The Answer - Part 1

The following is the first half of a short story I've been working on. The second half will come shortly.

           We had fought for two long, exhaustive hours, but unlike professional boxers we were not throwing punches, we were throwing insults. This was something new that Janet and I did. Before moving in together, we had never fought. We had never argued. In fact, now that I think about it, I don’t think we had ever had a substantial disagreement. But things were different now. And as I sat alone at the dining room table, staring at the bowl of fruit in front of me, I wondered if things would always be this way. I wondered if Janet and I could go back to the way we were. I did not have an answer. And either ironically or poetically, perhaps both or possibly neither, my inability to provide answers was one of the most significant issues Janet had with me.

            I wasn’t insulted that Janet thought I could never provide an answer to an issue I faced alone, an issue she faced and sought out my advice on, or an issue we faced together. I was a man, a human being. Do any of us really have the answers? I wasn’t sure we even knew all of the questions. Janet had questions, though – far too many, in my honest opinion. But I loved her. I wanted to be able to provide the answers. Perhaps I couldn’t. Perhaps I didn’t know enough. The only thing I currently knew was that moving in together may not have been the best idea.

            I needed a drink. I stood and entered the kitchen, where the steak dinner I had lovingly labored over still sat untouched. I may not be able to provide Janet with answers but at least I could provide her with fresh, home-cooked meals. I took care of her – not financially, as I was currently one of those in-betweeners who could never seem to catch a break. I cooked. I cleaned. I ran all of our errands. I did all of those things that, according to society, she was supposed to do. In a recession, depression, or any other uninspiring economic state all societal roles go out the window. They no longer hold any sort of value. Everyone – male or female, young or old – does what they must to survive. For Janet and I to survive in this house, in this economy, I had to play the role of the housekeeper and Janet had to play the role of the moneymaker. I had accepted my temporary role in this partnership. I had only assumed that Janet had, as well.

            I settled on a glass of water instead of my usual bottle of beer, as I did not want my judgment hampered this evening. I drank half of the glass and then returned to the dining room table at least partially refreshed. I set down the glass next to the bowl of fruit. I may have been alone but that didn’t mean that the fruit bowl and the glass couldn’t enjoy each other’s company.

            I began to wonder what Janet was doing upstairs. She hadn’t made a sound, not a peep. She typically made it clear how she felt by rearranging furniture, or by destroying it – usually things that I owned; nothing that belonged to her, as would be expected. But I had heard nothing. No rustling. No creaking of the floorboards. No unnecessary breakage. The more I thought about it the more I worried. What could she be doing up there? I needed to find out. I downed what was left of my glass of water, stood, and strode up the stairs, continually reminding myself not to say or do anything that could make matters worse, not that I knew what any of those things were.

            I reached the bedroom to find the door closed. I placed an ear against the cool, polished wood and listened intently, but I still heard nothing. Either Janet was doing nothing or she had finally mastered the seemingly lost art of silence. If I had to guess, I would say that it was the former. I lifted a hand to knock on the door and then realized how ridiculous that would have been. It was my bedroom as much as it was hers. I didn’t need to knock. I didn’t need permission to enter. So I twisted the surprisingly cold doorknob, opened the door cautiously, and stepped into the room.

            Janet sat on the edge of the king-sized bed, staring at a framed photograph of her and I at her office’s most recent Christmas party – I quickly learned that professionals found any excuse to liquor themselves up and do things that they would later come to regret, things that Janet seemed to be drawn to lately, things that I suggested she not become too fond of. Beside her on the bed was a suitcase half-filled with clothes that she wore on a regular basis.

            “After everything, you’re just going to give up?” I asked.

            Janet stood and placed the framed photograph back on the nightstand, face down.

            “I’m not the one that gave up.” News to me, a cold hard fact to her.

            As I approached the suitcase she strolled around me to gather more clothes for the suitcase, not once making eye contact with me. I removed the clothes she had already placed in the suitcase and returned them to the dresser.

            “Must you make everything so difficult?” she asked.

