Split Decisions

The toilet tank in their bathroom, off their bedroom, suddenly engaged its water feed.

Spence was just pulling off his hat, and walking out the door, when Edwina placed a hand on his shoulder. It, the hand, was neither light nor loving.

“Wait,” she said, looking at him with widening eyes whose pupils seemed to pulse with gravitas. “If you have a moment to sit down with me.”

“But I was going…” he protested, but not much, and she led him outside and toward the corner of the front porch.

They sat, she with her sharp elbows digging into her tanned thighs, he with his usual and increasing hunch. Out in the daylight, Spence was surprised how shiny and red Edwina’s hair looked. Hadn’t she, like him, turned grey?

“This is hard,” she began, and then paused. Then, she said, with a shrug: “I mean, I always think I know exactly what I’m going to say when I run this through my head. But now, I don’t have the words.”

Spence squinted at her — then up at the sun, then at a chipmunk — looking more vulnerable than he had…well, ever. At least not over their thirty years together. He had this way, these days, of seeming as though he was either seeing things for the first time, or for the last.

“Maybe we can wait until later — ”

“No, I really think it’s best we do this now,” she insisted, and he furrowed his brow, but quizzically, not annoyedly as in the old days.

“Okay.”

“You know how I’ve been short with you lately. Right? That time with the can opener and the box of wine? And, and — when you were coming back from, you know, that thing?”

“The, the, the…um…”

“Yes, you remember. And you said you felt happier there than you had in years?”

Spence’s already lean face leaned harder.

“And it was like I had failed you. And you wanted me to know that.”

“Right…yes, yes,” said Spence, his words trailing off.

“All these years.”

“Right. All these years.” Spence’s eyes came suddenly alive. “But you make me happy! You do!”

“Do I though? If you really think about it, we haven’t been happy together for a while now.”

Spence tried to really think about it, but could only come up with that time in the park when he couldn’t get a kite into the air and Edwina almost wet her pants laughing at his efforts. Would she still love him if he had just gotten that kite to fly?

“Okay,” he said, hoping agreement would lead to reconciliation.

“Okay?” asked Edwina incredulously. “I’d say it’s not! It’s not okay that we can’t make each other happy.”

“No,” replied Spence.

Edwina stared him down, which always made Spence shrink a little, then try to stare back, which never worked. His mouth started twitching oddly.

“Well,” said Spence, looking away. “I think I’ll need to think this over.” He got up from his chair.

“You do that.”

Spence left, and walked down their street to the corner, where he sat on a bench and watched some birds frolicking in the late winter sun. His head was cold, and he wondered where he’d left his hat.

He remembered that he was supposed to be thinking about something, but not exactly about what. Edwina was disappointed in him. Of that much he was sure. How could he get her to stop being so mad at him? Didn’t she know how much he loved her? He loved her so much, seemingly more with each day, that he concealed some of it for fear she would think him shallow or needy.

He remembered a store; it was somewhere close to where they lived. It was colorful, and smelled wonderfully. Flowers. A flowerist! Florist! He got up and walked toward where he thought that store was located.

After ten minutes of walking, he realized he’d been going in the wrong direction. Instead of turning around — which he knew would look strange to onlookers — he walked to the corner, crossed to his left, then made another left to walk in the opposite direction.

He got about fifty feet into his reroute when he heard the stacatto tapping of a horn. He turned and saw Edwina sitting in a car, their car, motioning him to climb in and join her. A ride! Sometimes a nice drive was just what the doctor ordered.

It didn’t last very long — in fact, only as long as the distance back to their apartment’s garage. Spence waited for Edwina to open her door before he did the same. The two walked inside.

“Where were you going?” asked Edwina.

“To the florist,” he answered quickly.

“Hmm. Who’s the lucky lady?”

He looked at her. “You,” he said. “You are.”

“Yeah, I’m lucky.” She seemed like she wanted to say more, but he didn’t press it. He wanted to sit in that happy place for a little while.

Later, he was putting the lunch dishes into the dishwasher when their toilet tank started filling, though no one had recently used the master toilet. Edwina called to him from the bedroom. “Coming!” he called back. “Just a second, Eddy.”

When he found his way to the bedroom, he entered and saw his wife lounging in her reading chair, wearing a red kimono that just barely covered her most precious parts. “Hi,” she said. “Hello, my lucky man.”

“Oooh what a lucky man he was,” he sang, laughing, and Edwina joined in, just a little. It was one of those lovely moments, the kind they probably used to have with regularity. Spence approached her, a bit timidly, and then lowered himself to his knees. He looked at her and she smiled. He burst into tears and buried his face between her thighs, but not with lust. It was more like pleading, begging for leniency, but for what crime he did not know. She stroked his hair. He was crying. They stayed that way for a while.

