When the Ending is also a Beginning
My feet emit a hollow scrape on the worn hardwood floors. I can't bear to pick them up fully, not anymore. I've poured everything I have into this crumbling facade of a life I built over the last decade. All those years ago, I entered this city, brimming with potential, desperate to prove myself. And I did. I clawed, I begged, I bartered and stole my way up that metaphorical ladder, until I was perched here, at the top. Until... I looked down and realized I'd left nothing but smoldering regret in my wake. What was I thinking, all those years ago, when I threw away my dreams to become that which the world wanted me to be? When I settled down and settled into a job, a relationship, an existence, that would demand everything from me and give nothing in return?
I toss my keys on the counter and wave vaguely at my wife where she sits in her usual haunt, staring blankly from the couch at the television with the volume set unbearably high. She mumbles something, no doubt asking about work, but I don't bother to reply. She's not listening. She doesn't care. Her eyes are glued to the screen, upon which a man with puppy dog eyes is handing out roses to women clad in every hue of silk. Garbage. Utter garbage... and this is how she spends her days. This is what I go to that pretentious job at the tippy top of that gods-damned tower to provide for. I let my rage simmer for all of half a second before dismissing it. I sigh. I can't blame Renata for losing herself in that drivel on the television. It's what I'd do if I were her. Anything at all to distract herself from facing the fact that she's stuck in a loveless marriage... that she's stuck with me. I'm under no delusion about the fact that I am miserable to live with these days. I've been miserable to live with for at least eight years now; ever since I quit my dream- the reason I'd moved here in the first place. Yes, the day I traded in that fool’s hope of becoming a bestseller and put my bachelor's degree to good use in a cubicle at Harvey & Quinn Industries, was the day I turned into this miserable louse.
My shuffling feet bring me to the kitchen, where I brew an ill-advised cup of coffee. I counteract the caffeine with a generous slug of Baileys on top. Renata calls from the living room, “If you’re making Irish coffee, bring me one!” I pour a second cup and leave it in Renata's waiting grasp. Our fingers brush and she looks up at me with something like longing. I clear my throat and turn away, but not quickly enough to miss her face crumpling with disappointment. I am a rotten bastard, that’s certain. I know she just wants to be loved. I know she just wants me to ignore the clacking of keys, the whisper of paper, the acrid smell of ink for once. I know she’d like for me to sit beside her on the couch, to hold her in bed at night, to put in the merest ounce of effort. Ultimately, Renata wants something from me I simply cannot give her. I have but one passion in this life, and it is not her. So I continue on my way, settling in the one place in this god-forsaken flat that feels like home.
My writing desk faces the broad window overlooking the street. Renata wanted to put the couch here, but I refused. The moment we walked into the flat that handful of years ago, I knew this was the spot. I can see life below, a swarm of people carrying on with their day to day, existing as the main character in their own stories, blissfully unaware of the man perched several floors above. I like this window, because when I look down, I feel like more than the author of my own fate- I feel like the author of theirs. There, that woman with the burgundy scarf, black curls glistening with tiny droplets of rain, a package wrapped in brown paper tucked under her arm… She’s hunched to protect the paper from becoming soiled in the rain. But from up here, she might be a spy, delivering intel that will turn the tide of a war with mythical beasts torn from the pages of legend. A man is approaching her. He is tall and broad and from the looks of it, an insufferable gym rat. He stops dead in the center of the sidewalk and gives the black-haired woman an appreciative look, hands braced on his hips, unfazed by the rain. This man is confident to the point of pain. I’d hate this man if I ever really met him… but from up here, from my little window that transcends the bounds of this reality, that makes me into a god instead of a miserable excuse of a man…. From up here, that muscle-head in the street becomes a warrior, an escort for the woman… the beginning of a quest.
My fingers fly along the keys of my typewriter, misspelling words, adding spaces where they don’t belong, and skipping conjunctions altogether in the fervor of getting a new idea inked down. Renata sighs behind me, but I don’t care. I am lost to the words. I am a world away; just me, my grandfather’s hand-me-down typewriter, and the story of the spy with the burgundy scarf. My heart thunders in my chest, and I can taste the apricot the character is eating on the back of my tongue. I can feel soft hands brush along the biceps of her lover. I smell petrichor as she stands in a field on the outskirts of a village at the base of towering cliffs. I choke down fear as a lion stalks her from the cover of long grass. I revel in triumph as she turns to the beast and recognizes it as that stray kitten she saved from the gutter. I become her. I become the story. And when that happens, I feel…free. I am relieved of the burden of my pitiful excuse of a life. I type wildly, like a man who is burning alive, so starved to live the life that isn’t mine that I don’t hear Renata until she is standing beside me, until she places her hands atop mine and forces me to still. I glare up at her. She knows better. She knows better than to interrupt me when I’m in a flow.