            Janet returned to the suitcase, neatly stacked the clothes she had retrieved, and then stepped away to gather more. I returned a moment after that, realizing this time that the suitcase was one of mine and not one of hers. It was either an honest mistake or a part of her believed that she would return. I foolishly believed it was the latter.

            “You know, we never got a dog,” I said. “We always talked about it. I don’t know why we didn’t.”

            “Sheila volunteers at an animal shelter on the weekends. I’ll give you her number.”

            “We can afford to get a new dog, a puppy even. I have the time to train it and keep it in check.”

            Janet returned with more clothes and leaned around me, pressed against me, so she could reach the suitcase. I removed her previous stack to give her as much room as possible. As she pressed against me, her left breast cushioning her, I caught a whiff of her shampoo. It was strong, as if she had recently showered. I instantly felt intoxicated. The worst part was that she didn’t even need an elegantly fruity shampoo to smell like a goddess. Her natural scent was intoxicating enough. The shampoo only intensified it. This helped me realize that I could not do without her scent in my life, that I could not do without her. It would be difficult to let her go. She might have to kill me to effectively end the relationship.

            “Your time would be better spent doing something productive,” she said. “A dog would only slow you down. As if you haven’t been slowed enough already.”

            “What is that supposed to mean?”

            “It’s a common belief that actions speak louder than words. And they do. But there’s one thing that speaks louder than action: lack of action. Your inability to act to improve your life and improve our relationship tells me everything. I know exactly where you stand.”

            As soon as Janet finished placing her new stack into the suitcase I removed it and stepped away. She moved to gather more clothes from one side of the dresser as I stuffed the two stacks I had into the other side.

            To make my job easier I had left the dresser drawers open so I wouldn’t have to constantly open and close them. This is something that burglars did: open drawers one by one starting at the bottom, and then leave them all open once finished. Closing drawers was a waste of valuable time. I wasn’t necessarily trying to save time, just buying myself some more while my brain worked up a long term solution to my current predicament. Janet accidentally bumped into the drawers and groaned in disapproval in my general direction.

            “For Christ’s sake, you’re not even doing it correctly.”

            Janet placed the new stack she had onto the bed and then proceeded to fix all of the stacks I had put away, because I wasn’t obsessive compulsive enough when it came to stacking clothes in dresser drawers. I moved to her position and took the stack she placed onto the bed and returned it to where she got it.

            Janet returned to the suitcase empty-handed as if to remove a stack of clothing from it, only to find the suitcase empty. She finally realized what I had been doing.

            “Dammit, Mike.” Janet sighed, then strode away and left the room. I zipped up the suitcase and placed it with the rest of the set on the floor in the back of the closet.

            When I arrived back in the dining room, to what had become the place where I could think most clearly, I had expected Janet to either be breaking something or rearranging something. She was doing neither, because she was no longer in the house, and her car was no longer in the driveway. A couple of months prior I had installed a GPS tracking application onto my phone for both my car and Janet’s car. I did not do it so I could track her – I trusted her much more than a man should ever trust a woman. I did it just to see if I could. Tonight, however, I would use it to track her. I needed to know where she could go without a fresh set of clothes.

            I drove for twenty minutes on familiar streets to an apartment complex predominately recent college graduates. The township neglected this area of town, for reasons unknown to all, so the lack of streetlights worked to my advantage. Janet would not be able to see me even if she had made an effort to look, even if she had known she was followed. After a moment I realized that I would not be able to see her, either. Luckily, I caught her figure in an apartment on the third floor. She was in the company of a well-maintained young man. They gazed at one another the same way Janet and I did when we first met, when we were still discovering each other. I watched, heartbroken, as they touched one another in ways that I had become unfamiliar with.

            I briefly considered continuing my journey after her, confronting her in the presence of her new lover, but then I thought better of it. I thought of how hard it was for me to change myself, to alter all the habits that held me back, that stunted my potential, and I realized that I would never be able to change her, especially not her opinions of me. And even if I could, I would have to change myself first. I would have to prove that I could be a better man. As I drove back home I came to believe that she had not only effectively killed the relationship, but that she had effectively killed me. But I was wrong. She saved me. I just didn’t know it yet.