Juice

 “Are you coming tonight?” I try to keep my voice from shaking as I speak after the beep. It’s the only sound on the other end no matter what time I call him. “It’s… it’s been so long,” I sigh, “too long… I think you should come home tonight.” My breath comes out in desperate puffs as I search for something else to say, but there’s nothing else to say.

I hang up the phone and stare at it, waiting for him to hear my message and call me back, but he doesn’t and I drift to sleep.

“You haven’t been taking your meds.” His voice startles me awake; I didn’t hear him come in or feel the bed dip with his weight. I don’t turn around.

“You haven’t been visiting me.” I try to change the subject.

“You haven’t been visiting me, either.”

The silence stretches on for minutes that feel longer than they are. My body trembles and my eyes sting with suppressed tears, but I hold them back along with the screams and accusations and demands.

“Talk to me…” I can barely squeeze the words through the lump in my throat, but I need to check if he’s still here; he always comes and stays and leaves so silently. “Please.”

“You need to take your meds.” He reminds me of my mother, keen on repeating her words.

“But then, you won’t come to scold me for not taking them.”

“This is not healthy.”

“Then, stop doing it to me.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“Exactly…” I sigh, and I have to rest a while before I can speak again. “You’re not doing anything… You’re not visiting me or talking to me… but I’m missing you… and I can’t stop thinking about you… and I need you and that’s not healthy… So, do… something… Please.”

He sighs with sadness, with pity, with helplessness, the way he always does in goodbye when he’s given up on our conversation before disappearing.

I hold back the tears and screams and accusations and demands and fall back to sleep.

“Juice?” Mom asks me when I walk into the kitchen in the morning. I don’t like juice, so I shake my head.

Mom moved in with me shortly after he moved out. At first, I thought it was merely out of convenience since we were both living alone, but I’m starting to think there’s more to it; his sporadic visits occur on the days she deems to be my worst, his words accord with hers, and his knowledge of my doings is perceptibly fed by hers. I’m not sure if he asked her to live with me so that he can always have access to me, or if she volunteers this access because she knows that I can’t go on without him.

The day is routinely slow. I sit next to Mom on the couch as she flips through the TV. She eventually settles on something, but I can’t focus on the images or the noise. I chew something bland and can’t force myself to swallow more than thrice. Mom drags me to the front porch, insisting that I’m getting too pale and need sunlight.

The sun is too bright, making my eyes itch, and my body shakes with the softest breeze. Mom covers me with a blanket – his blanket, and we sit together on the swing he built, silently, just like I often sat with him.

Three young people walk by our house, they pause by the front yard and stare until Mom yells at them to leave before pulling me back into the house, saying that we’ve had enough sunlight.

She asks me if I want juice. I don’t like juice, so I shake my head.

I turn off the lights, slide under the sheets, and wait for him.

I’m not sure how much time passes before his voice startles me; “You haven’t taken your meds.”

“You’ve been visiting me.” I want to smile because he’s here to see me for the second night in a row, but my lips are chapped and it hurts to stretch them.

He sighs and doesn’t say anything else. I beg him to talk to me, and he tells me that I need to take my medication. I remind him that he will have nothing to reprimand me about if I do, hoping that he would promise to drop by even if I take them – just to chat, but he doesn’t. He tells me that what I’m doing isn’t healthy, and I ask him to stop doing it to me.

“I’m not doing anything.”

I try a different approach this time.

“Can you keep doing that? Can you not do anything? Can you not chide me? Can you not recite what Mom already has of what I should and should not do? Can you not leave me alone?”

He sighs with sadness, with pity, with helplessness, the way he always does in goodbye when he’s given up on our conversation before disappearing.

“Juice?” Mom asks me when I walk into the kitchen in the morning. I don’t like juice, so I shake my head.

The day goes by like so many before it; TV light and noise in the background, tasteless bites, sunlight underneath his blanket and on his swing, and people moving.

I turn off the lights, slide under the sheets, and wait for him.