“Ben, we have to talk,” she says, and I notice for the first time how quiet the flat has become. She has turned off the TV. The only sounds are those of her staccato breathing and the distant roar of tires on wet pavement below.
I hold her stare for a moment before trying to shake off her hands, “Fine. Just let me finish this page.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No, Ben. God. This. This is why we need to TALK.” She lifts her hands off mine but doesn’t step away. She just wraps her arms around her middle as if she can hold some broken shards of herself together before continuing, “I’m done. I am so done with this. Ben, this is not a life.” She waves a hand in my direction, encompassing all of me in one swoop.
My ire roils and words fly off my tongue before I can stop them, “Newsflash, sweetheart– but this is a life. It’s our life. So I suggest you get used to it.” I sound like a villain. No. I am a villain. I grin up at Renata, “So, what do you want to do about it?”
She sucks down a gulp of air and steps away as if I’ve landed her a physical blow. Good. At least if we’re fighting we’re feeling something.
“No, Ben. Just no. I refuse for this to be my life for another second. You won’t even try to pretend you care about anything aside from that stupid typewriter.” She glares at the thing like it's sentient and then jabs a finger at it, “That’s your wife. And I’m not going to be. Not anymore. I want a divorce.” Her words hang in the air for a minute, heavy. Something rumbles in my chest at them. Something whispers in the back of my mind: failure. But the rumble isn’t pain. The rumble isn’t the tremor before a quake, set to break apart everything I’ve built. The rumble is an unleashing. Freedom. I laugh.
Renata bursts into tears. They flow as if freed from a dam, landing with audible plops on the wood floor. She backs into the wall and covers her face in her hands. I should get up. I should go to her. I should apologize for laughing in her face– even if she’s divorcing me, I shouldn’t end things like this. I shouldn’t actually behave like the insufferable ass I am. But. I can’t bring myself to rise. I can’t bring myself to care. Not when the story is waiting. Not when Renata is setting me free. So I just sit, hands hovering over the keys, desperate to continue, but not quite brazen enough to cover Renata’s sobs with the comforting sound of typing. An indeterminate amount of time passes before Renata’s weeping ebbs to soft snuffles. Only then do I rise, stepping around her like some piece of broken furniture. I go to the kitchen and pour two generous glasses of whiskey. I use the stupidly expensive cut crystal glasses she gave me on our seventh wedding anniversary. I feel nothing when I look at them– nothing but a small appreciation for the way they warp the light through the amber liquid. I know the whiskey is going to sit like curdled milk atop the coffee and Baileys in my stomach, but the fortification it’ll provide is more important than my comfort.
I stride for Renata on stilted legs, folding down onto the floor beside her, backs against the wall. I hand her a glass and she takes it with shaky fingers.
“Ren, I shouldn’t have laughed,” I speak glumly.
“You think?” Her voice is thick, but it seems she’s put her walls back up at least. She won’t let me see her cry again.
“Yes. I apologize.” She nods and I continue, “You’re right, Ren. Of course, you’re right. I’m not living out here… but I am living— in here.” I tap a finger on my temple.
“I know,” she whispers, “but I can’t live with you in there.”
“I know. I don’t want you to.” She sucks in a breath, but I still her with a hand on her cheek, “Ren, you need to live. You are right. You need to leave me. I can’t ever give you the life I promised.”
She just stares at me for a long minute, before a sad smile curves her lips, “I’m always right, Ben. You just seem to have forgotten.”
I raise my glass, “Well, then cheers– to you always being right.”
Renata clinks her glass with mine before slugging back the contents in one go and coughing. “What will we do now?” she muses.
“You’ll live.”
“And you?”
“I’ll write the story of how you do.”
Renata rises and pads to the kitchen, lugging the whiskey bottle back with her and dropping to the floor at my side once more. She refills our glasses, “Well then, let’s drink to that, Ben. Let’s drink to the end of our story.”
“To the end of our story– and to the beginning of another.”
We smash glasses again and drink.
I tuck Renata into bed two hours later. She promises to go pick up the paperwork tomorrow. In the silence of our flat, I breathe and breathe and breathe, and then I walk– not shuffle– to the typewriter in front of the window. I pull free the page about the woman with the burgundy scarf and roll a new sheet in its place.
And then, I begin:
Once upon a time,
There was a man who hated himself.
And there was a woman who dared to love him despite it.
I smile. Yes, life as I know it is over, but the ending is also a beginning.