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Davis
“What the hell are you wearing?”
I stop just inside the doorway of the kitchen and glance down at myself, then look over at Chantal and roll my eyes. “They’re called running clothes.”
She bristles at my sarcastic tone, lips pursed as she glares at me. “Go change. We’re going to be late for church.”
I almost laugh out loud.Almost. It’s damn amusing how she thinks she can order me around. Especially now, after all these years of barely talking to me. Granted, there was a time when I played the part of the good husband, choosing my battles and biting my tongue. Those years have long since passed. I don’t know what’s changed with me, with my life, with many things in general, but I’m no longer willing to be her punching bag. She’s spent too many years talking down to me. The little she does talk, that is. Too often she pops off with some statement of fact about what I will or will not do. I doubt she ever truly hears what she’s saying to me anymore. I know she doesn’t care about what’s said—or isn’t said—between us. She has made that abundantly clear on more than one occasion.
“I’m going for a run.” I stroll with my head held high through the kitchen and into the living room. She’s hot on my heels, stomping loudly across the carpet as she hurries to catch me.
“Wait.”
I love how she thinks I’m going to follow her demand. I ignore her and keep moving with purpose toward the door.
“What will I tell everyone about why you’re not there?”
My feet immediately halt their forward progress, and I slowly pivot to face her. “I don’t give a fuck what you tell them. I’m not going to church today. Or any other day, for that matter, ever again. I’m done.”
This day has been a long time coming. For far too many years, I’ve gone along with her ridiculous expectations that I’ll show my face in church every week. For too long, I’ve played the part I was expected to; the part she once insisted I owed her, her way of laying blame on my shoulders for Charlotte’s death. I’ve spent years trying to get out of this forced weekly social engagement, making lame excuses that she rarely would buy. Years attempting to plead my case each week, only to have the silent guilt wear me down. Once she completely stopped interacting with me I figured I’d been given a free pass.
Not so much.
There is blame on both sides of the aisle here, but even I’m not so grief stricken that I will place undo blame on her for our daughter’s passing. We know all too well that nothing we did or didn’t do would have changed a thing. We both know it….but I highly doubt either one of us will ever believe it completely. Guilt, like grief, is something that will remain forever.
Surprisingly, somewhere in the past few weeks I’ve grown some balls. I’ve decided to stand up for myself for a change and have stopped letting guilt rule my life. If I have to live with this crap day in and day out, I’m going to have some ground rules. Whatever has happened that has kicked my ass in gear, I’ll take it.
This moment reminds me of the morning I moved out of the house and into the garage apartment, finally admitting to myself that I was destined to live my life alone, though under the ever-watchful eyes of my once wife. At the time, the apartment was nothing more than four walls and a framed doorway for a bathroom, but still it held far more appeal then sleeping on the couch or in the empty spare bedroom and living within the same four walls as a woman who despises me. Like this moment, that day she unleashed her inner bitch, dictating to me what I should and shouldn’t do. Only that time, I caved to the pressure.
You can’t move out of the house. What will my parents think?
How are you going to explain that you live over the garage and I live inside?
I recall being amused by her questions. First of all, the only people who have ever come over to our house have been my family, and only a few times at that. Her parents—snobs that they are—refuse to visit our normal, suburban neighborhood. Her bitch of a sister will hardly even leave San Francisco, she’s so convinced all other cities are beneath her. How I ever got Chantal to agree to buy this house still astounds me. I figure like our marriage, the rebellious fuck-you to her parents was worth slumming it for a few years until she could convince me to move to a high rent district.
“You’re such a selfish bastard,” she snaps, whirling on her high heels and stomping back across the room. I bite back the urge to laugh. This entire situation is as pathetic as it is sadly amusing. The two of us are wasting our lives with this sham of a marriage. If we were at all intelligent people, one of us would have walked away for good years ago.
I refrain from saying anything more, grateful to have been given—or to have taken—this short reprieve to what my normal has become. I slam the front door behind me, then make my way down the walkway and onto the sidewalk, anxious to leave the oppressive confines of a place I used to call home.
Merrick is just coming down his driveway, and greets me with a smile. Like me, he’s wearing a t-shirt and shorts. There’s a chill in the March air, which I try to ignore. The fog is already burning off, giving way to semi-warm sunshine. Once we get going, I’ll be plenty warm.
“Any particular way you want to go?” He inquires.
I shake my head and pull one ankle up behind me, stretching out the kinks from my lumpy futon mattress. “Doesn’t matter to me. I usually do around five or six miles, but I’d be up for more.”
He smirks at me, before it slides off his face and his eyes dart around anxiously, as if he’s nervous for some reason, which seems strange since I’m well aware that he runs on a regular basis. “Okay. Well, we can head out and turn back whenever we get tired.”
“Works for me.”
We jog at a measured pace as we wind through the neighborhood and down to the busy intersection. I’m a step behind him, letting him lead the way as we run past unopened businesses and busy coffee shops. We cross the street at the light, and head in the direction of the Aquarium, which is located on Cannery Row. There are a few tourists out and about, but mostly it’s just the two of us keeping pace with one another.
“Been running long?” he asks when we reach the path that will take us in the direction of the wharf.
“Off and on most of my life.” I don’t tell him there was a good ten years or so when I barely broke stride, and that it wasn’t until my entire life imploded that I needed the outlet and once more took up the sport I once loved as a teenager. “You?”
“Same.”
I’m grateful he’s not the type to want to chat endlessly during a run. While I’m perfectly able to carry on a conversation at this pace, I don’t exactly want to. The benefit of running by myself all these years is that it is easy to fall into that murky headspace where everything else fades away and it’s only you and the smack of your feet on the ground as you tear across the miles.
