I leaned back and exhaled loudly, not even trying to hide my irritation. Anita seemed so upset she had scared me half to death and all the time it was just about that goddamned house again.
“Okay, now I get it-” I began, but that was as far as I got.
“No, you don’t,” Anita snapped. “You do
Anita stood up and took several quick steps as if she were leaving the room. Then she stopped and turned back, her arms still folded tightly across her body. I remained sitting in the chair watching her, tilting my head in puzzlement and rubbing at the back of my neck.
“I’m sorry,” I finally said. “I don’t understand.”
“Yes, you do. But you’re dealing with it just as you do everything else. You acknowledge only what you want to know. You shut everything else out.”
And just like that, I saw.
I realized then exactly what was happening, and even though the massive shock of it nearly paralyzed me, some part of my consciousness still marveled at how I could have missed it up until then. The telephone turned off, the bags in the hall, the sitting in the darkness waiting for me to come home. Now it was all so obvious.
Anita was leaving me.
“Something has changed since we were married, Jack. Something’s changed, and I don’t like it.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s all too much.”
“Too much
“Too much like little boys playing spy games, hiding in the woods until people end up dead. Then you come out just as if nothing happened and go on just as you were before. You have no idea of danger, no concept of risk. Maybe you’ll be the next body to turn up somewhere, Jack. Did you ever think of that?”
“I’m just a teacher, Anita. I’m not playing spy games and I’m not in any danger.”
“Oh, bullshit, Jack. Everybody you know is a spook, a criminal, or a cop. And if you’re not up to your neck in one thing, it’s another.”
The words were tough, but the look on her face was tougher.
“Look, if this is about Plato Karsarkis,” I stammered, “last week you were saying you thought I ought to help him, and now you’re saying-”
“I’m not talking about Plato. I’m talking about
“About me?”
“Not you, I guess. Not really,” she said. “About what you do.”
“Same thing.”
Anita shook her head very slowly.
“I knew you’d say something like that,” she said.
“Look, Anita,” I started, “think about-”
“I’ve done so much thinking these last few days that I can’t think straight about anything anymore. But I do know this, Jack. We have to be apart for a while. We have to sort things out.”
“I don’t.”
“Well, I do. And if I have to sort it out for us both, then I’ll do that. I need some time to decide, and believe me I’m thinking of you, too. I’m not sure I’m the right one for you.”
“I’m sure, Anita. I’m absolutely sure.”
“Please, don’t say that. Don’t make this any worse than it already is.”
“I don’t want to live without you, Anita. I won’t go back to the way I was before.”
“I have never asked you to change for me, Jack. I know you and I don’t think you could even if you wanted to. I’m not saying…oh,
Anita was crying now. I could see the tears in her eyes and I watched as they rolled down her cheeks, first from one eye and then from the other. I wanted to stand up and walk over and put my arms arut my around her, but I knew absolutely that would be exactly the wrong thing to do. Instead I looked out the window and followed the blinking white lights on the wingtips of an airliner as it climbed out over the city and disappeared to the south. I wondered where it was going and who was on it, and I wondered whether I might like to be on it, too.
“Look,” I finally said, “it’s after midnight and you can’t go out there alone tonight. You take the bedroom and I’ll sleep on the couch in here and tomorrow we’ll decide what to do.”
“No,” she said, “my flight is tonight. I have a car waiting downstairs.”
There was a long silence as we both groped through our pain, looking for purchase or maybe just a place to hide. I glanced away, not able to bear the sight of Anita’s tears any longer, but there was nothing at all I could do right then to make them stop.
“I’ll do whatever you want, Anita.”
“I want you to go into your study,” she said in a voice that was suddenly clear and strong. “I want you to wait there and let me leave without making things any worse than they already are.”
“Yeah,” I nodded as if in a daze. “Okay.”
“Just give me some time, Jack.”
“Time to decide?”
“Yes,” she said. “Time to decide.”
Anita walked over and collected her purse from the chair where she had been waiting for me. I stood up, but she turned away without looking at me. I put out my arm to stop her and she brushed by it. When she reached the doorway, she stood for a moment with her back to me.
“Please do what I asked. Go into your study and let me leave, Jack.”
Then she went into the bathroom and closed the door. I could hear her crying.
I didn’t say anything. I just left the living room, walked into my study, and closed the door. I was sick at heart and I didn’t know whether I felt hopeful or hopeless or what I felt, but it was Anita’s move now and whatever feelings I might have or not have weren’t going to change that.
I settled behind my desk and spread my hands on top of it, palms down. The room seemed to move around me and I sat as still as I could, holding onto the desk until it stopped. When it felt safe to turn loose, I lifted one hand cautiously and poked with my forefinger at a glass heart that lay on top of a stack of papers. It was crystal and Anita had given it to me for my last birthday, a beautiful pebbled glass heart with a ribbon of red winding through it. I hadn’t been sure what else to do with it so I had kept in on my desk and used it as a paperweight.
I examined the crystal heart now and wondered about it. It looked intact, the same as it had always looked; but maybe there were fault lines there I had never noticed before, cracks and imperfections that even the best, most loving eyes could never find. Maybe it had already been broken when she gave it to me and I had never even noticed.
I sat there for a while in absolute stillness staring at the little glass heart. For a time I teetered on the edge of hope that any moment Anita would walk in and tell me she hadn’t meant any of it, she had had a bad day and that was all there was to it; but then I heard the front door open and close again, and I knew A and I knita wouldn’t be coming in after all.
Some time after that, I have no idea how long, I swiveled around in my chair and stared out the window. The city was very dark and seemed utterly still. I wondered what time it was, but something stopped me from looking at my watch. Instead I just sat and stared, focusing on nothing, seeing nothing.
As blanked out as I was, at some level that was less than conscious I could feel my mind’s instinctive protective devices beginning to react. A part of my brain, entirely unbidden, began shuffling the cards, slowly dealing out new hands, examining each for possibilities, then collecting the cards and dealing more hands. I could not bear to look at any of them.
All at once I felt as if only my body was sitting there in that chair looking out the window, that my conscious self had stepped outside my body and even then was doing a reconnaissance of the dark apartment like one of those mechanical devices bomb squads use to examine unknown packages, warily probing the gloom for hidden dangers.