Going in Circles (29 page)

“Nothing, at first. Matthew went to bed.”

“Did you cry?”

“No. I couldn't. I kept wanting it to have not happened, for me to have imagined it. And if it had happened, surely in the morning when he was sober, he'd apologize.”

“Did he?”

“No. He said he didn't remember it, and that it must have been an accident. That he would never have done it if he hadn't been drunk and that upset with me.”

“Oh, Charlotte. That's not your fault.”

I shake my head. “The thing is, I don't believe him. And no matter what I've done in all this time, I can't seem to find a way to let it go.”

And then I tell her a very dark secret. “Sometimes I wish he had hit me. That he'd really pushed me. Done something so I could say, ‘There. That's unforgivable. Now I have to go.' ”

“Some would say what he did
was
unforgivable. I think he's a jerk.”

“He left two weeks later. I think he couldn't handle what he'd done.”

“Or what he was told he did. If he really doesn't remember, that has to be a little scary, huh?”

I scratch the back of my head, feeling the heat of sunburn at the base of my scalp. “I know. And maybe now he thinks I'm a reminder of the worst that he's capable of.”

Francesca crosses her arms and stares out at the view. “But what if you haven't seen the worst he's capable of?” she asks.

The question causes me to rub my chest, trying to get through to the ache inside. “Frannie,” I say, my voice breaking. “Why do you think I moved out?”

Maybe if I'd taken his name. Maybe if he'd come home earlier that night, instead of staying for another round. Maybe if I were different, if I wanted different things. Maybe if I were the perfect wife. A million useless maybes.

I spin my empty beer bottle between my hands. “Some people work this stuff out.”

“Some do. That's true. But some people can't. And that's okay. Nobody dies. Maybe you're both too messed up and hurt. I don't know. It sucks, but love isn't always enough.”

“So I have to give up everything I wanted: him, our marriage, our home, our future that I wanted . . . He doesn't even remember it, and I have to be the one to walk away? Doesn't that seem incredibly unfair?”

“One hundred percent unfair. But if you stay with him, and things get worse, if something bad happens one more time, you'll never forgive yourself.”

A wind has picked up around us. It's getting chilly. I hug my shoulders and twist my neck from side to side. “I'm still sore from practice the other day,” I say.

“I bet that's why you like derby,” she says. “All the rules.
When you hit someone, there's a right way and a wrong way. There's no weird gray area like in love, when sometimes you hurt someone and it's kind of okay, but kind of not. I don't know. It's like you're the Jammer in your marriage.”

“Oh, God.”

“I'm serious!” She punches me in the arm. “Shut up, I'm being profound. You played by the rules. You skated clean, made it through all the rough slams, found the holes and fought your way to the front of the pack, and now you don't know if you want to call off the jam.”

I exhale, and it releases something I have been holding on to with all of my might. It releases the truth. “I have to call off the jam.”

“Yeah.”

“We were supposed to be on the same team.”

No more looking back, no more trying to fix, no more worrying about where I'm broken. No more being cracked.

My marriage is over.

I think people assume there's a relief that comes from this realization, this decision, because something is done. That's not true. It never stops being sad.

You can't hide from it. You can't make it easier on yourself. And the worst of it is that no matter what you do, you can never, ever fall small.

B
ang-Up finds me hiding in the back bathroom of the Wheelhouse.

“This is where the girls always go when they want to disappear,” she says. “You'd think you guys would figure out we always find you in here.”

“It's a warehouse, Bang-Up. It's not like there are a lot of places to go.”

I'm the worst skater on my Rookie Rumble team. I'm always at the end of the pace line. Sometimes I have to get off the track entirely, just to catch my breath. I'm very frustrated with myself. I'm sure the others notice just how bad I am. The looks they quickly give themselves when I join the pack or come lumbering up behind say it all. They try to find my strengths, they try to be encouraging, but I know there must be a part of them hoping I will back down, skate away, and offer to be the girl who refills their water bottles instead of the dead weight on their team.

Bang-Up leads me toward one of the warm-up rooms. We move in lazy circles as she talks.

“You're doing much better,” she says. “I know you can't see it, but it's true.”

“I'm really struggling.”

“So you have things to work on. We all do. Even the rock stars out there. But that's derby.”

“Right, right,” I say, dangling my helmet from my fingers. “I know.
Welcome to roller derby
.”

“You'll make it through this, Broke-Broke. And I don't mean the Rookie Rumble.”

I look up to see the softness of her face, the empathy in her eyes. “Past'er told you I'm getting a divorce?”

“Yeah,” she says. “But also I know what it looks like.” She sticks out her hand. “Welcome to the club.”

I take her hand, as she pulls me into a hug. I wasn't expecting it, and topple over, taking her with me.

“Oh, no!” she shrieks. “Your tailbone!”

I'm laughing too hard to tell her that I'm fine.

I
'm so nervous waiting for Matthew to arrive that I just cleaned the toilet.

It was a dumb move, because now I'm a little sweaty from anxiety, and I smell like bleach, so if he hugs me when he gets here I'm going to smell like a housekeeper. I feel a little pang of nostalgia remembering the bleach spill the first night at his place. It's different this time. This isn't the beginning. This meeting is to end things as quickly and painlessly as possible.

Every car that passes outside my window sends me running to check if it's him. I eventually force myself to sit down on the Fuck You Couch and open a book. But I can't focus on the words in front of me. I just sit there staring at the pages. Like a mannequin.

He knocks on the door, too loudly. I jump, halfway expecting to hear: “
LAPD! OPEN UP
!”

My knees are wobbly as I walk to the door.

Matthew is standing in my doorway. He's on my turf.

“Hi,” he says. He's already looking over my shoulder. Is he checking for visitors, or instantly sizing up my home? I say hi
back and open the door wider, taking a few steps back to let him into the living room.

