Through a small hole near one of the curtained windows of the cabin Tate could see the night sky, black, distant, oblivious to all that went on beneath it. The sky was just a shadow surrounding the smaller shadow formed by the walls and roof of the cabin. It was the same sky he'd been born under; the same sky everyone was born under. Tonight as he stared at that tiny piece of it, it offered about as much comfort as it had each night of his life. He wished he believed there was someone or something up there from whom he could seek guidance and actually GET it. People were always looking to the sky to say their prayers and chant their chants. But he didn’t believe. He was alone in his uncertainty… or maybe, in this case, his unwillingness.
He turned to face the bedroom. Wen lay where he'd left her, sleeping soundly. He could hear her susurrate breathing, sounding like the distant, insistent wind. Something within him gave, and he turned away from the door.
Indecision had gotten him into trouble plenty of times. He’d tortured himself waffling one way and the other on choices large and small; but this left him numb, sick and angry and feeling totally unable to act.
He walked across the dark room to the hole; and, covering one eye, he placed the other against the aperture to search the blank screen of the sky for a point of light, for a glow near the horizon, for an airplane or satellite making its way through the darkness. Nothing. Same as always.
He began to pace the dark room avoiding the places where he knew the furniture to be.
He didn't remember much of the night they'd met at The Area. In memory, it was all heat and alcohol and booming music followed by moonlight and a warm bed at his apartment. He'd awakened next to her and stared at her large thin hand on the pillow, at her foxlike triangular face, at her sleep-mussed blond hair; and he'd smiled, feeling he'd known her for years.
For the rest of that week he'd looked for his mysterious woman everywhere on campus. They were grad students in the same department, but she didn't seem to frequent the same places the other grads did. He'd finally seen her that Thursday, and she'd asked him to a concert. The Chieftains were going to play at the Union. Folk music was not his choice of listening material; he preferred his music loud and strange. After the concert, he'd told her he loved it. That had pleased her, so he'd been happy.
That had been August. Now, in March, he knew he'd been too optimistic. He should have known things wouldn't hold; they never held.
Three weeks ago, he had asked her out to lunch with more than lunch on his mind. At that time the relationship had seemed healthy. He'd been in love with her for months, but he'd had trouble getting a simple I-love-you out of her to prove to himself that the feelings were mutual. She'd stayed with him, but she said nothing. Certainly, he'd thought as the months went by, if she stays, she must love me.
They'd had lunch in a close, dim restaurant in town. Throughout the meal he'd felt tied down by taught wires. Their conversation had been littered with expectant pauses.
At the meal's end while the cosmetic-covered waitress rang up their check at the register, he got up his nerve and began to speak. “Can you guess why I asked you here today?” he had said with a smile. He’d expected her to know why for some reason; he’d thought that she had felt the silences and understood their meaning.
“I thought we were here for lunch,” she'd said. Her brow furrowed a bit; her voice sounded slightly sarcastic.
“Well, I have another reason. I wanted to know what's going on this summer and afterwards.” He’d felt his heart beat in every inch of his body, and he’d been certain his excitement shown in his smile.
She had paused, seemingly interested in the swirling motion of the ice cubes in her drink as she drove them around with the skinny drink straw. “I don't know. After I graduate, I suppose I'll get a job.”
“The question of the day, the month, the year,” he’d said. “Is do you want me with you?”
Her hand stopped suspended in the act of stirring. The straw slipped from her fingers and spun crazily around the glass as they sat in silence. Finally, she said, “Do you know what you're saying?”
He'd been really sure of what he'd said at the time, “Yea, I do.”
Still intent upon the slowing motion in her glass, she said, “What about the rest of your graduate work? You've got at least one more year.”
“There are colleges all over the world. No matter where you decide to settle, I'll be able to find a school somewhere nearby.”
“What about your parents?”
“To hell with them. There are times in life when you've got to stop thinking so much about everyone else.”
Her gaze darted up to his face for just a moment before returning to her drink. “I'll admit I have wondered about what would happen at the end of the year.”
“But you didn't think I'd ask you what I asked you.” It had almost been a question. “You don't have to answer today,” he said over the table. Tate took her hand. “I know it's a big decision. Graduation is four months away.”
She'd simply nodded, and after he'd paid, they left.
It had taken her a week to get back to him with her answer. He'd stewed the entire time. She had seemed unaffected. A couple days before she said anything, a wall went up between them. They still slept together, but he could tell something was different.
One overly warm winter day, they had been sitting in his apartment. They were each working on their thesis papers. He had been staring at the top of her head, picking out with his eyes the most golden of her hairs. She'd looked up straight into his eyes; and without blinking, she'd said, “We need to talk.”
He'd agreed. They both knew what the conversation would be about. They'd been together too long not to know a little of what went on in each other's mind.
After a moment of toying with an index card, she laid it flat on the tabletop and looked up. “You… you just picked a bad time to ask your question,” she'd said staring at his shoulder.
“I know you were busy with the department--”
“No, that's not it. You should know me by now. You should know I'm—that I… that I wouldn’t want anyone with me my first time out. I went from my parents’ house to undergrad to grad school; I’ve never been out there in the world.” Wen had sighed and shaking her head ever so slightly said, “I can't say yes.”
