It's super short and I do like it. All rights reserved, blah blah blah.
*
I Would Want Him to Never Recover
Julia Evans
*
“Right here,” he says, pointing ahead. It’s a flat spot, not too many trees, and I can’t help but wonder what the ground looks like without snow.
I've never seen this place without snow.
“Yeah?” I ask.
“Yeah. We’ve been eyeing this spot for like a decade.”
“Yeah?” I ask again, not really sure what else to say. Is this some sort of confession? Is he even talking to me? Its not unusual for him to forget I’m even here.
“I’ll start building it in the spring.”
“Wow. What?”
“This spring. Like in, uh, three months? Maybe less? Depends on the snow situation,” he says, looking at me, like right at me. I guess he hasn’t forgotten that I’m really here.
“That’s incredible. Congratulations, I guess,” I say, trying not to cringe, because it wasn’t really as happy as it should be.
“I know. I feel good about it. It’s exactly what she wanted,” he says, and I’m instantly gone. I’m instantly miles away from him but I haven’t moved an inch.
*
I watch as Andy outlines the foundation with a stick. His shoulders are so bony, they jut out through his thermal. He’s talking to himself again, or maybe he’s talking to her. Or maybe he’s measuring and calculating. I’m not sure which would relieve me more. I hate that he is so lost to someone he can never have again, and then I hate myself for feeling that way. Marian was my friend too, the closest thing I’ve ever had to a soul mate. And if I would ever know the total joy and then total heartache of being loved by this man only to have it taken away, I’d want him to be totally messed up by me, too. I’d want him to mourn me for so long, inhumanly long. I’d want him to never recover. That’s how selfish I am. I’d rather him be stuck in a shell of a life than get over me and move on to the next girl he brings out here.
*
“Well, that is a finely crafted cabin,” I tease.
“Why thank you, my Delia,” he says, nudging my shoulder and God, this is the first time I’ve felt him be like this with me in fifteen years. I’m nearly certain he’s not being his teenaged flirty self, but this is definitely a far cry from his grief-stricken absence that defined the last three years. And it’s even better than the Marian years, the decade of cautiousness, of guarded feelings, of bottling and bottling and bottling up. Or maybe that was just me.
“Wait,” I say, completely high on what buzzes between us. “This is not structurally sound right here.”
I poke around at our tent. We managed to stretch the fly out as far as it goes, so the strings and the pegs reach the little outline Andy drew with a stick.
“Ah, much better. I was about to go all building inspector on you,” I say.
“Will you?” he asks.
I hold my breath.
“Delly, will you help me?” he asks again.
I release my breath. Oh lord, do I release.
“Of course,” I say. “Of course I will.”
“You were so special to Mari,” he says. He closes his eyes and I know I’ve lost him again. “It’d mean the world to her.”
“I know,” I say, my voice more quiet than the wind. “I know.”
*
Of all the fucking times to have this nightmare, it has to happen when he’s sleeping right next to me. I wake up with a shout and panic that he may have heard me. I panic that I shouted more than once. I panic. My breathing is shallow, loud, and I’m using every ounce of strength I am to be still. Play dead. The noise I make as that thought crosses my mind was pitiful, like a meerkat giving birth or something. Because what I just woke up from wasn’t playing. It was real. Real dead. Marian’s lifeless body in her bed, lying next to me, a crossword book crumpled between us, the eight year struggle with acute lymphoblastic leukemia crumpled between us. The space between my grief for her and my grief for what I never had and never would have with her husband, crumpled between us.
Andy’s breathing is shallow, too. Andy’s body is too still too. He heard me.
I’m not sure what I want right now. Do I want him to let this go? Do I want to keep this torment to myself any longer? Or do I want him to just think I’m sad about losing her? Because then he would probably wrap his arms around me and kiss my hair and I would sleep in pure, good-enough, manufactured bliss.
He says nothing. I say nothing. We go back to sleep. Or I do. I never know these things with Andy. He’s always the first up in the mornings. He’s always awake when I go to sleep. He’s always awake when I’m startled awake in the middle of the night. The fact that he is still so tortured by the loss of his wife to never, ever sleep tears me in two. I’m so sad for him, a man I have always loved in some capacity, and will always love first and foremost as a friend. It’s not fair for him to suffer, and for that reason I would give anything for Mari to be alive again, to be healthy, and to be his. I would give my own life.
And for that reason, I will never, ever tell him how I feel. I am a tent, a temporary shelter, a portable shrine. My heart is a nylon cabin, a hack job. And in its place something permanent will etch its way into the ground, mud, grass, snow, and ice to forever memorialize the lucky girl I never was.
*
“Morning, gorgeous,” I swear he says. It’s so real I could hear it.
“Ha. Ha!” I reply, not even sure how my mouth is moving when I’m still half asleep. I can still see my dream. I’m still partway in there, in our old college dorm of all places, but now Andy is there too, calling me gorgeous, but disappearing into an elevator.
“Come on, get up,” he says, and it’s all slipping away. “It snowed some more overnight. We have a nice little rooftop.”
“Unf,” I mumble. “Okay. Give me a minute.”
When I emerge from the tent, as bundled as I could manage without standing up, I cannot hide my gasp.
“Jesus,” I whisper.
“I know,” he says.
Before us, beneath us, laid at our feet, the fresh snow fall overwhelms me. The sun is bright. I close my eyes against the blinding or maybe it’s the tears. Andy has already started shaking down our tiny tent, laying out our measly provisions for breakfast.
“We should hurry. There’s only a little blue sky up there. I wasn’t expecting a storm overnight, so I can’t be certain about today’s weather, either,” he says to the thin air around us. I’ve lost him again, I can tell by the tone in his voice. He’s distant and, as my vicious mind likes to think, probably imagining he’s talking to her instead.
I do not answer. Because no words come out when I try.
Over the last three years my time spent with Andy has become increasingly more difficult. And always as our outings draw to a close, I find myself wondering if this is it. Have I had enough? Can I do this to myself for much longer? And then I see Andy the next time, and he hugs me hello and spins me around and kisses my hair and I’m right back to where I started.
“Delia,” Andy says, drawing out the vowels, the way he always does when he wants to tell me something serious. Like the time he told me, ‘Delia, I’ve met someone.’ Like the time he told me, ‘Delia, I love her.’ Like the time he told me, ‘Delia, we’re getting married.’ Like the time he told me, ‘Delia, she’s sick.’ Like the time he told me, ‘Delia, she wants you to lie with her tonight.”
We’re about ready to go, snowshoes on, packs loaded, lined up. He says it again. “Deeeliaaa.”
I turn around, not graceful at all on behalf of the tennis rackets beneath my feet.
“Andy?” I ask, half irritated that he waits to the very end of this trip to tell me his serious thing, his difficult thing, whatever hand he’s going to deal me next. And half scared of what it might be.
He doesn’t answer for a long time. I stare at him, but he doesn’t really look at me. He’s staring at the skeletal imprint of our tent.
“Nevermind,” he says, as he starts to trudge back to the lodge. “It’s nothing.”