After dinner on the back deck, Spence moved to start carrying the dishes back to the kitchen. Even back there, they could hear the toilet again, wasting a few seconds of water. “Leave the dishes,” said Edwina, pouring herself a second glass of Merlot. “Just leave them there for a while.” Spence stood and looked at her. He thought he felt something like dread, but didn’t know what of.

“Sit, please, dear.” Spence sat. She looked at him a while, and he thought maybe he should start talking. But then she did.

“I think we need to have a conversation,” she began, with some trepidation.

“Yes, yes,” agreed Spence. “Talking is always good.”

“This thing, this, I don’t know, charade, maybe? Whatever this is isn’t working for me any more.”

Spence nodded, pretending to get it. “Whatever this is,” he tried to agree.

She seemed to suppress a smile. “For instance, look at what you’re wearing,” she said. He looked down, and saw a light blue pullover with red stains down the front. Probably a sauce. Below that, there were his pajama bottoms that he’d picked out recently at a thrift store. Even lower, his socks didn’t match; his loafers, however, did.

He’d been retired for a few years now. After decades of slacks, belts and buttons, he’ been done with it. He could have offered that as an excuse. Instead, he felt ashamed.

Getting that, Edwina tamped down her calm vitriol, just a bit. “I’m still making an effort to look good to you. You don’t seem to be. Remember when that was important to you, and you shamed me into losing weight?”

He didn’t. He didn’t want to admit that he didn’t. He didn’t say anything, just shook his head in a “no” fashion.

“If you cared,” she declared, “you’d care enough to do the bare minimum to attract your wife. But you don’t.”

His head-shaking had continued through the whole declaration, but now it seemed it affirmed her declaration.

“I care!” he blurted at last. “I care!!”

“I’ve heard that before. But your actions show me otherwise.”

“I’ll make them better! I’ll make better actions. To you!”

“I’m done turning it over in my mind,” she said firmly. “I think we end this before we really start to hurt each other.”

He covered his face with shaking hands. Tears weren’t coming, and he briefly wondered why. Then they came.

Before the stores closed, they drove to one. There, Spence picked out some pants, a brown and green sweater and new loafers. Edwina took them and discreetly hid them behind a mannequin. “Here,” she said. “These will fit you, both in size and style.”

The next day, wearing his new outfit, he dumped the spent charcoal from the grill and got a substantial amount of the dust on his attire. When he walked in, still brushing it off, but now onto the dining room floor, Edwina burst into laughter. He hoped this meant things were okay again.

But her head snapped to the side as she heard the toilet, the one he just couldn’t fix, however many times he’d tried, filling again. She fixed her gaze back on him. “Look at you,” she said, borderline nastily. “How would you like it if I wore that dress you bought me while working underneath the car?”

Spence thought he would love that. Especially if her bare legs dangled from out under the car and he could look at them surreptitiously. Her body was something to behold. He now, however, through reflex, thought it better to hide that admission. “I just,” he began, then paused as she pierced him with her look. “Just…I forgot.”

“I’ve had about enough of you. Your abuse. Your gaslighting. I should have left you the first time you called me a crazy bitch.”

His usual headshaking had commenced, more emphatically than usual. He tried to defend those infractions she’d just mentioned, but it was like remembering a movie he’d seen years ago while drunk.

“But do you know why I couldn’t leave?”

He had no idea. His frantic eyes answered for him.

“Money,” she said. “The kids. The shame. The pity and discomfort from our friends. And worry about you. Your inability to care for yourself. Your potential for violence.”

“No, don’t worry about me!” he cried.

“How can I not? Look at you.”

He looked around for a mirror; Edwina reached for a purse and found one for him. Into it he peered. He knew that face from somewhere, or maybe he knew that face’s son. But this face was thinner, and paler, and seemed worried about something. He did not enjoy looking at it.

“You’re losing your mind, you old fart,” she said, leaving the room, letting out a little cry.

Spence looked at the place where he’d last seen her, as if expecting her to materialize and make things better. But somehow he knew that wasn’t how it worked. What he didn’t know was what to do right then. Was there something that needed doing? What could he do to make things right again? Should he find someone to help him?

Later, he sat in his favorite chair, the one he’d long ago transported from the Poconos on the roof of his Toyota Corona. He had a New Yorker on his lap, but couldn’t keep his mind on any of its content. The world had gotten so complex.

He heard the toilet refilling itself, which for some reason made his heart race. Cold sweat beaded on his forehead. He looked about him as if expecting something to come at him. He stayed that way until, a minute later, Edwina appeared and sat down on the edge of the chair opposite him.