“You haven’t taken your meds.” My heart starts at his voice, closer than it has been the nights before.

“You’ve been visiting me.” I feel my lips bleed as they spread into a grin.

Before he can say anything, I turn to him. My sudden energy surprises us both – his eyes are wide as he takes me in. Do I look different from the last time we were in this position, looking at each other? I haven’t looked into a mirror in a while. Is my hair messy? I recall once plucking out a white hair and freaking out because I didn’t want him to see it. Has it grown back? Are there others? Are my eyebrows craning into one?

He probably can’t see all my flaws in the darkness; my eyes have been training against it as I waited for him and I can barely see him. He looks tired, a little blurred by my own exhaustion, but his eyes are piercing as he holds my gaze.

“I miss you.”

He closes his eyes, taking deep breaths.

My hand reaches out on its own, wanting to sink in his soft hair, missing the graze of his stubble. His eyes snap open before my quivering fingers can reach his face. I quickly retract my hand, terrified of pushing him away when I haven’t been this close to him in so long.

We stare at each other for too long, but it hasn’t been nearly long enough when he begins to blur and my eyes begin to droop. I don’t have much time left with him.

“I love you.”

I reach out for him, refusing to let him go without feeling him, refusing to accept that I’m beginning to forget the feel of him, wanting to touch him just one last time knowing that it’s the last time, but he quickly scoots away.

“Don’t go,” I try pulling him back to me with my voice when my arms fail to. “Stay here.”

“I can’t stay here. I don’t belong here anymore.”

“Yes, you do.” I choke. “You belong with me. We are-”

“We are not together anymore. This is not my house anymore. You are not my wife anymore.”

He sighs with sadness, with pity, with helplessness, the way he always does in goodbye when he’s given up on our conversation before disappearing.

But he doesn’t. Instead, he lies in bed next to me, closer than he has been before. He can pull me into his arms, but he doesn’t. He can touch me if he wants to, but he doesn’t want to.

“Please,” We both beg at the same time, voices too heavy with the same emotion to tell apart.

I can’t force any other words out as the tears drain the last bits of hope and consciousness in me.

“Take your meds, and then, come visit me.” I fall asleep with him still next to me.

I wake up in the morning and gape at the mirror. For a moment, I mistake my reflection for a visitor, but the guest’s movements synchronize with my own in the frame.

My skin is of a sickly, yellow color. My eyes are pinned up to my face by two thick, black crescents. My hair is oily. My body is sharp with bones I have never noticed before.

I scream, and Mom comes rushing to me.

“No wonder he won’t touch me!” I cry. I am ugly and sickly and scary and he doesn’t want me.

Mom tries to comfort me and offers me juice. She tells me that it’s full of vitamins and that it’ll restore me to my health and beauty. I don’t like juice, but I nod.

He doesn’t come tonight, and I don’t want him to. I don’t want to see him again until I look like the woman he wanted and loved and stayed with.

Over the next few days, Mom and I follow an unspoken strategy to win him back.

I wake up every morning and take a shower to stay clean. I go downstairs and Mom offers me juice. I don’t like juice, but I nod. We eat more than once during the day. Then, in the afternoon, we go for a walk because the sunlight and the exercise can help me look healthy and beautiful and his again.

As the days pass by, the images and noises on the TV become easier to decipher, the meals are easier to swallow, neighbors’ faces are accompanied by names, and our slow walks turn into regular-paced ones.

I lead our walk by his property once. Mom advises me against it but doesn’t say anything when I slow down when I near him. I wonder if he can see me, if he can tell that I’m drinking juice, taking showers, eating, and exercising for him, if he can see the girl he once promised never to leave, and if he wants to come back.

I remember the first time I told him I loved him. We’d been watching movies the night before in his room, and I must’ve fallen asleep. I woke up to find him staring at me with a soft smile. I’m not a morning person, but it felt so exemplary to wake up beside him, and I just said it.

