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Chapter 11
Hannah
The morning is as the night before was after he left. Quiet and maudlin. Never ending. I gaze out onto the street below me, my fingers gently tapping the window pane. I don’t know why. It’s just a repetitive motion that seems to anchor me to something. There’s nothing else to anchor to. I’m misplaced, my mind a scattered mess of why and why not. So much time wasted and so many thoughts and hopes split into nothing but dishonesties.
My nail scrapes the condensation on the glass, drawing random circles and patterns. No hearts anymore. Hearts have become broken memories, the impact they used to have now crumbled and beaten. I sigh as I listen to my phone ringing somewhere, uninterested in talking to anyone. Who will it be? Another person to offer their condolences? If it wasn’t for the fact that he was a cheating asshole, I might acknowledge the thought of conversation. But he was.
The few I have answered want to tell me they’re sorry that he’s gone, and that they’re sorry they couldn’t get to the funeral because he was such a wonderful person. Wish I hadn’t bothered going myself. Maybe then I could ignore this emptiness that’s beginning to swell in my guts, turning me in some direction that I’m unused to. I’m becoming full of malice and rancour, and the full weight of that feels like it’s burning my skin.
It was here with me before Gray came in last night, making me think of things that no grieving wife should be thinking about. Revenge somehow. It’s not possible, though. He’s dead. And now I have no ability to retaliate. Maybe that’s why I dropped the robe, letting Gray gaze on something that no one else, other than Rick, has seen for a long time. It felt good to show myself off to someone, as if I was rebelling against Rick’s wishes. It shouldn’t work like that, but it does. I hope he was looking down on it, is still looking down on it and listening to my thoughts on the matter.
I half smile at the thought and keep scratching patterns, amused at the thought that he’ll be up there with no ability to stop me acting like a slut. Ten tonight. That’s what time Gray said he’d meet me. I don’t know where he’s thinking of taking me, and I don’t really care either. What’s the point in care? Care got me into this position in my life. My care for Rick got me nothing but heartaches and lies. Maybe going forward without care for anything is the way to travel. If I don’t care nothing can interfere, can it? I’ll be solitary. Singular. Unfazed and uninterested unless something makes me feel good about myself.
I walk aimlessly towards the bedroom and look over the clothes I’ve dragged from the wardrobe. The scissors still lie discarded on the bed near them. They’re nothing but rags now. Thousands of dollars’ worth of suits and shirts and track gear cut up into nothing but scraps of material. They need to go, as does the smell of Rick still lingering on them. They’d make a good fire. I could dowse them with gas, light it all up and watch them burn.
I start grabbing them to me instead, piles of them lodged in my arms as I walk back to the window in the lounge. It gets flung open in my haste, the clothes tossed out in the piles they’re gathered in. I repeat the process, crossing the floor and back until there’s not a shred of him left in the bedroom at all. And then I start on our personal things, speed, venom, and fury making me hurl things into the street below.
Cars screech under me, horns blaring and brakes being slammed on as photos and objects he bought get launched. I don’t care where they land, as long as they’re not here with me. I’m done smelling him, or seeing him in everything. He’s not here now. None of him. And what used to be here of him was a liar and a cheat, a fucking monster.
I laugh and fall back against the wall, tears and hatred making me slide down it to the floor. My head knocks on the surface, over and over again until the sense of nothingness descends again. It’s calm there. Nothing. My eyelids blink, drying up whatever frustrated tears want to continue. I’m not doing them anymore. I’ll be bare of them, let them rest six feet under like he is doing. Ten tonight. Ten tonight is what I have, and a man called Gray Rothburg. My friend Gray.
Obey him?
I snort, antagonism pouring through me.
Why the hell would I obey a man ever again?
My gaze flicks to the red wine stain on the floor. Odd. Red wine on the floor. I crawl over and make my finger run circles over that instead of the window pane.Tap, tap.Another tap. It feels different than the window. Softer. Like my finger is bouncing back at me rather than the harsh surface I was tapping before. I look up at the open window, listening to the traffic. Softer than the window. What does that mean? It means it’s a carpet, Hannah. I chuckle and reach for the bottle of wine by the corner of the sofa, bringing it to my lips, as I keep tapping the floor beside me.
There’s nothing else now other than wine. Wine, more wine, and then some more wine to spice up the wine. As Gray said, the sad reality of real is all around me here. It’s in the fabric of my thoughts. In fact - I roll upright and start pacing the room - it’s even inside me. Rick is. He was inside me, fucking me, not long ago at all. I can feel him still, feel the way he moved, the way his frame covered mine. I want a new real. I want a real that destroys this real I’m in, wipes it away as if it was never real at all.
Hmm.
I should clean that stain on the floor. It’s what Hannah would have done before this. Hannah with all her tricks and tips on how to maintain the perfect home and the perfect life and be the perfect fucking wife. I don’t. I walk over to the fucking stain and pour the remainder of the bottle of red I’m holding all over it, creating a bigger stain on the cream carpet. I even swish the bottle at the matching cream drapes, splashing droplets and spots of deep red all over them. Better. More real. More like the current version of me.
The vision has me walking back to the bedroom, the scissors picked up and brought back to the drapes. I don’t care as I start cutting, slashing the full length of them. I know they’re not my drapes. I know I didn’t hang them or put them there, but I never got a fucking chance to hang anything of my own, did I?Hisjob.Hishouse moves.Hisfucking life that I followed like a good little girl so he’d be happy and get his career on track. And what am I left with? This? A laugh barks out of me as I back away from the new version of real drapes in front of me. That’s more like it. Ripped to shreds, the perfect pretence of them destroyed and hanging tattered and dirty.
Just like me.
A sharp knock on the door makes me swing my head to it, scissors poised in my hand. Who the fuck is that? I hover, my bare feet planted on the floor. I’m not answering doors. Doors mean people, and people mean conversing, and I’m not ready for conversing.
Another knock, the handle ratcheting for some reason.
“Fuck off!” snaps out of me.
“Mrs Tanner, open the door.” Oh, Gray.
I walk to it, swinging it wide. He walks in and looks me over, a brow raised at the scissors still in my hand. I don’t give him any answer to his unasked question. I just let the near see-through robe swing around me and sway, as I walk off into the kitchen for more wine.
“Interesting design,” he says from the lounge. I pick up a bottle and start pouring the wine into a glass, not giving a damn for his opinion of my handiwork. I do walk back to him, though, intrigued as to why he’s here now. It isn’t ten tonight as far as I know.
“Why are you here?”
“Passport.”
“What about it?”
“Do you know where yours is?”