He looks tall in my place, and I realize nobody tall has ever been in this apartment. I have never seen him here. It looks like a mistake, like there's a backdrop around him of my apartment instead of our house, where he's supposed to be standing in front of me. It must be awkward for him, too, because he hasn't moved from his position a few steps in. I have to gesture him farther inside so I can shut the door.

“You don't have very good parking out there,” he says.

I guess I
am
being graded. And that's one point for Matthew.

“Oh,” I say. “Well, I have my own parking spot, so it doesn't really affect me.”

He grunts at this, and starts taking in my apartment, looking like he's making an inventory. His eyes go over each piece of furniture. He glances down at the rug and kicks at the corner, as if he's checking my apartment's tires. He scans through the books. Then he stops at one, pointing at it. “That one's mine,” he says. He grabs the book, flips to the front page, and shows me his initials scrawled in the corner: “M.P.”

“Oh.” But I stop myself before I apologize.

He slides it back into its place. “It's okay,” he says, assuming I needed forgiveness. “I didn't like that book anyway. Not sure if I even finished it.”

And that's
two points
for Matthew Price!

“Do you want something to drink?” I ask him.

“Um, yeah, I guess. What do you have?”

“Water. Wine. Scotch. Beer. Maybe a Diet Coke, I'm not sure. Tea. Um—” I stop myself again, as I'm starting to sound like a waitress.

“Water's fine,” he says.

He follows me into the kitchen, staying a few steps be-hind me, to survey my home. “Did you paint this place your-self?”

“No, it came this way.”

“Oh. I was going to say.”

It's like I walk right into his traps.

“I heard you quit your job.”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Must be nice.”

Three points. This man is on a roll. You aren't even going to try to play defense?

He's wearing new sneakers. They are blindingly white, and if we were still together I wouldn't have let him out of the house in them. The shorts and white socks pulled up toward his knees make him look like my grandpa on his way to a golf course. Maybe he isn't seeing anyone. If he is, he did not see her this morning. Or perhaps she's blind.

I hand him a glass of water. “Where'd you get that bookcase?” he asks.

“Pretty much everything came from IKEA.”

. . .
which is Swedish for Fuck You.

We make small talk until we're approximately halfway through our drinks.

Then Matthew says, “Can, um, I . . . Can
we
talk for a second?” He rubs his thumb around the rim of his glass. “About us.”

“Yes.”

I wonder what you'd find if you compiled all the words said between a couple at the beginning of their relationship and compared them to all the words said when they're at the end. I'm pretty sure that the harder a relationship gets, the shorter the words become. I don't know if we're too afraid to
articulate and become vulnerable, or just too exhausted to do much more than grunt and nod.

Matthew is sitting on the couch opposite me. He takes one of the pillows, puts it in his lap, and then puts it back where it was. He rubs his face and swallows twice.

He says, “Can, um, I feel like . . . we should, um.”

Usually when Matthew struggles like this, I help him out. But not this time. It breaks my heart to watch us act like we never used to be madly in love. Like our shells are talking. We've hired other people, horrible people, to fill our flesh and be here because our real selves are too wounded to look each other in the eye.

I don't want to get emotional, but I can already feel my muscles tugging at the corners of my mouth. As he gags on syllables, it dawns on me that the reason he's struggling is because he wants to tell me something he thinks I don't want to hear.

He rubs his face again. And that's when I notice he isn't wearing his wedding ring.

I gasp. I actually gasp, as my hand reaches out and I touch his naked finger. Matthew jumps like I've cursed him and he's about to have a limb fall off. Then he figures out what I mean and quickly shelters the back of his left hand with his right.

I've always kept my rings on. Maybe it's silly, but to me they were a reminder that I'm still a part of someone else until we officially call it quits. They helped keep me from feeling like I'd become a completely different person who slipped away into a different life. I also didn't want other people out there to think I was available. The ring gave me a silent barrier from the rest of the world. I belonged to someone, no matter how complicated the situation.

Now I know what's coming. The naked finger said it all.
When Matthew finally speaks, it's too late. I feel the words before I hear them.

“I think it's time we moved on.”

Game, set, match.

Matthew excuses himself to the bathroom, and I sit stunned.

He beat me to it. I couldn't do it first. Matthew just did exactly what he said I shouldn't expect: he just told me what was going to happen to me.

When Matthew comes back from the bathroom, he asks, “Did you know your hallway light is out? You should fix that.”

Charlotte Goodman watches her friends Andy and Jonathan help each other with another large box. They struggle in the doorway, the box digging into Andy's thigh as Jonathan hikes his side up higher. They quietly joke between them about what's inside, gently teasing that it must be Charlotte's anvil collection. From the bedroom, Francesca runs over to join the men, opening the box and peering inside. “Kitchen stuff,” she says with authority.

Charlotte feels slightly numb as she watches her old life join her new one. She's still feeling dazed as she rubs the tender ridge of skin on her left finger where her rings once lived. Francesca quickly found a buyer for the engagement ring; Charlotte doesn't have to worry about finding a new job for at least a few months.

The boys return from the kitchen with glasses of ice water. They sweat and pant, but they do not complain. They just keep working until the job is done.

Afterward, Charlotte stares at a cold slice of pizza that sits untouched on a plate she once parted with, but now owns again. But her friends sitting around the coffee table have no problems finishing their hard-earned dinner. Charlotte watches Andy eat as he sits on a chair that he's sat on before, but in another house. In fact, Andy sat on that chair in a different apartment even
before that. Charlotte realizes as long as that chair and that man can find a way to reunite no matter where life takes her, she will be able to find a way to be okay. She hasn't left earth's atmosphere; she just changed her position in it.