“Can't say yes because you don't want to be dragging me along? I can pull my own weight. Can't say yes because you don't want to ask me to leave the school? I offered; you didn't ask.”
“You didn't hear me. I don't even know where I'm going. I don't want to be living with anyone when my life is so unsure.”
“So your answer is—”
“No.”
By an unspoken mutual decision they both returned to working on their thesis papers until he left to teach an evening class.
During the week he'd waited for her answer as melodramatic as it sounds, he'd been sure he would die if she said no. He hadn't. In fact he'd found, after thinking about it, that he'd expected her to say no. Maybe he knew her better than he realized.
He didn't see her for two days after that conversation, and through those two days he'd worked very hard at feeling nothing. He had, however, almost become physically ill at the numbness that sat in his chest.
She'd finally called him which, in itself, was something rare. “I'd like to see you. We need to talk.” she'd said. Somehow the telephone made her voice a little colder than usual. He shivered at the chord it struck within him.
He said nothing.
“Can I ask you a question?” She said into the silence of the phone line.
“Sure.”
“Where did you get the guts to ask me that?”
“You won't like my answer.”
“Fine. I want to hear it anyway.”
He considered several ways of saying what he’d felt and picked the most direct, “A year ago, were I to have outlined my idea of my perfect mate, it would have sounded as if I were describing you.”
“Oh.”
“I had to ask it. I knew if you said yes, there would have been a few months of hell after graduation while we settled down. And if you said no, there would be a few months of hell before graduation.”
“These months don't have to be hell,” she'd said slowly. “That's why I wanted to talk. Want to meet at The Area tonight?”
The riot in his head might be calmed by a little external riot. “Sure.” he’d said.
They'd met at the bar. Beneath the psychedelic lights in the music-beaten, hot air where they'd first met, he'd asked her what she was on her mind.
He'd sat there, one of his hands covering the other as he waited, staring at her across the table.
“I want,” she began as she caressed the condensation off her Long Island Iced Tea glass. “I think… we should continue, like it was before.”
He had not been ready for that. ‘Like it was before’. Part of him wanted to shout, maybe for you it can be like it was before. But he didn’t. He loved her, and she had stayed with him. He didn’t want to hurt her. “Me too,” he'd said quickly. There was no rush of adrenalin, no surge of happiness.
She'd smiled. Then there were a few moments of awkwardness, as if they had just met, while they ordered their next drink.
He knew that no matter when they said goodbye it would be hell. She told him it would be hell for her; he knew it would be hell for him.
They'd gotten overly drunk that night. Later in her apartment, they'd started laughing. They laughed for what seemed like an hour. Every time they looked at each other they'd laughed harder. When they went to bed, both of them laughed themselves to sleep.
That had been a week ago. Since then, it had been like they were starting over, except that this time, there were no illusions on his part that their relationship would last. There was a temporal limit on what they did, and that changed the way everything felt. To him, they were friends who shared a bed. It all seemed mechanical.
The weekend had come around again, and they'd decided to spend it at his parents’ cabin just outside of town. They'd been having a good time, but being near her made him tired. He was always holding back. It felt odd to him to feel tears so close and to know that they weren't allowed or appropriate. He was sick of the emotional shell game he always practiced when he was afraid he'd hurt someone if the truth came out.
His love for her had changed since she'd given him that one word answer. He could feel the lack of depth, and it frightened him that it couldn't endure, that it was so superficial, that one word had so completely shattered it. Everyone had always told him love lasted forever.
She'd been mighty free with the I-love-you's and the I-missed-you's since their reconciliation. She knew he was a hopeless romantic, and he couldn't help feeling that it was a ploy to keep someone near her until she left. But he didn't want to believe that she was capable of such machinations.
He wanted to tell her. He wanted to say that what kept him going in a relationship was the promise of forever, and that was gone. He wanted to tell her he could handle saying goodbye, but not for three solid months. He wanted to say that he needed to move on.
They'd built a fire when they'd arrived earlier in the evening. It had been warm enough in the cabin, but a fire sounded and looked romantic. As they sat next to one another in the light of the fire she'd broken one of their too-common silences, “What ya thinking about?”
She'd laid her hand on his. Hers had felt unnaturally warm.
“Nothing,” he’d smiled, sitting back and crossing his arms. “just zoning out. I was lost in the fire, I suppose.”
She'd let it pass, and they'd begun discussing their students' progress since the beginning of the semester. When they'd started getting sleepy, he'd closed the glass doors on the fireplace; and they'd gone to bed.
He had been thinking, but not of anything he could force out of his mouth at the time.
He stopped pacing the dark room and sat against the wall opposite from the hole. Every morning he'd wake up next to the same face he'd awakened next to since August, but even in sleep he could see some distance in her immobile features. He wondered why he hadn't noticed it before. Perhaps the events of the past month were just coloring his perceptions. She was her own, and no one would possess her. Certainly not him, not now.
He stood. The sky outside the hole had begun to brighten. It was a curious pink-black color. His thoughts were in an uproar. “Only three more months,” he said aloud. He could pretend that long, for Wen… maybe a little for himself. Tate turned his back on the little aperture and walked through the darkness towards the bedroom.