I remember our disaster of a first date. We were both too nervous for the casual conversation that had dictated our friendship for years, he spilled juice on me, and I tripped, ripping my dress in the process and falling on top of him, causing him to fall backwards into a thorn bush. We ended our date with a trip to the hospital to get the tiny prickles out of his back and arms.

I remember our wedding; the flowers and the music and the cheers and our dance and our promises.

I remember our conversations vividly. I remember the way his eyes sparkled when he talked about the shows he was watching, and the way they turned in random directions when he was lying. I remember the way his lips twitched slightly to the left when I was trying to make him laugh and he was trying to stay angry with me. I remember how warm his hugs were.

But I can’t remember him.

Don’t all eyes sparkle with passion and avoid direct contact when fabricating? Don’t all lips involuntarily wobble with suppressed laughter? Aren’t all hugs comforting? These things aren’t him.

I can remember the color of his eyes, but I can’t trace a shape to them. His voice was deep and low, but I can’t remember anything past these two adjectives that fit most male tones. I can’t remember what he felt like when I’ve felt so many things since him.

I feel my eyes well with tears, but I hold them back.

Mom and I resume our recently-arranged routine. We drink juice, and watch TV, and eat the meals she used to cook for me when I was a kid, and walk a different path every afternoon.

I avoid him. This way, he’ll miss me enough to come see me.

I wait for him every night, but he never comes. I’m too fatigued with missing him to keep my eyes open for long, but I miss him enough to summon him into my dreams.

I can’t remember what I’m so angry about, but I’m so angry and I’m taking it out on him. He tries to calm me down, but his understanding and kindness shame me, and I keep yelling at him, throwing his own faults in his face to feel better about my own.

He leaves the house and slams the door behind him. The room shakes and I fall down to my knees and cry, wanting to take every word back, wanting him to come back and hold me and stay with me.

A sob shakes me awake.

I get out of the bed and stare at the mirror. My skin is back to its normal tone, my eyes are wide, my hair is clean, and my body is soft with the same curves I’ve always had during our marriage. I’m the girl he fell in love with again – so, why isn’t he here, loving me again?

“Juice?” Mom asks me when I walk into the kitchen. I don’t like juice, but I nod.

The memories are too strong this morning. I refuse to take my medication to avoid the clarity of reality, but it’s here regardless.

I think about taking the pills and visiting him, maybe then he’ll congratulate me and hold me instead of scolding me and pulling away.

I open the cabinet, but the bottle of pills is nearly empty.

I hear Mom gasp behind me, and I turn to find her looking at me with fear and guilt, the glass of juice shaking in her hand.

“It’s in the juice, isn’t it?” My chest rises and falls in panic. “You made him go away!” I scream and push her out of my way. I hear the glass of juice break as I run out of the door.

I run to him, wanting to tell him that I haven’t knowingly taken the meds, that I’m not the one who pushed him away, that I don’t want to lose him.

I run past rectangular houses, each designated for one occupant only, until I see his name.

I pound my fists against his stone, begging him to answer me, but he doesn’t, and I hate how accepting my mind is of the fact that he can’t.

Had we not fought, had he not left the house… He never would’ve been there. He never would’ve had to be cut out of the car seat with a pile of flowers in the passenger seat beside him.

I cry.

I cry because I miss him, because I love him, because I’ve taken the meds and can no longer see him, because I’ve been feeling better even without him, because I know that he would be angry at me for not forgiving myself for something that isn’t my fault when he’d attempted to make it up to me when it was, because he can’t hold me and go home with me, because I know that he wants me to get better and I’m letting him down, because he isn’t here anymore, and I am – for the first time since he left – aware of this.

I don’t know how long I cry for, but I can’t cry anymore. When I lift my head, I see Mom standing next to me. I meet her gaze, and she hugs me until it turns dark and we have to go back home.

“Juice?” Mom asks me as we walk between the graves and pulls out a bottle. I don’t like juice, but I nod.