Evie and I were in the process of breaking up. We'd been together for a few years. I thought things were going well but, hey, apparently I missed something. The complaint of women all over, I suppose. Anyway, she had found a new guy, decided she liked him, and that was that as far as she was concerned. I had questions and I wanted answers, needed answers, but I never had found a way to ask her. The timing was always wrong, her mood wasn't right or the my state of mind was all wrong for the conversation. Something always came up.
In the end we decided to keep living together. We'd eat and talk about our days together like normal, barring, of course, entire blank spots in her life where blank spots never used to be. It was insidiously normal-feeling, much like things always were. We still hugged each other when we were upset, still kissed each other goodnight and told each other 'I love you.' If I didn't know better I'd have said everything was going just fine. Other than the whole sleeping in different rooms thing. And no more sex. I wondered just what role this new guy played in her life, considering how she lived. How we lived. I couldn't fathom it. I tried on more than one occasion, but I couldn't think of anything that fit. Maybe he was just more trendy. Gotta admit, I'm pretty boring sometimes. Reliable, caring, but boring. Like varnished wood.
I was anything but boring on the inside, though. I was sad, really sad, hurt, madly hurt, angry, totally furious. I wanted to cry myself to sleep, and some nights I did, making sure I was quiet enough so that she wouldn't hear me and wake up. Our house was a bit on the cheap side and our walls were pretty thin. I wanted to take sleeping pills and pain meds to get rid of the sunken feeling in my chest that was always there even though I knew they wouldn't work. I know because I tried and it didn't do a damned thing. That made me angry. In this world where pills are purported to heal every little thing you can think of, or at least help, they couldn't even numb the way I felt. I wanted to scream. I wanted to yell at the doctor for making me believe that they would help. I wanted to scream at my coworkers for their infighting and petty rivalries. And most of all, I wanted to scream at Evie. I wanted to yell, "What about what you told me, you said I was number one, that you only wanted me, that you'd never leave me, you promised me!"
But that wouldn't achieve anything. It'd only make her upset and then she would cry or wall me off for a while. That's how she always handled that kind of thing. Yell back and run away. So I didn't. I had to be the adult one who controlled himself when she yelled and then ran away, later came back sulky. That was our dynamic. In the past it had always been over insecurity issues, over worries about being too attached, not attached enough, over loving me, over being afraid of me. I didn't understood that part of her, but I always did my best to soothe her.
I was doing pretty poorly when I caught myself just sinking and sinking. It was coming out through the cracks and starting to show in my every day life. When my boss took me aside and asked me about it, I thought to myself, god damn, things are bad. I needed to change. I resolved right then and there to do just that. On my way home from work, I stopped by the local Ace Hardware and I bought a few tools and materials, some nails, a beveling plane, sandpaper, a hammer and some wood. I needed them to go about fixing my frame of mind. When I got home, I looked over our apartment. It was messier than it usually was, we were both stressed. More specifically, we were both lazy when we got stressed. It used to be amusing after the stress would pass and we'd laugh at ourselves. Oh jeez, we've totally forgot everything but the problem and each other. Haha! Silly us! And then we'd have ice cream and cuddle and laugh and watch a movie. Remembering that made that sunken feeling a little more piercing. I pushed it away. I needed to work.
I cleared off the table, put the salt and pepper shakers and napkin holder on the counter, picked up the placemats and put them away in the drawer. Then I laid out my things and looked them over. For the first time in some time I felt like a man in his element, ready to work, ready to do some Great Good for the world. Except this wasn't really for the world, and it wasn't a great good. This was for me. Not for anyone else, not for Evie, not for my family, not for friends or the random guy on the street. For me. For once, something for me. I picked up the plane and started peeling the wood.
When Evie got home she stopped and looked at me, clearly surprised. She asked what I was doing and I told her, "I'm making a door frame." When she asked why I told her that it was just something I had been wanting to do. Which it wasn't really, it was a recent revelation, but I wanted to do it and it was a something, so technically it wasn't a lie, and I was alright with that. She said alright and left it at that. I kept working.
A few days later my friend Blake came by while I was working. I showed him the frame. It was essentially ready to be put together, it needed more sanding down and a layer of varnish and better alignment and tons of other things but I was ready to finish it off all the same. When he said it looked like it was going to be something crazy I grinned. That's exactly what it needed to be. And it did look strange. The angles were off, the sanding was imperfect, but I was no woodworker and this was the best I could do. And hell, it served. The next day I varnished it, but forgot to open the windows and the smell stunk up the house and pissed off Evie. And me.
For a while after that I just let the frame be. It was sitting in the corner of the living room now, an ugly little thing. I managed to mess up the varnish too, so not even that looked right. Evie cooled down a bit about my smelling up the house with the acrid scent of fresh resin and we got back to being friendly and loving again. It was a welcome return after the few days of her being pissy with everything. Things were good.
Two weeks, three days and approximately 1.5 hours after she had stopped being angry with me, she announced that she was going to be moving out shortly. I knew it was coming eventually, but even knowing it, it still crushed me. I called in work sick and I took off the next three days. The first two I moped around like an kicked dog, just slinking around feeling sorry for myself and scared of life. The third I was getting upset with the situation again. I resolved to put my emotions into use again rather than just be overpowered by them, and so I found myself taking another trip to Ace Hardware, my closest friend when times are stressful. I came back with a sledgehammer and some drywall. That crooked frame was ready to be put to use.
When Evie stepped through our new front door after work, she found me cooking in a totally new environment. The kitchen was completely different, where we once had a thick wooden table, now there was a stained glass table. Our familiar noisy ivory fridge was replaced by one slightly smaller with stainless steel plating. Our formica countertops, now a black granite. She stood there with her jaw dropped. I looked back at her and smiled and went back to cooking the bacon and eggs I had made just for us. I flipped our hashbrowns, then started scooping our portions out onto our plates. She didn't sit. She asked what I had done to the door. I told her I replaced the frame, that's all. Then I asked her to sit and she did, and I started eating my toast. Then I remembered. "Oh, I forgot." I scooped up our coffee mugs off the counter and set them in front of us. Espresso. She was still looking stunned and hadn't touched any of her food. In her eyes was that look of a deer. She gets that look every so often when she's nervous, when she doesn't know whether to run or stay. I liked seeing her nervous and scared like that. It always made me want to scoop her up and hug her and tell her I loved her more than life itself. I didn't say anything, I smiled at her though. It broke through. She smiled back at me.
"I love you. "
"I love you too, more than life itself."
"...me too."
I took my coffee mug by the handle and I extended it to her. She picked up hers and they clinked, a thin line of espresso streaking down the side of mine, and then we drank, looking at each other and smiling.
It was picture perfect.
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