Circling the Drain by Amanda Davis Page B

of your disappearance. I fantasized I’d caused it, erased you with some careless act. I watched the clock tick slowly and was unable to breathe. Everything was filthy and grotesque. You arrived home to our tiny studio to find me on my hands and knees, scrubbing the kitchen floor and sobbing. You dropped your books and held me and we made love on soapy linoleum, sliding on the wet, squeaky floor.
    Then in absent moments, I thought you were an accidental gift, a present I didn’t deserve. I ironed our clothes every week, the curtains, sheets and towels, too. I vacuumed under the cabinets, scoured our window until it was invisible to birds. When I killed two cardinals you said: Take it easy . I wanted to tell you: I’m trying to earn this. Instead I arranged our shoes in pairs, defrosted the freezer, painted the windowsill blue.
    I woke in the middle of the night to make sure you were still there. You tossed an arm over me, murmuring in your sleep while I held my breath and recited the alphabet backward in my head.
    My affair was an empty punishment, a test. I’d brought a stranger home from the library for you to find us. I wanted to hurt you, to shatter the glass pane that pressed my life flat into yours. I’d felt myself slip into transparency and I needed to make sure you knew I was real. You left, disgusted, and I wallowed in the misery I deserved. I sat in the dark for those two weeks. When you returned, I was haggard, our apartment filthy.
    We cried and I made promises, offered explanations, and you made me soup and turned on the small lamp by the sink.
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    Sometime later our life fell quietly into place. I hid my rituals from you and got a job at a bookstore where I met Louisa and then Anton, then Jim. As I began to find things in common with people, to feel connected to the world by more than one thread, I started to see beyond our apartment, beyond the image of us entwined. I began to see my life from the inside, as though I’d been off to run an errand and had just returned.
    The world had sounds and smells that seemed familiar but it had been a while since I noticed them. I read voraciously, worked overtime. I still listened to your stories of your students, your colleagues, your days, but I began to have my own.
    And you seemed to see through me. I felt my words skid past you as you jotted notes or sipped tea. I wondered at your few friends, at your clothes, your taste. I questioned the place you claimed to have in your department. Where were the invitations or phone calls from colleagues? My throat tickled at the repetition of your life. When you reached for me I held my breath. You must have noticed me pull back, turn inside out to avoid your touch? When we walked down the street I didn’t take your arm but buried my hands in my pockets, felt my foot placed in front of my leg, my leg in front of my body. You spoke to me and I did not respond. You asked if I had heard and I nodded.
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    I really think I brought you to this cafe to break you. You’ve never been slow at people and their motives but this doesn’t save you from the inevitable. I had to bring you to a place where my absence could be thorough, where the echo of our conversation could rush around and around you. It’sbeen ending slowly in this faded winter light, our common gestures bloodless and empty. We’re just a shadow play of what we once were, ghosts, floating here and there.
    This room is loud and chaotic. I can’t focus on you, my eyes drift to the people around us: a tall gangly boy with glasses scratching his cheek as he watches the smoking brunette across from him; the sweatered men tackling a game of chess in the corner; the fluffy blond women behind you, their heads together over foamy white glasses. They are all talking and laughing while we are still, immobile, lost in the thickets of a miserable conversation, a shattered, bitter evening.
    When I was small, I often dreamt that I could