Being helpful or thoughtful hadn’t been my M.O. as of late—Doc had been quick to point that out to me—and I still grimaced when I thought of Charlie’s bowl and our discussion from two days before. Or lack of discussion, rather. Sadie and I had an argument without having one: she’d walked away from the conversation, and I’d gone about my own business. Maybe my helpfulness now served as a subconscious way of trying to make amends.
She looked at me with kind eyes. While there was no way to know what was going on in her mind, the softness in her face made me consider if she was reflecting on how we used to be, on those days when we had time for one another. The nights when I’d be home for weeks on end, before the nightmares in the middle of the night forced me to the bathroom, up against the cool wall tile, trying to talk myself down from the ledge. What would she do if she knew I had another one of those episodes the night before? Would she care? I’d changed, but so had she. Where was the girl I fell in love with?
“I’m good, Theo. I’m the mom, and it’s what I do—clean up the spills. But yeah, I should go. I have a couple phone meetings with other editors I can’t push off.” She pressed the lid of her travel mug—snap! A noise that set my jaw clenching. Between the sound and that she had no time for me, my ire rose.
“Are we going to talk about it at all?” The question hung in the air—so palpable it was almost visible—and I waited for an answer. Did she get what I was talking about? A ticking inside my head counted off the seconds. One, two, three, four...
Sadie’s face blanched before her usual mask of calm slid into place. “About what?” She refused to meet my gaze as she fumbled around in her purse, most likely to find her keys. Her lack of organization skills with respect to those keys had always surprised me. With everything else in her life, things seemed to fall in line. But not with those damn keys. Hell, right after our wedding, I’d even bought her a key tree. It stood empty on the counter right now.
“About what you said...me being broken. About us.”
She set her full mug on the kitchen table and pulled her phone out of her bag. Somehow, her phone was always easy to locate. “I didn’t say you were broken, Theo.” A touch of the screen and she started to text. “Hold on a minute. We can talk now, but I need to let Jackie know not to expect me until later.”
Of course. The curse of the phone. “Yeah, Sadie, it’s always that phone. Can’t you leave it alone?”
My words dripped with contempt, and I shook my head. Breathe in, Breathe out.
Sadie looked up at me, twin spots of red on her cheeks. “What are you talking about, Theo? What would you do, and what would you want your colleagues to do? The right thing to do is inform a coworker I’m going to stay and speak with you.” She punched at her phone and then put it back in her bag. “If you want to talk now, then we’ll talk. But I’m going to be late, and work needs to hear about it. That’s called common courtesy.”
A few choice words slipped back down my throat, and I gripped the counter, hoping they didn’t choke me. “Well, you don’t choose to use common courtesy when it comes to me now, do you?” I threw the words at her, turned my back, and walked toward the bedroom. My anger seized me from within, and I slammed the bedroom door shut, the quake of the force shaking the doorframe itself.
What was wrong with me? Fuck that. So much was wrong with me. But uncharacteristic heat still coursed through my system when I thought about the hole I’d blasted through Sadie with my behavior. Stupid, petulant behavior. Doc would have told me to go back and apologize. “Apologies are necessary for any relationship,” she’d have said. “Even those on the verge of rupture, especially if you want to keep that relationship from dissolving.” I forced myself to return to the kitchen.
“I’m sorry. That’s all I can say.” I beelined for the garage, hoping to keep any more anger at bay until she left the house.
A few moments later, Sadie put her hand on my shoulder. Recoiling internally, I tried not to flinch externally.
“Do you need a ride?” she said.
“No.”
“So you’re not going in to work today?”
“Nope.”
Just like Doc, Sadie possessed an aversion to one-word answers, but something kept me from speaking more.
“Okay,” she said. “Then do you want to talk about my statement or how you’re doing this morning? Going from kind to unkind in sixty seconds seems to be par for the course these days.” She paused. “This is difficult. Life, the PTSD, the lack of control, the divorce papers, all of it. But you seem a little off today...”
I turned to her and hoped to keep my face unreadable. A long time ago, she’d been able to read my emotions with a simple glance, whether I was angry, tired, confused. This time, all three might have been part of the equation. “Leave it. I’m done here.” I averted my eyes. Conversation over.
. . . . .
Twenty minutes passed. I wore a path in the carpet of my family room as thoughts about Sadie and who we were to each other bombarded me, followed by resentment at her “no driving for Theo rule.” The wall became a punching bag for both my left and right fists.
Punch. Fuck the service. And Afghanistan. And PTSD.
Punch. Fuck this life, Doc. All of it.
Punch. Fuck Sadie. She can’t
