Big Arms Big issues

I can’t finish the book I was reading while you died. Sometimes, I blame that book. What if I wasn’t reading while I waited for you, sprawled out on the couch, full from our dinner and sleepy from the sun? Tired from a day well lived. Too secure, too happy, too peaceful. My hair tied up in a messy top knot because I hadn’t bothered to wash it after the beach; what’s the rush? There is always tomorrow. You’d still love me, dirty hair and all. I had on my gray pajama top and black bottoms. Right leg stretched out, left foot resting on the ground. I was propped up on my elbow, Kindle in my right hand, our future in my left. I’ll just read this book while you queue up the movie and get ready; no problem, that’s fine, I said as I walked into the living room, seeing you alive for the last time. 

The pajama top was thin and low-cut. I remember this so clearly because after I called the police, I frantically searched for a sweatshirt to put on, thinking that I needed to cover up before they came. It was so hot that sweat trickled down my back while I ran up and down the stairs, alternating between trying to open the door you were locked behind and waiting in the street for someone to come, inclining my ear at anything that sounded vaguely like a siren, yelling out loud, “Where are they?” before running back inside, where the locked door continued to defeat me. 

Would I have checked on you sooner if I hadn’t been reading? If I wasn’t so distracted with my book and its stupid, useless storyline, would my relentless impatience have tugged at me to get up and see what was taking you so long? To bang on the door and demand you answer. To tell you I’m bored please come out and play with me. It always annoyed you when I did that. “Can’t a man have some peace in his own home?” You’d say. No, not when I’m around, except for that night my book entertained me, and I let you have your peace.

Why did I choose that night to leave you alone? 

If I wasn’t reading, would the passage of time have been that much slower? Could I have somehow stopped what was happening, rewritten this terrible ending, stepped in, and changed the plot? How many minutes would have made the difference? Five? Ten? One chapter? Two? Can a person measure time in pages? In Chapters? Would one less sentence have interrupted this? 

You downloaded that very book for me earlier that morning. Did you unknowingly set in motion your own death so I could read a crappy romance novel at the beach? You laughed at me when you saw the cover, the chiseled abs and the cheesy title. I know they’re terrible, but sometimes I need a break from the heavy stuff; after all, I work hard during the week. I defended myself. It was my guilty pleasure to set aside the leadership and business books and lose myself in a terribly uncomplicated storyline. That day, I was looking for something steady, predictable, and easy. I wasn’t looking for a plot twist, for an interruption. 

I’m not sure if you knew that about me until then, that underneath the thick-rimmed glasses and the lofty thoughts and the black starched pants was a simple girl who liked simple words and simple stories. That I had a little secret soft spot for romance after all. You had so much more to discover about me. I had so much more to discover about you. We had so much more to discover about us. Earlier that day, a new topic had come up, and we’d said tomorrow, tomorrow, we will talk about that; let’s enjoy today. 

Tomorrow never came for us. 

Who sits on a couch reading while the love of their life dies in the next room? Me, the eternal idiot. I now hate reading. Who knew that something I once loved so much, a favorite pastime, would become a tool of destruction? I could burn all the books in the world and still not feel satiated in my thirst for revenge for what they’ve taken from me. Since I learned to read, words have been my steady companions, and then they turned on me, another betrayal in this sordid tale of my life. 

My mom used to pay us 25 cents for each book we read until she realized my habit was becoming unaffordable for her. I was reading her out of house and home. I didn’t need the incentive; I’d read anyway, staying up late at night with a flashlight under the covers, begging for just one more page, flying through the American Girl Doll Series, The Boxcar Children, Nancy Drew, the Babysitter’s Club. Winning book-it contests and personal pan pizzas. I could have fed my family Pizza Hut for life on the number of books I read. 

In High School, I would crack open my textbooks in class and tuck a book between the pages, reading Summer Girls under the guise of Econ 101. I never did get caught. I’d often stay in on weekends, pretending I had to work, but really I just had a good book waiting for me at home. Sometimes, I’d bring that book out to parties, devouring Ender’s Game in the corner while my friends socialized around me, wanting to be near people but also wanting to lose myself in a different world. I still have the copy of Black Beauty I read at my grandparents’ every summer. My aunt took it from the house for me when they had to put it on the market. It’s musty and smells of days gone by, of different lifetimes, where those I loved were alive, my mom, my grandma, my grandpa. 

What if my mom had never done that? Paid me to read. What if I never learned to love the written language? What if I’d gotten more interested in boys than books, chasing dates instead of stories? What if I’d paid attention to Econ instead of swapping the stock market for science fiction? What if I’d been a normal kind of rebellious, the kind where I snuck out and went to parties instead of ignoring my friends and staying up late to read? What if I’d never signed up for a library card and checked out stacks so heavy my childish arms could barely wrap around them, so high I couldn’t see over them as I left the building? What if I hadn’t accumulated so many overdue charges I had to do chores for my mom to pay them off? She was so mad at me for that. The week after Jason’s death, I received three calls from the Minneapolis Libraries notifying me of late charges. I owe my soul to Hennepin County. I never changed. I haven’t learned my lesson. 

Would any of that have altered things? Was it as simple as forgoing a quarter in exchange for his life? If I hadn’t been saving up to buy toys, would he still be alive? How far back do we need to go in time to rewrite the future? Was that far enough? Need I go further? Maybe if I’d never been born, he could live. 

The book I was reading that night remains half-finished, like us. It will stay that way forever; the bookmark is stuck on page 135. I’ll never reopen it; I’ll never know how the story ends. How would the remaining 217 pages have gone? Would the characters predictably end up together? Would they overcome the odds stacked against them? Was the conflict resolved? Will the good guys win in the end? Of course they will, because that is how all good love stories go. Love always wins and always triumphs. Love always finds a way to stay before the final sentence is dotted with a crisp period mark. 

I am so tired of love only lasting in the stories I read, in the made-up worlds of my imagination. I want to disappear into them, into the pages where the good people win, and happiness lasts, and just when you think all hope is lost, the day is saved, and lives go on uninterrupted. 

I’ve never read a love story that went any other way, until now.

I was drinking in a love story as my own ended. I was lost in a fantasy, unaware of my own reality. I was cushioned in someone else’s joy as mine crashed all around me. I wish this had happened in the book. Can I trade places with the characters? Could we switch plot lines? This tale would be easier to read as fiction than biography. 

Instead, our story is forever interrupted.  

Like the book, such a difference between pages 134 and 135; that day is evenly divided between 9:48 and 9:49. There will always be a before and after. A book interrupted. A minute interrupted.

It struck me that night. After the paramedics and the police and the medical examiners and the crisis workers and the thousands of people parading in and out of our home had left. As I was gathering my things, turning off lights and finding your keys to lock up the house, the movie was still queued up on the TV screen, waiting for us to press “play”. One of many things that we will never finish together. That book, that movie, that night. I never did turn the TV off, it felt too final, too much like an ending.

 Let it play, I thought as I left the house; please, let it play. 

Our day, interrupted

Our lives, interrupted.

Our love, interrupted.

Our dreams, interrupted. 

Our forever, interrupted. 

I am. Interrupted.