My favorite sort of winters, the brief thirty-hour ones that roll in as we are finishing dinner downtown at our favorite hole-in-the-wall ramen house and end within a day or two, as the temperatures rise, bringing rain and taking away every last trace of the snow. The children spent most of Sunday building snowmen in the backyard and we found out what still fits and what doesn't when it comes to snowpants, boots and mittens.
Today is blinding sunshine and warm spring air once again. It smells sweet to me, as if spring is coming at last. Just around the corner.
He sat at the desk, waiting while I cried. Wiping my nose on my sleeve, I took hitching breaths. Wishing he would just look at me but he couldn't so instead he kept his hand wrapped around mine and held it tightly while I kept trying to pull it out so I could hit him or hurt him or make him feel the same way just for once and I cried and cried until there was nothing left and then he stood up and grabbed a tissue for me, standing beside my chair while I dried my eyes and pretended to compose myself.
And then I made a break for the door.
He was waiting for that too, and he grabbed me around the waist and lifted me off the ground and just held me there as I thrashed and screamed at him. I called him everything I have ever learned on the show and afterward. I named every flaw he owns and put myself right back at square one with tears, wondering why he's still allowed to make me feel this way when I have come so far without his help.
And still not a word. It's all right there in his eyes. Pretend stoicism, Incapacitating fear masquerading as impatience, ambivalence, embarrassment, even. Maddening silence. I can talk and talk and talk until my voice disappears and I run out of words and he will listen to every single thing and still not respond. Not a word. Then I will throw myself into his arms, forcing him to put them around me and rock myself for far too long before he takes over, the movement less one of desire and more of a habit, a hypnotizing lull.
His life now is the next best thing. The closest he can get to still having his beloved circus without the danger involved for me, because it became abundantly clear that it was no place for a girl and so he was forced to choose between his two only loves. Resentment goes both ways, you know.
I took it away and yet I am what he loved most about it. Though he gets tired of these wordless fights.
We had a lot of years there where we were almost normal, ones where you never would have known how visceral things were, just under the surface. Years we thought we might actually survive one other. Years we thought maybe things had changed.
A wasted effort, all of it. Nothing changes. Ever.
