The Gravity of Us(6)

It wasn’t fair how the world took Mari’s health and then had the nerve to come back to make sure her heart was shattered into a trillion pieces too. With every inhale, she cursed her body for betraying her and ruining the life she’d built. With every exhale, she prayed for her husband to return home.

I never told her, but with every inhale, I begged for her healing, and with every exhale, I prayed for her husband to never come back.





2017



Two days before, I’d bought flowers for someone who wasn’t my wife. Since the purchase, I hadn’t left my office. Papers were scattered all around—notecards, Post-It notes, crumpled pieces of paper with pointless scribbles and words crossed out. On my desk sat five bottles of whisky and an unopened box of cigars.

My eyes burned from exhaustion, but I couldn’t shut them as I stared blankly in front of me at my computer screen, typing words I’d later delete.

I never bought my wife flowers.

I never gave her chocolates on Valentine’s, I found stuffed animals ridiculous, and I didn’t have a clue what her favorite color was.

She didn’t have a clue what mine was either, but I knew her favorite politician. I knew her views on global warming, she knew my views on religion, and we both knew our views on children: we never wanted them.

Those things were what we agreed mattered the most; those things were our glue. We were both driven by career and had little time for one another, let alone family.

I wasn’t romantic, and Jane didn’t mind because she wasn’t either. We weren’t often seen holding hands or exchanging kisses in public. We weren’t into snuggling or social media expressions of love, but that didn’t mean our love wasn’t real. We cared in our own way. We were a logical couple who understood what it meant to be in love, to be committed to one another, yet we never truly dived into the romantic aspects of a relationship.

Our love was driven by a mutual respect, by structure. Each big decision we made was always thoroughly thought out and often involved diagrams and charts. The day I asked her to by my wife, we made fifteen pie and flow charts to make sure we were making the right decision.

Romantic?

Maybe not.

Logical?

Absolutely.

Which was why her current invasion of my deadline was concerning. She never interrupted me while I was working, and for her to barge in while I was on a deadline was beyond bizarre.

I had ninety-five thousand more to go.

Ninety-five thousand words to go before the manuscript went to the editor in two weeks. Ninety-five thousand words equated to an average of six thousand seven hundred eighty-six words a day. That meant the next two weeks of my life would be spent in front of my computer, hardly pulling myself away for a breath of fresh air.

My fingers were on speed, typing and typing as fast as they could. The purplish bags under my eyes displayed my exhaustion, and my back ached from not leaving my chair for hours. Yet, when I sat in front of my computer with my drugged-up fingers and zombie eyes, I felt more like myself than any other time in my life.

“Graham,” Jane said, breaking me from my world of horror and bringing me into hers. “We should get going.”

She stood in the doorway of my office. Her hair was curly, which was bizarre seeing as how her hair was always straight. Each day she awoke hours before me to tame the curly blond mop upon her head. I could count on my right hand the number of times I’d seen her with her natural curls. Along with the wild hair, her makeup was smudged, left on from the night before.

I’d only seen my wife cry two times since we’d been together: one time when she’d learned she was pregnant seven months ago, and another when some bad news came in four days ago.

“Shouldn’t you straighten your hair?” I asked.

“I’m not straightening my hair today.”

“You always straighten your hair.”

“I haven’t straightened my hair in four days.” She frowned, but I didn’t make a comment about her disappointment. I didn’t want to deal with her emotions that afternoon. For the past four days, she’d been a wreck, the opposite of the woman I married, and I wasn’t one to deal with people’s emotions.

What Jane needed to do was pull herself together.

I went back to staring at my computer screen, and my fingers started moving quickly once more.

“Graham,” she grumbled, waddling over to me with her very pregnant stomach. “We have to get going.”

“I have to finish my manuscript.”

“You haven’t stopped writing for the past four days. You hardly make it to bed before three in the morning, and then you’re up by six. You need a break. Plus, we can’t be late.”