Just Beyond the Window

My fingers trembled against the cool glass of the window, the beautifully cut diamond of my engagement ring bearing more weight than I ever remembered, as my husband stood a short distance away along the shoreline. My mind flashed to the day he proposed. He had assumed the traditional position, holding a small, red box out to me in shaky hands while my heart pounded as if I were face to face with a lion. I was embarking on a journey more perilous than that of a safari with my whispered “yes” though I hadn’t known it at the time. My eyes hopped back and forth between my finger’s embellishment and the figure that seemed to belong to another world just beyond the glass. The sounds of ceaseless waves would have inhibited him from hearing my call, but he was close enough that I could make out some of his features. The small amount of light that peaked between the clouds of the nighttime sky was enough to silhouette my unfortunate spouse against the black abyss of a seemingly endless ocean.

           I could distinguish the hunch in his shoulders from the curly mop of hair that stuck out from his neck as I gazed, imagining the desolate look that must have filled the very depths of his eyes. His head bowed to the sand beneath him. If he was a religious man, he could have been praying, asking some almighty source for the strength to continue on. I’d never known him to indulge in such mysticism, but as he stood at the ledge of his sanity, things may have changed. I watched as the water glinted the moonlight around his ankles– ankles I had once begged him not to cover with socks while on vacation in Cabo. Oh, how I wish our squabbles had remained so trivial.

           There are things no one mentions when you’re getting married, secrets that only the experienced hold. Everyone will claim the union was built on love and respect without even the smallest hint of what life may be like behind closed doors. It’s simply assumed that the marriage is good and wholesome. No one tells you that there will be times after the honeymoon has ended in which that love and respect just won’t seem to be enough to weather the pains of life. That very foundation that you preached and clung to may be like the concrete beneath our seemingly perfect home– worn away ever so slightly by every wave of trouble that comes. Eventually, you may find yourself stacking bricks beneath your front porch to keep the floor from caving in and wishing you had invested more in the beginning. No one will tell you that one day the person lying next to you, that same person that has lain next to you for years upon years, will seem as distant and foreign as hieroglyphs, written on the tomb of a long-forgotten pharaoh. Our vows most likely resembled the same that night, chicken scratches and symbols that once held so much meaning– that once were true. That night, as I looked beyond the glass, those solemn promises, if I were even able to find them tucked away amongst the clutter, would have seemed to hold the voice of a stranger, someone full of hope and desire. 

           I never envisioned myself to be so cruel and uncaring to the man that seemed to offer me his everything, but life hardened my once-giving heart. I had seen the safe that had been hidden away in the bedroom closet since moving sitting open before I realized how quiet our house had become. After what seemed like an eternity of hateful words and incessant tears, I had left, leaving him to his own accord. When I finally returned after an hour or so of idle driving, I did not call out to him. Instead, I basked in the silence of a picturesque home and wished that it wouldn’t ever be interrupted. I wished he would just disappear. I had seen the safe that had been hidden away in the bedroom closet since moving sitting open as I embraced the quiet. I immediately contemplated what the realization of my wish might mean.

           There was a time in which I would have run to him, sensing the pain that accompanied his every breath. I wouldn’t have been able to stand behind the safety of the window knowing the pure despair I had brought unto his life even with the threat of violence at a head. When my mother passed away of breast cancer he ran to me in an instant, just as he had promised years before in front of her weeping eyes. It didn’t matter that he had been trying to tackle his biggest project at work and was under heat from his boss; he left the office early to allow me to cry into the shoulder of his meeting-reserved button-up despite the streaks of black that he knew would be left over. He ran to me numerous times during the years we were together, always with a genuine intention to help in whatever way he could. It didn't matter what was going on in his life or what plans he might have had, he always came. I, on the other hand, chose to distance myself when his world turned sour with the guise in mind that he needed space. I claimed that I wouldn’t know how to be helpful, but truly I was just bothered by the inconvenience of his feelings. I realize this sounds cold, but aren’t we all responsible for our own happiness? I never asked him to come to me during my times of distress. Those were his own conscious decisions. Am I not entitled to making those same decision differently? At first, this was a small contrast between our coping mechanisms that could be navigated and remedied with late-night conversations and after-the-fact apologies, but little did I know that it was these very qualities that would cause our peril.

           “I’m being suffocated,” I shouted, standing at the top of the stairs with my fingernails digging into my scalp. “Can’t you see? You have always had your hands around my throat, but now that we’ve lost the baby, you’re squeezing a little bit tighter every time I try to take a damn breath. Deal with your own feelings and leave me to mine. Let me grieve alone, for God’s sake. Please, just leave me alone.”

           At the time, his pain didn’t seem mine to bear; I had enough of my own to carry. It didn’t matter to me that he had tried to create an anniversary dinner that would distract me from my grief the night of my dramatic outburst. Instead, I lamented the fact that he so insensitively served baby carrots to a mother without a child. It didn’t matter to me that I was knowingly being irrational. I validated myself saying that he would never understand the pain I was feeling. He didn’t watch blood circle the shower drain until the water turned cold, shivers diminishing from a trembling caused by mourning to those caused by the icy cold water after enough time had passed. He didn’t feel a life leave his body knowing he had failed his biological purpose. No, when he had learned that our baby would never be, he didn’t crumble to the floor like a poorly played game of Jenga. Instead, he just looked at me as I wept with a completely blank expression. The reaction would have been similar had I come home with a bad haircut or quite possibly something as off-the-wall as a chicken costume. He just didn’t feel what I was forced to feel, and I resented him for it. When we got home from the hospital, as I stripped the stained, satin panties from my body and dropped them in the trash along with all of the visions I had once held of my future child, he opened a beer. 

           Oh, how I wish I could have dulled my own suffering with the simplicity of a beer. Instead, my stomach continuously twisted and contorted as if my body were trying to curl up into itself, retreating from the misery of my existence. The refreshing cool of a beer would do nothing to pull my mind away from the burden of my loss, but he was able to enjoy his beverage despite the atrocity we had just experienced together.

           “What do we do now,” he asked, putting the chilled glass bottle slowly to his lips and allowing the intoxicating liquid to steal him away from our shared pain. 

           As I watched my estranged once-love kiss the encompassing black of the ocean months later, the same question floated around in my mind. I hadn’t set out to hurt him. I had stopped caring for him months before I allowed my body to be caressed and enjoyed by another man. My husband just didn’t seem to be a concern of mine any longer. We had tried to fulfill our purpose together and failed, so what was the point of continuing on? Following the death of my baby, he spent longer hours at the office while I spent more and more time with a friend I had met at yoga, or at least as far as he knew. In reality, those afternoon coffee chats were furtive meetings with a boy just out of college– a boy who allowed me to feign my youth and naivety of life’s cruelty. The boy had given me the escape that a beer offered my husband. Sure, I know I should feel guilty about this whole ordeal, but as I stood watching my husband contemplate death, I felt the overbearing opportunity of freedom. Perhaps this is why when I saw the glint of the moonlight jump from the water around his ankles to the carefully crafted piece of metal that he held to his temple, I didn’t reach desperately to the windowsill to shout in a desperate attempt to save him. Instead, I stood motionless, as the sound that would encompass my dreams for years to come shook me to my very core.