Good Night

I sat alone in the big empty house and stared out the window for what seemed like hours.  With a sigh, I placed the post-it note on the computer monitor.  “Read me,” called the scrawled handwriting in blue Sharpie.  I stared at the screen, focused on the bright yellow flap of paper that represented my last hope to salvage my marriage.   In the dark, I sat and waited, resigned to whatever fate awaited me.

For weeks, the spaces between us had grown cold with distance.  We slept in the same bed, backs toward one another.  Our conversation had limited itself to things like, “dinner’s ready.”   I became alarmed when a week passed, and she was still leaving the living room whenever I came to rest on the couch beside her.  She would get up and go into the office.  Shortly afterward, I would hear the familiar sound of her fingers confiding to that faceless hunk of plastic and silicon all those intimacies she was withholding from me.  

The next evening, I got home from work early.  I knew that she kept a journal.  In any other situation, it would never have occurred to me to violate her trust by reading the pages between.  But this was different. I could feel our five year marriage crumbling around me, and I had to do something.   She wasn’t speaking to me.  With trepidation, I opening the leather-bound cover of the journal I had given her on Valentine’s Day the year that we met.  On the first page I had inscribed a message to her.

“To Jen,” it read, “may you record the fulfillment of your dreams within these pages.  In these hallowed halls, may you commit to paper your deepest secrets and wildest dreams.  May you always find solace in the love that binds us.  And in my arms, may you find a soft place to land.”   A sense of failure consumed me, and I hesitated to turn the pages and read what lie ahead.   Doing so meant that there would be no going back.  My shortcomings as a husband would be revealed there on the page.  My hand trembled, and my breath quickened as tremors of fear crept into my gut.  Nevertheless, I continued.  I had to know where her heart was.

As I flipped the pages, records of happier times flashed before me.  “Harper’s Ferry,” read the heading on one entry.   Not long after Valentine’s Day, we had taken a road trip to Harper’s Ferry.  She couldn’t find a baby-sitter for the day, so we took her five year old daughter with us.  “It was cold,” I spoke allowed.  We walked, the three of us, hand in hand as the wind whipped around in our faces.  We stopped in a small café to catch our warmth, and ordered some French fries.   That was a good day.

Nervously, I flipped to end of her journal. I had to know what was going through her mind.  She wouldn’t talk to me.  Only the book of leatherbound paper, and the hunk of silicon and circuits in the office knew her secrets, and I was determined to know them too.  Soon, I found the words that would change the direction of my life forever.   “I just don’t know,” they read.  “Everytime we touch, make love, I hate myself a little more,” the words rocketed through my brain.  “I don’t want a divorce, but I don’t see an alternative.”

I sat on the bed, devastated.  What had I done that had driven her to this extreme?   I pickup up the journal and flipped backwards, seeking answers.   I discovered, to my surprise, that she had thought of leaving me in 2001.  When 9/11 happened, however, she decided that we would make it work.  2001?  We had only married in 1999?  Had we been drifting apart for that long? Was I just too oblivious to notice?  I recalled that our life was filled with turmoil during those days.  We had filed for bankruptcy in 2000, and just after 9/11 we had to move in with a friend because Jen had quit her job.  These were stresses to be sure, but nothing I thought we couldn’t handle.

“Marriages end because someone cheats,” I thought to myself.  “ I’ve never so much as looked at another woman.”   Within the pages of her journal, I found entries that indicated she suspected that I might be capable of doing so.  I was crushed. “How could we be so close and still not see each other,” I questioned.  Tears filled my eyes as I felt the anguish of having let such distance come between us that we couldn’t even see each other for who we were anymore.  There were no records indicating that she had cheated either.  I know.  I checked that too.  

We needed to talk.  But how could I force a conversation with her, without letting on that I had read her journal.  I wanted to talk, not fight.  After all, I had an idea that the conversation was not going to be pleasant at any rate.  I recalled how she had the habit of leaving the room to chat on the internet with her friends whenever I entered the room.  I saw my chance.

I waited until Wednesday evening.  She liked to attend the Wednesday service at the local community church.   While she was at the service, I sat down at wrote her a short letter that let her know I had noticed the distance between us growing.  “All I want to know is if there is chance for us to fix this, or if we’re better off figuring out how to untangle our lives,” I wrote.  I made sure not to hit too close to the mark on any of the things that I had read in her journal.  Than, I placed the post-it note on the computer screen and waited for my answer.

In the darkness, I waited, listening to the clock tick, tick, tick from it’s perch on the mantle.    Then, the shadows on the floor scattered, torn and ripped asunder, as headlights flooded up the driveway.  “Moment of truth,” I muttered. 

I will never forget the absolute stillness in the air as she read my note.  I sat in the other room, transfixed in the moment as I awaited for some sign that my words had reached her.   I saw the answer in the tears the rolled down her cheeks.  As she sat next to me on the couch, I expected a conversation.  What I got was a note.  “I want to work things out,” it read as my heart heaved a sigh, “ but I can’t do this anymore.”  My heart evaporated in my chest.  The air escaped my lungs against my will.  I struggled to keep it together.  “Isn’t there something….we could…like..uh..counseling, maybe,” I stammered.   “I just don’t love you anymore,” was the reply, carved in ice.  

“Okay,” I said.   We held each other, shamelessly, for the first time in months.  Silently, we agreed that it was over.  We had fought the fight and lost.   As the fingers of night enveloped us, we made our way upstairs.  We slept in the same bed, backs toward one another.   Our conversation was limited to things like, “good night” and “I’m sorry.”