“What have I done…” I thought.

Twenty minutes earlier I’d have rather died than admit what I’d just said, but now I was falling away from safety, spinning into something I couldn’t see the bottom of. I spent lifetimes in that moment, searching for my voice.

At some point my nerves caught up and I began to speak. I don’t know what I said; I don’t know if it mattered. Words flowed out of the crack in the dam, looking for enough purchase to stem the flood, but every word only widened the divide.

She was listening, but I could see the words wash over her and slip away. I saw her hands fold, I saw her eyes begin to well, I saw the shock flash across her face as she internalized that I was not kidding. I kept talking, hoping I’d find the magic words that would make it OK. “I’m trying,” I said through my own tears, “I’m trying to tell you the truth.”

Please, I begged myself, find the words so she’ll understand she’s the first person to ever reach me.

I didn’t find them. 

When it became clear the words would not help, we decided we should go. We walked back to the car slowly and I hung behind her. I’d walked this shame before, and here I walked it again. I couldn’t leave well enough alone, could I? This time would it cost me my children?

What a monstrous curse this was. I’d kept it at bay for sixteen years of marriage, and tonight I’d failed. The dam had broken. There was no way back. Wherever things went now, I was marked for life.

I only partly remember the ride home; tears, talking.

Distance, fear. 

We mostly kept quiet, neither of us fully inhabiting ourselves. “I’m sorry” fell limp and useless from my lips, “…I love you.”

When we got home I started grabbing my pillow and a blanket. “What are you doing?” she asked. “I’m going to sleep downstairs so you can have some space,” I offered. “I figure I could always live down there.”

“Stop,” she said, “stay.”

I considered a protest, but I put my pillow back down.

“You know, if I knew this would be how it turned out when I married you,” she told me, “I’d have still married you.”

There in the inky black of my mind, a parachute opened.